Joe Tingle's Creative Nonfiction and Other Stuff

Wow

2010-01-30T07:55:00.000-08:00

Little update here: I was so close to finishing revising and and finishing my first essay for submission. And then I found the people I was writing about.

So now trying to get it published is kinda weird! I'm not sure I can still do it. I think I'll publish one of the other ones.

What a semester--

2009-12-20T20:06:00.000-08:00

I've learned a lot in Dr. Chandler's Creative Nonfiction class. After two back-to-back semester of being a "blogger," I've decided that I kinda like it. I'm going to keep blogging. If anyone else wants to, let me know, and I'll add you back on my side bar.

Thanks to everyone for a great semester!

Joe

Course Eval

2009-12-10T12:08:00.001-08:00

Course Evaluation/Reflection

1. Meeting course objectives

What did you learn in this course?

Firstly, I learned what Creative Nonfiction actually is. When I came into this class, I really thought that Creative Nonfiction was synonymous with memoir and first person oriented feature writing. After realizing this, I learned how to start writing in a new style. I really do feel that through this course I’ve learned how to expand my own writing. I’m much more conscious of the way I write now, thanks to that.

About the form of CNF?

Creative nonfiction is a very personal genre that can take many forms. Sometimes, creative nonfiction takes the form of a story-driven narrative. Other times, it takes a form that’s more fragmented. Creative fiction always has a truth-seeking, personal aspect, by which the writer tries to make the reader come to the same conclusions the same way the writer has.

What did you learn about how to write CNF?

I’ve learned that I can’t really get away with pounding my reader. This is where CNF really separates with Journalism and Editorial writing. If I have a point to make, I’ve realized instead of using just facts and arguments I can also describe my own experience and other important details, and attempt to persuade the reader to come to my own implicit conclusions by allowing them to walk in my shoes and look through my eyes.

About where to publish/find publishing venues for your creative writing?

There seems to be a lot out there, and there’s definitely a lot of people interested in it. However, one thing I did definitely notice is that creative nonfiction seems to be by and large a writer’s genre. It’s not always the kind of writing that average readers can understand or have the patience for. It’s generally for people who like reading for the sake of reading, and like genres that sometimes play games with them. This isn’t always true, but it seems to be true in general.

Did you change anything /try anything different in your writing process? Please describe.

Definitely. I’ve never written this way in my entire life. I almost always try to avoid personal experience in my writing, which changed. I copped a lot of personal experiences for these essays, more than I was sometimes comfortable with. I also never willfully tried to juxtapose two seemingly unrelated things as I did in my essays.

Which class assignments/class experiences helped you learn whatever you learned?

Any chance we had to write in class was fantastic. I really enjoyed my “place” essay and will try and work on it some more before attempting to publish it. I also think that I can use my first essay as a long term piece. Reading everyone else’s work and workshopping in class was very valuable. I think that the class would be even better with more time to workshop each other’s work in class.

What do you wish the course spent more time on?
Workshopping each other’s work. Though we all posted on blogs, unfortunately, people didn’t comment on each other’s work as much as I would have wished. I had a Business Writing class where the professor spent a lot of time at the head of the class with a few written assignments every week, and the whole class got to critique the works which were made anonymous. The criticism was tough to stomach sometimes, but it was definitely valuable.

What do you wish we'd spent less time on?

Nothing. If anything, we didn’t have enough time to cover everything. This is a common problem in University classes. I don’t think we could have had enough time to work on being writers WHILE making sure we had a pretty firm understanding of CNF’s major works.

2. Structure of course/assignments

Questions:

Right pace/schedule?

One blog a week—no problems there!

Coherence of material?

Yes, though it was interesting reading non-CNF precursor pieces first. That makes sense chronologically, but I also think it was a little confusing as an introduction to the genre.

Workload => Too much, too little, just right? What would you change?

Here’s my big confession for the class—I never purchased the book! I couldn’t afford it the first week of class, and then we didn’t have so many readings from it, so by the time I got paid I figured the semester was already half over and that I didn’t really need it.

Still, I found myself being made busy enough by the class. Again, I’m not sure we would have had enough time to read CNF and also work on our own writing.

Cover material appropriate to course goals?

Eh, see above. I feel like I’ve learned a lot, and I admit that’s NOT something I’ve been able to say for a lot of my classes at Kean…

Enough feedback for grades?

Yes. As always your comments were very valuable.

3. Provisions for feedback/grades

comments/grades for blogs

Good.

comments from classmates

Not enough L

reading aloud from journals + class discussion

Was always very helpful and very interesting.

conferences with professor on papers

Great. Thanks for making so much time for your students!

group work with classmates on papers

Not a fan of working in small groups, to be honest. I feel like I can’t be myself. I do like the anonymous group workshopping I described above, though.

written feedback/grades on papers

Was EXTREMELY valuable to my revisions.

reflective writing about your work (in you journal, on your blog)

I’m going to keep at it. I’ve even bought a trendy moleskine notebook. I can’t wait to go to B&N, get some Starbucks, and start writing in my Moleskine~

Questions:

Which form of feedback was most helpful?

The Conferences, followed by the in-class discussions.

Which did you enjoy most?

Conferences, and getting “off-track” in class.

Any which you felt was unproductive?>

Working in small groups to break down readings. You either read, or you didn’t.

What would you do more of?

In class workshopping.

What would you do less of?

The one I felt was less productive.

Did you feel the grading system was fair?

Yes

Did the grades/grading system contribute to learning?

I already learned through writing for cyberspace that my blogs needed to have substance, so I tried my best to keep that up.

4. General response

Is there anything you could tell me that would help me teach a better/more engaging course?

Anything you want to say about your experience of the course?

I think I’ve posted a couple suggestions through the whole reflection, so I won’t write ‘em all again. I will say that, as expected, this class was a very interested one which I feel I’ve come away from knowing something new. I’m a better writer because of it.

Blog 23- Average Divinity and the "Me" Team

2009-12-06T11:55:00.001-08:00

I remember wearing headphones on the bus. Everyday was like a private concert.

I had those big headphones that wrap around your ears, and I liked to turn them up loud. I didn’t want to hear all the noises of the people around me, or the corporate pop that normally blasted through the bus’ speakers.

When I was a teenager, I liked rock and rap. My parents approved of some of it. As for the rest of it? My Dad considered it “pornography coming out of the speakers.” I didn’t care.

At the time, my parent’s feelings about my music weren’t that important to me. I was constantly exploring, using the internet and other means to find as much new music as I could. High school was torture for me; scared, inept, unattractive, awkward—and music was my way out. I played guitar. Tool’s “The Patient” became my mantra: “Wait it out.”

I loved those days on the bus, when I could listen to my music and stare out the window at everything passing by. Sometimes it was chilly and rainy, and that was always my favorite: listening to music, bundled up in a big coat while raindrops fell against the window. Other times, I would simply shut my eyes and listen, waiting for the bus to reach my home near the end of the line.

During the summers and on the weekend nights, though, I spent less time with headphones on and longer hours in front of the computer. A friend of mine recently commented, “the internet’s like a huge support group for losers.” Maybe, but in high school it was more or less a window to a world of people I was afraid to touch and shut-out in real-life. I was that kid who didn’t talk to people much in class, but initiated conversations on AOL instant messenger. I loved the net. Everything was there: Religion, music, art

Sex.

Sex was on the internet, in abundance. Years earlier, in the sixth grade, a lunch table buddy informed our clique that he’d found a box of his dad’s porn on VHS. We were all pretty shocked. My Roman Catholic upbringing outright rejected it. I told every authority figure I could about this evildoer. All the teachers and parents seemed deeply troubled. This was, of course, a big “red flag.” That a 12 year old boy should want to look at naked women was a sign of real concern.

No less than three years later, I was habitually browsing porn of all kinds on the internet. More: me and my friends were trading sites, talking about it to each other, watching it together in a strange, sanitized kind of way. All borderlining taboo—but everyone’s doing it. We were all kind of like that little brat who’d gone down as the red-flag example. That little, snot-nosed kid who was the same age as us and now, a junkie somewhere, a lost cause not yet blossomed into a regular sex-offender.

In 1995, an electrical engineer at Carnegie Melon, Martin Rimm, did a study and came to the conclusion that almost 85 percent of what was being shared on the internet at the time was pornographic. This was, obviously, before most people were online. Some people claim Rimm’s numbers are bogus, and maybe they are. But no one will argue the validity of his point: that the internet is full of porn. Porn makes up a huge portion of the internet. Even now, while some people estimate porn sites make up only one percent of web pages on the internet, that’s still enough for porn to be among the most top-searched terms. Porn breathes life into the internet.

But Music, music, music.

Music was always my Muse, my main inspiration, my “way out.” Before long, I was using technology to a new extent, downloading music. That opened some new windows. But this was still before iTunes, and before you could find the really good stuff anywhere online. This was before the 99 cent song downloads of today.

I never listened to pop music, but I was spellbound by the oiled Aphrodites and Xochiquetzals that graced MTV’s video countdown. Even before the internet, and the world of porn—even before the kid at the lunch table had brought anything up—I’d been captured. These condescending sexual goddesses drove me insane, frustrated me. Frustrations that would be echoed later, in high school, by the average batch of perfect girls who went tanning, dyed their hair, and had just gotten their braces off.

It was around high school that guys and girls started caring about the cosmetics. Today, I see kids still in grade school wearing make-up, wearing skirts, doing their hair. I don’t remember it being that way when I was in grade school, but I could have been oblivious. I started noticing things.

I started noticing, for example, when my brother’s friend, a boy, started straightening his hair and wearing girl’s jeans. I started noticing the girls who made it a point to unbutton the tops of their blouses, and wear their skirts up a little bit higher. We could pick apart the ones who were suitable, the ones who looked like the people on the reality TV, from the rest, unfortunate, like ourselves.

Shit. We started noticing the teachers who noticed.

In my first years of high school, I had a friend who I’d share my pain with. This was Kevin, someone who joined me on my explorations of the opposite and music. We shared the same tastes. Kevin was heavier than me, but had a long-time female friend who was not his girlfriend. Kevin, unlike me, did not have the internet. Kevin knew more than me, though, and had friends who knew how to look in the right places. Porn and music became our currency. A floppy disc full of photos hand plucked from the internet was the equivalent to a CD full of music. It was symbiotic. A barter system.

When I parted ways from Kevin, I also parted ways with sharing my frustrations with other people for awhile. Our family moved back to Jersey. I dove into the world of the internet even further than before. What was once a sort of communal ritual had become habitualized, mechanized.

A weird thing happened with music, though, from the time I was in 7^th grade ‘til the time I was graduating high school. Music, and what popular music could be, started to change. When I had reached the end of grade school and getting ready to think about high school, there was a variety of popular music. Between Britney Spears in Catholic school-girl attire and a sweaty, half-nude Christina Aguilera getting “Dirrty” with shirtless body-builders, one might hear the melancholic crooning of Scott Stapp, inviting the world to approach one another “with arms wide open,” or Blink 182’s lament of a young teenager who gives all of his things to his friends and “never steps foot in his room again.”

By the time I graduated from high school, though, that had disappeared. All the music playing on MTV was some deviation of electronic pop, with repeating beats and thumping bass. Girls had to be urged not to “grind” at homecomings and proms. As annoying as Creed’s rehash of the 90s grunge scene was, it was still real. It was like technology had finally caught up with the mainstream. No need for instruments, no need for live bands, no need for real things. Now, we had this.

The real music fans outlashed against this and, once again, I was able to learn about it via the internet. I learned that record labels were in the middle of what was popularly dubbed a “sound war;” a race to 1.) make songs that reached a catchy chorus within the first thirty seconds, 2.) be loud—if not ear-damaging in a heavy metal concert kind of way than at least louder than everyone else songs and the commercial breaks if possible and 3.) be clean. This was always a rule, but as long as songs were censorable they were deemed O.K. and usually made it on the radios in one form or another.

Software like iTunes brought some of this on, though indirectly. Music that’s mixed loudly—especially music that has no dynamic range, (that is, music where the soft and loud parts are both “loud” as they can be turned up on a mixing board without immediately notable distortion) is exhausting. Try listening to a newer album in an iPod from start to finish. It gets old quick. Ears start to hurt. There’s no reason to buy a full album most of the time, anyway. iTunes lets you download individual songs, and when those songs get old, they don’t need to be thrown away. They’re just data, sitting on a hard drive, barely taking up enough space to be noticed.

In the past, even the loudest most obnoxious musicians on the planet accepted the ridiculousness of the sentiment voiced so eternally by Spinal Tap: “But these go to eleven.” But that was the old format. There’s a format now that leaves zero room for creativity, zero room for innovation, zero room for aesthetic statements.

Now, I hang out with my 12 year old brother and am amazed by how loud his music is. I can’t listen to music the way he does anymore. I’ll take a well-produced album, and some nice stereo-speakers at an enjoyable volume instead. If I want loudness and intensity, I’ll go to a live concert and see the real band do it.

Sometime, toward the end of high school, I stopped being an introverted teen and turned into an adult who wasn’t afraid to talk to his peers. I stopped looking at girls, and started trying to date them.

Dating is something my generation’s been accused of being very bad at. The millennials, they say, are too interested in their own careers and making money. The MTV generation is too self-centered to produce very many meaningful relationships.

These arguments are backed-up by some pretty terrible statistic. Half of marriages don’t make it past the first couple years. Not like centuries ago, before people married for the sake of “love,” and pragmatic interests were more important. Marriages lasted longer then—and it was perfectly acceptable for a young husband to piss on his fidelity through mistresses and trips to the public house. Silly “love.” Today’s couples crumble at the first sign on infidelity.

Me and my buddies had pretty high standards about who was dateable and who wasn’t. There were girls who hung out with us, but they were “friends.” Sure, they weren’t horrendous. Sure, they liked the same music as we did. Sure, they shared an abundance of other common interests and genuinely cared about us—but they were “friends.” They were “around.” The hung out with us, talked to us, had nothing actively working against them. We liked them, but deep down inside we knew the truth: that the other girls; the popular, attractive ones—the ones who seemed to try really, really hard— were the ones we needed. That’s what we all secretly knew we were entitled to, and that’s what we wanted to be able to show one another. The entirety of our sexually-aware lives had been pointing to one thing: these were the girls who looked like the girls in the videos and online, whose very existence to us was more grounded in myth than reality, who were already built in like archetypical forms but just as ephemeral as sublime. They were captivating, entrancing, flustering Medusas. These other girls were the average ones who just “showed up.” These girls were it; these girls weren’t. We were young, obsessed with ideals, gasping and panting for air amid a sea of average goddesses.

In retrospect, I wonder if our girl-friends felt the same about us?

-Joseph E. Tingle, Jr

Blog 22: Power Point for Monday

2009-12-03T12:22:00.000-08:00

Publishing Venues

We should...

2009-12-03T11:16:00.001-08:00

Go out to eat somewhere, and talk about our writing

Blog 21: Revision Narrative

2009-12-03T11:00:00.000-08:00

Revising my narrative:

I'm going to completely overhaul the narrative of my 4th essay. What I have now is very journalistic, very "sketchy" but not very much like creative nonfiction. So what I've done, and what I'm doing, involves almost completely changing all of the material into a first person perspective.

I hope that by doing so I haven't gone too far the other way. Even at the end of this course, I still feel incredibly uncomfortable talking about myself. I'm getting better at it, but I'm not there yet. At least I'm no longer afraid to use "I" and to write about my own experience as if it were valid.

I also think that my transitions into the historical sections have become arbitrary. I'm going to have to think of a way to have them not stick out so much.

I'm also looking into changing the title. I admit that the original title, "Bored," was something that I just kind of threw out at the last minute. I'm going to write down a plethora of new ideas this weekend, and see what I come up with. I'll also scan my text for phrases and such which I think make a better title than the one I have currently.

Last Revision

2009-11-30T09:58:00.000-08:00

I'll be revising essay four, my porno Essay. I think, convoluted as it is, it's still far superior to my third essay. One thing I'm going to have to do, though, is some serious free writing. When I wrote my first draft to essay 4, my thoughts weren't completely together, and it really shows.

Things I'm going to have to do:

- Continue to "think" about what my point is, and what kind of message I want to get across. I think I'm almost there for this one.

-Re-evaluate whether the anecdotes and details I've included actually get that message across, and, if not, substitute them for new ones. So far, I think I'm about 50/50 on this.

-Add a first person narrative. It's tough, but it's necessary.

That's about all I can think of right now. What does everyone else think?

Bored

2009-11-22T21:08:00.000-08:00

The internet is for porn.

It’s 1995. An electrical engineer at Carnegie Melon, Martin Rimm, does a study and comes to the conclusion that almost 85% of what’s being shared on the internet is pornographic. This is before most people are online. Fifteen years later, though porn sites will make up only an estimated one percent of what’s become an infinitely vast, immeasurable internet, porn-- next to music, travel, and e-bay-- will remain the most frequently searched topic on the net.

At the turn of the millennia, the word pornography enters the vocabulary of a twelve year old boy. He’s sitting at a lunch table with someone who say’s they’ve found their dad’s collection of porn on VHS, and to his surprise he’s the only person who hasn’t heard the word before. His first year in public school has been an enlightening one: he’s learned a lot of things that the Catholic school 6^th graders didn’t tell him about. What’s more frightening is the kid with the porn wants to invite everyone at the table over one weekend to watch in what sounds like a terrifying male-bonding experience.

He tells his mom about it. His mom’s baffled, and scared. What parents in their right mind could raised a child that assumes pornography viewing is appropriate for a social gathering? Pornography, by it’s very nature, is for privacy. All that exists in the world of the modern porn movie is the female model(s), the muscular torso of the male, and the observer who takes the identity of the usually faceless male.

By high school, his family and the families of his friends have bought computers and gotten online. Porn is no longer a mystery, but something regularly viewed and regularly discussed by almost everyone he knows. Christina Aguilera, oiled and wearing a bikini top with leather chaps, surrounded by dozens of sweating, shirtless muscular guys, has made a daily ritual of singing “Dirrty” on MTV’s video countdown. Back in Catholic school, girls bleach their hair blonde, wear thick mascara, and push the limits of the allotted skirt length. No one is complaining.

Christina’s “Dirrty” is an onslaught of sexual stimulation and pushes the limits of what’s allowed on television, and what being a role model to young woman can mean. But Christina is following the trend. She’s not especially beautiful compared to the woman in the other videos. Neither is her song unique compared to the rest of the top-40 crowd which feature radio-mandated hooks occurring before the first 30 seconds. She receives mixed critical reception.

She’s the “average,” not much different than what the girlsstrive for. Fake tan, heavy eyeliner and mascara, fake blonde hair with lots of spray, perfect and shining white teeth. They get in trouble for dancing like Christina and all the other pop divas at homecoming and prom and the 8^th grade dance. The now 16 year Catholic school student makes a general observation: these near perfect goddesses are decidedly average.

The internet, for a Millennial teen, is a tool of discovery. Knowledge about everything: news, the opposite sex, music, all is available on the internet. He listens to music on a portable CD player. Meanwhile, some classmates have already begun carrying around ipods and other slick MP3 players. Technology moves faster, and becomes outdated faster than anyone can afford. The dial-up connection that once served as a gateway to a world full of epiphanies is now a cumbersome fossil that takes 30 minutes for downloading a single song.

No one likes outdated, unattractive technology or unattractive anything-- cell phones are a good example. We all get new phones every two years but try and convince our parents to buy us new ones before that time. Most of them cave.

Teens who, being teenagers, feel the need to stand-out from the group do so in a way that’s paradoxically reactionary towards MTV self-worship. Together, in a rejection to the individual pursuit of perfection, they mutilate themselves and wear uniformly unattractive dark clothing. They pierce themselves and listen to music without hooks or melody. They reject pop music and it’s petty sentiments.

There’s a loudness war occurring on the radio that gets increasingly worse. Metallica, long time sell-outs, release a tragedy of album production that is Death Magnetic. Everyone wants their album to sound good on ipods and loud on the radio, so corporate producers are raising all the instruments to Spinal Tap like volumes and killing what audiophiles call “dynamic range.”

Music, regardless of genre, goes like this if it’s going to popular and make it on the radio: It’s loud, even when it’s soft. There’s a chorus or a hook that occurs either right in the beginning or before 30 seconds have passed which is repeated ad nauseum. Consumers have the option to buy the song for 99 cents instead of the whole album, which can be listened to on a personal music player like an ipod or CD player.

Dei Market has brought Free Music and Free Pornography to the masses. Anyone and everyone is capable of fire sharing. New ways to do it crop up as the old ways disappear. Porn versions of Youtube which feature entire films are available en masse, highspeed connections are fast enough to watch more than one at once, at home, on the laptop, or on the cellphone.

For the college-bound millennial, hook based music is as regular and standardized as streaming pornography. Regularly downloaded, regularly viewed- a regular part of life.

Corporate record labels are pulling their hair out because no one wants to pay for the low-quality music that is freely and easily obtained via the internet. Women are pulling their hair out after contrived attractiveness becomes increasingly less powerful in the face of men who are both exhausted and apathetic. Bored married couples divorce after being married for a year.

2009- People aren’t showing up to concerts. Despite falling prices, Live Nation, an organization that makes its money by buying up tickets and selling them back to consumers with a service charge attached, report that attendance is down 22 percent. Fans of acts big and small complain that their favorite bands are “falling off” but in reality, Y generation simply isn’t into concerts. The stimuli of pure, real “live” performers can’t compare to their perfected electronic avatars.

My Focus on Essay the 19th

2009-11-14T16:55:00.000-08:00

The focus of my essay is going to be pornography, technology, and the consumer-based market system in relation to middle-class interpersonal relationships and social institutions. What kind of enabling powers has technology had on the middle class? What about individualizing powers? What kinds of relationships are important in free market systems? And what kind of things go swept under the rug in them- and, how does the pornography industry epitomize these things.

My essay is going to be sectioned, with certain sections dealing specifically with the history of pornography, especially since its spread to the internet and especially focused on the role pornography plays in prostitution, human trafficking, and all-around degrading of sexual & romantic relationships.

I'm going to do a similar thing with the PC and where the its history coincides with that of pornography, but most likely these to timelines will converge with the registering of the first porn domain name.

How is pornography different than the rampant infidelity that was common before- when, like in the Victorian era, husbands were pretty much expected to pick up prostitutes and have mistresses. Is there even a difference? Is one way- strong institutionalized marriages with expected infidelity vs. weak "based on love" marriages with that collapse at the first sign of such- better than the other?

Finally, what kind of meaningful and healthy sexual relationships do (or can) exist in our hyper-individualized world?

I need all the feedback I can get. I need an anecdote. I'm not sure if I should or can add a first person angle to weave between the two "historical" segments. Does anyone have an idea how I could tie all these things together- and what kinds personal experience I should try and draw from?

Blog 18: A Weekend on Campus

2009-11-11T20:14:00.000-08:00

Hammerhead's Inn is located just outside the parking lot of the University. My freshman year, before I was old enough to drink, the Campus Bar was just a little hole in the wall. Then, the owner decided to renovate the place, move in some flat screen TV's, and add the "Hammerhead's" moniker to the sign.

Hammerhead's can be live or dead at any given night, and any given time. Sometimes, on weekend nights and game nights, it's packed with students and bar-hoppers to whom Hammerhead's is just a stop on the way somewhere else. Other nights, it's dead and me and my friends get the place to ourselves. Tonight, though, is a game night and a weekend night. Hammerhead's is packed.

Domestic pints are $3. Shots and mixed drinks are $4. Top-shelf is $5. Sharky's is cheaper than anywhere, except Long Island Ice Tea is $12. The weeknight bartender thinks the owner is nuts- Applebees down the street sell LIT for $4 after 10. The owner doesn't listen to this. No one comes to Hammerhead's for LIT.

Tonight, I'm not paying. My wealthy friend points to the top shelf, and says we'll do shots of whatever I like. I look up there- there's several varieties of Patron, Black & Red Label, Hennessey, Cristal, and several other drinks. Tonight, we drink shots of Patron. A bottle of Patron Silver costs about $40, but tonight we pay half of that for the four of us.

Jaeger Bombs and Irish Car Bombs are $8. We do a couple of those. Jaeger's in the fridge and "bottom shelf," by the way. It tastes like black liquorice and costs the same amount as Jack, Captain, Jameson, Jose, Schnapps, and so on.

2 pitichers of beer, drinks and shots for everyone has already put our tab up to nearly a hundred dollars. By last call that's nearly doubled, but no-one is falling over. Somewhere behind us, another group of friends- older friends- are talking about where they'll go next. They start naming off the different clubs around. They've drank as much as us, but their night is still young.

We debate the club but even my wealthy friend is spread thin on cash now, and I hate clubs. Before we leave, one of our girlfriends talks the bartender into a round of shots. This one is on him.

We hop in the car and pop into a diner. Gyros for everyone is on me. The next morning, I'll see the hole in my wallet and be disappointed.

Nearly 3:30 a.m. we're back on campus, relieved there's no random DUI check. Campus police are busy, crashing a real party that's happening in one of the residence halls. "They're idiots," my wealthy friend says as we're walking back. "They borrow so much money just so they can live there and party, just so they can get kicked out later."

Market Obfuscation and Worshipping Dei Tech (Blog 17)

2009-11-07T14:41:00.001-08:00

I’ve been really interested in smartphones lately. My Verizon contract is expiring soon, and I’m thrilled that I’ll have the option to upgrade to phones like the new droid, the blackberry and the iPhone. For the past four years, I’ve been stuck with these tiny, cheaply made cell-phones that can’t do anything except call people. Now, I’m finally going to get my next chance at purchasing something legit.

I’m the polar opposite of a technophobe. Though I’m admittedly bad at figuring out computers, and though I can’t really afford most of the electronics I wish I could be sporting, I love technology. As I browse Verizon’s webpage and see the various upgrades available to me, I’m practically in heaven. I can’t help but start thinking about what the next big thing could be. The iPhone, for example, is a digital camera, MP3 player, and internet device all in one. When I rode the bus into school in highschool, I used to carry a CD player with two or three CDs, my cellphone, and a couple of books. With the iPhone or any of the other smart phones, I could have the phone, my entire CD collection and my library of sci-fi and fantasy with me in the palm of my hand.

Seriously. The iPhone and most of these other phones weigh less than five ounces. How can you do better than that?

To be honest, though, all of this stuff is still kind of new to me. Though the iPhone and the Zune have been out for several years, I still have yet to purchase either. The Amazon Kindle is on my wish list, too, but that’s something else that I’m probably not going to be purchasing. What’s the point of having a Kindle, anyway, or an IPod, when the smartphone does it all in one? In all honesty, the iPhone is far from perfect, according to what lots of people have told me. It’s less of an MP3 player than the iPod, but it’s still a pretty good one. It’s less of a reading device than the Kindle, but it’s still pretty good. The internet isn’t comparable to the kind of internet you get on notebooks, but, again, it’s still pretty good. So, obviously, there’s still some room for improvement. Why buy now when there’s always something a little bit better on the way?

One of my best friends from highschool, John, considers himself to be what’s called a Transhumanist. The World Transhumanist Association, now called Humanity+, is an organization that wants people to be able to be, for lack of a more apt description, better than well. Though I’d like to avoid caricaturing the beliefs of people like my friend John, I’d say that Humanity+ is the kind of organization that wants to ensure that when the stars are right, your government has granted you the liberty to graft your iPhone into the back of your head and communicate telepathically with others who have opted to do the same thing.

John and I started being friends in high school because we were both kind of interested in dorkier things. Though, initially, our interests ranged widely from science, science fiction and literature to anime and video-game inspired philosophies, John graduated and went into the sciences while I stuck with the humanities-- more due to a perceived lack of mathematical skill than anything else.

John and I still see each other relatively often, though, and on any given day he might mention something that’s called the G.R.I.N. technologies- Genetics, Robotics, Informaton, and Nanotech. These fairly recent technologies make a plethora of promises. Genetics can one day eliminate disease. Robotics can ensure cheap manufacturing and put an end to unfair labor practices, as well as help people who’ve been in life changing accidents. Information tech like the internet and cell-phone can be improved and made into insurance against corrupt authoritative government, despite the seemingly authoritarian leanings of my own Verizon. Finally, there’s Nanotech. Nanotech is the most far off, and the most difficult for me to understand, but seems to have more promise than even the rest of the technologies-- for better or worse.

The two of us generally find enough common ground to stand on. Despite being a science guy, he’s pretty well read, easily just as well read as me even though I’ve devoted the last four years to learning literature and language. And despite me not being a science guy at all, I am interested. I’ve told John plenty of times that, though I don’t know a lot about future tech, I’m a believer. I don’t see how anything that liberates people can be that big of a bad thing.

What surprises me, though, is John’s foresight. He, unlike me, has not yet succumbed to the current batch of smart-phones. Surprisingly, his cellphone is even lousier than mine. I want to call him cheap, but it’d be a copout. It’s like he already knows something better and less expensive is on the way.

My entire life, I’ve been surrounded by my Anglo-Irish Catholic relatives who assert that “the world would be a better place if everyone was a Christian.” I’ve always wondered about what owning things like iPhones meant for Christians. My parent’s families are full of what’d I’d consider upper-middle class white collar types who go to better schools than I do- but, to be honest, all of us own nice things. I haven’t gone to mass regularly for ages, but I’ve always been curious as to how accruing personal property and owning nice things is answerable to that line in the bible about getting into heaven wealthy like getting a camel through Eel’s Eye.

Even if their Christianity is more out of convenience than anything else, though, these people are decidedly right leaning. They are disillusioned youths who grew up to be soft libertarians. Never will you hear them utter that technology is the answer to a better planet like John will, or higher taxes like my friend Pez the socialist will, or doing anything other than going to work and abiding the important laws. Their excuse is their religion, even if their religious experience is mostly inactive and takes the back seat to the rest of their lives.

I like them- I love them all, actually- but I feel different enough from them, even if we all agree that the iPhone is a fantastic device that we all want. For awhile, I thought that I might be a socialist. I even joined a group on Campus and went to a few protests. I found that while that label might apply to me in some circumstances, it certainly doesn’t apply in all of them.

I’ve found that I, too, am a religious person. In her book The God of Small Things, Arudhati Roy makes a creative comparison between Christianity and Marx that I still remember clearly, even though I read the book at least two years ago. Communism is like Christianity, she says. Both are obstacle courses with prizes at the end. All one needs to do is replace Marx with God, and Satan with the bourgeoisie, Heaven with Marx’s ideal society, and there you have it.

Roy could have just was well substituted Marxism with Technology. People like my friend John and Humanity+ have, in some ways, done what religion used to do before God became (in Joyce’s words) “a personal God.” But who are the believers? Authoritarian Verizon clearly isn’t a believer, even though they sell this stuff. Same goes for Apple—there’s nothing technologically “liberating” about a computer that you need a unique set of screws only the Mac store have to open up and mess with. My relatives aren’t believers either. Nice cell-phones and computers and being able to afford expensive ways of combating cancer might be trendy, but they don’t mean anything if they support these things in ways which help break down class barriers. Christianity tried (and failed) to create a new system of equality. Democracy tried (and failed) to create a new system of equality. Marxism tried (and failed) to eliminate class boundaries. But nothing is more capable of flattening the world than cheap technology everyone can afford and everyone has access too.

I, too, believe that technology is the asnwer. I pay top dollar for it, too, whenever I can, regardless of whether I’m buying the iPhone or an electronic copy of a new novel or record. Whether my consumerism validates my beliefs or is a reflection of my own insecurity about it, though-- I’m not really sure.

Blog 16- Brainstorming Essay 3

2009-11-03T18:45:00.000-08:00

As I said in class, I'm going to be focusing on technology, both the promise of technology and the reality of technology as something that's always near but never really obtainable. I will focus on my own yearning for the i-Pod, as well as a friend of mine who considers himself among the "Transhumanists"- essentially, a group of people who look up to technology as a utopian answer to all the world's problems much in the same way Marxists do Communism and Christians do Christianity.

My description of the i-Phone will be decidedly idealistic, which I hope will juxtapose nicely with the Transhumanists description. I don't have an i-Phone myself, which makes me an apt candidate for praising the merits of something that hasn't happened yet.

My overall "goal" is to present Technology not as a "thing" but an "idea" and a positive-though-flawed "system of belief" to which we've all already opted-in.

My description of the i-Phone is the overall belief held by most people about technology. I'm basically making myself out to be the voice of everyone- the person who wants something new and knows it's going to be great, even though it hasn't happened yet. I'm ignorant, yet optimistic.

I'm looking for a lot of feedback. Mainly, people's experiences with technology, how they feel about it in a general sense, and whether they have any stories about it. I also would like to be told if anyone feels like my topic is confusing.

Essay 1 Draft 2

2009-10-31T11:54:00.001-07:00

Dave was big and friendly. I’d met him my freshman year of high school, after my family moved to Illinois. Two years earlier, my family had moved from New Jersey to the suburbs of Chicago, and I’d been forced to make new friends. Then, for reasons I don’t really remember, my parents decided I should go to a high school that none of my grade school friends were going to- including a girl who I really though I liked. I was forced to remake all my friends for the second year in a row.

I probably wouldn’t have met Dave if it weren’t for his excellent, outgoing personality. I was sitting alone in graphics and design class when he first approached me, and asked me if I played Magic cards- something he’d asked everyone the first day of school. I didn’t know much about Magic, but I pretended to be a fan because I was lonely. Immediately, we hit it off.

At the time, we were both kind of outcasts. I was new, and had a speech impediment that made it impossible for me to tell people things like what town I was from. Dave had been around for awhile, but was overweight and definitely self-conscious about it. As the year progressed, we learned that we shared a plethora of nerdy interests.

We talked about videogames, rock bands and girls, and complained about why girls weren’t paying attention to us. Then, one day Dave met the girl of his dreams.

To put it nicely, the girl was out of our leagues. She was cute, and had the dark, gothic metal-chick edge that made the combo of our nerdy-ness and puberty go crazy. Dave talked to her quite a bit more than I did- at that point, I was still too nervous about my own speaking to do any talking myself.

I lived vicariously through the conversations Dave would have with her. As expected, things weren’t going well for him by way of a relationship. But Dave did tell me the short lists of things that this girl was attracted to- she’d told him, apparently, meaning he asked. They were: “Awkward” guys, guys who “had problems,” guys who were “punk,” and guys who had “been through things.”

Poor Dave. She was giving him the roundabout, telling him she liked guys who fit impossible descriptions when the honest her would have said “guys that I look at and am attracted to because they’re good looking and don’t treat me like crap.”

Unfortunately for Dave, his conversations with her led him to a whole new level of rigorous soul-searching. He decided that he needed to be that guy who “had problems” and “been through things.” A day later, he confessed to me that he was thinking about trying marijuana, and that he didn’t believe in god anymore. He also confessed to me that he always “thought” he “might have been abused when he was younger.”

Dave just wasn’t getting it. He and I were already the social misfits of high school, but he was driving himself nuts trying to figure out why he wasn’t “different” and “edgy” enough for this particular girl. She didn’t really want that, but for some reason he couldn’t fathom, it’s what he thought he needed to be.

As someone who aspires to be a writer-of-sorts, I constantly find myself in trying to fill the same shoes Dave was trying to fill. All writers seem to have that in common- we feel that we have a “voice” and that there’s something we should be saying, but all-to-often our own experience doesn’t seem to do much in the way for our “being distinct.” And, of course, to be different is to be noticed.

Other writers have been through pain they don’t need to invent:

When I was younger, my best friend's dad had a drinking problem. Though he was never hit by his dad, he constantly felt like he was being verbally abused, unable to meet the expectations of that person. Resentment for his father grew and grew, until he dropped out of college and moved out of the house at the age of nineteen.

Though their relationship is now probably better than it's ever been, his perception of his father has traditionally been a negative one. He sees his father as a unfaithful boozer, an opportunist, an abuser and is tormented by his memory of him daily.

I see his father as I see my own, an imperfect, old fashioned human being who has made tons of mistakes, but nearly always attempts to do the “right thing” if not right away then at least eventually.

Sometimes, though, I feel that I should dig up his or some other poor soul's torment, and make it my own. Sometimes, I feel that if I had a little bit more sensational of a life than my own real experience, I’d have a better shot at being a writer. Or I’d have a better shot if I did something interesting, like joined the army. That’d definitely make my voice more interesting.

By the time I made it to college, though, I’d given up on the dream of being the most interested man in the world. Larger than life adventures and deep-seeded psychological problem ceased to be what I wanted to write or hear about. I turned to Journalism, because that’s what described real people, living real honest life.

I started writing for the independent paper- the real “objective voice of the students.” The paper that was designed and created to be an alternative to the school’s newsletter and the Communication department’s paper. The paper was about what the students were all about. My kind of paper, you know?

But even during my short tenure there I had problems. When the election system our student government uses broke down, I hesitantly stood by as the paper printed as its front page headline (with semantic accuracy only obtainable by English majors) “Student Org fixes Election,” “fixes” being the keyword. Things like that were happening every issue, too. Then, it was becoming harder and harder for me to get published. The editors kept telling me that my stories “weren’t interesting enough” and that I should write about other things, like the protest that the faculty union was having. Issue by issue, my articles weren’t making it while the ones that pushed the limit were. I was supposed to be a Muckraker, or nothing at all.

I’m leaving college now, my creative writing degree in tow. After four years, I still haven’t found my voice, or what makes me distinct, or how I’m going to find something to entertain the world of readers. It seems more and more like although everyone likes talking guys like Dave, no one really wants to be with them.

A Photo

2009-10-28T19:53:00.000-07:00

I don't have a physical photo album here or at home, and I nowhere close to my mom's or grandmom's collections, so I'm forced to glean from tagged photos of me on Facebook.

This picture of Kenny and I playing Rock Band was taken by either my girlfriend Casey or Kenny's ex, Larissa on New Year's Eve. As background, I played music in bands pretty much all through high school and even a little bit in college, but eventually I became way too busy for it. I still play guitar (sometimes) but it's nowhere near the level I was at before my Freshman year. I wonder how much "skill" I have left?

I was listening to some of my favorite metal albums for the last prompt, and it occurred to me how much the "good" music I know and love has been missing from my life. I really feel like I need to start playing in a band again, if not to make actual music to cover my favorite tunes and feel the camaraderie of being in a band again.

This picture, taken less than a year ago on a New Year's Eve, sums up best where I am in my musical life- drunk, singing, and playing rock band with people who have absolutely no idea how music is played. Sorry, Kenny.

Remembering Awake: Dreams of My Favorite Album (blog13)

2009-10-25T10:52:00.000-07:00

Here in the dorms at college, I don't have a lot of physical objects from my past. Most of that kind of stuff is in my room somewhere, in boxes or collecting dust. So, for this blog entry, I didn't have whole lot of things to look at. I wound up going through my media library and looking at some of my music instead. Dream Theater's Awake immediately struck me as something I should write about.

Anyone who knows me and has been friends with me for some time know that my favorite band of all time is Dream Theater. It has been this way for many years, for at least half of high school and all of college. Dream Theater are my favorite band. I saw them twice this summer. No other band comes half as close as they do to my heart.

"Awake" was my first Dream Theater album. I bought it when I was in high school. Though I was incredibly obsessed with another band, Tool, at the time, I'd been told by many people on the internet that Tool weren't the rock band with the best musicians- Dream Theater were. At first, I couldn't believe it. Then, I bought "Awake" and I was convinced:

People on the internet are full of it!

Needless to say, it really took a long time for "Awake" to click with me. During my first listen, so many things stuck out like a sore thumb. The repeating samples over the first track, 6:00:

6 o'clock on a Christmas morning

And for what?

And then;

Well isn't it for the honor of God, Aunt Kate?

I know all about the honor of God, Mary Jane!

I'd learn later that the samples were a direct reference to James Joyce's "The Dead," and the theme of an artist struggling with the imagined futility of his own artistic expression an important one.

While I liked the next song, Caught in a Web, quite a bit, the next song, Innocence Faded, impressed me with it's Rush-ness but I hated the confusing lyrics.

Callous and vain, fixed like a fossil

shrouding pain, passionless stage

distant like brothers

wearing apathetic displays

sharing flesh like living in cages

condescending, not intending to end.

It wasn't until later, when I talked to some people online, that I realized just how deep "Innocence Faded" was, especially in the context of that album's "artist" theme. In fact, during the time of recording, the keyboardists and guitarist were not getting along. The guitarist wrote "Innocence Faded" as a reaction to keyboardist and childhood friend Kevin Moore's increasing social and artistic seclusion. The two may have begun competing with one another in healthy ways- condescendingly, two figures who used to be as close as brothers now beyond the point of caring, sharing a "passionless stage" with one another every night.

The instrumental, Erotomania, impressed me with it's guitar and keyboard parts, but the next song, Voices, is where I really started liking the album. Not only the lyrics, but the music too. I think the song speaks for itself. I had the opportunity to hear Dream Theater perform "Voices" live twice, flawlessly, this summer, and it is a song that I hope they play at every show. The Silent Man, which concludes the three-part suite, is a nice acoustic change of pace and I love it's thought provoking lyrics.

A question well-served

is silence like a fever?

A voice never heard?

Or a message with no reciever?

Pray they won't ask

behind the stained-glass.

There's always one more mask.

Has man been a victim of his woman?

Of his father?

If he elects not to bother

will he suffocate their faith?

Desperate to fall

behind the great wall

that separates us all.

The next duo of songs, The Mirror and Lie, never really stuck out, and still don't, though Lie is growing on me and hearing them is fantastic live. The lyrics compliment one another, though, the first dealing with lying to one's self about addiction and the second dealing with a relationship built on a falsehood. Musically, the songs contain a variety of themes which seem to be revisited elsewhere in the album. Moore's piano in The Mirror is echoed later, in Space-Dye Vest.

The Mirror & Lie are a heavy, balls-to-the-walls storm that happens to be the centerpiece of the album. The next song, Lifting Shadows off a Dream, is an ambient but equally as lyrically heavy change of pace. Like all the songs on the album, the lyrics deal with a disconnect between people that either does or doesn't get resolved. This time, bassist John Myung uses his only lyrical contribution on the album to present us with the nature of male/female relationships.

He seems alone and silent,

thoughts remain without an answer.

Afraid and uninvited,

he slowly drifts away.

Moved by desire and fear-

breaking delicate wings-

Lifting Shadows off a Dream once broken...

She can turn a drop of water into an ocean.

Next, we have Scarred. What can I say about Scarred? Nothing that can't be heard by listening to the album, I think. Again, the theme of distance is prevalent.

Do you feel you don't know me anymore?

Do you feel I'm afraid of your love?

And how come you don't want me asking

and how come my heart's not invited?

You say you want everyone happy.

We're not laughing.

And how come you don't understand me?

And how come I don't understand you?

Thirty years say we're in this together

so open you eyes!

People in prayer for me, everyone there for me

sometimes I feel I can't face this alone.

My soul's exposed, it calms me to know that I won't.

But also thinly hidden in Scarred is guitarist John Petrucci's next message to Keyboardist Kevin Moore. Again, as we saw earlier in Innocence Faded, Petrucci seems to be addressing a life-long friendship that is being torn apart. Petrucci's song ends "I'm inspired and content," while Kevin's song which closes the album, Space-Dye Vest, ends with the lyricist rushing into complete isolation, "I'll never be opened again."

I hated Awake at first, but there's so much depth to it. So much to listen to and think about. In retrospect, Awake is now one of my favorite Dream Theater albums. I know most people won't, but I do hope some people look at some of the links to these songs (live boots mostly because of copyright issues) and maybe wind up liking Awake as much as I do.

Revisions, revisions, revisions, (blog 12)

2009-10-25T09:26:00.000-07:00

I dropped the ball on my conference, so I'm not sure yet what essay I'm going to revise. Right now, though, I'm leaning towards the second essay. While I think the first album is more interesting, it lacks a lot of the "focus" that the second one has. Also, I think the second is more reflective of the place I'm at in my life now. If I don't finish that one soon, I'm not sure their will ever be a time when I can't finish.

I tried measuring the pro's and con's of both. The first essay offers a unique perspective that really could be explored more. However, it really would require quite a bit of heavy revision. The second essay isn't as unique as the first, but it is much closer to a final product that the first one. The first essay may require me to go and do some new research- the second does it. I'm afraid of rushing the first one and coming out with an inferior project.

2nd Essay- The Working Class College Experience

2009-10-17T11:27:00.001-07:00

I’m a little embarrassed to say this, but I spent a lot of the summer before my freshman year of college watching Gilmore Girls. It wasn’t out of choice, because reruns of the show were filling a daytime TV slot, and I was working a 2pm -10pm shift at Staples. I could only hang out with my girlfriend in the morning hours, and unfortunately she was even less willing to watch Walker: Texas Ranger than I was to watch Gilmore.

I remember Rory’s academic asspirations in stark contrast to my own. Rory, a lowly prep high school student who doesn’t belong, had dreams to attend Harvard, but wound up having to choose between her two fallbacks- Princeton and Yale. At that point in my life, I was still looking for the college that was the closest to my house while “still kind of far away.”

I don’t recall very much about Rory’s academic life- the show kind of lost its thunder for me after she made it into school- but I do remember her bearing witness to arguments about moral relativism as early as her first visit on campus, ordering food from hotdog stands named “Dante’s Inferno,” and getting excited about a set of the Oxford-English Dictionary.

My state university, by and large a working class commuter school, doesn’t have a philosophy department. No one from off campus tries to sell food at our around here. And you can’t find an Oxford-English Dictionary for sale at the bookstore.

I’m proud to have gone to my University, and so are my parents and everyone else. I’m the first person in my family to graduate. I have Aunts and Uncles who did, but neither my Mom or Dad or their grandparents went to college. They’re excited for me about graduating, even more than I am. We talk about it all the time.

“I’m nervous,” I’ll tell me my mom. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to get a job.”

“Joe,” she say, “You have your college degree. You’ll be able to get a job.”

But when I’m back on campus, everyone seems to have the same concerns that I do. I’ve met so many students who are training to be educators, or public administrators, or managers. I’ve met a fairly large amount of students who want to go to graduate school and be scholars, too. But, mostly, at my University, I’ve met a lot of teachers.

I wonder how many people graduate with Teaching Certification every year? Are there really that many teaching positions open? What about positions for public administrators? Store managers? In this economy?

My friends and I all come from the same types of families. I’d say most of those among us who aren’t geniuses wouldn’t be able to go to Universities if it weren’t for ones like my own, which stress affordability and cater to students many of whom work full time jobs. My girlfriend’s room mate, for instance, a child of a single parent, works two part time jobs over the weekend- one at night and one during the day. Another friend of mine, a coworker, is a double major but works with on campus and works 20 hours over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights off campus.

No one at my school really has time to sit in the café and talk politics or religion or philosophy or literature or art. I’m about the graduate, and I’m not really sure if any of my friends are interested. Whose fault is that, anyway?

Outside of certain circles, there’s no real strong intellectual interest here. College used to be a place where people who were interested in scholarly things went, and I’m not sure what went wrong about my particular University. I’m sure me and my peers are just as hard working and deserving of a college education as the college students of the past, so what’s different about us? Most likely, they’ll go through the course guideline, get their degree, and apply for some kind of job where they’ll never use the skills they supposedly did in college. That is, except for the ones who actually get those teaching jobs.

So who’s to blame for the overall “dumbing down” of the college experience? One time a professor of mine, an adjunct who does legal work, told me that the college experience was being ruined by democrats and liberals who insisted that a college education become something everyone can afford. In other words, college was becoming less important because the floodgates were open to all the working class- me and my peers, essentially.

I think it’s something deeper than resentment echoing from the elite. I think that maybe, a long time ago, someone decided that the people who belong in scholarly environments are those who can afford to be there. That has never been the case, but as a result, the market competitively moved to cater to more customers. Now that the task has been completed and there’s few people who aren’t going to college, college as-it-is has turned into a less than ideal place everyone needs to go to, but no one really belongs. It’s not just my University: This is the college experience that the working class has inherited.

College, Getting a Job, and the American Dream in the 21st Century (This is Blog 10)

2009-10-14T13:08:00.000-07:00

When I was in high school, I fell in love with Plato.

In retrospect it was probably because many of the other students in my intro to Philosophy class didn't like him, and I used to have this obsession with trying to "be different," but in my defense I've always been interested in politics and philosophy. And though I'm not politically savvy now and was even less so then, it was really no mystery to the eighteen year old me that we live in a muddled mess, and I found Plato's mystic alternative to be fascinating, to say the least.

I didn't care at all about school before my senior year of high school, and initially rejected my parents wishes for me to go away to a university. But my father, a truck driver, and my mother, who works in special needs, and my growing fascination with Plato ultimately convinced me that college was the right thing to do. So I went.

Though I was leaving behind a year-long high school relationship, a rock band, and all of my friends, college seemed like a pretty good place. There'd be people reading Shakespeare under the trees, or arguing about relativism at the lunch table. I'd be part of a new, unique "voice of the future," representing the first generation of working class people going to college, as my alma mater's president liked to say.

Unfortunately, when I finally moved in freshman year, I discovered that there wasn't a whole lot of that going on. Though there was plenty of people around, most couldn't be bothered to talk about deep questions. I did wind up joining a few politically based groups, but attendance was low. It seemed like everyone on campus was busy actually working between their classes. Where they doing? What else could be more important that scholastics?

A couple years in, and I'd resigned myself to the fact that that's just how college is. The humanities, I told myself, aren't important as they once were. It was evident by all of my peers, who showed little interest in academics, and where preparing to teach middle school or manage business.

I stayed firm with the scholastics, though. I gave all my projects 100 percent, and tried to learn about new things whenever I could. I borrowed books from the dusty old library, and made it a point to connect through the mist with the few dim lights of the other students like myself.

I told myself that people where the problem. People don't care! I thought. But I do. That's what makes me different. What makes me special.

Still, I was frustrated. I noticed other professors seemed frustrated, too, about the direction the administration was taking. I, who originally considered majoring in philosophy, and several of my professors where at a loss for words we when learned that the school's administration would be cutting the department. How can you have a university without a philosophy department? I remembered what my University's president had said about us being the "future" of college.

"Look around," he said once, at a special staff gathering (I worked as a Resident Assistant I the dorms) "What you see here is the future. In ten or twenty years, almost every university in the state is going to be like us."

Me and my peers, he reminded us, where some of the first in our families to go to college.

I couldn't be so optimistic, though. Something about the lack of interest in making college anything more than a degree factory bothered me. Then, one day, I met the alternative.

Because the administration was do determined at branching out and offering more courses than ever, I wound up having a lot of adjuncts and un-tenured professors, even in my 3000 and 4000 level classes.

One professor, and adjunct who also did legal work, told me and a few classmates after class that most of the students at my school "didn't belong to be in college."

"We just let everyone in, and as a result college has been dumbed down." he said.

I remember asking him if he was trying to tell me that I shouldn't be in college, but he denied that.

"You should be somewhere else, Joe." he said. "Why don't you apply at Rutgers, or somewhere out of state? Go Ivy league."

But he was wrong. I tried to explain to him that though my parents weren't poor, they could afford to pay the bill for my school, but any University that would've been a significant step up as a place of scholarship would be much more expensive. He never seemed to hear that, but before the course of the semester was over he made it a point to reiterate the same message to me, over and over again.

"You belong somewhere else."

Me and my peers are the first to go to college in our families. I don't know if we'll get jobs when we leave here. It just seems like there's so many of us. How could we possibly all be teachers next year? I've been lucky, because I never viewed my education as something strictly and have had a number of wonderful professors who've pointed me in various direction for my graduate studies.

But my university president is right. Around the nation, places like this are the first of their kind. Children of the world's remaining working class families can train for white-collar jobs, and join a class of living that's reserved for attorneys and accountants and other people who've snaked their way through letting the system work for them. But my adjunct professor is also right. Somehow, in making school and university something that everyone can do, the whole thing has changed. The process has "dumbed" down in a weird way, and now college is the new high school, grad school is the new college, etc. This is something everyone knows.

Who's fault is it that some people get to go to universities, and other people get degree factories called Universities? Is it the University, for having what would traditionally be considered low standards? Or is it the people in the beginning, who decided that monetary wealth should be the decided factor on who gets to go to college and who gets to work?

Reflection on my first essay

2009-10-07T17:44:00.000-07:00

So I realize that my first essay had some problems. For one, my personal stories aren't long enough. I felt like I spent a long time, but reading it over they're not nearly long enough. I also feel like they have a sort of "homily" quality to them which I really don't like. Was I meant for the priesthood? Please, no!

I feel like my essay needs more. If this were a paper, I'd feel like I need to hit up the library and do some more research.

This is probably my fault, but I came into this class assuming "Creative Nonfiction" was something like journalism, and that's clearly not the case.

I guess there are a few things I did right, though. I feel kinda optimistic about my topic, though, and think that if I focus on it again I can do better. I can probably be a little bit more personal, and focused now because I've already written the story before.

I guess I'll update this more after my talk with Dr. Chandler.

Draft

2009-10-03T18:37:00.000-07:00

The Language of Lies
by: Joseph Tingle

Unusual as it may be, I rely on the Muses of the world of rap, rock and heavy metal to draw inspiration for this personal essay, which I apologize for in advance as it's probably little more than a glorified free-write. Maynard Keenan and Tool have the stage:

We all feed on tragedy.
It's like blood to a vampire.

Now, lyricist, singer, wine-maker, political commentator, and amateur actor Maynard Keenan and cronies make a “good” though tragically-obsessed point. What is it? I'll get back to that.

When I lived in Chicago, a friend of mine from high school named “Dave” met a girl he was interested in. At one-hundred and some pounds overweight, Dave wasn't exactly what most women would consider “attractive.” Dave, of course, had an excellent personality, was thoughtful, sympathetic, easy to talk to, artistic, a “deep thinker” but not an athlete. One day, Dave met a cute (warning: high school terminology on the way) “gothic” girl in fishnets and a black skirt who fit his idea of beauty, and they began eating lunch together, talking on aim and the phone, going to concerts, and whatever else. This person loved talking and being with Dave, as people usually did. But what happened when the question of sex came up (it's inevitable between men and women, isn't it?)

This girl told Dave that she liked “guys who had problems,” and “people who lived on the fringe.”

Ah, classic representations of the pre-packaged, punk-rock sentiments on sale for $22.49 a tee at Hot-Topic. Unfortunately, it was only a couple days later when Dave told me that he didn't believe in God, thought he might be bipolar, and “always kinda thought he might have been molested as a child.”

Why did this person tell him these things? Was it to brush-off a “nice” but traditionally unattractive person? Or was she telling the truth? Or was it a combination of things?
The age of self-esteem tells us that we should be happy with ourselves, and that we shouldn't be afraid to be different. Eminem:

Don't let 'em say you ain't beautiful.
They can all get f---ed. Just stay true to you.

I used to write for an alternative newspaper named The Steaming Pipe. The Pipe started as a campus paper in the vein of the Medium or the old Village Voice, slowly grew into a local paper, then finally a multi-university arts magazine before imploding. Like Eminem, the paper flaunted itself as a source of controversy. It made liberal use of the word f---, and made sure that you knew it did so for some vague, counter-reactionary reason reminiscent of colonial pamphleteering.

When the University's Student Organization had problems with it's electronic voting system and had to postpone the election, the Pipe reported with the semantic accuracy attainable only by English majors “Student Org. Fixes Election.” When I wrote an article about how Student Organization was purchasing a lobby from the University for 1.3 million dollars, I stood by silently as the editor abrasively but accurately titled my story “Student Org gives 1.3 million to school.”

As it turned out, I wasn't artsy or edgy enough for the Pipe, and left as it turned into a full-fledged alternative arts magazine.

What is it? The people who write are the people who feel they have something to communicate. More often than not, the people who have something to communicate are the same who are somehow unsatisfied, negative, “deep thinkers” who have been through something life-changing. But writing is a sincere practice, isn't it? Where is the sincerity in exaggeration? Where is the sincerity is pretending to be “deep?” Where is the sincerity in over-dramatizing?

When I was younger, my best friend's dad had a drinking problem. Though he was never hit by his dad, he constantly felt like he was being verbally abused, unable to meet the expectations of that person. Resentment for his father grew and grew, until he dropped out of college and moved out of the house at the age of nineteen.

Though their relationship is now probably better than it's ever been, his perception of his father has traditionally been a negative one. He sees his father as a unfaithful boozer, an opportunist, an abuser and is tormented by his memory of him daily.

I see his father as I see my own, an imperfect, old fashioned human being who has made tons of mistakes, but nearly always attempts to do the “right thing” if not right away then at least eventually.

We're brothers, but we have different fathers. My mother, on the other hand, sees them both. There's parts of both of us in her.

Sometimes, I feel that I could dig up my brother's or some other poor soul's torment, and make it my own. Sometimes, I feel that I need to sensationalize my own experience, act generally unhappy, or lived some kind of fantastic life to be a writer. But that isn't true, is it? Where is the sincerity in that?

Society tells us it's okay to be ourselves, but somewhere, for some reason, writers make us feel like we have to have emotional scars to be noteworthy, to sell. Why is this? Is it about the combination of our hippie parent's self-esteem doctrine and the super-individuality emphasis of American capitalism that makes us feel like we have to be scared of tradition and “normal-ness” to be heard?

To be noticed, we need to stand out from the group. To stand out from the group, we need to have some kind of noticeable scar, real or invented. Writing is one of the oldest means in which people have attempted to reach immortality.

As humans, we love drama, especially the kind that we don't have to be a part of. And sometimes we'll go as far as to sensationalize the mundane in order to experience a little bit of that drama if we have to, because that makes us “deep,” and “special,” sets us apart from the group and gives us something to write about, occasionally by throwing sincerity to the fire. After all, that's what sells.

Maybe being yourself doesn't have to included acting deep, or like you have a cross to bear, or shooting an elephant like Orwell. As another band, dredg, tell us:

All you need is a modest house
in a modest neighborhood
in a modest town where honest people dwell.

Making the cleanest energy
for the greenest plants to grow,
the richest soil
that is wet with the freshest rain.

Then, you can sit in your backyard,
and watch stars come over the tallest mountaintop
because they unveil honest opinions about the stars.

Only language can tell lies.

The truth, lies, and "The Truth"

2009-10-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

So, sometimes you can tell a lie to get at a greater, capital-T "Truth." That, essentially, is the point of O'Brien's essay and according to him, the point of a good war story. But how does this happen?

It reminds me of the movie Platoon. That movie isn't based on a true story, and no real platoon in Vietnam had an experience as terrible as that one, but the movie manages to include all the terrible things about Vietnam in one film. The film manages to tell the "true" Vietnam story without actually telling a true story.

Can I think of anything similar?

A lot of creative nonfiction seems this way. Not necessarily true, but at the same time very True. I wonder, though, how untrue something can be before it stops being nonfiction? If I wrote a story about my family, and everyone read it and said "but I never did that!" would it be O.K. as long as it expressed some general Truth? This just occurred to me: Is James Joyce's "Dubliners" and "Portrait of the Artists as a Young Man" creative nonfiction, or even some kind of early precursor? Is any semi-autobiographical work creative nonfiction? What about Tobias Wolff's "Old School" some kind of creative nonfiction?

Is this even relevant? Damn me, I'm such a discussion de-railer.

My personal essay

2009-09-26T18:23:00.000-07:00

To be honest, I'm kinda already worried that this personal essay is going to kick my ass. Right now, I can't think of a concept. I can't even think of a potential concept. I can't even begin to think of a potential concept!

But I think Schwartz' method is best. I'd love to use Orwell's, but I'm not even half the writer that he was, and I'm not nearly as smart to bring whatever issue I'm talking about to the forefront. So I think I'll go with Schwartz, and do a story-telling essay.

But a story about what? It's not like I have a ton of personal experience to draw from.

Actually, I think I do have something. But it's so close to me... hardly the type of thing that I think I can just put out there. I can't write if I'm too concerned about who will read what I've written... what I think I've got bubbling up inside me could hurt a few *still living* people.

I'm so confused/intimidated/unwilling right now. I can't move until I think about this, because I don't even want to face what I have to write about.

This is a pathetic excuse for a blog! But I need time to think, and recover. Sorry, everyone.

"Alive" and "Westbury Place"

2009-09-24T07:16:00.000-07:00

First and foremost, I've got to admit that "Alive" had me on the edge of my seat through its duration. "Alive" was brief, but extremely introspective and thought provoking. There's some of those "truth seeking" elements here, too.

I really like the fact that the author is an ex-police officer. This person obviously has some unique experience to draw from, and as a writer I sometimes feel that that's something I don't have enough of. To write, you need to have gone through something, right? I feel like there's something there which I could dig up, but it can't be forced, right?

Maybe that's why there's so many crappy fantasy writers. No real world experience? Good writing skills? No worries, there's a spot for you next to R.A. Salvatore and Kevin J. Anderson! And, if made up worlds aren't enough and you want to pretend your fantasy land is real after all, you could always just start blogging from a marxist/libertarian perspective.

Anyway, the author of this story used real world experience and introspective reflection to come to an understanding- albeit a jaded, paranoid one- about life in general. Experiences do shape our understandings, and that was the point of both "Alive" and "Westbury," though who knows if the respective authors would agree.

That's pretty much the goal of Creative Nonfiction- to discover how one's experiences have led them to a certain understanding- is it not?

On a side note, I can't believe how quickly my idea of what's creative nonfiction is changing. I look back at my first post with a little bit of embarassment now.

Schrawtz

2009-09-19T15:10:00.000-07:00

First off, let me comment on what a pretentious rant my last post was! Sometimes, I truly do wonder what I'm thinking when I write these things. Then again, the point of "blogging" is not to come up with a clearly thought-out, consistent essay, but a clearly articulated "blurb" or some other kind of representation of thought.

Anyway, aside from the Orwell piece, the Schrawtz essay was my favorite thus far. The essay, more like a novel or a memoir, is set-up like a movie, with different chunks representing different progressing scenes, or progression's in the author's maturity. I found it odd that Schrawtz calls her father a "hick" early on- clearly he's not, but that maturity comes later on when she's visited Rindhiem with her family.

As for me, I barely noticed the blocks of text. Before I even realized that they were there, I knew as I was reading the essay that certain parts had their own significance, like the author's considering her father a "hick" or the transformed father playing golf and saying things like "you're lucky to be here."

But, as I'm made to think about it, the blocks represent episodes. Things that say, "although this is all related, this part in important for special consideration as it has it's makes it's own special contribution to the rest of the work."

P.S. ASchwartz' essay and other's like them don't represent self-absorbed stuff I mentioned in my previous post, in my opinion. I liked it quite a bit. She and her father were the focus, but it had overarching themes about immigration, nostalgia, personal maturity, and national pride. I think that's what creative nonfiction should always have, even if it's autobiographical.

Montaigne, Orwell, and the "contemporary voice"

2009-09-16T15:21:00.000-07:00

The essay seems to be progressing towards a greater focus on the individual. While both Montaigne and Orwell introspectively reflect on some greater social issue, I find that many contemporary essays are about the author, and sometimes only about the author, without any element of other commentary. I think I can best illustrate this by using an author, David Sedaris, as an example.

I remember a friend of mine, Angel, introducing me to a supposed body of "essays" by Sedaris, Naked. I soon learned, however, that "Naked" was merely a collection of unrelated, and probably exaggerated, personal memoirs. Some of the stories had a point, while others didn't.

I remember thinking to myself after reading Naked, "Well, isn't that petty?" Why is it that seemingly everything written since The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is bogged down in a masturbatory kind of personal obsession? Don't get me wrong- I really liked Naked. Sedaris presents himself as intelligent, worldly, and charming. But I also felt strongly that the book was an otherwise pointless exercise.

It's petty, and it's because of this petty self-obsession that nationally our arts and humanities are stereotypically considered petty subjects by plenty of people (Come on, English majors! Don't act like you don't get weird looks when people ask why you major in what you do! Why do you think the university and universities everywhere now only offer humanity programs as coupled with degrees in "Education"? Academic-Industrial Complex, anyone?)

The arts have become equally as self-obsessed. That a world-wide economic crisis hasn't prompted some people to re-evaluate just why and how-the-hell their tax dollars have wound up supporting museums (which would never stand on their own in the market) full scrbbles, blank canvases and "art" like piss christ is simply baffling. At least self absorbed shit like 808s & Heartbreak comes from and is supported by people who pay to play, rather than a collective gov't effort impossible to opt out of.

Orwell had a point, as did Montaigne, and it pisses me off when I realize that writing simply isn't an occupation people with points consider viable. People like Orwell in our society don't even consider writing a book or starting a blog, because the market and the blogs are already full of masturbatory porn- people obsessed with having themselves and their personality be the focus have already taken over the news, music, academia, creative writing, and who knows what next. Why would someone with good ideas even go there?

Now, Orwell, there's an author worth emulating!

That's not to say that an author can ever be disconnected with his or her work. What you write is always about you, to a point- but it shouldn't be all about you. My post here isn't about me- it's about a lot more than that- but when you read it it should be apparent that it's written by a pessimistic person concerned with the relevancy of his probable future profession.

There's an important distinction with you showing through your writing- like Orwell- and your writing existed merely as means for you to show people who cute or clever or trendy or intellectual you are. Somewhere in the 60s and the birth of Gonzo journalism, that distinction started disappearing, and now it's all but erased.

I realize this is kind of an unfocused (and maybe unfair) rant... but isn't that what blogs are for?

Kincaid and Lott

2009-09-13T13:34:00.000-07:00

Lott's definition of creative nonfiction, a process designed for people to understand, seems fair enough. Though I wasn't a fan of Lott's endless bravado, Kincaid seems to do a good job at presenting Lott's philosophy. In Biography of a Dress Kincaid describes an entire world around one old photograph, and likely comes to an understanding of it that couldn't be acquired from a quick glance.

In my last post I said that creative nonfiction is humanizing. But after reading the two essays, I'd also like to say that it's also about discovery. Creative nonfiction doesn't only humanize factual information. Sometimes, it is just as much, if not more, an exploratory truth-seeking process.

Creative Nonfiction...

2009-09-08T14:40:00.000-07:00

...can mean a lot of different things. There's people like Kean's Professor Connor who write books about historical figures. That's Creative Nonfiction. There's people like myself who write features for our newspaper, The Tower, and that's Creative Nonfiction too. There's blogs like this, and people who write journals. The underlying similarity is that all these things contain information which is supposed to be mostly true and supposed to be entertaining. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem like a very good definition.

Creative Nonfiction isn't as much of a genre as it is a process- a particularly humanizing one at that. Encyclopedias & budget reports & policy manuals are full of nonfictional information, but they don't contain information that's interesting to people. They're cold and systematic- the types of things few people are willing to read and even fewer find themselves enjoying.

The human concern, however, is the most important aspect of any writing endeavor. Creative Nonfiction, as I would like to define it, is a truth-telling process that presents factual information as it is relevant and sympathetic to human concerns. It's a presentation of the "real" world, sympathetic to the real concerns of the people who really go through it.

This is my blog for creative nonfiction...

2009-09-03T11:53:00.000-07:00

...I'll be covering a number of topics this semester, it seems. A quick glance at the course calender reveals discussions on "what is creative nonfiction?" "working between story and reflection," "essays about place, objects, and processes," and finally, "becoming a writer."

This all sounds very fun and exciting! I can't wait to get started.