Marie

So reads the title of the Phrontisterion's upcoming event. The Phrontisterion, Evergreen's Classical Studies Club, has traditionally organized events solo, but for our next project we're getting some awesome – and much needed – help from the Writers' Guild.

We had originally planned to host a benefit show to revitalize our scant budget (we spent lots of money Winter Quarter on face paint, feathers, and other carnivalesque items) but we realized that our event would be much more successful if we reached out to other corners of the community. Since our group focuses largely on academia – a focus happily interrupted by Ancient Greek comedies and hopscotch – we figured our audience is also intensely interested in writing. So we decided to organize our event around all three of these aspects – Classics, music, and writing. Four to six students and one teacher will read original Classics-inspired poetry at the event, an activity that will set the stage for two local musical acts: Moonstruck, a six-person indie rock ensemble, and Adam Jessup, a singer-songwriter.

Hopefully our collaboration with the Writers' Guild will pay off with double the audience, double the energy...and if we're so lucky, double the donations. :)

Posted by Marie at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This spring I'm taking a literary arts and theory program called Monstrous Possibility. A hybrid of creative and analytic writing, we're garnering inspiration for our work from an eclectic range of authors: Samuel Beckett, Gertrude Stein, Friedrich Neitschze, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, and others. Our assignment this week is to write with constraints; that is, to establish a set of 13 rules and rituals by which to govern, not necessarily the content, but the direction of our work. (The assignment is dubbed "Toward the Zero Point", by the way, with our teachers encouraging us to "write toward meaninglessness").

So here are the conditions of my writing sessions. Before beginning to write: eat a bowl of yogurt with granola, strawberry, and apple; do one 4-7-8 breathing cycle; collect a few excellent quotes from Edith Wharton's House of Mirth; turn off cell phone; put hair up, and heat my room. While writing: use a black liquid (but not felt-tip) pen, avoid using alliteration for merely its own sake; avoid making use of space (i.e., let the words do their "non-spatial" thing); insert a reference to fruit, and insert at least one line from The House of Mirth. After writing, let hair down. All this in my last constraint: a span of 45 minutes.

Posted by Marie at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This spring break, I spent the week on my uncle's houseboat in Seattle. Docked on Lake Union, it has a great view of downtown Seattle and Queen Anne, with the Space Needle seeming only a stone's throw away. Even though I lived in Seattle for a summer when I was 18, I spent most of my break doing the tourist thing. I went to the Seattle Art Museum to see the Roman art exhibit, which was great, but after seeing 30 or so marble statues of emperors and their wives, I sort of got the picture and was ready to move on...the best part was the Gates of Paradise exhibit. The Gates are made up of 9 bronze panels, each depicting a scene from Genesis. It begins with Adam and Eve, moving through the stories of Noah, Cain and Abel, Abraham, and other major biblical figures. Only three of the panels are on display, but the incredible detail of the carvings makes the trip worth it.

On my last night in Seattle, I went to a show at the Sunset Tavern in Ballard. The feature was my friends' band from NYC, The Lisps. I have their first CD and have always been a fan, but their live show blew me away. It was by far one of the most entertaining performances I've ever seen, complete with a chase scene and an epic improv about boats...The Lisps are so awesome that I'm gonna' plug them. Their website is thelisps.com and they also have a myspace page. Check out these tracks for maximum listening satisfaction: "Pepperspray", "Documents", "Brackish Water", and "Heaven".

Posted by Marie at 06:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)