https://wiki.ubc.ca/api.php?action=feedcontributions&feedformat=atom&user=ADRIANMATIASBELL 2026-05-17T14:57:10Z User contributions MediaWiki 1.43.8 https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Invisible_Cities_(Italo_Calvino_book)&diff=809070 2023-11-01T05:38:55Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> When I was in high school, I was in a creative writing program that allowed me to take a lot of writing courses, some of them very specific. My favorite teacher, who has already been mentioned in my article on “[[Course:In a Station of the Metro (Ezra Pound poem)|In A Station of the Metro]],” put together a class called “La Dolce Vita” that focused on Italian literature, cinema, and food writing. We watched Fellini and read [https://cdn.fulltextarchive.com/wp-content/uploads/wp-advanced-pdf/1/dante-s-inferno.pdf Dante’s Inferno]; I’m also 99% sure we watched [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M01_2CKL6PU ''Moonstruck'']. And I think that was the class where we read [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo_Calvino Italo Calvino]'s ''Invisible Cities''. <br /> <br /> ''Invisible Cities'' might be the first experimental novel I ever read. It follows [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo Marco Polo] as he recounts his journeys for the entertainment of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kublai_Khan Kublai Khan] in the twilight of his empire. The structure of the book is inherently mathematical; the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Cities#Structure breakdown of chapter themes] makes it look like a cascading MIDI score. Calvino himself said that the book was designed “as a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyhedron polyhedron]…it has conclusions everywhere, written along all of its edges.” At the same time, you can read it straight through as a “normal” book and still get so much out of it. Calvino, maybe more than any other experimental prose writer I’ve read, is a master of telling a structurally complex story that feels simple. His writing works because it’s full of heart and wit regardless, and he doesn’t let his structural experiments eclipse that. As someone who loves experimentation and often has to fight against the stiffness of their own writing voice, I admire him a lot for this.<br /> <br /> I have such a vivid memory of reading the last page of this book. It was the end of the day, the sunlight relentless and tinged with smog. I was eating a tangerine; the oil coated my fingers and made them scrape unpleasantly on the paper. I’m not really sure why the end of this book made a whole classroom of 15-year-olds cry, or if that’s more a testament to my teacher or to Calvino, but there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It stands out to me because he wasn’t writing about emotion on a human scale, but on the scale of a whole historical moment, a whole world; I think the book is about realizing you live on the precipice of empire, that it totally rules your life, and that you will have to find a way to keep living inside, and despite, that inferno. On the cusp of this realization in my own life, I was surprised to find expressed so beautifully and playfully something I’d only experienced up to then as an amorphous dread. I hadn’t known those things could even be approached in fiction or poetry before, much less with so much hope.<br /> <br /> I briefly dated a terrible boy in 12th grade; I wanted to read him this book, but ended up dumping him first (go figure). My teacher said, “If you can’t read Calvino to him, he isn’t worth it.” Then I met my current partner, and I wanted to read them this book–but, in a Calvino-like twist of fate, they had already read it.<br /> <br /> [http://brownreading.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/3/8/11385519/invisible_cities.pdf You can read all of Invisible Cities here!]<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Invisible_Cities_(Italo_Calvino_book)&diff=809069 2023-11-01T05:38:27Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino book) to Course:Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino book)</p> <hr /> <div>#REDIRECT [[Course:Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino book)]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Invisible_Cities_(Italo_Calvino_book)&diff=809068 2023-11-01T05:38:27Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino book) to Course:Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino book)</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> When I was in high school, I was in a creative writing program that allowed me to take a lot of writing courses, some of them very specific. My favorite teacher, who has already been mentioned in my article on “[[Course:In a Station of the Metro (Ezra Pound poem)|In A Station of the Metro]],” put together a class called “La Dolce Vita” that focused on Italian literature, cinema, and food writing. We watched Fellini and read [https://cdn.fulltextarchive.com/wp-content/uploads/wp-advanced-pdf/1/dante-s-inferno.pdf Dante’s Inferno]; I’m also 99% sure we watched [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M01_2CKL6PU ''Moonstruck'']. And I think that was the class where we read [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo_Calvino Italo Calvino]'s ''Invisible Cities''. <br /> <br /> I don’t remember her ever sending us home with reading; we read together, in class, and that was how we worked through Invisible Cities. It might be the first experimental novel I ever read: it follows [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo Marco Polo] as he recounts his journeys for the entertainment of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kublai_Khan Kublai Khan] in the twilight of his empire. The structure of the book is inherently mathematical; the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Cities#Structure breakdown of chapter themes] makes it look like a cascading MIDI score. Calvino himself said that the book was designed “as a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyhedron polyhedron]…it has conclusions everywhere, written along all of its edges.” At the same time, you can read it straight through as a “normal” book and still get so much out of it. Calvino, maybe more than any other experimental prose writer I’ve read, is a master of telling a structurally complex story that feels simple. His writing works because it’s full of heart and wit regardless, and he doesn’t let his structural experiments eclipse that. As someone who loves experimentation and often has to fight against the stiffness of their own writing voice, I admire him a lot for this.<br /> <br /> I have such a vivid memory of reading the last page of this book. It was the end of the day, the sunlight relentless and tinged with smog. I was eating a tangerine; the oil coated my fingers and made them scrape unpleasantly on the paper. I’m not really sure why the end of this book made a whole classroom of 15-year-olds cry, or if that’s more a testament to my teacher or to Calvino, but there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It stands out to me because he wasn’t writing about emotion on a human scale, but on the scale of a whole historical moment, a whole world; I think the book is about realizing you live on the precipice of empire, that it totally rules your life, and that you will have to find a way to keep living inside, and despite, that inferno. On the cusp of this realization in my own life, I was surprised to find expressed so beautifully and playfully something I’d only experienced up to then as an amorphous dread. I hadn’t known those things could even be approached in fiction or poetry before, much less with so much hope.<br /> <br /> I briefly dated a terrible boy in 12th grade; I wanted to read him this book, but ended up dumping him first (go figure). My teacher said, “If you can’t read Calvino to him, he isn’t worth it.” Then I met my current partner, and I wanted to read them this book–but, in a Calvino-like twist of fate, they had already read it.<br /> <br /> [http://brownreading.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/3/8/11385519/invisible_cities.pdf You can read all of Invisible Cities here!]<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Invisible_Cities_(Italo_Calvino_book)&diff=809067 2023-11-01T05:38:05Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: Created page with &quot;{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}} When I was in high school, I was in a creative writing program that allowed me to take a lot of writing courses, some of them very specific. My favorite teacher, who has already been mentioned in my article on “In A Station of the Metro,” put together a class called “La Dolce Vita” that focused on Italian literature, cinema, and food writing. We watched Fellini and read [https...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> When I was in high school, I was in a creative writing program that allowed me to take a lot of writing courses, some of them very specific. My favorite teacher, who has already been mentioned in my article on “[[Course:In a Station of the Metro (Ezra Pound poem)|In A Station of the Metro]],” put together a class called “La Dolce Vita” that focused on Italian literature, cinema, and food writing. We watched Fellini and read [https://cdn.fulltextarchive.com/wp-content/uploads/wp-advanced-pdf/1/dante-s-inferno.pdf Dante’s Inferno]; I’m also 99% sure we watched [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M01_2CKL6PU ''Moonstruck'']. And I think that was the class where we read [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo_Calvino Italo Calvino]'s ''Invisible Cities''. <br /> <br /> I don’t remember her ever sending us home with reading; we read together, in class, and that was how we worked through Invisible Cities. It might be the first experimental novel I ever read: it follows [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo Marco Polo] as he recounts his journeys for the entertainment of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kublai_Khan Kublai Khan] in the twilight of his empire. The structure of the book is inherently mathematical; the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Cities#Structure breakdown of chapter themes] makes it look like a cascading MIDI score. Calvino himself said that the book was designed “as a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyhedron polyhedron]…it has conclusions everywhere, written along all of its edges.” At the same time, you can read it straight through as a “normal” book and still get so much out of it. Calvino, maybe more than any other experimental prose writer I’ve read, is a master of telling a structurally complex story that feels simple. His writing works because it’s full of heart and wit regardless, and he doesn’t let his structural experiments eclipse that. As someone who loves experimentation and often has to fight against the stiffness of their own writing voice, I admire him a lot for this.<br /> <br /> I have such a vivid memory of reading the last page of this book. It was the end of the day, the sunlight relentless and tinged with smog. I was eating a tangerine; the oil coated my fingers and made them scrape unpleasantly on the paper. I’m not really sure why the end of this book made a whole classroom of 15-year-olds cry, or if that’s more a testament to my teacher or to Calvino, but there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It stands out to me because he wasn’t writing about emotion on a human scale, but on the scale of a whole historical moment, a whole world; I think the book is about realizing you live on the precipice of empire, that it totally rules your life, and that you will have to find a way to keep living inside, and despite, that inferno. On the cusp of this realization in my own life, I was surprised to find expressed so beautifully and playfully something I’d only experienced up to then as an amorphous dread. I hadn’t known those things could even be approached in fiction or poetry before, much less with so much hope.<br /> <br /> I briefly dated a terrible boy in 12th grade; I wanted to read him this book, but ended up dumping him first (go figure). My teacher said, “If you can’t read Calvino to him, he isn’t worth it.” Then I met my current partner, and I wanted to read them this book–but, in a Calvino-like twist of fate, they had already read it.<br /> <br /> [http://brownreading.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/3/8/11385519/invisible_cities.pdf You can read all of Invisible Cities here!]<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Tower_of_Babel&diff=809064 2023-11-01T04:43:26Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}&lt;blockquote&gt;And they said, “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world.” יהוה came down to look at the city and tower that humanity had built, and יהוה said, “If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.” ([https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.11.4-9?lang=bi&amp;aliyot=0 Genesis 11:4-9])&lt;/blockquote&gt;As a child, I was sent to Christian school by my atheist parents; now, as an adult, I’m a Jewish convert. My partner was raised [https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/reconstructionist-judaism-today/ Reconstructionist], and I’ve been practicing Judaism for many years. I count myself lucky to be surrounded by a robust, diverse Jewish community that affirms my other identities and values as part of my Judaism, not counter to it. I believe that it is Judaism’s commitment to textuality and interpretation that have allowed me to use it as a lens to better understand and commit myself to things like my mixed-race identity or anti-Zionism. (I also believe that I was drawn to this aspect of Judaism because I was raised by two lawyers…but anyway.)<br /> [[File:Tower-of-babel-pieter-bruegel.jpg|thumb|Pieter Bruegel the Elder, &quot;The Tower of Babel&quot; (1563)]]<br /> I can’t write an entry on Judaism, because it would go on forever. Instead, I want to talk about my favorite Bible story, which looms large in both my Christian-adjacent childhood and my Jewish adulthood. <br /> <br /> The [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tower-of-Babel Tower of Babel] is a story in Genesis in which the linguistic unity of a people inspires them to start building a huge city. This offends G-d, who splits their single language into many languages, preventing them from communicating with each other. G-d scatters them across the earth, demolishing the tower in the process.<br /> <br /> As with anything else in the Torah, this story has inspired many interpretations and could inspire infinitely more. When I was a kid, Babel was presented to me as a parable about why different cultures speak different languages. Or maybe it’s about hubris–in my mind, it always feels linked to the Greek myth of [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Prometheus-Greek-god Prometheus] bringing fire to humans and being punished by having his liver eternally pecked out by vultures. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abba_Arikha Rav Abba bar Aybo], who lived in 3rd-century Asoristan, says: “As a result of the building of the tower, forgetting was introduced into the world” ([https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.109a.7?lang=bi&amp;with=all&amp;lang2=en Sanhedrin 109a:7]), which I find beautiful and haunting. My friend [https://www.samdoubek.com/ Sam], who loves the Tower of Babel so much he made a ceramic sculpture of it, says that this story is his favorite because it reveals G-d as jealous and fearful of their own creation. All of these interpretations coexist in my mind. The Tower of Babel, like so many Bible stories (and so many poems!), is short, but it can hold all that and more.<br /> <br /> Personally, I see the Tower of Babel as a story about alienation. Just as many of the stories in Genesis explain why things are the way they are, I think that Babel attempts to explain why we can’t understand each other, even when we try. Our single, perfect language was shattered, and now even people who speak the same language spend their entire lives trying to understand and be understood. I return to these themes again and again in my writing, and I think that writing as a practice is uniquely suited to explore them. <br /> <br /> The friction of attempted understanding can be so painful, and yet it is also the thing that makes human relationships pleasurable and fulfilling. In a song, I recently wrote the line: “There can be no touch without separation.” In response to the invention of the struggle to comprehend each other, maybe we invented new kinds of love.<br /> <br /> To end this entry, here’s a poem I wrote a couple years ago that I’m still proud of:&lt;blockquote&gt;'''babel'''<br /> <br /> is it true / about the tower / is that really the origin<br /> <br /> / not only of other languages / but times / our friends have turned away<br /> <br /> in the green hours / of the afternoon / provenance evaporates<br /> <br /> / &amp; what was that book / where did i get this jacket / where will it go<br /> <br /> when i die / these things / when i die<br /> <br /> / no country / can be visited / except capitalism<br /> <br /> i tell myself / to staunch the desire / to be alone<br /> <br /> / face impassive / bullet train / through the chest of a mountain<br /> <br /> last time i did this / i looked into the black window / afraid that someone<br /> <br /> / would look back / and know / i was a man<br /> <br /> but still wanting someone / anyone / to see<br /> <br /> / a mirror craves reflection / is it true / our faces were made for mirrors<br /> <br /> no trick is any use / desire persists / after it is fulfilled<br /> <br /> / in the green hours / sometimes i still think / ''i want to be a man''<br /> <br /> ''i want to go work / for a summer / on that tower''<br /> <br /> ''/ to find out / how it feels''&lt;/blockquote&gt;(PS: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang Ted Chiang]’s story Tower of Babylon is one of my favorite short stories and deserves a mention in this entry for how it revisits the Babel story. [https://jenniecreatesclasses.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/tower_of_babylon_-_ted_chiang.pdf You can read the whole thing online here!])<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Encountered Before Twelve]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Tower_of_Babel&diff=809062 2023-11-01T04:41:20Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}&lt;blockquote&gt;And they said, “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world.” יהוה came down to look at the city and tower that humanity had built, and יהוה said, “If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.” ([https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.11.4-9?lang=bi&amp;aliyot=0 Genesis 11:4-9])&lt;/blockquote&gt;As a child, I was sent to Christian school by my atheist parents; now, as an adult, I’m a Jewish convert. My partner was raised [https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/reconstructionist-judaism-today/ Reconstructionist], and I’ve been practicing Judaism for many years. I count myself lucky to be surrounded by a robust, diverse Jewish community that affirms my other identities and values as part of my Judaism, not counter to it. I believe that it is Judaism’s commitment to textuality and interpretation that have allowed me to use it as a lens to better understand and commit myself to things like my mixed-race identity or anti-Zionism. (I also believe that I was drawn to this aspect of Judaism because I was raised by two lawyers…but anyway.)<br /> [[File:Tower-of-babel-pieter-bruegel.jpg|thumb|Pieter Bruegel the Elder, &quot;The Tower of Babel&quot; (1563)]]<br /> I can’t write an entry on Judaism, because it would go on forever. Instead, I want to talk about my favorite Bible story, which looms large in both my Christian-adjacent childhood and my Jewish adulthood. <br /> <br /> The [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tower-of-Babel Tower of Babel] is a story in Genesis in which the linguistic unity of a people inspires them to start building a huge city. This offends G-d, who splits their single language into many languages, preventing them from communicating with each other. G-d scatters them across the earth, demolishing the tower in the process.<br /> <br /> As with anything else in the Torah, this story has inspired many interpretations and could inspire infinitely more. When I was a kid, Babel was presented to me as a parable about why different cultures speak different languages. Or maybe it’s about hubris–in my mind, it always feels linked to the Greek myth of [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Prometheus-Greek-god Prometheus] bringing fire to humans and being punished by having his liver eternally pecked out by vultures. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abba_Arikha Rav Abba bar Aybo], who lived in 3rd-century Asoristan, says: “As a result of the building of the tower, forgetting was introduced into the world” ([https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.109a.7?lang=bi&amp;with=all&amp;lang2=en Sanhedrin 109a:7]), which I find beautiful and haunting. My friend [https://www.samdoubek.com/ Sam], who loves the Tower of Babel so much he made a ceramic sculpture of it, says that this story is his favorite because it reveals G-d as jealous and fearful of their own creation. All of these interpretations coexist in my mind. The Tower of Babel, like so many Bible stories (and so many poems!), is short, but it can hold all that and more.<br /> <br /> Personally, I see the Tower of Babel as a story about alienation. Just as many of the stories in Genesis explain why things are the way they are, I think that Babel attempts to explain why we can’t understand each other, even when we try. Our single, perfect language was shattered, and now even people who speak the same language spend their entire lives trying to understand and be understood. I return to these themes again and again in my writing, and I think that writing as a practice is uniquely suited to explore them. <br /> <br /> The friction of attempted understanding can be so painful, and yet it is also the thing that makes human relationships pleasurable and fulfilling. In a song, I recently wrote the line: “There can be no touch without separation.” In response to the invention of the struggle to comprehend each other, maybe we invented new kinds of love.<br /> <br /> To end this entry, here’s a poem I wrote a couple years ago that I’m still proud of:&lt;blockquote&gt;'''babel'''<br /> <br /> is it true about the tower is that really the origin<br /> <br /> not only of other languages but times our friends have turned away<br /> <br /> in the green hours of the afternoon provenance evaporates<br /> <br /> &amp; what was that book where did i get this jacket where will it go<br /> <br /> when i die these things when i die<br /> <br /> no country can be visited except capitalism<br /> <br /> i tell myself to staunch the desire to be alone<br /> <br /> face impassive bullet train through the chest of a mountain<br /> <br /> last time i did this i looked into the black window afraid that someone<br /> <br /> would look back and know i was a man<br /> <br /> but still wanting someone anyone to see<br /> <br /> a mirror craves reflection is it true our faces were made for mirrors<br /> <br /> no trick is any use desire persists after it is fulfilled<br /> <br /> in the green hours sometimes i still think ''i want to be a man''<br /> <br /> ''i want to go work for a summer on that tower''<br /> <br /> ''to find out how it feels''&lt;/blockquote&gt;(PS: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang Ted Chiang]’s story Tower of Babylon is one of my favorite short stories and deserves a mention in this entry for how it revisits the Babel story. [https://jenniecreatesclasses.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/tower_of_babylon_-_ted_chiang.pdf You can read the whole thing online here!])<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Encountered Before Twelve]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=File:Tower-of-babel-pieter-bruegel.jpg&diff=809060 2023-11-01T04:40:23Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: Uploaded own work with UploadWizard</p> <hr /> <div>=={{int:filedesc}}==<br /> {{Information<br /> |description={{en|1=Pieter Breugel the Elder, The Tower of Babel (1563)}}<br /> |date=1563<br /> |source={{own}}<br /> |author=[[User:ADRIANMATIASBELL|ADRIANMATIASBELL]]<br /> |permission=<br /> |other versions=<br /> }}<br /> <br /> =={{int:license-header}}==<br /> {{self|cc-by-sa-4.0}}</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Tower_of_Babel&diff=809059 2023-11-01T04:38:02Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page Tower of Babel to Course:Tower of Babel</p> <hr /> <div>#REDIRECT [[Course:Tower of Babel]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Tower_of_Babel&diff=809058 2023-11-01T04:38:02Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page Tower of Babel to Course:Tower of Babel</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}&lt;blockquote&gt;And they said, “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world.” יהוה came down to look at the city and tower that humanity had built, and יהוה said, “If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.” ([https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.11.4-9?lang=bi&amp;aliyot=0 Genesis 11:4-9])&lt;/blockquote&gt;As a child, I was sent to Christian school by my atheist parents; now, as an adult, I’m a Jewish convert. My partner was raised [https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/reconstructionist-judaism-today/ Reconstructionist], and I’ve been practicing Judaism for many years. I count myself lucky to be surrounded by a robust, diverse Jewish community that affirms my other identities and values as part of my Judaism, not counter to it. I believe that it is Judaism’s commitment to textuality and interpretation that have allowed me to use it as a lens to better understand and commit myself to things like my mixed-race identity or anti-Zionism. (I also believe that I was drawn to this aspect of Judaism because I was raised by two lawyers…but anyway.)<br /> <br /> I can’t write an entry on Judaism, because it would go on forever. Instead, I want to talk about my favorite Bible story, which looms large in both my Christian-adjacent childhood and my Jewish adulthood. <br /> <br /> The [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tower-of-Babel Tower of Babel] is a story in Genesis in which the linguistic unity of a people inspires them to start building a huge city. This offends G-d, who splits their single language into many languages, preventing them from communicating with each other. G-d scatters them across the earth, demolishing the tower in the process.<br /> <br /> As with anything else in the Torah, this story has inspired many interpretations and could inspire infinitely more. When I was a kid, Babel was presented to me as a parable about why different cultures speak different languages. Or maybe it’s about hubris–in my mind, it always feels linked to the Greek myth of [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Prometheus-Greek-god Prometheus] bringing fire to humans and being punished by having his liver eternally pecked out by vultures. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abba_Arikha Rav Abba bar Aybo], who lived in 3rd-century Asoristan, says: “As a result of the building of the tower, forgetting was introduced into the world” ([https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.109a.7?lang=bi&amp;with=all&amp;lang2=en Sanhedrin 109a:7]), which I find beautiful and haunting. My friend [https://www.samdoubek.com/ Sam], who loves the Tower of Babel so much he made a ceramic sculpture of it, says that this story is his favorite because it reveals G-d as jealous and fearful of their own creation. All of these interpretations coexist in my mind. The Tower of Babel, like so many Bible stories (and so many poems!), is short, but it can hold all that and more.<br /> <br /> Personally, I see the Tower of Babel as a story about alienation. Just as many of the stories in Genesis explain why things are the way they are, I think that Babel attempts to explain why we can’t understand each other, even when we try. Our single, perfect language was shattered, and now even people who speak the same language spend their entire lives trying to understand and be understood. I return to these themes again and again in my writing, and I think that writing as a practice is uniquely suited to explore them. <br /> <br /> The friction of attempted understanding can be so painful, and yet it is also the thing that makes human relationships pleasurable and fulfilling. In a song, I recently wrote the line: “There can be no touch without separation.” In response to the invention of the struggle to comprehend each other, maybe we invented new kinds of love.<br /> <br /> To end this entry, here’s a poem I wrote a couple years ago that I’m still proud of:&lt;blockquote&gt;'''babel'''<br /> <br /> is it true about the tower is that really the origin<br /> <br /> not only of other languages but times our friends have turned away<br /> <br /> in the green hours of the afternoon provenance evaporates<br /> <br /> &amp; what was that book where did i get this jacket where will it go<br /> <br /> when i die these things when i die<br /> <br /> no country can be visited except capitalism<br /> <br /> i tell myself to staunch the desire to be alone<br /> <br /> face impassive bullet train through the chest of a mountain<br /> <br /> last time i did this i looked into the black window afraid that someone<br /> <br /> would look back and know i was a man<br /> <br /> but still wanting someone anyone to see<br /> <br /> a mirror craves reflection is it true our faces were made for mirrors<br /> <br /> no trick is any use desire persists after it is fulfilled<br /> <br /> in the green hours sometimes i still think ''i want to be a man''<br /> <br /> ''i want to go work for a summer on that tower''<br /> <br /> ''to find out how it feels''&lt;/blockquote&gt;(PS: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang Ted Chiang]’s story Tower of Babylon is one of my favorite short stories and deserves a mention in this entry for how it revisits the Babel story. [https://jenniecreatesclasses.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/tower_of_babylon_-_ted_chiang.pdf You can read the whole thing online here!])<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Encountered Before Twelve]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Tower_of_Babel&diff=809057 2023-11-01T04:37:38Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: Created page with &quot;{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}&lt;blockquote&gt;And they said, “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world.” יהוה came down to look at the city and tower that humanity had built, and יהוה said, “If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. Let us, then, go down...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}&lt;blockquote&gt;And they said, “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world.” יהוה came down to look at the city and tower that humanity had built, and יהוה said, “If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another’s speech.” ([https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.11.4-9?lang=bi&amp;aliyot=0 Genesis 11:4-9])&lt;/blockquote&gt;As a child, I was sent to Christian school by my atheist parents; now, as an adult, I’m a Jewish convert. My partner was raised [https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/reconstructionist-judaism-today/ Reconstructionist], and I’ve been practicing Judaism for many years. I count myself lucky to be surrounded by a robust, diverse Jewish community that affirms my other identities and values as part of my Judaism, not counter to it. I believe that it is Judaism’s commitment to textuality and interpretation that have allowed me to use it as a lens to better understand and commit myself to things like my mixed-race identity or anti-Zionism. (I also believe that I was drawn to this aspect of Judaism because I was raised by two lawyers…but anyway.)<br /> <br /> I can’t write an entry on Judaism, because it would go on forever. Instead, I want to talk about my favorite Bible story, which looms large in both my Christian-adjacent childhood and my Jewish adulthood. <br /> <br /> The [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tower-of-Babel Tower of Babel] is a story in Genesis in which the linguistic unity of a people inspires them to start building a huge city. This offends G-d, who splits their single language into many languages, preventing them from communicating with each other. G-d scatters them across the earth, demolishing the tower in the process.<br /> <br /> As with anything else in the Torah, this story has inspired many interpretations and could inspire infinitely more. When I was a kid, Babel was presented to me as a parable about why different cultures speak different languages. Or maybe it’s about hubris–in my mind, it always feels linked to the Greek myth of [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Prometheus-Greek-god Prometheus] bringing fire to humans and being punished by having his liver eternally pecked out by vultures. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abba_Arikha Rav Abba bar Aybo], who lived in 3rd-century Asoristan, says: “As a result of the building of the tower, forgetting was introduced into the world” ([https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.109a.7?lang=bi&amp;with=all&amp;lang2=en Sanhedrin 109a:7]), which I find beautiful and haunting. My friend [https://www.samdoubek.com/ Sam], who loves the Tower of Babel so much he made a ceramic sculpture of it, says that this story is his favorite because it reveals G-d as jealous and fearful of their own creation. All of these interpretations coexist in my mind. The Tower of Babel, like so many Bible stories (and so many poems!), is short, but it can hold all that and more.<br /> <br /> Personally, I see the Tower of Babel as a story about alienation. Just as many of the stories in Genesis explain why things are the way they are, I think that Babel attempts to explain why we can’t understand each other, even when we try. Our single, perfect language was shattered, and now even people who speak the same language spend their entire lives trying to understand and be understood. I return to these themes again and again in my writing, and I think that writing as a practice is uniquely suited to explore them. <br /> <br /> The friction of attempted understanding can be so painful, and yet it is also the thing that makes human relationships pleasurable and fulfilling. In a song, I recently wrote the line: “There can be no touch without separation.” In response to the invention of the struggle to comprehend each other, maybe we invented new kinds of love.<br /> <br /> To end this entry, here’s a poem I wrote a couple years ago that I’m still proud of:&lt;blockquote&gt;'''babel'''<br /> <br /> is it true about the tower is that really the origin<br /> <br /> not only of other languages but times our friends have turned away<br /> <br /> in the green hours of the afternoon provenance evaporates<br /> <br /> &amp; what was that book where did i get this jacket where will it go<br /> <br /> when i die these things when i die<br /> <br /> no country can be visited except capitalism<br /> <br /> i tell myself to staunch the desire to be alone<br /> <br /> face impassive bullet train through the chest of a mountain<br /> <br /> last time i did this i looked into the black window afraid that someone<br /> <br /> would look back and know i was a man<br /> <br /> but still wanting someone anyone to see<br /> <br /> a mirror craves reflection is it true our faces were made for mirrors<br /> <br /> no trick is any use desire persists after it is fulfilled<br /> <br /> in the green hours sometimes i still think ''i want to be a man''<br /> <br /> ''i want to go work for a summer on that tower''<br /> <br /> ''to find out how it feels''&lt;/blockquote&gt;(PS: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang Ted Chiang]’s story Tower of Babylon is one of my favorite short stories and deserves a mention in this entry for how it revisits the Babel story. [https://jenniecreatesclasses.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/tower_of_babylon_-_ted_chiang.pdf You can read the whole thing online here!])<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Encountered Before Twelve]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:The_Museum_of_Jurassic_Technology&diff=808279 2023-10-13T07:53:04Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}&lt;blockquote&gt;''The learner must be led always from familiar objects toward the unfamiliar, guided along, as it were, a chain of flowers into the mysteries of life.''&lt;/blockquote&gt;[http://mjt.org/ The Museum of Jurassic Technology] is a museum in Los Angeles. It’s one of my favorite places in the world, but it’s challenging to describe. <br /> <br /> If a museum normally conveys knowledge, MJT is a poem about knowledge: it’s like our (Western) systems of categorizing, labeling, fact-checking, and believing have been run through a dream machine and reconfigured into something new.<br /> <br /> When I was a freshman in college, I met my best friend Mars. We gravitated toward each other instantly, for reasons both obvious and not. I call her my evil twin sister, and our lives have a lot of eerie parallels: we both grew up as oddball mixed-race Asian kids on opposite sides of the state, we taught ourselves how to be two different kind of musicians (she is a genius electronic producer; I play a lot of guitar), and we’re both trans–although, in 2015, we didn’t know about that last one yet.<br /> <br /> I first went to MJT with Mars, and we’ve been back dozens of times since, both together and separately. The feeling of walking open-eyed into something neither of us really understood, and then walking, together, through the stages of confusion, disbelief, and delight that often come with a first visit to the museum–when I look back on this, I see it as a metaphor for the creative process, especially undertaken collaboratively. Mars is the person who taught me I don’t have to make art alone. She was the first person I ever wrote a song with; we made two full albums together during college (about identity, the self, knowledge, and archives) and plan to do more one of these days. She taught me, and still teaches me, that there is nothing more bewildering and hard and joyful and rewarding than making art with someone you love.<br /> <br /> When you are a kid, and you are both a weird, intense brainiac and a marginalized person, and you’re strongly aware of the first thing but only dimly aware of the second, there’s a lag between you becoming invested in the systems that organize knowledge in your world and you realizing that those systems don’t see you as human. Did you know that [https://www.npr.org/2004/05/31/1909651/living-exhibits-at-1904-worlds-fair-revisited the 1904 World’s Fair involved kidnapping Filipino people and displaying them like zoo animals?] Did you know that [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201509/when-homosexuality-stopped-being-a-mental-disorder homosexuality was in the DSM until 1987?] (obvious CWs for racism and homophobia at these links) When people talk about “the archive” having gaps and ghosts or libraries being organized “problematically,” I often wish they’d get specific. I worry sometimes that it’s too sanitary to just say these systems are old or broken or in need of decolonization. The truth is gory. I don’t want us to be scared of it.<br /> <br /> MJT appears invested in these systems because it appears to be a normal, serious museum where everything is true and real. But then it turns out to be something else. I think it’s a great joke about how museums (fail to) organize and categorize knowledge, but it’s also a wonderful poem about our desire and failure to truly know the world. Going there with Mars was strangely healing for me. It showed me that, if the systems of knowledge around me weren’t made to fit me, I could gnaw at them until they did. If systems of knowledge didn’t take me seriously, I didn’t have to take them seriously either, but I also didn’t have to abandon my genuine love of learning. <br /> <br /> The original “wonder cabinets” were about demonstrating dominion over the world. It’s not too late to make something that connects with the world instead, and that celebrates the unknowable. When I write, especially collaboratively–which, I know now, is always–this is what I want. This is the museum of my dreams. <br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Places]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=The_Museum_of_Jurassic_Technology&diff=808278 2023-10-13T07:48:58Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page The Museum of Jurassic Technology to Course:The Museum of Jurassic Technology</p> <hr /> <div>#REDIRECT [[Course:The Museum of Jurassic Technology]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:The_Museum_of_Jurassic_Technology&diff=808277 2023-10-13T07:48:58Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page The Museum of Jurassic Technology to Course:The Museum of Jurassic Technology</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}&lt;blockquote&gt;''The learner must be led always from familiar objects toward the unfamiliar, guided along, as it were, a chain of flowers into the mysteries of life.''&lt;/blockquote&gt;[http://mjt.org/ The Museum of Jurassic Technology] is a museum in Los Angeles. It’s one of my favorite places in the world, but it’s challenging to describe. <br /> <br /> If a museum normally conveys knowledge, MJT is a poem about knowledge: it’s like our (Western) systems of categorizing, labeling, fact-checking, and believing have been run through a dream machine and reconfigured into something new.<br /> <br /> When I was a freshman in college, I met my best friend Mars. We gravitated toward each other instantly, for reasons both obvious and not. I call her my evil twin sister, and our lives have a lot of eerie parallels: we both grew up as oddball mixed-race Asian kids on opposite sides of the state, we taught ourselves how to be two different kind of musicians (she is a genius electronic producer; I play a lot of guitar), and we’re both trans–although, in 2015, we didn’t know about that last one yet.<br /> <br /> I first went to MJT with Mars, and we’ve been back dozens of times since, both together and separately. The feeling of walking open-eyed into something neither of us really understood, and then walking, together, through the stages of confusion, disbelief, and delight that often come with a first visit to the museum–when I look back on this, I see it as a metaphor for the creative process, especially undertaken collaboratively. Mars is the person who taught me I don’t have to make art alone. She was the first person I ever wrote a song with; we made two full albums together during college (about identity, the self, knowledge, and archives) and plan to do more one of these days. She taught me, and still teaches me, that there is nothing more bewildering and hard and joyful and rewarding than making art with someone you love.<br /> <br /> When you are a kid, and you are both a weird, intense brainiac and a marginalized person, and you’re strongly aware of the first thing but only dimly aware of the second, there’s a lag between you becoming invested in the systems that organize knowledge in your world and you realizing that those systems don’t see you as human. Did you know that [https://www.npr.org/2004/05/31/1909651/living-exhibits-at-1904-worlds-fair-revisited the 1904 World’s Fair involved kidnapping Filipino people and displaying them like zoo animals?] Did you know that [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201509/when-homosexuality-stopped-being-a-mental-disorder homosexuality was in the DSM until 1987?] When people talk about “the archive” having gaps and ghosts or libraries being organized “problematically,” I often wish they’d get specific. I worry sometimes that it’s too sanitary to just say these systems are old or broken or in need of decolonization. The truth is gory. I don’t want us to be scared of it.<br /> <br /> MJT appears invested in these systems because it appears to be a normal, serious museum where everything is true and real. But then it turns out to be something else. I think it’s a great joke about how museums (fail to) organize and categorize knowledge, but it’s also a wonderful poem about our desire and failure to truly know the world. Going there with Mars was strangely healing for me. It showed me that, if the systems of knowledge around me weren’t made to fit me, I could gnaw at them until they did. If systems of knowledge didn’t take me seriously, I didn’t have to take them seriously either, but I also didn’t have to abandon my genuine love of learning. <br /> <br /> The original “wonder cabinets” were about demonstrating dominion over the world. It’s not too late to make something that connects with the world instead, and that celebrates the unknowable. When I write, especially collaboratively–which, I know now, is always–this is what I want. This is the museum of my dreams. <br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Places]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:The_Museum_of_Jurassic_Technology&diff=808276 2023-10-13T07:48:48Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: Created page with &quot;{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}&lt;blockquote&gt;&#039;&#039;The learner must be led always from familiar objects toward the unfamiliar, guided along, as it were, a chain of flowers into the mysteries of life.&#039;&#039;&lt;/blockquote&gt;[http://mjt.org/ The Museum of Jurassic Technology] is a museum in Los Angeles. It’s one of my favorite places in the world, but it’s challenging to describe. If a museum normally conveys knowledge, MJT is a poem about knowledge: it’s like our (Western) syste...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}&lt;blockquote&gt;''The learner must be led always from familiar objects toward the unfamiliar, guided along, as it were, a chain of flowers into the mysteries of life.''&lt;/blockquote&gt;[http://mjt.org/ The Museum of Jurassic Technology] is a museum in Los Angeles. It’s one of my favorite places in the world, but it’s challenging to describe. <br /> <br /> If a museum normally conveys knowledge, MJT is a poem about knowledge: it’s like our (Western) systems of categorizing, labeling, fact-checking, and believing have been run through a dream machine and reconfigured into something new.<br /> <br /> When I was a freshman in college, I met my best friend Mars. We gravitated toward each other instantly, for reasons both obvious and not. I call her my evil twin sister, and our lives have a lot of eerie parallels: we both grew up as oddball mixed-race Asian kids on opposite sides of the state, we taught ourselves how to be two different kind of musicians (she is a genius electronic producer; I play a lot of guitar), and we’re both trans–although, in 2015, we didn’t know about that last one yet.<br /> <br /> I first went to MJT with Mars, and we’ve been back dozens of times since, both together and separately. The feeling of walking open-eyed into something neither of us really understood, and then walking, together, through the stages of confusion, disbelief, and delight that often come with a first visit to the museum–when I look back on this, I see it as a metaphor for the creative process, especially undertaken collaboratively. Mars is the person who taught me I don’t have to make art alone. She was the first person I ever wrote a song with; we made two full albums together during college (about identity, the self, knowledge, and archives) and plan to do more one of these days. She taught me, and still teaches me, that there is nothing more bewildering and hard and joyful and rewarding than making art with someone you love.<br /> <br /> When you are a kid, and you are both a weird, intense brainiac and a marginalized person, and you’re strongly aware of the first thing but only dimly aware of the second, there’s a lag between you becoming invested in the systems that organize knowledge in your world and you realizing that those systems don’t see you as human. Did you know that [https://www.npr.org/2004/05/31/1909651/living-exhibits-at-1904-worlds-fair-revisited the 1904 World’s Fair involved kidnapping Filipino people and displaying them like zoo animals?] Did you know that [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201509/when-homosexuality-stopped-being-a-mental-disorder homosexuality was in the DSM until 1987?] When people talk about “the archive” having gaps and ghosts or libraries being organized “problematically,” I often wish they’d get specific. I worry sometimes that it’s too sanitary to just say these systems are old or broken or in need of decolonization. The truth is gory. I don’t want us to be scared of it.<br /> <br /> MJT appears invested in these systems because it appears to be a normal, serious museum where everything is true and real. But then it turns out to be something else. I think it’s a great joke about how museums (fail to) organize and categorize knowledge, but it’s also a wonderful poem about our desire and failure to truly know the world. Going there with Mars was strangely healing for me. It showed me that, if the systems of knowledge around me weren’t made to fit me, I could gnaw at them until they did. If systems of knowledge didn’t take me seriously, I didn’t have to take them seriously either, but I also didn’t have to abandon my genuine love of learning. <br /> <br /> The original “wonder cabinets” were about demonstrating dominion over the world. It’s not too late to make something that connects with the world instead, and that celebrates the unknowable. When I write, especially collaboratively–which, I know now, is always–this is what I want. This is the museum of my dreams. <br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Places]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:In_a_Station_of_the_Metro_(Ezra_Pound_poem)&diff=807991 2023-10-02T21:13:26Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: </p> <hr /> <div><br /> {{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> Cw for mentions of fascism and antisemitism in the links.<br /> <br /> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound Ezra Pound]’s 1913 poem “[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12675/in-a-station-of-the-metro In a Station of the Metro]” is only fourteen words long and has no verbs. Here it is:&lt;blockquote&gt;The apparition of these faces in the crowd:<br /> <br /> <br /> Petals on a wet, black bough.&lt;/blockquote&gt;I’m no Ezra Pound fan: he was [https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/literature/american-literature/ezra-pound-and-italian-fascism a fascist] and [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1208225?typeAccessWorkflow=login an antisemite], and to be honest, I’m not really into his other poems or Modernist poetry generally. The first poetry teacher I ever had, one of my favorite people I’ve ever learned anything from, was a huge Modernism fan; we spent weeks reading all of T.S. Eliot’s ''[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land The Waste Land]'', picking it apart line by line to see how it worked. We read some Pound as well, maybe this poem, although I don’t remember. <br /> <br /> In fact, I have no idea when I first encountered this poem, which still chases me constantly. The phrase “petals on a wet, black bough” is one of those things my brain has chosen to chant, some days, dozens of times in a row. I think about it every time it rains in Vancouver (so, pretty often). For a while, I forgot where it was even from. That was how I found this poem again.<br /> So that’s something. It’s a mysterious quality, the ability of a poem–a single line, really, or an image–to chase you down like that. What makes it happen? Is it Pound’s use of sound? The efficiency of his language? The accessibility of the image? The feeling of a portal opening, then snapping shut, like a camera’s shutter? It’s all of those, I think. This poem feels like it’s been in my brain since before I was even born. While I’m not sure I’m capable of writing something that makes someone feel that way, I’m having fun trying.<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Conflicted, Ambivalent, or Antagonistic Feelings]]<br /> [[Category:Poem Composed Before 1945]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:In_a_Station_of_the_Metro_(Ezra_Pound_poem)&diff=807990 2023-10-02T21:13:21Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: </p> <hr /> <div><br /> {{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> Cw for mentions of fascism and antisemitism in the links.<br /> <br /> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound Ezra Pound]’s 1913 poem “[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12675/in-a-station-of-the-metro In a Station of the Metro]” is only fourteen words long and has no verbs. Here it is:&lt;blockquote&gt;The apparition of these faces in the crowd:<br /> <br /> Petals on a wet, black bough.&lt;/blockquote&gt;I’m no Ezra Pound fan: he was [https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/literature/american-literature/ezra-pound-and-italian-fascism a fascist] and [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1208225?typeAccessWorkflow=login an antisemite], and to be honest, I’m not really into his other poems or Modernist poetry generally. The first poetry teacher I ever had, one of my favorite people I’ve ever learned anything from, was a huge Modernism fan; we spent weeks reading all of T.S. Eliot’s ''[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land The Waste Land]'', picking it apart line by line to see how it worked. We read some Pound as well, maybe this poem, although I don’t remember. <br /> <br /> In fact, I have no idea when I first encountered this poem, which still chases me constantly. The phrase “petals on a wet, black bough” is one of those things my brain has chosen to chant, some days, dozens of times in a row. I think about it every time it rains in Vancouver (so, pretty often). For a while, I forgot where it was even from. That was how I found this poem again.<br /> So that’s something. It’s a mysterious quality, the ability of a poem–a single line, really, or an image–to chase you down like that. What makes it happen? Is it Pound’s use of sound? The efficiency of his language? The accessibility of the image? The feeling of a portal opening, then snapping shut, like a camera’s shutter? It’s all of those, I think. This poem feels like it’s been in my brain since before I was even born. While I’m not sure I’m capable of writing something that makes someone feel that way, I’m having fun trying.<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Conflicted, Ambivalent, or Antagonistic Feelings]]<br /> [[Category:Poem Composed Before 1945]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:In_a_Station_of_the_Metro_(Ezra_Pound_poem)&diff=807989 2023-10-02T21:13:14Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: </p> <hr /> <div><br /> {{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> Cw for mentions of fascism and antisemitism in the links.<br /> <br /> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound Ezra Pound]’s 1913 poem “[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12675/in-a-station-of-the-metro In a Station of the Metro]” is only fourteen words long and has no verbs. Here it is:&lt;blockquote&gt;The apparition of these faces in the crowd:<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Petals on a wet, black bough.&lt;/blockquote&gt;I’m no Ezra Pound fan: he was [https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/literature/american-literature/ezra-pound-and-italian-fascism a fascist] and [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1208225?typeAccessWorkflow=login an antisemite], and to be honest, I’m not really into his other poems or Modernist poetry generally. The first poetry teacher I ever had, one of my favorite people I’ve ever learned anything from, was a huge Modernism fan; we spent weeks reading all of T.S. Eliot’s ''[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land The Waste Land]'', picking it apart line by line to see how it worked. We read some Pound as well, maybe this poem, although I don’t remember. <br /> <br /> In fact, I have no idea when I first encountered this poem, which still chases me constantly. The phrase “petals on a wet, black bough” is one of those things my brain has chosen to chant, some days, dozens of times in a row. I think about it every time it rains in Vancouver (so, pretty often). For a while, I forgot where it was even from. That was how I found this poem again.<br /> So that’s something. It’s a mysterious quality, the ability of a poem–a single line, really, or an image–to chase you down like that. What makes it happen? Is it Pound’s use of sound? The efficiency of his language? The accessibility of the image? The feeling of a portal opening, then snapping shut, like a camera’s shutter? It’s all of those, I think. This poem feels like it’s been in my brain since before I was even born. While I’m not sure I’m capable of writing something that makes someone feel that way, I’m having fun trying.<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Conflicted, Ambivalent, or Antagonistic Feelings]]<br /> [[Category:Poem Composed Before 1945]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=In_a_Station_of_the_Metro&diff=807988 2023-10-02T21:12:16Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page In a Station of the Metro to Course:In a Station of the Metro (Ezra Pound poem)</p> <hr /> <div>#REDIRECT [[Course:In a Station of the Metro (Ezra Pound poem)]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:In_a_Station_of_the_Metro_(Ezra_Pound_poem)&diff=807987 2023-10-02T21:12:16Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page In a Station of the Metro to Course:In a Station of the Metro (Ezra Pound poem)</p> <hr /> <div><br /> {{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> Cw for mentions of fascism and antisemitism in the links.<br /> <br /> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound Ezra Pound]’s 1913 poem “[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12675/in-a-station-of-the-metro In a Station of the Metro]” is only fourteen words long and has no verbs. Here it is:&lt;blockquote&gt;The apparition of these faces in the crowd:<br /> <br /> Petals on a wet, black bough.&lt;/blockquote&gt;I’m no Ezra Pound fan: he was [https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/literature/american-literature/ezra-pound-and-italian-fascism a fascist] and [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1208225?typeAccessWorkflow=login an antisemite], and to be honest, I’m not really into his other poems or Modernist poetry generally. The first poetry teacher I ever had, one of my favorite people I’ve ever learned anything from, was a huge Modernism fan; we spent weeks reading all of T.S. Eliot’s ''[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land The Waste Land]'', picking it apart line by line to see how it worked. We read some Pound as well, maybe this poem, although I don’t remember. <br /> <br /> In fact, I have no idea when I first encountered this poem, which still chases me constantly. The phrase “petals on a wet, black bough” is one of those things my brain has chosen to chant, some days, dozens of times in a row. I think about it every time it rains in Vancouver (so, pretty often). For a while, I forgot where it was even from. That was how I found this poem again.<br /> So that’s something. It’s a mysterious quality, the ability of a poem–a single line, really, or an image–to chase you down like that. What makes it happen? Is it Pound’s use of sound? The efficiency of his language? The accessibility of the image? The feeling of a portal opening, then snapping shut, like a camera’s shutter? It’s all of those, I think. This poem feels like it’s been in my brain since before I was even born. While I’m not sure I’m capable of writing something that makes someone feel that way, I’m having fun trying.<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Conflicted, Ambivalent, or Antagonistic Feelings]]<br /> [[Category:Poem Composed Before 1945]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:In_a_Station_of_the_Metro_(Ezra_Pound_poem)&diff=807986 2023-10-02T21:12:03Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: Created page with &quot; {{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}} Cw for mentions of fascism and antisemitism in the links. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound Ezra Pound]’s 1913 poem “[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12675/in-a-station-of-the-metro In a Station of the Metro]” is only fourteen words long and has no verbs. Here it is:&lt;blockquote&gt;The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough.&lt;/blockquote&gt;I’m no Ezra Pound fan: he was [https...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div><br /> {{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> Cw for mentions of fascism and antisemitism in the links.<br /> <br /> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound Ezra Pound]’s 1913 poem “[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12675/in-a-station-of-the-metro In a Station of the Metro]” is only fourteen words long and has no verbs. Here it is:&lt;blockquote&gt;The apparition of these faces in the crowd:<br /> <br /> Petals on a wet, black bough.&lt;/blockquote&gt;I’m no Ezra Pound fan: he was [https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/literature/american-literature/ezra-pound-and-italian-fascism a fascist] and [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1208225?typeAccessWorkflow=login an antisemite], and to be honest, I’m not really into his other poems or Modernist poetry generally. The first poetry teacher I ever had, one of my favorite people I’ve ever learned anything from, was a huge Modernism fan; we spent weeks reading all of T.S. Eliot’s ''[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land The Waste Land]'', picking it apart line by line to see how it worked. We read some Pound as well, maybe this poem, although I don’t remember. <br /> <br /> In fact, I have no idea when I first encountered this poem, which still chases me constantly. The phrase “petals on a wet, black bough” is one of those things my brain has chosen to chant, some days, dozens of times in a row. I think about it every time it rains in Vancouver (so, pretty often). For a while, I forgot where it was even from. That was how I found this poem again.<br /> So that’s something. It’s a mysterious quality, the ability of a poem–a single line, really, or an image–to chase you down like that. What makes it happen? Is it Pound’s use of sound? The efficiency of his language? The accessibility of the image? The feeling of a portal opening, then snapping shut, like a camera’s shutter? It’s all of those, I think. This poem feels like it’s been in my brain since before I was even born. While I’m not sure I’m capable of writing something that makes someone feel that way, I’m having fun trying.<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Conflicted, Ambivalent, or Antagonistic Feelings]]<br /> [[Category:Poem Composed Before 1945]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=The_Narrow_Road_to_the_Deep_North&diff=807985 2023-10-02T20:53:03Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page The Narrow Road to the Deep North to Course:The Narrow Road to the Deep North</p> <hr /> <div>#REDIRECT [[Course:The Narrow Road to the Deep North]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:The_Narrow_Road_to_the_Deep_North&diff=807984 2023-10-02T20:53:03Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page The Narrow Road to the Deep North to Course:The Narrow Road to the Deep North</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsuo_Bash%C5%8D Matsuo Bashō] lived during the Edo period in Japan and is well-known as a master of the haiku form. But when I learned about his book [https://thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/items/show/214 ''The Narrow Road to the Deep North''] (trans. Nobuyuki Yuasa–this link has the full text!), which records Bashō’s round-trip journey from Edo (Tokyo) to Hiraizumi (in Iwate Prefecture), it was in the context of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haibun haibun], a form consisting of a prose poem followed by a haiku.<br /> <br /> Bashō was middle-aged by the time he made the journey in ''The Narrow Road''; the trip itself was 2400 km long and took two years to complete. He writes about moments of transcendent beauty, but also about his back hurting, his feet aching, a horse pissing near his head while he tries to sleep at night. He cries a lot, often about the losses of the past: “I sat down on my hat and wept bitterly till I almost forgot time.” Even four centuries ago, much of what he saw on the road was already in ruins. Reading his writing brings me close to both the past he lived in and the past his poems record:&lt;blockquote&gt;In this ever-changing world where mountains crumble, rivers change their course, roads are deserted, rocks are buried, and old trees yield to young shoots, it was nothing short of a miracle that this monument alone had survived the battering of a thousand years to be the living memory of the ancients. I felt as if I were in the presence of the ancients themselves, and, forgetting all the troubles I had suffered on the road, rejoiced in the utter happiness of this joyful moment, not without tears in my eyes.&lt;/blockquote&gt;This book had a profound effect on me because it gave me a vision of “old” poetry that was counter both to what I knew of old Western poems and to what I had previously believed about haiku. Bashō doesn’t choose the images he does for their beauty, but for their salience. His keen observation of the past means he also documents his present in razor-sharp detail. I’ve never read poetry so old that feels so real and immediate. <br /> <br /> ''The Narrow Road'' inspired me to keep travel journals, a practice I maintain separately from my regular journalling. Now I get a lot of writing done when I travel: my poetic attention and memory feel focused and alive, and I feel a deep sense of appreciation for the experiences I’m having.<br /> <br /> This book also made me fall in love with haibun as a form. I like how the haibun allows poetic attention to wander, diffuse, then refocus, even glance off itself, in the haiku. It’s also fun to play with: reverse, double, and [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/160533/writing-from-the-ashes-on-the-burning-haibun burning] (or “dissolving”) haibun are all variations I’ve tried out and enjoyed.<br /> <br /> The last thing I’ll say about ''The Narrow Road'' is that it was a collaborative work. Bashō was traveling with his apprentice, Kawai Sora, and frequently includes Sora’s haiku in his work. Even though haiku are associated with moments of stillness and the absence of people, there is a strong social element to Bashō’s journey: ''The Narrow Road'' is full of innkeepers, guides, old friends, people he meets on the road, and poets he admires. I love when poets incorporate sociality into their poems. The narrow road is not a solitary one.<br /> <br /> Here’s one haibun from the book:&lt;blockquote&gt;I went to the Tada Shrine situated in the vicinity, where I saw Lord Sanemori’s helmet and a piece of brocaded cloth that he had worn under his armor. According to the legend, these were given him by Lord Yoshitomo while he was still in the service of the Minamotos. The helmet was certainly an extraordinary one, with an arabesque of gold chrysanthemums covering the visor and the ear-plate, a fiery dragon resting proudly on the crest, and two curved horns pointing to the sky. The chronicle of the shrine gave a vivid account of how, upon the heroic death of Lord Sanemori, Kiso Yoshinaka had sent his important retainer Higuchi-no-Jirō to the shrine to dedicate the helmet with a letter of prayer.<br /> <br /> <br /> I am awe-struck<br /> <br /> To hear a cricket singing<br /> <br /> Underneath the dark cavity<br /> <br /> Of an old helmet.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Poem Composed Before 1945]]<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Book of Poems]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:The_Narrow_Road_to_the_Deep_North&diff=807983 2023-10-02T20:52:53Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: Created page with &quot;{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}} [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsuo_Bash%C5%8D Matsuo Bashō] lived during the Edo period in Japan and is well-known as a master of the haiku form. But when I learned about his book [https://thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/items/show/214 &#039;&#039;The Narrow Road to the Deep North&#039;&#039;] (trans. Nobuyuki Yuasa–this link has the full text!), which records Bashō’s round-trip journey from Edo (Tokyo) to Hiraizumi (in Iwate Prefecture), it was in the...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsuo_Bash%C5%8D Matsuo Bashō] lived during the Edo period in Japan and is well-known as a master of the haiku form. But when I learned about his book [https://thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/items/show/214 ''The Narrow Road to the Deep North''] (trans. Nobuyuki Yuasa–this link has the full text!), which records Bashō’s round-trip journey from Edo (Tokyo) to Hiraizumi (in Iwate Prefecture), it was in the context of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haibun haibun], a form consisting of a prose poem followed by a haiku.<br /> <br /> Bashō was middle-aged by the time he made the journey in ''The Narrow Road''; the trip itself was 2400 km long and took two years to complete. He writes about moments of transcendent beauty, but also about his back hurting, his feet aching, a horse pissing near his head while he tries to sleep at night. He cries a lot, often about the losses of the past: “I sat down on my hat and wept bitterly till I almost forgot time.” Even four centuries ago, much of what he saw on the road was already in ruins. Reading his writing brings me close to both the past he lived in and the past his poems record:&lt;blockquote&gt;In this ever-changing world where mountains crumble, rivers change their course, roads are deserted, rocks are buried, and old trees yield to young shoots, it was nothing short of a miracle that this monument alone had survived the battering of a thousand years to be the living memory of the ancients. I felt as if I were in the presence of the ancients themselves, and, forgetting all the troubles I had suffered on the road, rejoiced in the utter happiness of this joyful moment, not without tears in my eyes.&lt;/blockquote&gt;This book had a profound effect on me because it gave me a vision of “old” poetry that was counter both to what I knew of old Western poems and to what I had previously believed about haiku. Bashō doesn’t choose the images he does for their beauty, but for their salience. His keen observation of the past means he also documents his present in razor-sharp detail. I’ve never read poetry so old that feels so real and immediate. <br /> <br /> ''The Narrow Road'' inspired me to keep travel journals, a practice I maintain separately from my regular journalling. Now I get a lot of writing done when I travel: my poetic attention and memory feel focused and alive, and I feel a deep sense of appreciation for the experiences I’m having.<br /> <br /> This book also made me fall in love with haibun as a form. I like how the haibun allows poetic attention to wander, diffuse, then refocus, even glance off itself, in the haiku. It’s also fun to play with: reverse, double, and [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/160533/writing-from-the-ashes-on-the-burning-haibun burning] (or “dissolving”) haibun are all variations I’ve tried out and enjoyed.<br /> <br /> The last thing I’ll say about ''The Narrow Road'' is that it was a collaborative work. Bashō was traveling with his apprentice, Kawai Sora, and frequently includes Sora’s haiku in his work. Even though haiku are associated with moments of stillness and the absence of people, there is a strong social element to Bashō’s journey: ''The Narrow Road'' is full of innkeepers, guides, old friends, people he meets on the road, and poets he admires. I love when poets incorporate sociality into their poems. The narrow road is not a solitary one.<br /> <br /> Here’s one haibun from the book:&lt;blockquote&gt;I went to the Tada Shrine situated in the vicinity, where I saw Lord Sanemori’s helmet and a piece of brocaded cloth that he had worn under his armor. According to the legend, these were given him by Lord Yoshitomo while he was still in the service of the Minamotos. The helmet was certainly an extraordinary one, with an arabesque of gold chrysanthemums covering the visor and the ear-plate, a fiery dragon resting proudly on the crest, and two curved horns pointing to the sky. The chronicle of the shrine gave a vivid account of how, upon the heroic death of Lord Sanemori, Kiso Yoshinaka had sent his important retainer Higuchi-no-Jirō to the shrine to dedicate the helmet with a letter of prayer.<br /> <br /> <br /> I am awe-struck<br /> <br /> To hear a cricket singing<br /> <br /> Underneath the dark cavity<br /> <br /> Of an old helmet.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Poem Composed Before 1945]]<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Book of Poems]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Southern_California&diff=807979 2023-10-02T00:00:56Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> I’m from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California Southern California]–OK, fine, I’m from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_County,_California Orange County]. Even more specifically, I’m from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Clemente,_California San Clemente], which isn’t the most embarrassing town in Orange County to be from. It’s the southernmost town in the county, and mostly known for being beautiful and having lots of surfers and skaters. Even then, though, it can’t escape the gravitational pull of the conservatism that permeates Southern California–it’s right next to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Pendleton_Mainside,_California Camp Pendleton], and it’s home to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Casa_Pacifica Richard Nixon’s Western White House]. To which I can only say: LOL.<br /> <br /> I have thought a lot about the influence that growing up in this place exerted on me, particularly as a kid. In the early 2000s, the United States, or at least the part I lived in, was riding a paranoid, unhinged nationalistic high: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%932021) we were at war in Afghanistan], and nothing less than the soul of our nation was at stake, apparently. This was what I heard at school–I attended private elementary and middle schools where I was often one of the only non-white kids in class, and certainly one of the least wealthy. At home, my mom watched the news with me: terrifying footage of cities collapsing in the desert. She explained to me what war was, what imperialism was, and why these things weren’t worth it. <br /> <br /> Our own family wasn’t so removed from the consequences of American imperialism. My Lolo immigrated to the US by joining the Navy, part of [https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/f/filipinos-in-the-united-states-navy.html a program made possible by the American colonial presence in the Philippines]; upon arrival, he learned that, because the armed forces were segregated, he would never be allowed to rise above the rank of steward. When I was a kid, we lived so close to Camp Pendleton that their artillery drills made our windows shake.<br /> <br /> On the other hand, it’s beautiful down there. My dad took my brother and me hiking almost every weekend, teaching us about the plants and animals native to the area. Chaparral only looks dead if you don’t know what you’re looking for. I got to see both the oceans and the mountain almost every day for the first eighteen years of my life. I was really lucky.<br /> <br /> Southern California is an endlessly rich text. I could talk about it forever. A quarter of my mind always feels stuck there, no matter where I go, even though I would never want to live there again.  The first album I made, [https://nightjarsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/modjeska Modjeska], is named after one of the peaks of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddleback_(Orange_County,_California) Saddleback Mountain], which I grew up looking at from my backyard. I wanted to make an album about colonialism and its consequences–including my own life, the life I lived while becoming an adult in the 21st century. Here’s an excerpt from an essay I wrote about the album (it’s included in the CD liner notes &amp; with the digital album, but just get in touch with me on Canvas if you want to read the whole thing!):&lt;blockquote&gt;The money is new money, brought in with venture capital and real estate. Everything is so glossy and smooth, it becomes trashy, the way too-shiny skin starts looking taut with disease. Or it just starts to feel blank: strip malls forever and ever, winding labyrinths of box houses with identical interiors and grass-laden yards.<br /> <br /> The consequence of this blankness is the assumption that Orange County is what it is innately. In fact, the place is the product of so many elements of American colonialism…Colonialism and its consequences are part of the context that shapes me and my work. I want people to see this part of the world in context, so they might better understand Orange County for what it is: one tiny flourish in the vast concatenated pattern of the West. I want this because, when the past feels real, the future starts to feel real too.<br /> <br /> Whenever I go back home, I get excited to lock eyes with the mountain again. In a time and place shot through with the belief that the earth belongs to us, it is the center reminding me that we belong to the earth.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Conflicted, Ambivalent, or Antagonistic Feelings]]<br /> [[Category:Places]]<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Encountered Before Twelve]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Southern_California&diff=807978 2023-10-01T23:57:59Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page Southern California to Course:Southern California</p> <hr /> <div>#REDIRECT [[Course:Southern California]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Southern_California&diff=807977 2023-10-01T23:57:59Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page Southern California to Course:Southern California</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> I’m from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California Southern California]–OK, fine, I’m from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_County,_California Orange County]. Even more specifically, I’m from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Clemente,_California San Clemente], which isn’t the most embarrassing town in Orange County to be from. It’s the southernmost town in the county, and mostly known for being beautiful and having lots of surfers and skaters. Even then, though, it can’t escape the gravitational pull of the conservatism that permeates Southern California–it’s right next to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Pendleton_Mainside,_California Camp Pendleton], and it’s home to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Casa_Pacifica Richard Nixon’s Western White House]. To which I can only say: LOL.<br /> <br /> I have thought a lot about the influence that growing up in this place exerted on me, particularly as a kid. In the early 2000s, the United States, or at least the part I lived in, was riding a paranoid, unhinged nationalistic high: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%932021) we were at war in Afghanistan], and nothing less than the soul of our nation was at stake, apparently. This was what I heard at school–I attended private elementary and middle schools where I was often one of the only non-white kids in class, and certainly one of the least wealthy. At home, my mom watched the news with me: terrifying footage of cities collapsing in the desert. She explained to me what war was, what imperialism was, and why these things weren’t worth it. <br /> <br /> Our own family wasn’t so removed from the consequences of American imperialism. My Lolo immigrated to the US by joining the Navy, part of [https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/f/filipinos-in-the-united-states-navy.html a program made possible by the American colonial presence in the Philippines]; upon arrival, he learned that, because the armed forces were segregated, he would never be allowed to rise above the rank of steward. When I was a kid, we lived so close to Camp Pendleton that their artillery drills made our windows shake.<br /> <br /> On the other hand, it’s beautiful down there. My dad took my brother and me hiking almost every weekend, teaching us about the plants and animals native to the area. Chaparral only looks dead if you don’t know what you’re looking for. I got to see both the oceans and the mountain almost every day for the first eighteen years of my life. I was really lucky.<br /> <br /> Southern California is an endlessly rich text. I could talk about it forever. A quarter of my mind always feels stuck there, no matter where I go, even though I would never want to live there again.  The first album I made, [https://nightjarsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/modjeska Modjeska], is named after one of the peaks of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddleback_(Orange_County,_California) Saddleback Mountain], which I grew up looking at from my backyard. I wanted to make an album about colonialism and its consequences–including my own life, the life I lived while becoming an adult in the 21st century. Here’s an excerpt from an essay I wrote about the album (it’s included in the CD liner notes &amp; with the digital album, but just get in touch with me on Canvas if you want to read the whole thing!):&lt;blockquote&gt;The money is new money, brought in with venture capital and real estate. Everything is so glossy and smooth, it becomes trashy, the way too-shiny skin starts looking taut with disease. Or it just starts to feel blank: strip malls forever and ever, winding labyrinths of box houses with identical interiors and grass-laden yards.<br /> <br /> The consequence of this blankness is the assumption that Orange County is what it is innately. In fact, the place is the product of so many elements of American colonialism…Colonialism and its consequences are part of the context that shapes me and my work. I want people to see this part of the world in context, so they might better understand Orange County for what it is: one tiny flourish in the vast concatenated pattern of the West. I want this because, when the past feels real, the future starts to feel real too.<br /> <br /> Whenever I go back home, I get excited to lock eyes with the mountain again. In a time and place shot through with the belief that the earth belongs to us, it is the center reminding me that we belong to the earth.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Conflicted, Ambivalent, or Antagonistic Feelings]]<br /> [[Category:Places]]<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Southern_California&diff=807976 2023-10-01T23:57:43Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: Created page with &quot;{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}} I’m from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California Southern California]–OK, fine, I’m from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_County,_California Orange County]. Even more specifically, I’m from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Clemente,_California San Clemente], which isn’t the most embarrassing town in Orange County to be from. It’s the southernmost town in the county, and mostly known for being beautiful and ha...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> I’m from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California Southern California]–OK, fine, I’m from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_County,_California Orange County]. Even more specifically, I’m from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Clemente,_California San Clemente], which isn’t the most embarrassing town in Orange County to be from. It’s the southernmost town in the county, and mostly known for being beautiful and having lots of surfers and skaters. Even then, though, it can’t escape the gravitational pull of the conservatism that permeates Southern California–it’s right next to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Pendleton_Mainside,_California Camp Pendleton], and it’s home to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Casa_Pacifica Richard Nixon’s Western White House]. To which I can only say: LOL.<br /> <br /> I have thought a lot about the influence that growing up in this place exerted on me, particularly as a kid. In the early 2000s, the United States, or at least the part I lived in, was riding a paranoid, unhinged nationalistic high: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%932021) we were at war in Afghanistan], and nothing less than the soul of our nation was at stake, apparently. This was what I heard at school–I attended private elementary and middle schools where I was often one of the only non-white kids in class, and certainly one of the least wealthy. At home, my mom watched the news with me: terrifying footage of cities collapsing in the desert. She explained to me what war was, what imperialism was, and why these things weren’t worth it. <br /> <br /> Our own family wasn’t so removed from the consequences of American imperialism. My Lolo immigrated to the US by joining the Navy, part of [https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/f/filipinos-in-the-united-states-navy.html a program made possible by the American colonial presence in the Philippines]; upon arrival, he learned that, because the armed forces were segregated, he would never be allowed to rise above the rank of steward. When I was a kid, we lived so close to Camp Pendleton that their artillery drills made our windows shake.<br /> <br /> On the other hand, it’s beautiful down there. My dad took my brother and me hiking almost every weekend, teaching us about the plants and animals native to the area. Chaparral only looks dead if you don’t know what you’re looking for. I got to see both the oceans and the mountain almost every day for the first eighteen years of my life. I was really lucky.<br /> <br /> Southern California is an endlessly rich text. I could talk about it forever. A quarter of my mind always feels stuck there, no matter where I go, even though I would never want to live there again.  The first album I made, [https://nightjarsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/modjeska Modjeska], is named after one of the peaks of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddleback_(Orange_County,_California) Saddleback Mountain], which I grew up looking at from my backyard. I wanted to make an album about colonialism and its consequences–including my own life, the life I lived while becoming an adult in the 21st century. Here’s an excerpt from an essay I wrote about the album (it’s included in the CD liner notes &amp; with the digital album, but just get in touch with me on Canvas if you want to read the whole thing!):&lt;blockquote&gt;The money is new money, brought in with venture capital and real estate. Everything is so glossy and smooth, it becomes trashy, the way too-shiny skin starts looking taut with disease. Or it just starts to feel blank: strip malls forever and ever, winding labyrinths of box houses with identical interiors and grass-laden yards.<br /> <br /> The consequence of this blankness is the assumption that Orange County is what it is innately. In fact, the place is the product of so many elements of American colonialism…Colonialism and its consequences are part of the context that shapes me and my work. I want people to see this part of the world in context, so they might better understand Orange County for what it is: one tiny flourish in the vast concatenated pattern of the West. I want this because, when the past feels real, the future starts to feel real too.<br /> <br /> Whenever I go back home, I get excited to lock eyes with the mountain again. In a time and place shot through with the belief that the earth belongs to us, it is the center reminding me that we belong to the earth.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Conflicted, Ambivalent, or Antagonistic Feelings]]<br /> [[Category:Places]]<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:In_Conflict_(Owen_Pallett_album)&diff=807633 2023-09-21T23:37:48Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: </p> <hr /> <div>''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Conflict In Conflict]'' is a 2014 album by Canadian violinist and songwriter [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Pallett Owen Pallett].{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}&lt;blockquote&gt;''I’ll never have any children:''<br /> <br /> ''I’ll bear them and eat them, my children''<br /> <br /> ''I’m gonna change my body''<br /> <br /> ''In the light and the shadow of suspicion''<br /> <br /> ''I am no longer afraid''<br /> <br /> ''The truth doesn’t terrify us, terrify us''<br /> <br /> – &quot;I Am Not Afraid&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;When I was 17, and then 18 and 19, and really all the way up until I was about 22 years old, being trans did not feel good most of the time. Or I, a trans person, did not feel good generally. Either interpretation is valid. <br /> <br /> Those were also landmark years for representation: suddenly, as I was leaving high school, trans people became visible in an ostensibly positive way. Although I had watched out trans people, including kids, be subject to derision and ignorance by the people and institutions around them for my entire adolescence, I was suddenly being told that it was actually OK and good for me to come out, be out, and share exactly how I felt with the world. I didn’t trust it. But that put me in a difficult spot as an artist who wanted to explore queerness on my own terms.<br /> <br /> I heard the Owen Pallett song “[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KNDXQUJ9BI I Am Not Afraid]” during one of my first weeks of college. I looped it over and over. Despite the title, it’s a frightening song: it feels like dizzying height, a moment of disintegration and realization at the same time. The song is about having a complex relationship to gender in a way that is not really celebratory or even legible. Pallett wasn’t using they/them pronouns when the album came out; when they were asked in interviews about ''In Conflict''’s themes of gender, their answers were often evasive. The clearest answer they gave, to [https://www.npr.org/2014/05/27/314880990/owen-pallett-the-consummate-musician-in-conflict NPR], was that the album was about “being unable to give up one thing to be something else that you'd want.”<br /> ''In Conflict'' is the first queer art that truly comforted me during those ages, precisely because it wasn’t comforting: “It don’t get better, the hunger / Even back in his arms, the water / Will get higher the faster you run,” Pallett sings on “[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hY2ES6qNew The Secret Seven].” (Content warning: This specific song is about [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Tyler_Clementi Tyler Clementi], a student who died by suicide after his classmates bullied him for being gay.) <br /> <br /> This album felt like queer art made for queer people: harrowing and ambiguous, but still undeniably political. It was the kind of art I wanted to make. What I needed from art was actually not to see myself or be seen; I needed something else. On ''In Conflict'', the sense that someone was telling me the truth made me want to continue.<br /> ==Categories==<br /> <br /> '''Add categories here'''<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Song, Painting, Film, Etc.]]<br /> [[Category:Music]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:In_Conflict_(Owen_Pallett_album)&diff=807632 2023-09-21T23:37:02Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: </p> <hr /> <div>''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Conflict In Conflict]'' is a 2014 album by Canadian violinist and songwriter [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Pallett Owen Pallett].{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}&lt;blockquote&gt;''I’ll never have any children:''<br /> <br /> ''I’ll bear them and eat them, my children''<br /> <br /> ''I’m gonna change my body''<br /> <br /> ''In the light and the shadow of suspicion''<br /> <br /> ''I am no longer afraid''<br /> <br /> ''The truth doesn’t terrify us, terrify us''<br /> <br /> – &quot;I Am Not Afraid&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;When I was 17, and then 18 and 19, and really all the way up until I was about 22 years old, being trans did not feel good most of the time. Or I, a trans person, did not feel good generally. Either interpretation is valid. <br /> <br /> Those were also landmark years for representation: suddenly, as I was leaving high school, [https://time.com/135480/transgender-tipping-point/ trans people became visible] in an ostensibly positive way. Although I had watched out trans people, including kids, be subject to derision and ignorance by the people and institutions around them for my entire adolescence, I was suddenly being told that it was actually OK and good for me to come out, be out, and share exactly how I felt with the world. I didn’t trust it. But that put me in a difficult spot as an artist who wanted to explore queerness on my own terms.<br /> <br /> I heard the Owen Pallett song “[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KNDXQUJ9BI I Am Not Afraid]” during one of my first weeks of college. I looped it over and over. Despite the title, it’s a frightening song: it feels like dizzying height, a moment of disintegration and realization at the same time. The song is about having a complex relationship to gender in a way that is not really celebratory or even legible. Pallett wasn’t using they/them pronouns when the album came out; when they were asked in interviews about ''In Conflict''’s themes of gender, their answers were often evasive. The clearest answer they gave, to [https://www.npr.org/2014/05/27/314880990/owen-pallett-the-consummate-musician-in-conflict NPR], was that the album was about “being unable to give up one thing to be something else that you'd want.”<br /> ''In Conflict'' is the first queer art that truly comforted me during those ages, precisely because it wasn’t comforting: “It don’t get better, the hunger / Even back in his arms, the water / Will get higher the faster you run,” Pallett sings on “[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hY2ES6qNew The Secret Seven].” (Content warning: This specific song is about [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Tyler_Clementi Tyler Clementi], a student who died by suicide after his classmates bullied him for being gay.) <br /> <br /> This album felt like queer art made for queer people: harrowing and ambiguous, but still undeniably political. It was the kind of art I wanted to make. What I needed from art was actually not to see myself or be seen; I needed something else. On ''In Conflict'', the sense that someone was telling me the truth made me want to continue.<br /> ==Categories==<br /> <br /> '''Add categories here'''<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Song, Painting, Film, Etc.]]<br /> [[Category:Music]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Have_One_on_Me_(Joanna_Newsom_album)&diff=807631 2023-09-21T23:36:34Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi0_jBHObqs Have One on Me] is a 2010 album by the singer-songwriter and harpist [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Newsom Joanna Newsom].<br /> <br /> The best word I can use to describe Have One on Me is maximalist. It is an album about excess as a weapon, especially a self-destructive one. Many of the songs are 8-10 minutes long, and it’s a triple album. The whole thing is two hours long, and the arrangements are incredibly complex, featuring a variety of folk instruments around the central harp or piano.<br /> <br /> The narrator is heavily based on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_Montez Lola Montez], an Irish dancer whose entire career hinged on her lying about being from Spain. (As someone who was also influenced by [[Course:CRW501P-003/Lana Del Rey|Lana Del Rey]], Lola Montez was totally the Lana Del Rey of the mid-1800s!) So, over the course of Have One on Me, the narrator suffers greatly; sometimes, she’s also selfish, shallow, cowardly, and wrong. She falsely naturalizes her own relationship to the land she lives on as a settler. This album is about so many things, but it’s also about how colonialism creates new varieties of falsehood, something I had never seen explored in music before. (I grew up as a settler in California too, surrounded by excess in early 2000s SoCal. Starting in college, I wrote a whole album about this, which I couldn’t have done without this album as an influence.)<br /> <br /> From a formal perspective, Have One on Me expanded my sense of what maximalism could do in art, outside of just shunting it aside as tacky. There’s totally tacky moments on this album (particularly a little Orientalism moment on what is otherwise one of Newsom’s best songs), but this album is about tackiness, about excess, and about the way resource extraction from colonized land allowed for the creation of excess in the colonial West in the first place. It’s also about gender as performance; heartbreak; tenderness; and trying to live with yourself when your life is falling apart. It’s so much–too much–and it’s beautiful. It really, really is.<br /> ==Categories ==<br /> '''Add categories here'''<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Song, Painting, Film, Etc.]]<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Music]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Stag%27s_Leap_(Sharon_Olds_book)&diff=807608 2023-09-21T20:44:53Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page Stag&#039;s Leap (Sharon Olds book) to Course:Stag&#039;s Leap (Sharon Olds book)</p> <hr /> <div>#REDIRECT [[Course:Stag's Leap (Sharon Olds book)]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Stag%27s_Leap_(Sharon_Olds_book)&diff=807607 2023-09-21T20:44:53Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page Stag&#039;s Leap (Sharon Olds book) to Course:Stag&#039;s Leap (Sharon Olds book)</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stag's_Leap_(book) Stag’s Leap]'' is a 2012 book of poems by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon_Olds Sharon Olds]. It chronicles her separation from her husband and his infidelity in their marriage. It’s very much a narrative book of poetry, with each poem feeling almost like a short chapter in a novel.<br /> <br /> Sharon Olds excels as an autobiographical poet because she can approach complex and terrible subjects with humor and grace without dampening their emotional devastation. Some of her earlier poems deal with her abusive family–I’d normally find that subject matter really hard to read about, but I keep returning to them. Stag’s Leap is no exception. What I found most wrenching about this book was not the intense detail in which she captures the turmoil of her divorce, but the moments of tenderness she still experiences toward her husband, which rise up suddenly and sharply: “I weep how I love to be like my guy,” she writes.<br /> <br /> “Last Look” is my favorite poem in the collection, and one of my favorite poems of all time. It ends with a litany of reasons why Olds is glad things went the way they did. Sometimes, we’re encouraged to find the good in horrible things with the assumption that doing so will make the bad less intolerable. I really don’t think it works that way, and I think Sharon Olds doesn’t either. Finding the good makes the horrible things sting even worse, but it also makes you feel more alive, more whole. So it’s worth it.&lt;blockquote&gt;'''Last Look'''<br /> <br /> <br /> In the last minute of our marriage, I looked into<br /> <br /> his eyes. All that day until then, I had been<br /> <br /> comforting him, for the shock he was in<br /> <br /> at his pain–the act of leaving me<br /> <br /> took him back, to his own early<br /> <br /> losses. But now it was time to go beyond<br /> <br /> comfort, to part. And his eyes seemed to me,<br /> <br /> still, like the first ocean, wherein<br /> <br /> the blue-green algae came into their early<br /> <br /> language, his sea-wide iris still<br /> <br /> essential, for me, with the depths in which<br /> <br /> our firstborn, and then our second, had turned,<br /> <br /> on the sides of their tongues the taste buds for the moon-bland<br /> <br /> nectar of our milk–''our'' milk. In his gaze,<br /> <br /> rooms of the dead; halls of loss; fog-<br /> <br /> emerald; driven, dirty-rice snow:<br /> <br /> he was in there somewhere, I looked for him,<br /> <br /> and he gave me the gift, he let me in,<br /> <br /> knowing he would never once, in this world or in<br /> <br /> any other, have to do it again,<br /> <br /> and I saw him, not as he really was, I was<br /> <br /> still without the strength of anger, but I<br /> <br /> saw him see me, even now<br /> <br /> that dropping down into trust’s affection<br /> <br /> in his gaze, and I held it, some seconds, quiet,<br /> <br /> and I said, Good-bye, and he said, Good-bye,<br /> <br /> and I closed my eyes, and rose up out of the<br /> <br /> passenger seat in a spiral like someone<br /> <br /> coming up out of a car gone off a<br /> <br /> bridge into deep water. And two and<br /> <br /> three Septembers later, and even<br /> <br /> the September after that, that September in New York,<br /> <br /> I was glad I had looked at him. And when I<br /> <br /> told a friend how glad I’d been,<br /> <br /> she said, ''Maybe it’s like with the families''<br /> <br /> ''of the dead, even the families of those''<br /> <br /> ''who died in the Towers–that need to see''<br /> <br /> ''the body, no longer inhabited''<br /> <br /> ''by what made them the one we loved–somehow''<br /> <br /> ''it helps to say good-bye to the actual,''<br /> <br /> and I saw, again, how blessed my life has been,<br /> <br /> first, to have been able to love,<br /> <br /> then, to have the parting now behind me,<br /> <br /> and not to have lost him when the kids were young,<br /> <br /> and the kids now not at all to have lost him,<br /> <br /> and not to have lost him when he loved me, and not to have<br /> <br /> lost someone who could have loved me for life.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Book of Poems by a Living Poet]]<br /> [[Category:Book of Poems]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Stag%27s_Leap_(Sharon_Olds_book)&diff=807606 2023-09-21T20:44:40Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: Created page with &quot;{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}} &#039;&#039;[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stag&#039;s_Leap_(book) Stag’s Leap]&#039;&#039; is a 2012 book of poems by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon_Olds Sharon Olds]. It chronicles her separation from her husband and his infidelity in their marriage. It’s very much a narrative book of poetry, with each poem feeling almost like a short chapter in a novel. Sharon Olds excels as an autobiographical poet because she can approach complex and terrible sub...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stag's_Leap_(book) Stag’s Leap]'' is a 2012 book of poems by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon_Olds Sharon Olds]. It chronicles her separation from her husband and his infidelity in their marriage. It’s very much a narrative book of poetry, with each poem feeling almost like a short chapter in a novel.<br /> <br /> Sharon Olds excels as an autobiographical poet because she can approach complex and terrible subjects with humor and grace without dampening their emotional devastation. Some of her earlier poems deal with her abusive family–I’d normally find that subject matter really hard to read about, but I keep returning to them. Stag’s Leap is no exception. What I found most wrenching about this book was not the intense detail in which she captures the turmoil of her divorce, but the moments of tenderness she still experiences toward her husband, which rise up suddenly and sharply: “I weep how I love to be like my guy,” she writes.<br /> <br /> “Last Look” is my favorite poem in the collection, and one of my favorite poems of all time. It ends with a litany of reasons why Olds is glad things went the way they did. Sometimes, we’re encouraged to find the good in horrible things with the assumption that doing so will make the bad less intolerable. I really don’t think it works that way, and I think Sharon Olds doesn’t either. Finding the good makes the horrible things sting even worse, but it also makes you feel more alive, more whole. So it’s worth it.&lt;blockquote&gt;'''Last Look'''<br /> <br /> <br /> In the last minute of our marriage, I looked into<br /> <br /> his eyes. All that day until then, I had been<br /> <br /> comforting him, for the shock he was in<br /> <br /> at his pain–the act of leaving me<br /> <br /> took him back, to his own early<br /> <br /> losses. But now it was time to go beyond<br /> <br /> comfort, to part. And his eyes seemed to me,<br /> <br /> still, like the first ocean, wherein<br /> <br /> the blue-green algae came into their early<br /> <br /> language, his sea-wide iris still<br /> <br /> essential, for me, with the depths in which<br /> <br /> our firstborn, and then our second, had turned,<br /> <br /> on the sides of their tongues the taste buds for the moon-bland<br /> <br /> nectar of our milk–''our'' milk. In his gaze,<br /> <br /> rooms of the dead; halls of loss; fog-<br /> <br /> emerald; driven, dirty-rice snow:<br /> <br /> he was in there somewhere, I looked for him,<br /> <br /> and he gave me the gift, he let me in,<br /> <br /> knowing he would never once, in this world or in<br /> <br /> any other, have to do it again,<br /> <br /> and I saw him, not as he really was, I was<br /> <br /> still without the strength of anger, but I<br /> <br /> saw him see me, even now<br /> <br /> that dropping down into trust’s affection<br /> <br /> in his gaze, and I held it, some seconds, quiet,<br /> <br /> and I said, Good-bye, and he said, Good-bye,<br /> <br /> and I closed my eyes, and rose up out of the<br /> <br /> passenger seat in a spiral like someone<br /> <br /> coming up out of a car gone off a<br /> <br /> bridge into deep water. And two and<br /> <br /> three Septembers later, and even<br /> <br /> the September after that, that September in New York,<br /> <br /> I was glad I had looked at him. And when I<br /> <br /> told a friend how glad I’d been,<br /> <br /> she said, ''Maybe it’s like with the families''<br /> <br /> ''of the dead, even the families of those''<br /> <br /> ''who died in the Towers–that need to see''<br /> <br /> ''the body, no longer inhabited''<br /> <br /> ''by what made them the one we loved–somehow''<br /> <br /> ''it helps to say good-bye to the actual,''<br /> <br /> and I saw, again, how blessed my life has been,<br /> <br /> first, to have been able to love,<br /> <br /> then, to have the parting now behind me,<br /> <br /> and not to have lost him when the kids were young,<br /> <br /> and the kids now not at all to have lost him,<br /> <br /> and not to have lost him when he loved me, and not to have<br /> <br /> lost someone who could have loved me for life.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Book of Poems by a Living Poet]]<br /> [[Category:Book of Poems]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:In_Conflict_(Owen_Pallett_album)&diff=807605 2023-09-21T20:27:10Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: </p> <hr /> <div>''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Conflict In Conflict]'' is a 2014 album by Canadian violinist and songwriter [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Pallett Owen Pallett].{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}&lt;blockquote&gt;''I’ll never have any children:''<br /> <br /> ''I’ll bear them and eat them, my children''<br /> <br /> ''I’m gonna change my body''<br /> <br /> ''In the light and the shadow of suspicion''<br /> <br /> ''I am no longer afraid''<br /> <br /> ''The truth doesn’t terrify us, terrify us''<br /> <br /> – &quot;I Am Not Afraid&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;When I was 17, and then 18 and 19, and really all the way up until I was about 22 years old, being trans did not feel good most of the time. Or I, a trans person, did not feel good generally. Either interpretation is valid. <br /> <br /> Those were also landmark years for representation: suddenly, as I was leaving high school, [https://time.com/135480/transgender-tipping-point/ trans people became visible] in an ostensibly positive way. Although I had watched out trans people, including kids, be subject to derision and ignorance by the people and institutions around them for my entire adolescence, I was suddenly being told that it was actually OK and good for me to come out, be out, and share exactly how I felt with the world. I didn’t trust it. But that put me in a difficult spot as an artist who wanted to explore queerness on my own terms.<br /> <br /> I heard the Owen Pallett song “[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KNDXQUJ9BI I Am Not Afraid]” during one of my first weeks of college. I looped it over and over. Despite the title, it’s a frightening song: it feels like dizzying height, a moment of disintegration and realization at the same time. The song is about having a complex relationship to gender in a way that is not really celebratory or even legible. Pallett wasn’t using they/them pronouns when the album came out; when they were asked in interviews about ''In Conflict''’s themes of gender, their answers were often evasive. The clearest answer they gave, to [https://www.npr.org/2014/05/27/314880990/owen-pallett-the-consummate-musician-in-conflict NPR], was that the album was about “being unable to give up one thing to be something else that you'd want.”<br /> ''In Conflict'' is the first queer art that truly comforted me during those ages, precisely because it wasn’t comforting: “It don’t get better, the hunger / Even back in his arms, the water / Will get higher the faster you run,” Pallett sings on “[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hY2ES6qNew The Secret Seven].” (Content warning: This specific song is about [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Tyler_Clementi Tyler Clementi], a student who died by suicide after his classmates bullied him for being gay.) <br /> <br /> This album felt like queer art made for queer people: harrowing and ambiguous, but still undeniably political. It was the kind of art I wanted to make. What I needed from art was actually not to see myself or be seen; I needed something else. On ''In Conflict'', the sense that someone was telling me the truth made me want to continue.<br /> ==Categories==<br /> <br /> '''Add categories here'''<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Song, Painting, Film, Etc.]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Musqueam_Garden&diff=807604 2023-09-21T20:26:40Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> The [https://ubcfarm.ubc.ca/learn/indigenous-initiatives/ Musqueam Garden] is a garden located on the [https://ubcfarm.ubc.ca/ UBC Farm] that grows edible and medicinal plants with and for the elders of the Musqueam community. I have been volunteering there for a few months on Thursday mornings, when I help with the weekly harvest. It’s an extremely beautiful, meditative place; working there has been very meaningful for me and given me an important counterbalance to my writing practice.<br /> <br /> I gardened a lot as a kid; we grew tomatoes, chard, strawberries (kind of) and a few other things in our yard. My dad was and is very passionate about native plants, cursing the invasive [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpobrotus_edulis iceplant] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynara_humilis thistles] that disrupted the soil around our house. Development in Southern California has cleared a lot of land of native [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_oak live oak trees], which live for centuries if left undisturbed. My dad would buy live oak tree saplings from the nursery and take me and my brother out on hikes to plant them, putting chicken wire around them so park officials would think the county did it. It worked; everyone watered the trees, some of which we could see from our backyard. They’re still there today, growing. I hope they’ll be there for a long time.<br /> <br /> A cultivation practice isn’t about you. It’s the plants, or the poems, that are in charge. The hours I spend in the garden are often the most wordless of my week. I get to work with my body instead of my mind. The small, repetitive tasks I do become part of a tapestry of labor so enormous that, if it were laid out in front of me, I’d never be able to find my place within it. But the work I do still matters, because it sustains life beyond my own.<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Places]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:X%CA%B7c%CC%93ic%CC%93%C9%99s%C9%99m_Garden&diff=807603 2023-09-21T20:25:52Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page Course:Xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden to Course:Musqueam Garden</p> <hr /> <div>#REDIRECT [[Course:Musqueam Garden]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Musqueam_Garden&diff=807602 2023-09-21T20:25:52Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page Course:Xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden to Course:Musqueam Garden</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> The [https://lfs-iherg.sites.olt.ubc.ca/the-garden/ xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden] is a garden located on the [https://ubcfarm.ubc.ca/ UBC Farm] that grows edible and medicinal plants with and for the elders of the Musqueam community. I have been volunteering there for a few months on Thursday mornings, when I help with the weekly harvest. It’s an extremely beautiful, meditative place; working there has been very meaningful for me and given me an important counterbalance to my writing practice.<br /> <br /> I gardened a lot as a kid; we grew tomatoes, chard, strawberries (kind of) and a few other things in our yard. My dad was and is very passionate about native plants, cursing the invasive [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpobrotus_edulis iceplant] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynara_humilis thistles] that disrupted the soil around our house. Development in Southern California has cleared a lot of land of native [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_oak live oak trees], which live for centuries if left undisturbed. My dad would buy live oak tree saplings from the nursery and take me and my brother out on hikes to plant them, putting chicken wire around them so park officials would think the county did it. It worked; everyone watered the trees, some of which we could see from our backyard. They’re still there today, growing. I hope they’ll be there for a long time.<br /> <br /> A cultivation practice isn’t about you. It’s the plants, or the poems, that are in charge. The hours I spend in the garden are often the most wordless of my week. I get to work with my body instead of my mind. The small, repetitive tasks I do become part of a tapestry of labor so enormous that, if it were laid out in front of me, I’d never be able to find my place within it. But the work I do still matters, because it sustains life beyond my own.<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Places]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:CRW501P-003/In_Conflict_(Owen_Pallett_album)&diff=807601 2023-09-21T16:19:08Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page Course:CRW501P-003/In Conflict (Owen Pallett album) to Course:In Conflict (Owen Pallett album)</p> <hr /> <div>#REDIRECT [[Course:In Conflict (Owen Pallett album)]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:In_Conflict_(Owen_Pallett_album)&diff=807600 2023-09-21T16:19:08Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page Course:CRW501P-003/In Conflict (Owen Pallett album) to Course:In Conflict (Owen Pallett album)</p> <hr /> <div>''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Conflict In Conflict]'' is a 2014 album by Canadian violinist and songwriter [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Pallett Owen Pallett].{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}&lt;blockquote&gt;''I’ll never have any children:''<br /> <br /> ''I’ll bear them and eat them, my children''<br /> <br /> ''I’m gonna change my body''<br /> <br /> ''In the light and the shadow of suspicion''<br /> <br /> ''I am no longer afraid''<br /> <br /> ''The truth doesn’t terrify us, terrify us''<br /> <br /> – &quot;I Am Not Afraid&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;When I was 17, and then 18 and 19, and really all the way up until I was about 21 years old, being trans did not feel good most of the time. Or I, a trans person, did not feel good generally. Either interpretation is valid. <br /> <br /> Those were also landmark years for representation: suddenly, as I was leaving high school, [https://time.com/135480/transgender-tipping-point/ trans people became visible] in an ostensibly positive way. Although I had watched out trans people, including kids, be subject to derision and ignorance by the people and institutions around them for my entire adolescence, I was suddenly being told that it was actually OK and good for me to come out, be out, and share exactly how I felt with the world. I didn’t trust it. But that put me in a difficult spot as an artist who wanted to explore queerness on my own terms.<br /> <br /> I heard the Owen Pallett song “[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KNDXQUJ9BI I Am Not Afraid]” during one of my first weeks of college. I looped it over and over. Despite the title, it’s a frightening song: it feels like dizzying height, a moment of disintegration and realization at the same time. The song is about having a complex relationship to gender in a way that is not really celebratory or even legible. Pallett wasn’t using they/them pronouns when the album came out; when they were asked in interviews about ''In Conflict''’s themes of gender, their answers were often evasive. The clearest answer they gave, to [https://www.npr.org/2014/05/27/314880990/owen-pallett-the-consummate-musician-in-conflict NPR], was that the album was about “being unable to give up one thing to be something else that you'd want.”<br /> ''In Conflict'' is the first queer art that truly comforted me during those ages, precisely because it wasn’t comforting: “It don’t get better, the hunger / Even back in his arms, the water / Will get higher the faster you run,” Pallett sings on “[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hY2ES6qNew The Secret Seven].” (Content warning: This specific song is about [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Tyler_Clementi Tyler Clementi], a student who died by suicide after his classmates bullied him for being gay.) <br /> <br /> This album felt like queer art made for queer people: harrowing and ambiguous, but still undeniably political. It was the kind of art I wanted to make. What I needed from art was actually not to see myself or be seen; I needed something else. On ''In Conflict'', the sense that someone was telling me the truth made me want to continue.<br /> ==Categories==<br /> <br /> '''Add categories here'''<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Song, Painting, Film, Etc.]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:In_Conflict_(Owen_Pallett_album)&diff=807599 2023-09-21T16:18:47Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: Created page with &quot;&#039;&#039;[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Conflict In Conflict]&#039;&#039; is a 2014 album by Canadian violinist and songwriter [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Pallett Owen Pallett].{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}&lt;blockquote&gt;&#039;&#039;I’ll never have any children:&#039;&#039; &#039;&#039;I’ll bear them and eat them, my children&#039;&#039; &#039;&#039;I’m gonna change my body&#039;&#039; &#039;&#039;In the light and the shadow of suspicion&#039;&#039; &#039;&#039;I am no longer afraid&#039;&#039; &#039;&#039;The truth doesn’t terrify us, terrify us&#039;&#039; – &quot;I Am Not Afraid&quot;&lt;/...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Conflict In Conflict]'' is a 2014 album by Canadian violinist and songwriter [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Pallett Owen Pallett].{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}&lt;blockquote&gt;''I’ll never have any children:''<br /> <br /> ''I’ll bear them and eat them, my children''<br /> <br /> ''I’m gonna change my body''<br /> <br /> ''In the light and the shadow of suspicion''<br /> <br /> ''I am no longer afraid''<br /> <br /> ''The truth doesn’t terrify us, terrify us''<br /> <br /> – &quot;I Am Not Afraid&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;When I was 17, and then 18 and 19, and really all the way up until I was about 21 years old, being trans did not feel good most of the time. Or I, a trans person, did not feel good generally. Either interpretation is valid. <br /> <br /> Those were also landmark years for representation: suddenly, as I was leaving high school, [https://time.com/135480/transgender-tipping-point/ trans people became visible] in an ostensibly positive way. Although I had watched out trans people, including kids, be subject to derision and ignorance by the people and institutions around them for my entire adolescence, I was suddenly being told that it was actually OK and good for me to come out, be out, and share exactly how I felt with the world. I didn’t trust it. But that put me in a difficult spot as an artist who wanted to explore queerness on my own terms.<br /> <br /> I heard the Owen Pallett song “[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KNDXQUJ9BI I Am Not Afraid]” during one of my first weeks of college. I looped it over and over. Despite the title, it’s a frightening song: it feels like dizzying height, a moment of disintegration and realization at the same time. The song is about having a complex relationship to gender in a way that is not really celebratory or even legible. Pallett wasn’t using they/them pronouns when the album came out; when they were asked in interviews about ''In Conflict''’s themes of gender, their answers were often evasive. The clearest answer they gave, to [https://www.npr.org/2014/05/27/314880990/owen-pallett-the-consummate-musician-in-conflict NPR], was that the album was about “being unable to give up one thing to be something else that you'd want.”<br /> ''In Conflict'' is the first queer art that truly comforted me during those ages, precisely because it wasn’t comforting: “It don’t get better, the hunger / Even back in his arms, the water / Will get higher the faster you run,” Pallett sings on “[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hY2ES6qNew The Secret Seven].” (Content warning: This specific song is about [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Tyler_Clementi Tyler Clementi], a student who died by suicide after his classmates bullied him for being gay.) <br /> <br /> This album felt like queer art made for queer people: harrowing and ambiguous, but still undeniably political. It was the kind of art I wanted to make. What I needed from art was actually not to see myself or be seen; I needed something else. On ''In Conflict'', the sense that someone was telling me the truth made me want to continue.<br /> ==Categories==<br /> <br /> '''Add categories here'''<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Song, Painting, Film, Etc.]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=X%CA%B7c%CC%93ic%CC%93%C9%99s%C9%99m_Garden&diff=807590 2023-09-21T06:51:47Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page Xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden to Course:Xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden</p> <hr /> <div>#REDIRECT [[Course:Xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Musqueam_Garden&diff=807589 2023-09-21T06:51:47Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page Xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden to Course:Xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> The [https://lfs-iherg.sites.olt.ubc.ca/the-garden/ xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden] is a garden located on the [https://ubcfarm.ubc.ca/ UBC Farm] that grows edible and medicinal plants with and for the elders of the Musqueam community. I have been volunteering there for a few months on Thursday mornings, when I help with the weekly harvest. It’s an extremely beautiful, meditative place; working there has been very meaningful for me and given me an important counterbalance to my writing practice.<br /> <br /> I gardened a lot as a kid; we grew tomatoes, chard, strawberries (kind of) and a few other things in our yard. My dad was and is very passionate about native plants, cursing the invasive [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpobrotus_edulis iceplant] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynara_humilis thistles] that disrupted the soil around our house. Development in Southern California has cleared a lot of land of native [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_oak live oak trees], which live for centuries if left undisturbed. My dad would buy live oak tree saplings from the nursery and take me and my brother out on hikes to plant them, putting chicken wire around them so park officials would think the county did it. It worked; everyone watered the trees, some of which we could see from our backyard. They’re still there today, growing. I hope they’ll be there for a long time.<br /> <br /> A cultivation practice isn’t about you. It’s the plants, or the poems, that are in charge. The hours I spend in the garden are often the most wordless of my week. I get to work with my body instead of my mind. The small, repetitive tasks I do become part of a tapestry of labor so enormous that, if it were laid out in front of me, I’d never be able to find my place within it. But the work I do still matters, because it sustains life beyond my own.<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Places]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Musqueam_Garden&diff=807588 2023-09-21T06:51:23Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: Created page with &quot;{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}} The [https://lfs-iherg.sites.olt.ubc.ca/the-garden/ xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden] is a garden located on the [https://ubcfarm.ubc.ca/ UBC Farm] that grows edible and medicinal plants with and for the elders of the Musqueam community. I have been volunteering there for a few months on Thursday mornings, when I help with the weekly harvest. It’s an extremely beautiful, meditative place; working there has been very meaningful for me and given m...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> The [https://lfs-iherg.sites.olt.ubc.ca/the-garden/ xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden] is a garden located on the [https://ubcfarm.ubc.ca/ UBC Farm] that grows edible and medicinal plants with and for the elders of the Musqueam community. I have been volunteering there for a few months on Thursday mornings, when I help with the weekly harvest. It’s an extremely beautiful, meditative place; working there has been very meaningful for me and given me an important counterbalance to my writing practice.<br /> <br /> I gardened a lot as a kid; we grew tomatoes, chard, strawberries (kind of) and a few other things in our yard. My dad was and is very passionate about native plants, cursing the invasive [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpobrotus_edulis iceplant] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynara_humilis thistles] that disrupted the soil around our house. Development in Southern California has cleared a lot of land of native [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_oak live oak trees], which live for centuries if left undisturbed. My dad would buy live oak tree saplings from the nursery and take me and my brother out on hikes to plant them, putting chicken wire around them so park officials would think the county did it. It worked; everyone watered the trees, some of which we could see from our backyard. They’re still there today, growing. I hope they’ll be there for a long time.<br /> <br /> A cultivation practice isn’t about you. It’s the plants, or the poems, that are in charge. The hours I spend in the garden are often the most wordless of my week. I get to work with my body instead of my mind. The small, repetitive tasks I do become part of a tapestry of labor so enormous that, if it were laid out in front of me, I’d never be able to find my place within it. But the work I do still matters, because it sustains life beyond my own.<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Places]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Encyclopedias&diff=807584 2023-09-21T06:30:52Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page Encyclopedias to Course:Encyclopedias</p> <hr /> <div>#REDIRECT [[Course:Encyclopedias]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Encyclopedias&diff=807583 2023-09-21T06:30:52Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: ADRIANMATIASBELL moved page Encyclopedias to Course:Encyclopedias</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> When I was a kid, I read the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia encyclopedia] for fun. I got the encyclopedia from my Lolo and Lola for Christmas; it was a DK children’s encyclopedia, and it was hundreds of pages long, the longest book I owned at the time. I had already read, and adored, the children’s dictionary, with its [https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F1cgkqyqsxvjb1.jpg two-page full-color cross-section of a medieval castle]. <br /> <br /> To read my encyclopedia, I would put it on top of my bookshelf, climb up on a stepstool, and stand there reading for hours. (There’s a very cute picture of my younger brother standing next to me as I do this, his arms wrapped around me, although he’s too short to see the pages.) I was intrigued by the idea that a book could explore, or at least touch on, all human knowledge, and I didn’t understand that reference resources were something most people might consult periodically. I wanted to know everything, so of course hoped the book would deliver on its promise.<br /> <br /> There were more encyclopedias to be read: childcraft books, vintage encyclopedia sets, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_Things_Work The Way Things Work], and of course [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikipedia]. I’m not sure how old I was when I realized that the encyclopedia did not contain the sum total of human knowledge, but I was certainly disappointed. <br /> <br /> Once I was in college, I worked in a lot of museums and archives and did a lot of related coursework. We learned (and I saw firsthand) how traditional architectures of information uphold the hegemonic ideals of the societies they spring from, almost by default. My fascination with encyclopedias is also a fascination with the impossibility of neutrality: the way all information is tainted, the way no knowledge or expression of knowledge is truly objective. All informational architectures are forced, incomplete attempts at grappling with our inability to know or understand everything. While poetry’s methods are different, I actually think that it attacks the same problems, not necessarily more effectively. Poetry is also an architecture of information. The difference is that poetry has the capacity to celebrate its own failure.<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Encountered Before Twelve]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Encyclopedias&diff=807582 2023-09-21T06:30:19Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> When I was a kid, I read the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia encyclopedia] for fun. I got the encyclopedia from my Lolo and Lola for Christmas; it was a DK children’s encyclopedia, and it was hundreds of pages long, the longest book I owned at the time. I had already read, and adored, the children’s dictionary, with its [https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F1cgkqyqsxvjb1.jpg two-page full-color cross-section of a medieval castle]. <br /> <br /> To read my encyclopedia, I would put it on top of my bookshelf, climb up on a stepstool, and stand there reading for hours. (There’s a very cute picture of my younger brother standing next to me as I do this, his arms wrapped around me, although he’s too short to see the pages.) I was intrigued by the idea that a book could explore, or at least touch on, all human knowledge, and I didn’t understand that reference resources were something most people might consult periodically. I wanted to know everything, so of course hoped the book would deliver on its promise.<br /> <br /> There were more encyclopedias to be read: childcraft books, vintage encyclopedia sets, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_Things_Work The Way Things Work], and of course [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikipedia]. I’m not sure how old I was when I realized that the encyclopedia did not contain the sum total of human knowledge, but I was certainly disappointed. <br /> <br /> Once I was in college, I worked in a lot of museums and archives and did a lot of related coursework. We learned (and I saw firsthand) how traditional architectures of information uphold the hegemonic ideals of the societies they spring from, almost by default. My fascination with encyclopedias is also a fascination with the impossibility of neutrality: the way all information is tainted, the way no knowledge or expression of knowledge is truly objective. All informational architectures are forced, incomplete attempts at grappling with our inability to know or understand everything. While poetry’s methods are different, I actually think that it attacks the same problems, not necessarily more effectively. Poetry is also an architecture of information. The difference is that poetry has the capacity to celebrate its own failure.<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]<br /> [[Category:Encountered Before Twelve]]<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Encyclopedias&diff=807581 2023-09-21T06:28:51Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: Created page with &quot;{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}} When I was a kid, I read the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia encyclopedia] for fun. I got the encyclopedia from my Lolo and Lola for Christmas; it was a DK children’s encyclopedia, and it was hundreds of pages long, the longest book I owned at the time. I had already read, and adored, the children’s dictionary, with its [https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F1cgkqyqsxvjb1.jpg two-page full-color cross-...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> When I was a kid, I read the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia encyclopedia] for fun. I got the encyclopedia from my Lolo and Lola for Christmas; it was a DK children’s encyclopedia, and it was hundreds of pages long, the longest book I owned at the time. I had already read, and adored, the children’s dictionary, with its [https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F1cgkqyqsxvjb1.jpg two-page full-color cross-section of a medieval castle]. <br /> <br /> To read my encyclopedia, I would put it on top of my bookshelf, climb up on a stepstool, and stand there reading for hours. (There’s a very cute picture of my younger brother standing next to me as I do this, his arms wrapped around me, although he’s too short to see the pages.) I was intrigued by the idea that a book could explore, or at least touch on, all human knowledge, and I didn’t understand that reference resources were something most people might consult periodically. I wanted to know everything, so of course hoped the book would deliver on its promise.<br /> <br /> There were more encyclopedias to be read: childcraft books, vintage encyclopedia sets, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_Things_Work The Way Things Work], and of course [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikipedia]. I’m not sure how old I was when I realized that the encyclopedia did not contain the sum total of human knowledge, but I was certainly disappointed. <br /> <br /> Once I was in college, I worked in a lot of museums and archives and did a lot of related coursework. We learned (and I saw firsthand) how traditional architectures of information uphold the hegemonic ideals of the societies they spring from, almost by default. My fascination with encyclopedias is also a fascination with the impossibility of neutrality: the way all information is tainted, the way no knowledge or expression of knowledge is truly objective. All informational architectures are forced, incomplete attempts at grappling with our inability to know or understand everything. While poetry’s methods are different, I actually think that it attacks the same problems, not necessarily more effectively. Poetry is also an architecture of information. The difference is that poetry has the capacity to celebrate its own failure.</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Have_One_on_Me_(Joanna_Newsom_album)&diff=807017 2023-09-12T17:20:02Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: </p> <hr /> <div>{{Course:CRWR501P-003/Infobox}}<br /> <br /> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi0_jBHObqs Have One on Me] is a 2010 album by the singer-songwriter and harpist [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Newsom Joanna Newsom].<br /> <br /> The best word I can use to describe Have One on Me is maximalist. It is an album about excess as a weapon, especially a self-destructive one. Many of the songs are 8-10 minutes long, and it’s a triple album. The whole thing is two hours long, and the arrangements are incredibly complex, featuring a variety of folk instruments around the central harp or piano.<br /> <br /> The narrator is heavily based on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_Montez Lola Montez], an Irish dancer whose entire career hinged on her lying about being from Spain. (As someone who was also influenced by [[Course:CRW501P-003/Lana Del Rey|Lana Del Rey]], Lola Montez was totally the Lana Del Rey of the mid-1800s!) So, over the course of Have One on Me, the narrator suffers greatly; sometimes, she’s also selfish, shallow, cowardly, and wrong. She falsely naturalizes her own relationship to the land she lives on as a settler. This album is about so many things, but it’s also about how colonialism creates new varieties of falsehood, something I had never seen explored in music before. (I grew up as a settler in California too, surrounded by excess in early 2000s SoCal. Starting in college, I wrote a whole album about this, which I couldn’t have done without this album as an influence.)<br /> <br /> From a formal perspective, Have One on Me expanded my sense of what maximalism could do in art, outside of just shunting it aside as tacky. There’s totally tacky moments on this album (particularly a little Orientalism moment on what is otherwise one of Newsom’s best songs), but this album is about tackiness, about excess, and about the way resource extraction from colonized land allowed for the creation of excess in the colonial West in the first place. It’s also about gender as performance; heartbreak; tenderness; and trying to live with yourself when your life is falling apart. It’s so much–too much–and it’s beautiful. It really, really is.<br /> ==Categories ==<br /> '''Add categories here'''<br /> [[Category:Sources of Inspiration and Influence]]<br /> [[Category:Song, Painting, Film, Etc.]]<br /> [[Category:Orchid]]</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:Have_One_on_Me_(Joanna_Newsom_album)&diff=807016 2023-09-12T17:15:56Z

<p>ADRIANMATIASBELL: Created page with &quot;Have One on Me is a 2010 album by the singer-songwriter and harpist Joanna Newsom. The best word I can use to describe Have One on Me is maximalist. It is an album about excess as a weapon, especially a self-destructive one. Many of the songs are 8-10 minutes long, and it’s a triple album. The whole thing is two hours long, and the arrangements are incredibly complex, featuring a variety of folk instruments around the central harp or piano. The narrator is heavily ba...&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>Have One on Me is a 2010 album by the singer-songwriter and harpist Joanna Newsom.<br /> <br /> The best word I can use to describe Have One on Me is maximalist. It is an album about excess as a weapon, especially a self-destructive one. Many of the songs are 8-10 minutes long, and it’s a triple album. The whole thing is two hours long, and the arrangements are incredibly complex, featuring a variety of folk instruments around the central harp or piano.<br /> <br /> The narrator is heavily based on Lola Montez, an Irish dancer whose entire career hinged on her lying about being from Spain. (As someone who was also influenced by Lana Del Rey, Lola Montez was totally the Lana Del Rey of the mid-1800s!) So, over the course of Have One on Me, the narrator suffers greatly; sometimes, she’s also selfish, shallow, cowardly, and wrong. She falsely naturalizes her own relationship to the land she lives on as a settler. This album is about so many things, but it’s also about how colonialism creates new varieties of falsehood, something I had never seen explored in music before. (I grew up as a settler in California too, surrounded by excess in early 2000s SoCal. Starting in college, I wrote a whole album about this, which I couldn’t have done without this album as an influence.)<br /> <br /> From a formal perspective, Have One on Me expanded my sense of what maximalism could do in art, outside of just shunting it aside as tacky. There’s totally tacky moments on this album (particularly a little Orientalism moment on what is otherwise one of Newsom’s best songs), but this album is about tackiness, about excess, and about the way resource extraction from colonized land allowed for the creation of excess in the colonial West in the first place. It’s also about gender as performance; heartbreak; tenderness; and trying to live with yourself when your life is falling apart. It’s so much–too much–and it’s beautiful. It really, really is.</div>

ADRIANMATIASBELL