"All you see is the choice between working hard and slacking off"
I am feeling so unmotivated.
I slacked off last week and didn't write a Women and Violence post. I promised myself I'd make up for it by writing two this week, but I've been putting it off for days. Now I'm wondering if I'll do it at all, or just call it a loss and write one for this week. On the one hand, I don't think this will cause me to be penalized on my final project. On the other hand, I should (and want to) have as many entries as I can for this series.
A dilemma for tomorrow. I've been suffering from stress-fueled insomnia lately, and I want to get to sleep at a decent hour.
This afternoon, a woman who graduated from our Women Studies program a few years ago came to speak to my class. She works at Reel Grrls and talked to us about non-profit work and activism after graduation. Besides her work in film, she's also a spoken word artist, and even performed a piece for us (which kicked ass - we're trying to get her to perform at our graduation ceremony).
There's something about spoken word that appeals to me a lot, even though I've only seen a few performances. Every time I do, it pulls at me. Spoken word gives me an actual reason to think that poetry should be read aloud. I've never understood the fierce emphasis that all my poetry instructors have put on reading it out loud; it's all right, but I normally prefer the written form much more. With spoken word, though, I really understand why I'm supposed to hear it out loud - the speaker really brings something vital to it.
Reading formal poetry out loud is all about "pleasing word sounds" and things that don't really call to me. Performing spoken word ... there's something far stronger, far more live about that.
That quality is possible in formal poetry, I know - I'm thinking in particular of "black poetry" (in quotes because I know not all black poets write in this style, nor is this style is exclusive to black writers). I had the immense good fortune to hear Nikki Giovanni give a reading when I was in high school, and she captured a lot of the same qualities that today's performance did.
Hearing today's performance was one of the rare instances in which I actually wanted to read my own poetry out loud. Normally I don't care for it.
Also, I talked to this woman a little bit about balancing activism with art - how to negotiate that tension between political ideals you want to teach everybody, and the creative integrity that demands you not to require anything out of your audience. Things she said got me thinking about my own creative writing again, something which I haven't engaged in for a really long time.
I kind of want to get back to it. I don't know if I can actually do it. I think part of that reluctance is just fear that I won't do it well, a problem I've always had with my writing.
I have no real closure to this ... just more thinking.
And also: because I like this.
I slacked off last week and didn't write a Women and Violence post. I promised myself I'd make up for it by writing two this week, but I've been putting it off for days. Now I'm wondering if I'll do it at all, or just call it a loss and write one for this week. On the one hand, I don't think this will cause me to be penalized on my final project. On the other hand, I should (and want to) have as many entries as I can for this series.
A dilemma for tomorrow. I've been suffering from stress-fueled insomnia lately, and I want to get to sleep at a decent hour.
This afternoon, a woman who graduated from our Women Studies program a few years ago came to speak to my class. She works at Reel Grrls and talked to us about non-profit work and activism after graduation. Besides her work in film, she's also a spoken word artist, and even performed a piece for us (which kicked ass - we're trying to get her to perform at our graduation ceremony).
There's something about spoken word that appeals to me a lot, even though I've only seen a few performances. Every time I do, it pulls at me. Spoken word gives me an actual reason to think that poetry should be read aloud. I've never understood the fierce emphasis that all my poetry instructors have put on reading it out loud; it's all right, but I normally prefer the written form much more. With spoken word, though, I really understand why I'm supposed to hear it out loud - the speaker really brings something vital to it.
Reading formal poetry out loud is all about "pleasing word sounds" and things that don't really call to me. Performing spoken word ... there's something far stronger, far more live about that.
That quality is possible in formal poetry, I know - I'm thinking in particular of "black poetry" (in quotes because I know not all black poets write in this style, nor is this style is exclusive to black writers). I had the immense good fortune to hear Nikki Giovanni give a reading when I was in high school, and she captured a lot of the same qualities that today's performance did.
Hearing today's performance was one of the rare instances in which I actually wanted to read my own poetry out loud. Normally I don't care for it.
Also, I talked to this woman a little bit about balancing activism with art - how to negotiate that tension between political ideals you want to teach everybody, and the creative integrity that demands you not to require anything out of your audience. Things she said got me thinking about my own creative writing again, something which I haven't engaged in for a really long time.
I kind of want to get back to it. I don't know if I can actually do it. I think part of that reluctance is just fear that I won't do it well, a problem I've always had with my writing.
I have no real closure to this ... just more thinking.
And also: because I like this.