Christmas Music, Part I: Non-Traditional Holiday Songs

It's been a while, hasn't it? Well, I have been listening to plenty of Christmas tunes as of late, and I decided I should share them with the Internet. This is part one of my Christmas music write-up:

Patrick's Favorite Contemporary/Non-Traditional Holiday Songs! (after the jump)

Music Review: The Antlers - "Hospice"

Hospice is one of those odd things in the entertainment world that is simultaneously a positive and negative experience. When I first listened to it, my immediate reaction was to compare it to Requiem For A Dream. Exceedingly well-made, artistically, and fascinating to experience. At the same time, unbelievably draining on an emotional level. The kind of thing you need to be mentally prepared for before watching. In the immortal words of Marty McFly, "Heavy." Don't get me wrong, it's probably the best album I've heard in the past year, and The Antlers are well on their way to being my favorite band because of it. I'm just saying it's not an album one should enter lightly.

More after the jump!

Growing Up, and Friendship.

I just spent nine days in northern Michigan with my friend Mark and much of his extended family, and it was the most genuine fun I've had in a long, long time. However, the experience was bittersweet, because it sort of symbolizes the true end of my childhood. I graduated in May and decided to stay in Ann Arbor to live with friends and have fun in their company before everyone parted ways to begin "real life". I have spent the last three-point-five months doing some part-time work and some job searching, but mostly I was enjoying what time I had left. Now that I have returned from Up North, I must begin packing my Ann Arbor house and move back in with my parents until I find a proper job. And depending on what happens in the next year, I may not even be around for the next Up North trip with his family. Mark may not be, either. What if we just had the last pure, innocent, fun week of our lives before adulthood? (Probably not, but it's a thought.)

Turns out? Growing up is a tough thing.

In high school, I didn't have the kind of experience you see in popular culture. I wasn't going out drinking (never touched the stuff until college) or making out with my girlfriend (uh...ditto). I wasn't going to Warped Tour, or trying out for a school play, or forming a band. Mostly, I just hung out with my friends. Watching movies, playing video games, occasionally dressing up in wacky costumes - good times. Innocent times. As high school went on, some of my friends started drifting toward the drinking-and-partying angle and were no longer quite satisfied with a mere hang-out, but that was okay.

It's interesting, going back and thinking about friendships through the years. The aforementioned Mark was my best friend from seventh grade to high-school graduation. When it turned out we were both going to the same university, I thought "Hot damn, the good times will just keep rollin'!" And then...college happened. In my dorm, I made all kinds of new friends very quickly, which was something that I had never really experienced before. Thanks to these new friends, I started discovering the enjoyable type of college party (protip: they're usually at co-ops). It was a heady time. Meanwhile, Mark spent a lot of time in one of the other dorms, where a large handful of our high school friends had ended up in a hall together. Those guys and their hallmates bonded pretty quickly, too, and they had a great time. I visited usually once a week to hang out with the gang, and I loved being around that crowd - old and new - but it was very different from the days when we would all meet up at somebody's locker every morning and walk around the school before class started. All four years of college, it was a pretty similar story: Mark and the dudes lived far away from me, and I would visit regularly but not necessarily frequently. We were all still friends, but best friends was a hard label to apply.

But starting the first summer after freshman year of college, I got a standing invitation to join Mark and his family at their house up north. We always have an absolute blast, and it's always a bummer to part ways when the nine-day week is over. Those weeks always remind me why Mark and I were so close, and make me want to spend more time with him. However, somehow, once the school year started back up, I always fell into the same habit of only seeing him and the rest of the high school gang every once in a while. Why? I'm not sure. And every summer, I felt rather guilty accepting that invitation, considering the sub-par effort I'd put into maintaining our friendship in the interim.

I hope that, seeing as several of us high-school chums have moved back home, we'll get back into our old groove. Plus, I'm no longer the only one who drinks, so that's another social divide between us that's been sealed. But at the same time, I wonder what will happen when I move. I will not be back home forever - not even for a year, if I meet my goals - and I am excited at the prospect of starting a new period in my life. Having my own place, making actual amounts of money, getting a change of scenery. The problem is that when I find a new home, I will probably need to find new friends. I won't have dorms or classes to force me into amicable social encounters with like-minded people. I won't have high-school friends to reconnect with. Oh, and a large percentage of my dorm-spawned friendships can be traced through Alia, another high school friend who ended up in the same hall as me. Frankly, I don't think I know how one goes about meeting new people in the Real World.

Maybe, though, it'll just be like what happened with my friends when we went to college, but on a bigger scale. It could be that I'll make lots of new friends in whatever city I wind up in, and I'll become a bit distant with all my college friends. But if that happens, there will probably be weekends or weeks where I go back and visit with all those college friends, and those times will end up being the most genuine fun I've had in a long time. Maybe the "specialness" of seeing those people after a dry spell is what makes it so much more exciting - like my weeks with Mark and his family. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say. I hope it's true, because I don't want to close the book on my college life and relationships just yet.

I know this is kind of rambling, stream-of-consciousness stuff. Sorry!

Racebending and Ethnicity Issues in Hollywood

If you haven't read my earlier essay that discussed Avatar: The Last Airbender, allow me to fill you in on some of the show's core concepts - by quoting the monologue that begins every episode:

"Water.. Earth.. Fire.. Air.. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them but when the world needed him most, he vanished. A hundred years passed and my brother and I discovered the new Avatar, an airbender named Aang. And although his airbending skills are great, he still has a lot to learn before he's ready to save anyone. But I believe Aang can save the world..."

So that's that. It's a pretty straightforward epic fantasy story, albeit extremely well-done for a kids' show. Now, the animation style is strongly influenced by Japanese anime rather than "typical" American animation. However, in addition to that, almost every element within the series' universe is borrowed from various Asian cultures. The written language of all four nations is Chinese calligraphy - a point which the producers felt was so important to get right that they hired an expert. Each nation has its own form of martial art/elemental control, each of which is essentially a real-world Asian martial art with magic added: Airbending is Bagua, Waterbending is Tai Chi, Firebending is Shaolin, and Earthbending is Hung Ga. They got an expert for that one, too. In terms of visual culture - architecture, clothing, hairstyles, and even skin tones - the Fire Nation resembles primarily Tang Dynasty China, the Earth Kingdom draws from both Qing Dynasty China and Korea, and the Air Nomads are mostly Tibetan-inspired. The Water Tribe, which is mostly informed by Inuit culture, is kind of the odd one out. Even so, can we agree that the show has very little caucasian influence, aside from the language spoken? Good.

....But now they're making a movie of it, and things are going awry.

A Tumblr for Patrick!

In case anyone is interested, I've finally caved in and gotten a Tumblr to share all the awesome pictures I've saved over the years. Enjoy it!

http://classyshenanigans.tumblr.com/

...Also, this will prevent me from being tempted to make posts on this blog containing a single image.

100 Words #1

The other day, I felt inspired to do a little writing exercise: the hundred-word story. I recall doing stuff like this in high school and really enjoying it. I think I'm pretty good at setting a scene, if I say so myself, so this kind of thing suits me well!

*  *  *

Before the tramp could see the train, he could hear it coming. Not the rumble of the engine or the click-clack of the wheels, but the vibrations traveling through the rails. The steel hummed and twanged like something alive, reaching frequencies that made his teeth hurt. It reminded him of his youth on the farm, watching rabbits and voles fleeing the thresher that was chewing up their field. He stretched and picked up his pack. The train came, the pitch of its horn bending in his ears as it approached - and passed.

"Oh," he said sadly, "not stopping today."

Video Games as Art

 Donkey Kong, 1981

I recently read an article by the esteemed Roger Ebert entitled "Video Games Can Never Be Art." Ebert's core declaration is this: "No one in or out of the [gaming industry] has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets." Regardless of what you may think of video games, I think it can be agreed that this is a distressingly strong assertion. All art is, after all, subjective, even within the fields Ebert mentions. Generational differences play a large part as well - I imagine that Dickens might have a hard time accepting the novels of Cormac McCarthy (an author that Ebert specifically praises in the article) as "art". Then again, Dickens might not even think of his own writing as art; only relatively recently have we been so keen to draw a line between what is and isn't art across all media. My point is that Ebert is positioning himself as a voice of authority on what can be considered art - an egregious error as it is - and views video games with a fairly narrow mindset.

More after the jump!

Ownership & Appropriation, Part V: Conclusion

            As I hope these examples have shown, appropriation in art cannot be labeled as either wholly ethical or wholly unethical. After all, appropriation of one sort or another has led to revolutionary and changes in the Western conception of art in several ways, so it is irresponsible to ignore its cultural importance. There are, of course, unethical ways of appropriating art. Direct plagiarism – passing off another person’s creation as your own – is generally agreed to be reprehensible. There are also instances of one culture disrespectfully using another’s art for their own profit, such as Picasso’s refusal to acknowledge his African influences. Even appropriation within a single culture can be a dishonor to the original source, such as the totem pole imagery used in some Native American casinos. This does not change the fact that appropriation can be done respectfully and without infringing on the rights or traditions of others. Intent is a crucial element in determining the morality of appropriation. When people like Warhol and Prince alter an existing photo, they make no effort to pass off the photo as their own - they simply want to use it as raw material for sending a message. The Impressionists were not trying to replace Japanese art with their own, but instead to expand their artistic vision. In The Secret of Kells, Tomm Moore takes much from the Book of Kells and rewrites its history, but does so out of respect for the book’s importance to art and his cultural heritage. If I take a photograph of graffiti in an alley, I am in no way trying to tell people that I can create interesting art with a spray can; I am merely showing them what interests me in the juxtaposition of beauty and grittiness in the urban environment. In most of the examples analyzed in this paper, my judgment is that the appropriators were not trying to steal another’s art, or to become rich and successful without doing any work. They saw someone else’s art and believed that they could do something new, inspired, important, and unique with it. The poet Audre Lord once said “There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.” The quote may be somewhat cynical, but I believe it lends credence to the idea that appropriation can be an acceptable way of expanding one’s artistic sphere. Much of the artistic appropriation seen in recent history can be attributed to this idea. So, if an artist takes his cues from an existing piece of art, or the art of another culture, or that of his own culture, we as viewers should consider his treatment of that original before condemning him.

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...And that's my senior project! The essay part of it, at least. Looking back on it, even just a few weeks later, I can see things I want to change - like the implication that the Seven Cedars Casino and The Secret of Kells are indicative of the entire Native American and Irish cultures' take on appropriation. But...ah well, I wanted to post it in its natural state. Hope you enjoyed it!

Bibliography after the jump, if you're at all curious!

Ownership & Appropriation, Part IV: Appropriation of One's Own Cultural Style

Click the jump for the fourth part of the essay!

Photograph of totem poles depicting family crests.

Ownership and Appropriation, Part III: Appropriation of Others' Cultural Styles

Click the jump for the third part of my exploration of appropriation!

 Monet - "La Japonaise"

Ownership & Appropriation, Part II: Appropriation of Specific Works

Click the jump for the second part of my essay examining appropriation!

 Warhol - "Marilyn Monroe"

Ownership & Appropriation, Part I

I am going to break my RC Arts & Ideas senior project essay into chunks and upload each section as its own blog post. This is the beginning. Enjoy!

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Art is everywhere, and you need not visit a museum to encounter it. The billboards along the highway, the shows we watch on television, the graffiti in the alleyway; it is impossible to live a day in a modern life without experiencing someone’s creative output in some way or another. Whether this art entertains us. annoys us, or simply slips under our radar, it affects our lives deeply. Our society, personal tastes, and culture are shaped by it. It may be this ubiquitous influence of art upon us that leads to questions of ownership, appropriation, and creativity. Who owns an idea or an image? How do we define originality? Is it thievery to learn and incorporate the techniques of others? In my opinion, appropriation can be performed in a manner that is ethical and legitimate. If an appropriator pays respect to the original artist, or if the end product sufficiently changes the art’s meaning, appropriation can be acceptable. In this essay, I will examine several types of artistic appropriation, each highlighting a different element of the debate of originality and legal and cultural ownership.

I Can't Believe It's Not A Blog!

Wow!

Wait, wait...it is a blog. I guess that's why I was so convinced!