Grad student parties are a riot.
In the best way possible, of course.
There's nothing like throwing a group of overworked and underpaid grad students into a room, providing them with beers and good music, and letting them go to it. The result is inevitably a mixture of bitching about research and students, commiserating over the latest developments in relationships and dating, and, of course, the nerdiest talk imaginable. Conventions around spelling? Check. Raiding the host's bookshelf for scholarly texts on the holocaust, followed by google searching the author to see what else he's written on postmodernity and social thought? Check. Debating the value of graphic novels that deal with social issues, a la Maus? Check. Wrangling with Disney films and the contradictions that they present? Yep, we've got that covered as well.
Last night's gathering at one of my friends' houses included all of the above, and it was one of those nights where I smiled to myself and thought, "Ah, yes. That's why I'm here."
Today included slogging through grading while sunbathing, and catching a film that was showing at the SB Film Festival -- Pure, a Swedish film about a young woman whose life is changed by Mozart's Requiem. It is a beautifully haunting film, and the lead actress, Alicia Vikander, was amazing. The music that was used (including Beethoven's "Figlio Perduto," which I love and threads throughout the film) was also exquisite, and the whole movie was incredibly well-done.
In other news, I have also written stuff! I stumbled on the prologue of " Restoration and Redemption," a story I started last November for for the Parthenon writing community on Dreamwidth, and realized that I actually kind of liked it. I also ran across a ton of notes I had written outlining the rest of the story, to be told in 8 chapters and an epilogue, and I decided that it might not be a bad idea to throw it in the queue of rotating works-in-progress. I've realized that, for me at least, there's nothing wrong with trying to balance more than one story at a time, and that it actually works better for me. If one world isn't "speaking" to me, there's usually another one that is. I'm trying to learn to be patient with myself. I might not be able to churn out 5k words in a day like a used to, but I am writing, slowly but surely, marshaling words and ideas and deploying them with a deliberateness that I haven't always had.
Ironically, I am realizing that there is a positive side to my writing hiatus. For months and months I angsted over the silence of my imagination, wrung my hands over the fact that I couldn't dream, couldn't create, couldn't see or hear the characters and worlds that I had once enjoyed. What I've learned in the past couple of weeks, however, is that I've changed dramatically in the two years since my writing partnership ended. I've grown in ways that haven't been immediately obvious, and when I return to my old work and my former characters now, I feel a separation that never existed before. I know now that what I used to write no longer adequately captures the experiences I've had, the interests that I've acquired, or the life that I've lived since then. It's a startling realization, but one that will allow me, ultimately, to grow, both as a writer and as a person. My challenge now is to figure out how to create stories that capture the scope of what I now know, and characters who reflect how I've changed.
I've written Chapter 1 of "Restoration and Redemption," which I'll post next. Excited to have scribbled something!
There's nothing like throwing a group of overworked and underpaid grad students into a room, providing them with beers and good music, and letting them go to it. The result is inevitably a mixture of bitching about research and students, commiserating over the latest developments in relationships and dating, and, of course, the nerdiest talk imaginable. Conventions around spelling? Check. Raiding the host's bookshelf for scholarly texts on the holocaust, followed by google searching the author to see what else he's written on postmodernity and social thought? Check. Debating the value of graphic novels that deal with social issues, a la Maus? Check. Wrangling with Disney films and the contradictions that they present? Yep, we've got that covered as well.
Last night's gathering at one of my friends' houses included all of the above, and it was one of those nights where I smiled to myself and thought, "Ah, yes. That's why I'm here."
Today included slogging through grading while sunbathing, and catching a film that was showing at the SB Film Festival -- Pure, a Swedish film about a young woman whose life is changed by Mozart's Requiem. It is a beautifully haunting film, and the lead actress, Alicia Vikander, was amazing. The music that was used (including Beethoven's "Figlio Perduto," which I love and threads throughout the film) was also exquisite, and the whole movie was incredibly well-done.
In other news, I have also written stuff! I stumbled on the prologue of " Restoration and Redemption," a story I started last November for for the Parthenon writing community on Dreamwidth, and realized that I actually kind of liked it. I also ran across a ton of notes I had written outlining the rest of the story, to be told in 8 chapters and an epilogue, and I decided that it might not be a bad idea to throw it in the queue of rotating works-in-progress. I've realized that, for me at least, there's nothing wrong with trying to balance more than one story at a time, and that it actually works better for me. If one world isn't "speaking" to me, there's usually another one that is. I'm trying to learn to be patient with myself. I might not be able to churn out 5k words in a day like a used to, but I am writing, slowly but surely, marshaling words and ideas and deploying them with a deliberateness that I haven't always had.
Ironically, I am realizing that there is a positive side to my writing hiatus. For months and months I angsted over the silence of my imagination, wrung my hands over the fact that I couldn't dream, couldn't create, couldn't see or hear the characters and worlds that I had once enjoyed. What I've learned in the past couple of weeks, however, is that I've changed dramatically in the two years since my writing partnership ended. I've grown in ways that haven't been immediately obvious, and when I return to my old work and my former characters now, I feel a separation that never existed before. I know now that what I used to write no longer adequately captures the experiences I've had, the interests that I've acquired, or the life that I've lived since then. It's a startling realization, but one that will allow me, ultimately, to grow, both as a writer and as a person. My challenge now is to figure out how to create stories that capture the scope of what I now know, and characters who reflect how I've changed.
I've written Chapter 1 of "Restoration and Redemption," which I'll post next. Excited to have scribbled something!