Inspiration, Though an Unlikely Source

I have found a new idol. Eugene Hütz.

He's the frontman for a band called Gogol Bordello. He's from the Ukraine, and his Gypsy family evacuated following the Chernobyl disaster. He then emigrated slowly west through Europe, ending up eventually in New England. Then, in 1998, the band formed and began touring, collecting a hodgepodge of musicians from the world over. They're fantastically popular with critics and have appeared on many major talk shows. Their music is an eclectic blend of punk, East European folk, and latin rhythms. Parts of some of the songs are even in Romani, the Gypsy language!

My fascination is based less on Hütz' musical prowess (though he absolutely, undeniably rocks) than it is on his dedication to his culture, his robust self-education, and his refusal to adulterate his personality and style to fit popular taste. He simply is who he is, unapologetically and without reservation. I want that kind of confidence and joy in my own life.

Pa chiv tuka, Mr. Hütz.

Speechlessness

I'm not sure if anyone can relate, but sometimes I feel so warmly towards someone that I just want to say something wonderfully positive about them. I wish I could express the deep gratitude I feel for the people God has placed around me and the special role each of them plays in my life. I always end up just grinning like an idiot and giving them a hug or something.

I've been experiencing this a lot lately. It feels so good feelin' good again.

Decisions, Decisions

I just got into Burnet for Easter Break a few hours ago. Maria and I spent last night at her parent's high-rise apartment in Austin. It's a really incredible place, brand new and fantastically furnished. The view from the wall of windows in the living room? Unreal.

But now I'm feeling conflicted. I've had a comfortable upbringing; I didn't exactly get whatever I wanted, but we never had to wonder how we were going to make the next house payment. As such, I've come to desire a certain degree of luxury in my life. I would dearly love to be able to one day live in the type of place Maria's parents so graciously offered to my friends and me last night.

I love acting. Every moment I spend on stage, I feel closer to some divine truth, some great spirit of humanity. I'm happy when I'm acting. It's much more play than work. So how could I give that up to pursue medicine? "You can always do community theatre, Jeff!" Yeah, but it's not the same, and everyone knows it. Or at least I would always know it. Furthermore, recent developments regarding the future of medical care in the U.S. as well as changes in my personal life have robbed a career in medicine of much of its appeal. So I'm left to wonder if I'm willing to risk a long stint of poverty to pursue my dream career or if I'd be better off just settling for something mildly interesting, useful, and safe with a nice fat paycheck.

Decisions, decisions.

Specialness

Some moments in our lives are special.

They're not special because of what occurs, but because of the circumstances in which they occur. It's not necessarily just about the people or the place or the scenery or the time of day or the particular mix of emotions. It's about a combination of factors, a unique blend of elements that work together to create an indelible impression on our minds and hearts. We are certainly more than the sum of our experiences, but sometimes a single experience is more than the sum of all the rest.

Things that were once special can become mundane through overuse or painful experiences that become tied to what we once held dear. But the cause is not lost; shifting a few variables can reinvigorate our senses and revitalize our spirits. We can rediscover the specialness in ourselves and in our lives. I know that for a fact.

Fear of Flying

Over Spring Break I started taking flying lessons with my Dad. He's a great teacher, and my background knowledge of physics and conversations with him over the years have helped me come along at a satisfactory pace. He's even agreed to instruct me for free, though I'm sure I'll wash his planes a few times for payment along the way.

I'm not sure if my recent flight training has anything to do with this, but I had the most terrifying dream last night. I don't think it indicates an unconscious fear of flying or a mistrust of my father, but it's haunted me all day nonetheless.

In this dream, I was flying along in the Bonanza with my Dad over the countryside near my hometown. He was instructing me in his steady, patient manner, and I was trying my best to follow his directions. As we came in for a landing at the Burnet airport, I found myself in total command of the controls, something I was not (and am not) prepared for. As a result, I jammed the plane onto the runway, crippling the wheel struts and nearly flipping the plane over before bringing it to a grinding halt. My father was fuming, and I was in a cold sweat brought on by a sense of having narrowly avoided my demise.

We loaded the plane onto a trailer without speaking a word. I expected to ride back with Dad in the truck, but he inexplicably told me that as punishment I had to fly for another few hours with my brother in the passenger seat. Steven climbed into the Remos beside me and we took off. A few minutes in, the sky began to grow dark and we started encountering turbulence. The winds buffeted our tiny craft, and I began to fear that I couldn't control the plane.

Suddenly, my point of view shifted from a first person perspective to a view from outside, as though looking at my plane from another flying beside it. The frame of the Remos began to shift in strange ways, and eventually the wings detached with a horrific snapping sound. The entire plane fell to pieces, and I watched helplessly as my brother and I tumbled to earth, still strapped to our seats. After a few moments of free-fall, we became nothing more than scattered remains strew across a woody hillside in central Texas.

I woke up sobbing.

I rarely remember my dreams, so the vividness of my recollection in this case indicates the profound impact this experience has had on me. I'm unsure what it means, but I'm suddenly incredibly nervous about the idea of ever flying with anyone else in the cockpit. My expression of wide-eyed terror as I hurtled downward absurdly clutching the now-useless yoke is difficult to banish from my thoughts.

Lessons from COPS

I used to watch COPS with my parents a lot. It's simply amazing that the same scenarios can play out over and over again in cities across the nation and be broadcasted on national television without teaching the American people a few valuable lessons. Here are some things to consider before breaking the law.

• If you run, they will catch you. (Or if they don't, they probably won't put it in the show.)
  
• Crying gets you nowhere in violations more serious than a speeding ticket, even if you're a woman (but ESPECIALLY if you're a man).
• Officers of the law HATE being referred to as "dude." "Bro" is probably a mistake as well.
• If convicted of a crime of any nature, your likelihood of recidivism is inversely proportional to the number of teeth the meth hasn't rotted out of your mouth yet.
• "Oh, Lourdy, Lourdy!" is not a valid legal defense. Neither is "Come on, man."
• Don't lie about something that will soon become obvious. For example, if you know there's a rock of cocaine in your glovebox, don't swear to the arresting officers that there's nothing illegal in your vehicle. They won't take your word for it.
• Put a shirt on if you expect to be arrested in the near future. You'll be grateful when your mugshot gets printed.
• With a few exceptions, police officers can lie to you about anything during questioning. They are usually much better at it than you are, and they will almost always win a lying contest. Try it out if you doubt me.

Keep rockin' steady, boys in blue. The quagmire you wade through on a daily basis sure makes for entertaining television.

Simplicity and Serendipity

I'm on Spring Break this week, a week ahead of almost all of my friends from high school. I figured I'd struggle to entertain myself, but to be honest the change of pace has been exactly what I needed. I have been able to breathe deep, sleep late, and rediscover some of the simple pleasures that make life worth living. Here's a list of joys I had forgotten about.

Baths.

Reading on the couch.

Wrestling with a 90-pounds yellow lab.

Naps.

Vanilla bean ice cream.

Playing handbells.

Thinking about nothing in particular.

Forgetting what day of the week it is.

Cash Cab.

Conversations with Dad.

Kids' movies (Oliver & Company and Beethoven in particular)

Rocking chairs.

Home-cooked dinners.

Not setting an alarm when I go to bed.

Absence making the heart grow fonder.

Listening to: The Killers

Reading: The medical writings of Hippocrates

Flight

Here's a poem I've been working on. I'm not trying to "say something" about "the state of the underprivileged in America" or whatever. It's just a series of images that have haunted me lately. Some of the line breaks got messed up by the blog's formatting, but you should get the gist of it.

Steady drone of rain.

Rhythmic slap-slap-slap of sneakers pounding pavement,

accelerating with the heartbeat

of a delinquent.

A degenerate.

A hooligan.

A hoodlum.

A youth.

Pockets full of his prize,

he flees the scene,

reaches an alley,

leaps in,

stops.

 

 

Back

[breath]

to the wall,

[breath]

he pants

[breath]

as quietly

[breath]

as possible

[breath]

and waits.

[breath]

[breath]

[breath]

[breath]

He listens.

[breath]

[breath]

[breath]

Nothing.

[breath]

[breath]

He sighs.

[breath]

A noise.

[gasp]

A shout a light a turn a flight into the dark.

Around, over, under, through,

beyond the edges of the map in his mind,

he runs and leaps and trips and falls,

collapsing in a sobbing heap of broken will.

He can no more.

 

 

Minutes pass.

 

 

Like hours.

 

 

He reaches deep into his pocket and withdraws

the score: an apple and a pear.

A bite of each, and exhaustion carries off our troubled teen

to fitful sleep.

Visual, Not Verbal

I've been making really long posts lately, ones chock-full of my half-baked ideas and meandering tangents. So to mix things up, I submit some of my favorite photos from my portfolio. Click them to see the full version (they get cut off because of the blog format, and I don't know how to fix it). I hope you enjoy them.

Contextual Criticism

Okay, so Hamlet's all well and good, but what if it was set in SPACE?!?! Or what if Odysseus were Japanese? Would the Christ story be as significant if it had occurred in colonial America? 

For those of you who don't know, I'm currently in a production of Macbeth at Baylor University. Our iteration is set in a vague modern era. The swordfights are played out with katanas. Duncan wears a leather trench coat and aviators. All in all, it's a very hip, cool, artsy concept.

But is it valid? 

Shakespeare's contemporary actors would have worn fancier versions of their everyday Elizabethan garb and would have used few if any set pieces. The Bard obviously never intended for his play to be reinterpreted in this way, which raises interesting questions regarding the relationship between artists and their work. Should authorial intent guide our understanding of art, or should each play, painting, song, etc. stand alone and be endowed with meaning by the viewer?

I've never been a huge proponent of modern art. In general, I think it assumes too much about the obscurity of meaning and opens the door to purposeless imitations of true artistic depth. That being said, I accept the postmodern notion that an artist's work is larger than the artist and assumes an identity all its own. 

Once again, I'm going to take the moderate position on this issue. I respect those who incorporate other works into their art. Iphigenia 2.0 by Charles Mee (which was performed at Baylor last year) is an excellent example of intertextual dialogue. Michelangelo's supposed first painting, The Torment of St. Anthony, is a near-perfect copy of a German engraving of the same subject. These artists are not stealing, they are paying homage, adapting, and adding new layers of meaning to other works and the stories and themes they represent. As an artist, one must be comfortable with personal interpretation and application of one's corpus. However, it seems disrespectful to me to subvert or ignore an artist's intentions when evaluating their art. If someone publishes a play with obvious Islamic overtones, I think it would be a mistake to present that play as though it were purely a Christian allegory. If another artist wished to write a new version of this play with a central Christian message, I would have no problem with that. In fact, I wouldn't mind if someone analyzed the play as though it were a Christian allegory as an academic pursuit. I just find it foolish to pretend that an artist could somehow become possessed by a universal spirit that has its own purposes and produce some magnum opus that transcends their limited perspective.

The point of my ramblings is this: transporting works of art into a new context is perfectly acceptable. If it makes it more accessible or highlights aspects of the piece that interest you, then go for it. But don't assume that you have been chosen to recieve mystical insight into the spirit of the work that enables you to unlock its true meaning. That's both arrogant and unjustified.

Listening to: A random mix of indie college rock (Ben Kweller, Brand New, The Shins, et al)

Reading: Other people's blogs