dissertation

Here's a warning: this post is about the potential epic boringness that is a Master's dissertation from Oxford. I am not--I think--motivated by the stereotypical academic, self-inflated sense that people ought to read my writing. Rather, my last post about my work got a pretty decent response, and as it happens, I wrote about something pretty accessible, so it doesn't require a lot of icky specialised theory nonsense.

My dissertation, which is here, is about Alice in Wonderland mostly. It's a study of Darwinism in Carroll's writing, particularly how the concept of natural selection relates to Carroll's writings about size. Essentially, I argue that Alice herself undergoes a specific personal evolution: at Wonderland's outset, she sees size in this childish bigger-is-better sort of way, but through some harrowing experiences (specifically, ones in which she changes shape and questions her identity because of it), she develops into a more mature concept of Darwinian 'fitness': fitness is not necessarily being big and powerful; sometimes it is being small and delicate. It's about adaptation to surroundings, and when those surroundings are always changing, Alice must too. If you're curious (Christopher Cox, I'm talking to you), feel free to read the thing: it's around 12,000 words, though. A short, rough version (here) formed the basis for a lecture I gave on the subject, and though it's probably riddled with errors--like I said, it was just my notes--and is, I think, still colour-coded, it's far more palatable in terms of length. Also, it's sans background research and such: it sticks pretty exclusively to textual analysis, which is probably the more interesting part unless you're really into Carroll. Or Darwin.

There's more to it, of course. I talk a bit about Sylvie and Bruno and also about illustrations (that's the fun bit!) and maybe a little bit of Gulliver's Travels snuck in there. Anyway, I enjoyed writing it, as much as one can enjoy writing a dissertation, I suppose. I got my mark back on it a couple of days ago, and it received the High Pass I expected and not the Distinction that I wanted. C'est la vie (or, to preview what will possibly feature in my next post: tio estas vivo)!

blog intimidation

I don't update my blog one week. That's okay, I think. My friends understand that I'm busy with work. When the week lengthens into two or three, I shrug it off. I'll update when something happens.

The hitch is that my next update has to be really quite good to make up for my recent lax ways. I grow increasingly cowed until taking off into a full-fledged Blog Intimidation Spiral. It isn't pretty.

But then my dear and darling friend Ben encourages me via Twitter to keep writing. And I just can't say no to that face.

So, ladies and gents, consider this my disappointing but necessary reintegration, however brief, to the blogging world. I have less than a week left in Oxford, and there are updates, if you're interested, to be shared about my life and my time here and all that jazz.

may day

So, you know how I intended to write more on Budapest? I didn't do that. Suffice it to say, it was lovely and I long to go back and I have dozens of photos on facebook. Yes?

Yes.

Term officially started yesterday, though we postgrads have been in the academic swing of things all break. Nevertheless, it's nice to have everyone else back and regular sorts of things happening once more.

In addition to being the start of term (my final term here!!), it was also the first of May: May Day. Oxford engages in its own unique tradition of May Morning, wherein hundreds of people (a fairly even split, we observed, between drunk-people-still-up and tired-people-just-getting-up) make their way at five in the morning to Magdalen College on the High street and stand around the college's tower. At six, the Magdalen choir begins to sing.

I would like to report that the sound carries softly through the still morning air as if by magic--but in reality, the sound equipment was not the best and was almost irritatingly obvious. Still, the choir sang beautifully, and their performance was followed by a

bit of a bizarre Earth Mother-y kind of prayer. I was blown away by the number of people down in city centre at 5:30 on a Sunday morning, though, and the group atmosphere of dancing and coffee-drinking and singing was lovely to behold. Above are some of my college friends, tired but happy, congregating on the street.

Oxford students and visitors used to rent punts and float along the Thames for the morning's festivities, but due to drunkenness-related danger, the University forbade the renting of boats in the 1980s. For the last thirty years, then, people have jumped in the river, despite obvious and serious danger. I didn't see any splashes, so perhaps this year's police warnings paid off.

 After the singing, it was still only about 6:30, but already pubs and restaurants and things were open. We made our way to the Big Bang, but not before running into all sorts of crazy early-morning celebration-of-Spring shenanigans.

Adults and children alike sang, danced, and played  all through the City Centre. One woman, wearing a black sheep's head, hung thin filaments of golden thread on bicycles, college walls, and street signs. One ivy-covered wall (a wall on Broad street, belonging, I think, to Trinity college) had bits of coloured paper tied to its leaves, which upon closer inspection featured wishes, promises, Springtime resolutions, and other newly public messages.

People got increasingly odd as the morning wore on: lots of Oxford streetgoers had on really silly outfits and were doing even sillier things. The city exploded with colour and sound all morning, and I have to admit: I felt a lot more springy and rejuvenated all day. I didn't even have to jump off Magdalen Bridge.

boldwood

So I'm going to represent my life topsy-turvily out of order and take a break from Budapest-posting to muse about a subsequent cultural experience. Which will annoy the chronology purists (I'm looking at you, Star Wars fans).

Last night, Robby and Emily (two people from my programme) and I went down to St. Michael's church to see Boldwood. I didn't know anything about the band, but Robby told me they were some sort of folk band and that it was a cheap concert. He really couldn't have chosen better: the show was perfect for people like us in so many ways.

Boldwood plays indie dance music--except it's 17th and 18th century English and Welsh dance music. Several years ago, accordionist Becky found a whole lot of manuscript music at a London library. Most of this music has no recorded author; nearly has not been played for more than two hundred years. Well, she did what any accordionist-and-traditional-music-enthusiast would do, and she got a band together.

Now, they play as a four-piece set (though only three of them were there last night), doing what they call "brushing the dust off" of these old, never-before-heard pieces. We heard an unrecognisable version of "Greensleeves" as well as a number of fiddle-driven dance tunes. One of the tunes was collected by Thomas Hardy. Others probably had specific dances to accompany them once, though these have long been lost. Most of the manuscript tunes only existed as a couple of lines--Boldwood arranged every piece in its repertoire. Well, almost every piece: on one or two occasions, they would just start at the same time and finish at the same time, trusting themselves and their instruments to figure out the middle, which is therefore necessarily different every time.

All three members of the band were fantastic and interesting and funny, though Becky the accordionist was an absolute star. She introduced almost every piece with a depth of knowledge regarding classical and folk music that was not simple research: it was honest love for music itself and her place within it. All of them had that attitude--while playing, they smiled at each other as if they shared some secret joke, and it was clear to everyone that they were three people who would rather be where they were than anywhere else in the world. It was captivating.

And now I'm listening to their CD, which is called "Feet, Don't Fail me Now", which is, improbably, on Zune. Brilliant.

budapest: an introduction

Whew! It's been a long week and a half. Last Tuesday, Rowena (whom, if you've been paying attention, you'll recall my having mentioned in the past) and I caught the 7AM bus to the airport. EasyJet tickets in hand and a little nervous, we got on our big orange plane, Hungary-bound. An hour and a half later, we found ourselves blinking in the unexpected sun, surrounded by words we had no hope of reading and a pervasive sense of vacation.

What made us choose Budapest? That's a good question, actually. Some esoteric algorithm of EasyJet-flight, never-been-there-before, and really-cheap-hostel informed our decision, certainly. Regardless, three months ago we were sitting on Rowena's couch saying, "wouldn't it be cool if we went to Budapest?"--and a week ago, we were there. We were right. It was cool.

Cool, of course, doesn't begin to describe it. Budapest is kind of like two miniature cities: to the west of the Danube is Buda, and to the right is Pest. The photo to the left is of Buda, from Pest which is larger. Our fabulous hostel (more on that later!) was in Pest.

The city itself is an intriguing blend of old-world Central Europe, memories of Soviet involvement, and a shiny new Budapest of industry and tourism. Oh, and a lot of really incredible buildings. Rowena and I hadn't been there ten minutes before we fell in love

with the place, and we just kept getting more impressed. Budapest is known for a number of things: perhaps the most famous are its medicinal thermal spas, whose use dates from Roman colonisation. There are a few such complexes in the city. We chose Széchenyi, the largest spa in the city with something like fifteen pools--indoor and outdoor--as well as steam rooms, jacuzzis, and lots of other exciting spa-stuff. 


We filled ourselves with a week of buildings and sun and Magyar culture, and now it's proving difficult to be back. I'll write more on Budapest, of course: I have far too much to say to fit into one measly little entry. In the meantime, these and about two hundred other photos are up on my facebook. 


Szia! (that's an informal Hungarian colloquialism for both "hello" and "good-bye"--a bit like the Hawaiian "aloha")

"what are you writing about?"

I've been getting this question a lot; ostensibly, it is because I have been complaining a lot about my frequent and seemingly-interminable library days. And, as I am nearing the end of another one of those days, it occurs to me that writing about my research is better than writing my research itself. Lo! A blog post is born.

I turned in a paper yesterday that was about The Nursery "Alice", which is a Lewis Carroll work. It was published 25 years after the initial publication of Alice in Wonderland, and it does what it says on the tin: it is a nursery version of Alice, designed to be read to children aged 0 to 5. Its publication history is quite complicated--for example, Carroll condemned the entire first print run as "too gaudy" and condemned them for sale in America--and it took a long while for this adaptation to come to fruition. The text itself is absolutely adorable: it often references its own illustrations ("Don't you see how [the rabbit's] trembling? Just shake the book a little, from side to side, and you'll soon see him tremble.") and it includes some lovely random stories. Anyway, my essay--which is for my bibliography and theories of text class, and is therefore not a literary essay but a biblipgraphical one--is about this work's publication history and also about some issues related to self-adaptation: the importance of illustration, the author's willingness to toy with usual conventions regarding physical publication, narrative structures that lend the tale to being spoken aloud rather than read silently.

And now! I am working on a quite different vein. This current paper is for my "Science, Philosophy, and Popular Culture, 1880-1910" class. I'm writing about Sherlock Holmes, which is fun. When Doyle was writing, Darwinism was a big frickin' deal, and it was seen as being solely about competition. Therefore, when the concept of symbiosis (for those of you who only vaguely remember high school biology, that's when two (or more) organisms live with, in, or on each other for the benefit of one or both constituent members) was coined in 1877, it was quickly defined (read: simplified) by popular culture as being in opposition to Darwinism: one was about competition for the goal of survival, the other dealt with cooperation for mutual benefit. So I'm writing about how Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty have a relationship best characterised by pop-Darwinism--they compete constantly and they know that the end is death for one of them; in so doing, they 'evolve' in the sense that they both sharpen their skills. Meanwhile, Holmes' relationship with Watson (why yes it is difficult not to make references to the fact that they were probably totally gay, because they totally were) is one that mirrors symbiosis: they live together and work together. They provide various services for one another; they need each other. Most importantly, Homes/Watson is as opposed to Holmes/Moriarty as symbiosis was to natural selection, though each relationship is a means for the characters to evolve--rather, to grow.

So that's what's up! And now the library is closing in fifteen minutes, and a man wearing the loudest shoes on the planet is scurrying about closing all of the windows--so I ought to sign out.

Just thought I'd share. For the, you know, one person who might be interested in my boring essays.

xx

spring!

In an unbelievably unfair (given the current Red Alert status on the stuff-I-have-to-do meter) move on the part of Oxford, the weather has been gorgeous lately: sunny, blue-skied, relatively warm. So warm, in fact, that sitting in the park at Wellington Square (a park that has been featured on this blog before, as here and here) making a flower-chain crown for my hair and laying in the grass is quite a feasible alternative to, say, doing all of the paper writing and editing I have to do.

Actually, spring in Oxford came to me quite suddenly. In the midst of long library days, it's easy to ignore the ten minutes to and from the Bodleian that I usually spend head down, earphones in, powering through the usual wind and cold. All of a sudden, I turn a corner in a passage that I walk every day--and I almost run into a gigantic white cherry-blossom tree. It is cloud-like, voluminous--and has blossomed, apparently, overnight.

And that's when warmth and sunlight occurred to me, too. Either the elements conspired to become spring all at the same moment (possibly with the sole purpose of confusing me), or I've been walking around for two weeks unaware of my surroundings.

At any rate, it's brilliant. Come Thursday, I'll be free, for a little while anyway, and that freedom may well take the form of laying in the grass.

things to do today

Attend a fabulous (and relatively early-morning) lecture given by my lovely friend Christopher on Meister Eckhart. Fail to understand much of it. Feel, therefore, simultaneously good and bad about self.


Eat a delicious sandwich with Rowena, despite it being ten in the morning and not, therefore, optimum sandwich time.


Brainstorm reasons not to go to the Bodleian.


Go to the Bodleian despite brain's best objections.


Enjoy a brief and humorous three act play written by my dear (and absolutely insane) friend Emily. Try not to giggle too loudly; disregard own lack of success at this last goal.


Nearly perish at the sadistic whim of a hell bent, Bodleian-dwelling bumblebee.


Scrutinize every movement of said bumblebee for the next thirty minutes, just in case it's picked up my scent. 


Write blog post. (edited to reflect subsequent success)

Edit my Alice essay.

fools that will laugh on earth must weep in hell: doctor faustus

What better setting for Faustus’ hellish downfall than surrounded by books?

I couldn’t help thinking that to myself as I stood in Blackwell bookshop’s Norrington room, waiting for the show to start. Books of all varieties—kids’ books, textbooks, mass-market books—line the walls from floor to second-story ceiling. In the middle sits the stage: unassuming wood & cloth, nothing special.

Creation Theatre’s Doctor Faustus opens with books. Five pairs of hands around the stage, from underneath, slam down books and open them, leafing through the yellowing pages as the ensemble cast crawls onstage. A rhythmic, beatless sort of tribal dance ensues, the all-male cast treating the books themselves as idols to be revered. The play starts: the lead actor recites Faustus’ famed bored-with-everything speech while the rest of the cast sits, unassuming, browsing through the books that have now been left onstage. When Faustus quoted his Latin—from Logic, from Medicine, from Law, from Divinity—the silent readers would suddenly look up, fire in their eyes, and intone the Latin along with him. In identical exasperation, all five men would close their books with a loud slap and toss them to the side, starting on a new book together. The whole thing had an eerie, otherworldly feel: the audience was left unsure whether Faustus was moving the other members of the cast, or maybe they were moving him, or maybe some unseen force was moving them all. 

The scene where Lucifer presents Faustus with the seven deadly sins carried the same sense; part of me wanted to laugh at the foolishness of five grown men, three of whom wearing pantyhose on their heads, leaping about the stage. Part of me wanted to cry: the elaborate choreography really emphasised Faustus’ utter helplessness. Part of me felt the same acrid terror of Faustus. Still another part of me recognised in the strangeness of the scene my own distance from it, at which point their dance becomes just a dance. All the while, melody-less music beats cruelly in the background while Lucifer laughs.

The setting was simple but effective: the staging made excellent use of its trapdoors and one clever prop box. More than once I audibly yelped in fright at someone popping out of nowhere. The lighting, too, was straightforward but impeccable. Nearly every scene depended at some point or another upon a perfect light-cue being executed at the exact moment Mephistophilis stretches his hand out, and the hard-working lights operator must have put in some extra hours perfecting all of those prompts, since each was flawless.

Gus Gallagher made a brilliant Faustus: swaggeringly arrogant, even close to the end, but still somehow hollow—haunted. Gwynfor Jones, besides having a really cool name, was a stiff-armed, white-faced Mephistophilis; clad in an all-black suit, Jones’ portrayal of the somehow-sympathetic demon is characterised by sheer distance: distance from God. Distance from men. Distance from love, from humanity, from the audience.

To return to my original point, how flippin’ cool of a location is Blackwell’s? Especially in Oxford (Blackwell, for the uninitiated, is an Oxford bookshop, but they now have lots of locations across the UK), in Blackwell’s books are immaculately shiny, clean—almost, well, sacred. To watch Faustus kicking books, throwing them, ripping them apart felt like he’d committed sacrilege long before his pact with Lucifer. We live for books in this city: we base our lives around where we can find the books that we need. We complain about books and rejoice in books and have stacks of books on our desks up in the library at any given time. At some point, we have to look beyond the books into the real questions of the world, and then we have some options. A Faustus who had shunned his endless pursuit of knowledge in favour of God’s grace, for example, would have been saved and, as the good angel acknowledges, would have been filled with joy. Instead, we see a Faustus turned the other way: a Faustus who became disillusioned with his knowledgeable life and, swollen with pride, decided he could do better.

I will end as he did:

My God, my God! Look not so fierce on me!

Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!

Ugly hell, gape not! Come not, Lucifer!

I’ll burn my books—Ah! Mephistophilis!

i wrote a poem in the library. it is not a good poem, but it is better than working.

Kindle Therein Any Fire or Flame**

Did any of them die for burning scrolls?
Did they refuse to leave their manuscripts?

Poets’ words upon their fading lips,

did the now-nameless Alexandrian souls—

in all their million beat-papyrus rolls—

know medicine? or math? or sun’s eclipse?

Did knowledge, useless, fall in charréd strips?

Did ancient people mourn the glowing coals?

My back hurts. Bodley’s floor-to-ceiling lines

like prison bars remind me of my wrongs.

I tap my keys so not to feel alone.

Hard-covers, gleaming gilt upon their spines

edge the angles. Here, the ancient songs

cannot be heard through plaster, paper, stone.

**the title is a reference to The Bodleian Declaration, which is pasted above every desk in the Bod. Among its many provisions includes, "I hereby undertake . . . not to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame." The aforementioned declaration often happens to be the thing at which my eyes are sort-of pointed while I am staring into space. 

a typical friday night

After two full terms at Regent's, I've fallen into the easy familiarity of a Friday-night pattern. First we have pre-formal drinks: we gather in the MCR (the Middle Common Room--blog post on its many joys forthcoming?) and drink wine provided by our sommelier, Chris. We mingle with the other postgraduate and visiting students until it's time to head up for dinner, and then we wander up to Helwys Hall to sit. 

Dinner is a three-course meal, and it's almost always amazing. We're all quite formal in our black-tie garments and our Oxford gowns. Each week, two MCR members sit on High Table--which is where the principal, the tutors, and all of the senior people sit; this is an honour that I've held twice this term--and the free wine flows, well, freely. 

After three courses' worth of food and talk, we all head up in droves to the JCR for cheap beer and some brief relaxation. There, we take lots of photos (though not enough!, as I always lament the next day) and hang around until we get tired, where tired is code for "annoyed with drunk undergraduates."

Often enough--actually, nearly every week--something specific is going on in the JCR. Above-pictured is our hospital-themed bop: some people dressed up, and there were shots of tasty things in test tubes and syringes littering the tables of the JCR.

 Many of us--hideously uninteresting and getting old--leave quite early, but it's still a fun night. And the best thing is, it'll happen again next week! The only downside is that I am quickly running out of pretty dresses, because they've seen me in all of these at least twice...

king lear

Water pounds the thrust stage in bullets. The rain falls from somewhere above the ceiling of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theatre, splashing exuberantly from skin and stage. Rivulets slipping from his grey hair, Lear stands alone: he shivers, hugs himself tightly--visibly struggling with every word of his storm soliloquy. He is lit from directly above, which creates weird light-play on every surrounding surface; with each small movement, hundreds of tiny water droplets--glowing gold from stage-lighting--fan around him. Jarring lights and the sound of thunder (combined with an incongruous electric zapping noise) occasionally punctuate the appearance of the Fool, who tears apart the already-minimalist set to reveal the industrial, metal-girder skeleton of the stage. A haunting, feral howl. Chaos. Lights down.


***


In last night's Royal Shakespeare Company's production of King Lear, for which we travelled by train to Stratford-upon-Avon, this haunting scene left us shivering alongside Lear at intermission. The show itself was gorgeous, with only a few negatives (the second half, perhaps too indulgent of Lear's crazy-speeches, dragged; Cordelia was only so-so) to mar our enjoyment.


 It made a lot of interesting choices: some characters' costumes looked positively medieval, particularly in the beginning, but they slowly meandered into modernity. By the last scene, most of the men were wearing World War I-style uniforms; instead of the big battle, the lights simply dropped and massive gunfire could be heard. Greg Hicks' now-famed performance of Lear was as brilliant as I've been hearing. Goneril and Regan were notably good as well: Regan had a red-lipped, gorgeous sort of vindictiveness about her, while Goneril was actually quite sympathetic: sad, infirm, failing. The set, with its ever-discordant jumble of the old and the new, added a lot to the show. The unpredictable lighting (a chandelier in this scene; sparking industrial halogen ceiling-fixtures that look like they could fall at any second in that one) kept the audience aware--Brecht-like?--of the show's artificiality, and the blocking made good use of the thrust stage. All in all, a successful performance.

We also got to look around Stratford itself for awhile. It's a cute little town on the river whose only claim to interest, of course, is good old Bill, whose home (pictured above) we visited excitedly. Consequently, every cafe and pub and shopping-centre and street name seems to have some relation to the Bard--and some of them are quite silly.

 Along the river, we stopped to muse at the statue of the man himself: he sits atop a high throne, and sculptural renderings of Prince Hal, Falstaff, Lady Macbeth, and Hamlet surround him in death as they did in life. 

In fact, I even got a little up-close-and-personal with Falstaff. My eyes are up here, buddy. 


All in all, Robby and Kelly and Megan and I--three of us in the English M.St programme, and one amateur enthusiast--had a lovely time in Stratford, and the show definitely lived up to its expectations. Hicks' Lear is not one to miss: students in and around Oxford, do yourself a favour and pick up a £5 ticket for this spectacular performance. 

why the JCR is awesome

I've realised, as of late, that my blog's aim hasn't involved the teach-people-about-Oxford element that some of my friends' blogs do. In the midst of the part of term where I do nothing interesting--unless you're willing to consider sitting, immobile, for ten hours out of every day in the Bodleian interesting, in which case fair enough--I have to stretch a little bit for a blog post.

However! So much of the depths of college life remain unplumbed that I have loads of blog posts ready to be written. The JCR--in which I am pictured above with some of my favourite people--is consistently the social hub of college. The term stands for Junior Common Room, and it actually refers simultaneously both to the room itself and to its constituent members: basically, every student in college. The undergraduates are really what we mean when we refer to the JCR (we postgraduates have our own middle common room, aptly abbreviated to MCR--more on that later). Consequently, we feel just a tiny bit out of place when in the JCR, which is why we have to congregate in above-pictured large groups.

Anyway, stuff happens in the JCR. A couple of times a day people gather to drink tea and chat; the college's bar is situated in the JCR, meaning that it becomes popular after dark; most Fridays, you'll find people dancing and drinking and wearing silly costumes of some variety up there. Every college has one, and every one is different. Think Harry Potter, when you finally get to read about other Houses' common rooms? Gryffindor's is all plush and cosy; Ravenclaw's is austere and impressive; Slytherin's is like a dungeon. College JCRs, and college bars, are like that too. Ours isn't the biggest or the most elaborately decorated, but it feels more like home than many of the others I've seen.

My friends at other colleges are surprised by my hanging out with "JCR people"--with undergraduates. Like US undergrads, they're mostly between 18 and 21 (though a BA here generally requires three years, not four), meaning that they're a couple of years younger than I am. Fortunately, Regent's is small enough that those divisions lose a certain amount of meaning: why wouldn't we come to the bops and the parties and the socials?

Anyway. It's almost time for Brew, which means I'm headed up to the JCR to get a muffin--right before I go back to the library for the rest of my life.

in the last six months...

I've adapted enough that I...

• end all of my e-mails with two kisses.
• ask, "you alright?" upon encountering an acquaintance in the street. I know that "alright" isn't actually a word; I have, however, been assured of it as the correct spelling in this particular instance.
• spell 'colour', 'familiarise', and 'programme' in new ways.
• talk about the weather a surprising amount.
• place my commas outside the quotation marks (sorry, the inverted commas).
• remember where the @ is on my computer keyboard. 
• say, "toh-MAH-toe."
• look right then left when crossing the street.
• am newly acquainted with 8 Out of 10 Cats, The Inbetweeners, Gavin and Stacey, Hustle, Misfits, Sherlock, and, perhaps most importantly, The Crystal Maze. Almost all of these are courtesy of the unrelentingly awesome Andrew and Rowena Wilding, who deserve--as they have pointed out myriad times--more mentions in my blog than they happen to receive.
• refer to the sport that the Steelers play as "American football", and the one that Arsenal plays, "football". 

I have not yet adapted to the point where I...

• have even once been prepared for the astonishingly, inedibly overcooked state in which meat arrives to the table.
• ever, ever remember to say "trousers" instead of "pants", often to my own embarrassment. 

Getting there...?

xx

spring awakening

On Wednesday, I travelled with the old gang to see Brian in Spring Awakening, in which he played Melchior. My primary reaction to the play is to exclaim, fangirl-like, about how fantastic Brian was: he was amazing! I hope that all of you in Oxford got a chance to go see the production, though its tragically short run meant that it sold out quite quickly. We even got to snap a photo with the gorgeous and talented Brian, at which point Mark was apparently so taken by Brian's unparalleled glories that he couldn't look at the camera:

The show itself was good, but not an unmitigated good. Aside from certain key opening-night-related elements (most notably the sound quality), the production itself was excellent: the lighting, the minimalist & modern set design, the staging all contributed positively to the performance. The strongest aspect proved to be the individual performances, and in that realm the singing, the acting, and even the dancing were remarkably good.

But that doesn't make for a very good blog post, particularly when there's a play review just a couple of posts down from here. My real reflections on the show stem from problems that, by now, are largely out of the control of a particular cast or crew; the broader issues that I have with the play itself are still settling, and I think I'd rather write about them than Lewis Carroll for awhile, so I will.

The show--as many of you probably know--centres around a small German village around the turn of the century, in which the youth are undergoing something of a sexual and ideological revolution. One young man, Melchior (played, of course, by the above-mentioned (and -pictured) Brian) stands diametrically opposed to the generation of adults in this particular community: Melchior is an atheist, Melchior is sexually aware, Melchior is open to talking about his experiences and ideas. He quickly becomes, in a schoolroom scene somehow strangely reminiscent of Dead Poets' Society, the voice of awakening: the voice of, "it's okay to think about sex; it's natural!" to a group of boys who are tragically repressed. He has particular effect on one boy by the name of Moritz who comes to regard Melchior as a mentor in sex and faith and life. Melchior's enthusiastic commitment to a frank and candid education does not find its limit in his classmates, and Melchior, in the first act's climax (yes, okay, pun intended), has sex with Wendla, a beautiful young woman in the same community. I won't ruin it for you, but Moritz and Wendla both suffer deeply for their awakening, for their association with Melchior, and we are left to wonder: was it worth it? Could Melchior be no better for these people than the blind, ignorant faith against which he so vehemently rebels?

In that famous culminating scene of the first act--famous not least because its original staging involved a naked Lea Michele--Melchior and Wendla have a sexual encounter of a dubious nature: was it rape? Certainly Wendla says "no" more than once, though she appears to yield willingly in the end. However, this circumstance occurs not without some significant pressure on the part of Melchior, who clearly understands the implications of their actions far better than Wendla herself does. This particular production seemed to favour the interpretation that, though Melchior did act a bit pushy, the decision to have sex ultimately rested equally with both of them: that Wendla wanted it, rationally as well as emotionally. However, a different production could easily have reinterpreted Wendla's initial refusal and ultimate submission, particularly in light of prior scenes (one in which Melchior characterises the role of the woman as a submissive one; another where Wendla asks Melchior to beat her so that she can understand how it feels and Melchior, getting entirely too carried away, hurts and scares her). In the end, I wish that the production had dealt more with the implications of the complicated situation that is rape.

The play did deal with a number of issues--too many, perhaps. Sometimes one scene (or, more frustratingly, one musical number) would address an issue to which the play would never, or only slightly, return. These issues include incest, homosexuality, and physical abuse: all issues that are brought up but not explored, to the detriment of the show as a whole. The musical numbers, then, sometimes feel unrelated; I didn't get that sense that the musical elements of the show were a necessary outpouring of the non-musical elements, and that is a sense that I get with musicals like Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, or even Wicked. The irrelevance of some of the songs was palpable: I found myself wanting, even in the midst of a lovely and well-choreographed number, to get back to the actual narrative. This is highly unlike me: during a musical, I usually live for the songs, with the narrative in between forming a sort of glue to hold numbers together. My opposite reaction to Spring Awakening may be a testament to the excellent acting--in fact, almost certainly--but it is just as much a criticism of the failure of the numbers themselves to relate, either thematically or in terms of plot.

I also wish that the script focused more on feminine sexuality. I am glad for its focus on sexuality in general: while I don't think that the show was as ground-breaking and edgy as I'd expected it to be, it did treat issues of emergent sexuality with understanding and tenderness. Male sexuality, that is: the young women in the play did little more than titter at what a cutie-pie Melchior was. Only Wendla expresses any mature desire, and this maturity is marred by the fact that she is possibly raped in her only sexual encounter; either way, after the encounter she becomes clingy and lovestruck, idealising about a future with Melchior and their yet-unborn child--in other words, she acts like a total girl about it all, from the initial resistance to the eventual yielding to the resultant emotional dependence. All of that is fine and not unrealistic, but what I would have liked from the playwright is a more frank portrayal of female sexuality and desire.

All in all, I think the play should have made fewer concrete decisions. This particular production seems to have decided certain things: Wendla wasn't raped, at least not really. Melchior isn't to blame--he is merely unlucky. The conservative adults of the village behave not just incorrectly, but inexcusably so. Ultimately, I wish that the show itself, whether this is a flaw with the script or with this production in particular, left a little more work to the audience at the end. I want to leave a show with the sense that my interpretation is either flawed or imperfect, or at least that my interpretation wasn't handed to me on a plate.

Incidentally, my lovely friend Karith wrote a blog post on the same production; I have intentionally refrained thus far from a thorough reading of her interpretation because I have reason to believe that it will be not dissimilar from my own. So I don't know about you, but I'm off to read her take on things.

Three blog posts in less than a week? I'm on fire, y'all.

marbling

Legitimately, I won't be offended if six of you comment to say, Corinne, stop writing about your boring printing class! For one thing, it would mean that six people had read my blog post; it would also be the most comments I'd ever gotten. In addition, I know in my head that this can't possibly be as interesting to everyone else as it is to me. But this is so cool and I therefore want you to hear about it anyway.

So when we last left our printing heroine, she had set, proofed, and printed bunches of copies of her poem, alongside the poems chosen by everyone else. The time has come to finish it all up: to make an actual book. A pretty book, with pretty paper on the outside. Fortunately, this is actually quite easy: step one involves a simple bath of water and some oil paints. Here (above left) I've squirted some blue and some gold into a water bath. The oil floats on the top.
The next step is to lay down a piece of paper, large enough that it'll wrap all the way 'round our finished product, into the water. The gold splotches have soaked through a bit.

Then all that's left is to (gingerly!) pull it out and hang it up with clothespins on the line to dry. This is one of my first attempts, though it's serviceably good as a cover page. The paper will have soaked up most, if not all, of the oil paint in the water, so there's generally no cleanup to do before squirting more paint and going crazy with another piece of paper. Once we got the hang of it, we started using straws and combs and pointy things to move the oil around, and we can blow on it before putting a paper in for a different effect.

Here, some of our creations hang to dry. The blue and purple one on the right is one of mine; it's also the first in which we used our spanky new purple colour. Below, some mostly-dry beauties (this must be late in the day--these are rather good) chill out on the cases of type.

Next week: binding! Same bat-time, same bat-place. THIS IS THE COOLEST CLASS EVER.

a dream play

Okay, okay. I haven't posted in ages. But it's February, and most of you know how I feel about February; I can be excused, right? Anyway, I went two days ago (with a lovely ragtag group of random friends) to see an adaptation of August Strindberg's A Dream Play that was put on at the Oxford Playhouse, and it's been rattling around in my head ever since.

In the play, God's daughter (or the daughter of a god, as no specific religion seems massively more likely than another) has the Earth hanging in her bedroom as a night-light. She is obsessed with its people: she has acquainted herself with their literature and music to an almost exhaustive degree, but what she cannot understand is how they feel. She begs her cold, distant father--who has clearly stopped caring about the Earth long ago, if he ever cared much--to experience what they experience: to be a human, at least emotionally, for awhile. Her father relents (a good choice, given that the play would be quite boring if he didn't). Agnes descends to the Earth and, predictably, experiences joy and pain and love and death and hunger and lust and sadness. 

We'll get the obvious out of the way: this play is weird. Some of its elements seem jarring simply for the sake of being jarring: its characters behave inconsistently, even for mere mortals. Some of the odd facets are clearly representative: for example, there are characters representing Theology, Philosophy, Science, and Law; these characters have the predictable arguments over superiority and power. Ultimately, Agnes' eventual return to her bedroom--soft white light illuminating her cosy sheets, the Earth suspended harmlessly from the ceiling--is as we have anticipated all along, but somehow it is still a supremely profound moment. Most of the actors were so-so, but enough (perhaps three) were brilliant enough to carry the show. 

At intermission, I was nonplussed: the play, as far as I was concerned, had started off well and then gotten tragically lost in its own multifaceted meanings. 

After the show, I was silent for a moment: the music, the scenery, and one hell of a monologue had all coalesced into a unique experience by the curtain's fall.

But now, two days later, I just quite cheered myself up out of a pretty terrible day simply by remembering the beauty that was this production. 

So we'll go with success. 

In other theatre-related news, I'm seeing Spring Awakening tomorrow, and dear old Brian (whom my avid blog-followers will have seen in photos) is starring. Should be excellent.

visiting!

Yes, yes. I haven't updated in ages. I finally have something exciting to post about: a visit! Corbin came last week, and we got to roam all over Oxford and hang out with my stellar UK friends and go to things like formal hall. It was a cold week, but other than that the weather was fantastic: sunny and bright almost every day, which is odd for this time of year. Corbin had some struggles getting into the country--yes, again--and we feared for a bit that he'd have to turn straight around and go back. But the UK Border Patrol was again not completely heartless, and we were saved.

On his second day here, we went to Windsor & Eton. We saw the gorgeous Windsor Castle and snapped some nice photos. Inside the castle, we got to see exhibits of china and furniture and the beautiful living insides of the castle. It was a fantastic day to be out and about, and we actually got there quite cheaply. The surrounding town is cute as well, with lots of little shops and restaurants.

On one of Corbin's last nights in town, we travelled to Birmingham with some

 friends to go see The Head & The Heart and The Walkmen, which was a fantastic show. We had some cool-kid connections to Head & the Heart, so we got to meet them and chill out for a bit. And we all have a new favourite band, because they were so fantastic live.

I got, of course, zero work done. I am, of course, 100% behind on everything I have to do. But it was worth it for such an amazing week. Briefly, to quell the questions: Corbin and I did break up. It was time, and we're both fine. If you're curious, I don't mind talking about it, and it's not a touchy subject whatsoever. We're still friends because we're both too awesome to stop knowing each other.

And...now my life is back to its humdrum self. Rowing. Classes. Research. Not enough of any of those to call myself really productive. But the Super Bowl is in less than a week and we're having a party! I'm surprisingly excited about this particular emblem of America to come to me. I'll be here, cheering on the Steelers and explaining what a first down is at midnight or whenever the heck the game starts here.

You Georgia folks: Corbin's coming made me realise how much I miss y'all. Save up your money and come visit me over the summer please.

happy christmas!

Over Christmas, I got to have my own little week-long slice of Peachtree City when my family came to visit. We stayed around Oxford for four days before heading to London for the rest of the week. In Oxford we went to museums and landmarks and colleges and libraries and all the lovely touristy things. We especially had fun at the Pitt-Rivers museum, which is absolutely my favourite museum ever. And, of course, we ate lots of lovely fattening English food like pies and fish & chips and scones.

We did all the touristy stuff in London, too: we rode the London Eye and went to the National Gallery and marvelled at Piccadilly Circus and chased pigeons in Trafalgar square. Check out my sweet arm's-length-photo-taking skills, above. Actually, don't look too closely; Henry's face is really terrifying and I've only just noticed.

We actually managed to cook in my teeny-tiny kitchen for Christmas, a feat with which I am still rather impressed. We played board games and lots of hearts (I won!). They all went home for New Years, which I spent rather quietly in Oxford playing board games and things.

It was nice to have pieces of home with me over Christmas, and now I'm fully stocked on Velveeta Shells & Cheese for the next few weeks, as well. And, of course, we got to spend the whole week torturing one another with the clothespin game (for the unaware, it's quite simple: embarrass your friends and family by placing clothepins upon their persons--like my unwitting father, above). Ah, home. 

The libraries open tomorrow, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. One the one hand, it means a return to days spent in the library, but on the other hand I'm not getting anything done without it. 

I hope everyone had a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!