SPECTRUM

There’s something about the list format that absolutely belongs in a blog post. I’m not sure if reading too many Buzzfeed articles has brainwashed me; possible mental influence aside, I seem to have no choice but to present my last tumblr post in nice, sequential order. Prepare yourself. 

1) Writing? Are You There? This course has led to a couple of discoveries about writing. The first is that writing blog posts isn’t as easy as you might think it to be - there’s a weird pressure to remain both humorous and reflective, as if these posts are a reflection of the deep, dark subconscious. Another thing I’ve learnt 

(sidenote: Isn’t it strange that the English say “learnt” while Americans say “learned”? This is the kind of identity crisis I struggle with on a daily basis: to write what I learnt to be true as a child, or conform to what I learned later in life)

is that being a writer in a media is, again, not as easy as one might think. I’m taking a course on “distracted reading” and one thing that we discuss often in class is how it’s now possible for everyone to be a writer. In my mind, this both lowers the caliber of writing readily available and raises the stakes for writers attempting to make a living. In reference to my education, one thing I would note is how difficult it is to view blog posts as actual assignments. Although my mind can acknowledge that blog posts are my grade, and that they are especially important in a course aptly called

(or, as you might say, named)

Writing for Media, it’s very difficult to give the same weight to posts as I do to essays. I think this must be because of how my generation was raised - with a sharp focus on essays. We trained for written exams, and in our English classes we were taught that books are written to be analyzed. It’s clear that this is a mentality that’s going to have to change for future generations (our brains are changing, right?) but right now, I find it difficult. I almost feel like I should construct a thesis explaining why. 

2) Ah; The Video.

Is it bad to say that my biggest struggle was deciding on how much emphasis I should give to the phrase “cunt punt”?

Just kidding! (I’m not - it was a real difficulty) This video was a great learning experience for me. My main task was being the voice behind the video: I edited the speech down and recorded it quite a few times, getting strangely comfortable with its tyrannical vulgarity. My mother always said I could rule the world, and reading this letter out loud a few times made me believe I actually may, one day. 

After I perfected the voice-over, we all sat down to splice together images and music. We went through quite a few different songs - one finalist was the theme song to Halo 4, my guilty pleasure - before deciding on the title song to another one of my guilty pleasures: a little HBO show called The Leftovers. Fantastic show. I highly recommend it. Regardless, figuring out iMovie proved to be a real challenge, and attempting to splice together the music in a way that worked logically with the sophisticated narrative structure of my voice-over was equally difficult. 

I’m actually really grateful to have a basic understanding of iMovie now. I would not want this video to go viral (especially considering what it was entitled by my peers after I left the editing session) but having a deeper knowledge of editing and recording has inspired me somewhat. I want to make another video, and I want to make it really, really good. 

3) The Last Remark

My relationship with likes (and other public forms of approval) is much more complicated than it used to be. I find myself actively caring where I once didn’t, and, as a result, my Facebook posts have been more carefully selected. It’s interesting to think that we only present the best version of ourselves via social media. Once the world understands it all a little more, I would love to get a disgustingly qualified team of psychoanalysts to delve into various Facebook profiles and discuss what can be revealed about each author. 

Another thing: going viral. It’s still something I want to do (I’m apparently just narcissistic enough) but this course has affirmed my belief that one has to go viral for the right reasons. If you remember, one of my dreams is to write a book and have the amazingly crafted book trailer for it go viral - this is still a dream of mine. I think that would be the coolest thing ever. That being said, I no longer have secret fantasies about being approached by Jimmy Fallon on the street and turned into a YouTube sensation. 

And here we come to an end. My main takeaway from the course is this: there are many different factors that go into the relationship between writing and media, and by the time I understand them all there will probably be another few hundred to catch up on. The nature of this beast is that it’s always one step ahead of you. 

(If that’s too pessimistic of a note to end on, let me say that I’ve also discovered the value behind uttering the phrase “Newsflash, you stupid cocks” with a straight face.)

My second attempt. Can’t you just imagine him saying this in his weird, raspy tone, and then wandering off to cook some meth? I totally can. 

This is my first submission for the Floral Telegraph project. I chose the phrase “If the weather should be fine” because it’s awkwardly worded in a way that appeals to my innate qualities. Also, talk about a great life motto! It manages to be fun while remaining noncommittal, like it’s exuding an aura of spontaneity that hides its secret desire to stay inside watching Netflix. “If the weather should be fine”: meaning, of course, “If the weather is bad then I’m not moving. But sure, if the weather should be fine. I could rally.”

Genius. Pure, simple genius. No-one can get mad at you for rain. Even a little bit of wind throws off the whole concept of fine weather, really. It’s all up to interpretation. 

Anyway, I chose this idyllic picture because I used to really enjoy flying kites as a kid, and the idea of gigantic flowers floating in the sky came absurdly naturally to me. When I first started playing around with this picture the flowers looked like weird alien matter, and I’m having trouble separating that idea from the end result. Nevertheless, I’m pleased with this. I think it would look great on a calendar. Perhaps I’ll make a floral calendar one day. Who knows?

You told us to do something original, and interesting. 

I hereby defy you.

I don’t, actually. I was searching around for the most posted captions/hashtags on Flickr (I don’t have an Instagram) and I came across a very interesting fact: one of the most popular captions is “love”.

Well, I thought to myself, staring at my screen. This could be fun.

I was only a little bit wrong - love, as it turns out, is painfully boring in the world of Flickr. This, of course, makes it endlessly fun, but I really have to work to bring out the entertainment hidden within the endless photos of “love”. 

As I was scrolling through these pictures, I noticed something interesting about the human race: we love a lot of things. A lot of really dumb, really boring things. Do you know what the most common photo I saw captioned “love” looked like? Two animals stretching their necks to one another. Popular others included hearts made out of hands, various cute animals, scenic pictures, and the occasional rose. People were featured much less than expected - I was picturing sappy selfies of couples enjoying one another’s company, but I was surprisingly wrong. It turns out we don’t love each other. We love just about everything else, sure, but other people? Bah. The majority of people pictures I saw on Flickr were those involving babies, or clearly different cultures (why Japanese geisha looking at the camera is considered love completely baffles me. These women could hate each other). In contrast, he only couples featured were predominantly heterosexual and white. How’s that for an appreciation of diversity?

These photographs have completely reshaped my understanding of love. Clearly I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time! Love isn’t about your partner, or your friends, or your family - it’s about dogs and strangers who dress in things you’ve never dressed in. Next time I’m wandering through Isla Vista, I pledge to approach the most obviously culturally aware person and inform them of the greats service they are doing for the world in their inescapable promotion of love.

I’m left wondering what these definitions of love point to. Is it a deeper insecurity of one’s place in the world? They can’t post pictures of love as they view it, because their experiences are mediocre compared to the greater love circulating the globe? Perhaps they feel their love experiences really don’t compare to those of two swans reaching for the same fish. I really can’t say, for sure. I can say I’m not getting an Instagram, or a Flickr account, any time in the near future. Regardless, I’m happy to have explored the deeper meaning behind a concept I clearly know nothing about. I’m eternally grateful to have seen the picture of a sun suspended within layers of clouds, as the sun is, again, a concept entirely new to me. 

Let the record show that on Sunday, April 3rd, 2015, I, Alyssa Marie Paxevanos-Evans, spent a whole 24 hours without my phone. 

A day. A full day. It lay dormant in my top drawer, discarded among scraps of paper and pens that no longer work. The occasional bobby pin. An old chapstick. For 24 hours, my phone lay upon a bed of forgotten indifference. 

I’m actually making this sound much more dramatic than it was; ‘tis true, I suppose, that I spent a good day without my phone, but this in itself wasn’t all that surprising. More surprising, in my opinion, is how easy it was. 

I prepared for the day well: my family and friends were informed of the trials I was assigned, and I laid aside the time to focus on homework that needed to be done. All in all, I did not find myself missing my phone much. I will say that it proved inconvenient at certain points - I kept my entire group waiting outside for far longer than they should have been - but it’s incredible how much time is often chewed up by just checking the time on your phone, as oppose to a watch, or your computer. I almost think of the phone as a doorway to distraction; checking the time turns into a response to a text, or email, or a quick scroll through Facebook and a couple of snapchats sent and, before you’re really aware, ten minutes has gone down the drain. If the phone is this doorway, it was nice to put a few locks in place. 

So, in summation, not a particularly difficult endeavor. I actually find I have the urge to repeat it. I think if I had done a full-blown no technology day, my life would have been exponentially more difficult; saying goodbye to social media is easy, but forgoing the convenience of my computer is not a sacrifice I’m willing to make. I’ll try it in a couple of weeks and see how I do. 

I have a friend who’s getting a tattoo on his arm that says “Disconnect to Reconnect” - his belief being that we need to step back from technology to fully appreciate the environments in which we live. Ironically enough, the day I spent on Sunday was among the least social I’ve spent in a while, and as I spent the day doing homework I was in no way connected to my natural environment. So friend, if you’re reading this, please understand that I think your future tattoo is dumb. 

What would Harper Lee do?

This is the question that plagued me late into the night for the majority of last week. Why, you ask? It’s simple: Wikipedia. 

First things first - that place is competitive. Within one day of making my first edit to this page my delicate words were ripped from their rightful place, replaced by the same shoddy workmanship that preceded them. 

Not that I’m bitter.

Regardless, I’m grateful for the time I spent on Wikipedia. I touched on this in my last post, but deciding what to edit was actually the hardest part of my journey. The articles that desperately needed help mostly lay outside my realm of expertise - Azerbaijan articles need attention? You really want me to take a whack at those? - and I actually became kind of dispirited as I floated through pages upon pages of content I had no connection with. 

Anyway, I eventually decided to edit some of the character sections of the “List of To Kill a Mockingbird Characters” page, and after reading through it quickly for the first time I knew my changes were going to be mostly superficial. This thesis remained consistent throughout my experience; it wasn’t the content that needed editing, it was the construction. 

So I set off into the unknown, fingers at the ready. I deftly wove words from my keys, constantly asking myself what would Harper Lee do? Dammit, what would she do? (I’m guessing she wouldn’t create a Wikipedia page full of spoilers, but that’s another matter). 

The easiest part of my experience: the actual writing. I enjoy editing, and I enjoy this book, so writing on each of the character’s proved to be an enjoyable act. 

The hardest part of my experience: swallowing my pride. When I saw my Atticus Finch section had been changed to this nonsense, I was appalled. Why was my notable quote removed for this section, but not for Scout’s? Why were my sentences decimated? Why, why, why? 

(You may compare my version to their version and make the choice for yourself).

I will be editing the Wikipedia article on “List of To Kill a Mockingbird Characters”. The main problems of this article lie within the poor writing style of the author - it isn’t awful, but I feel sentences such as “He is a wise and caring father. Atticus is nearly fifty” could be spliced together in a more delicate manner. I also think the character summaries could be infused with slightly more analysis. 

The bulk of my editing will be done in the main character section of this Wikipedia article; many sections are fine. 

To ensure I am paying each character fair attention, I will be rereading To Kill a Mockingbird and taking detailed notes on character behavior. I will also be including a memorable quote from each main character. 

Educational vs. Viral. A battle for the ages. 

We begin with some Khan Academy. I’ve long been a fan of Khan academy, if I’m telling the truth. There is something very endearing about this man’s voice, something tantalizingly adorable in his occasional, confident sniff - and then there’s the sheer passion he uses to describe “The Beauty of Algebra” assuring his eager listeners that yes, yes, we can indeed find meaning within the abstract walls of numbers and equations. 

I love Khan. 

But why do other people love Khan? Educational videos aren’t generally the most popular kid on the block, but this damn “Beauty of Algebra” video has almost 2 million views - that isn’t bad, all things considered. As far as educational videos go, this is a fairly compelling one. It opens with a quote from Galileo, one that our narrator feels points to the fundamental beauty that lies within the abstraction of algebra. 

It’s a solid topic choice. The video covers some of algebra’s basics, skillfully leading its audience around its various nuances. If I’m being honest, the tone of this video is a little dry. Much as I adore Khan’s dedication to the beauty of algebra, talking for ten minutes about how p can equal 5 loafs of bread doesn’t pierce my heart as much as I feel it should. I think the title of this video is interesting as it lends a vague desperation to the piece (please listen to me talk about algebra! It’s pretty, I swear!) - although, that being said, it allows algebra to be drawn into a new light. 

General consensus on this video: Solid choice, Khan. You’ve given me a good understanding of what lies ahead, and I may choose to share this video with my more mathematically inclined father. Bravo. 

...and then we get to our viral video. 

The title for this piece is simple: “Surprised Kitty (Original)”. 

Already, I’m intrigued. My heart starts to beat a little faster, thoughts racing through my head - a kitty? How big? And surprised? Jesus, what does a surprised cat look like? - so I steel my nerves and press play. 

 Spoiler: It’s just as god damn cute as it sounds. 

The contrast between these two videos will never, ever stop amusing me. On one hand we have a well structured video about math, the universe, applications towards something greater than ourselves; on the other hand, we have a little kitten with paws the size of my thumb expressing delight in a weird, adorable game of peek-a-boo. 

Surprised Kitty has over 75 million views. I wouldn’t be surprised if I contributed to a good half of them. 

I think the real beauty of this video lies within its blatant exploitation of the cute radar in our brain - we see a cat, and we melt. Khan has to work much harder to draw in its audience (hence the ambiguous title), but Surprised Kitty can simply rely on the everlasting appeal of fur. 

In conclusion, I think each video is appropriately structured to please its audiences. “Surprised Kitty” is poor quality, simple, and simply brilliant; “The Beauty of Algebra” is lengthy, informative, well-planned, and unfortunately tiresome. The promise of sheer satisfaction lies with our kitten video, but Khan does a good job of appealing to a group of people that may need to foster their love for algebra before further delving into the subject. At the end of the day I will always choose seventeen seconds of cuteness over ten minutes of mathematics, but that’s not to say Khan didn’t try.

Links are below. Please enjoy. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpCJyQ2usJ4

In their articles Hickey, McLuhan, and Benjamin discuss theconcerns they have with technology’s everlasting grip on the world. Each writer presents their concerns in different ways, but the unifying theme throughout these three pieces is this: technology has had, will have, or could have negative impacts on our society.

We’ll start with Hickey. According to Hickey, one of the main problems facing society today is the lack of art weaved into its construction. Hickey feels we are, by nature, an anxious bunch, and we partake in various activities to try and dispel ourselves of this anxiety. The problem with the world is that “the live discourse about art is over, and what Susan Sontag calls the “erotics” of art has been wholly supplanted by the language of bureaucratic explanation” (p. 2), thereby furthering the anxiety each person lives with. If we cannot discuss art, we cannot civilize ourselves; we are more inclined to acts of violence in the desperate attempt to rid our being of the treacherous burden of anxiety.

Unfortunately for Hickey, I am inclined to think his argument is “elitist balderdash” (p.3). And yes – I did just take Hickey’s own words out of context to use against him (not necessarily the most mature thing I’ve ever done, but I stand by my decision). I felt very strongly while reading this article that Hickey had in his mind the idea of a “noble savage” – the notion that all societies preceding ours were just in their violence; elegant in their betrayal. The “noble savage” is an image that plagues the modern man, reminding him fondly of a time he was not fortunate enough to be alive in. This is what I want to say most to Hickey: human beings are, by nature, not all that nice. It is not art that civilizes us; it is a conscious effort to be better.

Hickey believes “we have reached a point at which members of the literate populace have a right to ask just what kind of a world they are being asked to inhabit” (p. 3). I have a few responses to this.

1)    My dear fellow, using big words does not automatically place you into this group of the population.

2)    And even if it did, I strongly object to the obscene amount of adverbs in your writing.

3)    I’ll tell you what kind of world we live in: a damn good one compared to what it used to be. There is no doubt that our world is deeply troubled, and has many flaws, but that fact alone does not set this period in history apart from any other. Art has been around for centuries, long before civilization (as we now regard it) descended upon society. Take the Romans as an example, a civilization that prized art…and entertainment in the form of death. Art has existed just as long as savagery has – often intertwined. Cavemen painted walls with the blood of their enemies; the Mayans built monuments from the skulls of their sacrifices; an emphasis on literature soared in the Victorian era – along with child labor.

Hickey seems to think that art is losing its place in our society, and it is this loss that ferments the sense of anxiety he perceives within each of us. I would like to ask Hickey when exactly it was that art stopped us from being murderous assholes.

In my rampant rage, I far exceeded my word count. A brief note on the other readings, starting with McLuhan. In “The Medium is the Message” McLuhan questions the effects media is having on us – an idea I find very intriguing. Trying to understand the long-term effects technology might be having on us is definitely a worrying idea, but it’s fun to think of in an “impending doom” sort of way.

I found Benjamin’s take on the authenticity of art mildly fascinating. In “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Benjamin examines the idea that art loses its unique qualities each time it is reproduced. In a world such as ours, where everything can be captured by a lens, or copied to perfection, it can be hard for art to retain its “aura”. It is interesting to consider this essay in relation to Benjamin’s time period (1935) with ours, almost 80 years later – what would Benjamin think of our obsession with sharing sunsets? Or our ability to upload a picture in seconds?

We are given a choice to describe our writing.

(I’m aware this might sound pretentious. Almost as if I’m readying myself to launch into an inspirational spiel on what it truly means to be a writer, those stubborn, omniscient, glorious forces that push us in the direction of meaning and purpose - and if we can discover this choice we will discover true depth, capture the flowing irregularities of the beauty that rests within the particles of the air we breathe - I swear, this isn't what I’m going towards. My teacher actually gave us a choice.)

We are given a choice to describe our writing. One of three, if I’m being specific: drawing, picture, or metaphor. 

As I don’t have the means currently to take a picture, I immediately remove it from the list. As for the drawing - well, all you need to know about my skills as an artist lie within my proudest illustration, a perfectly drawn cube. 

So, we are given a choice to describe our writing, and (in a horribly unoriginal turn of events) I choose metaphor.

My writing is like blood.

Now bear with me on this one, because it is actually a concept inspired by the late, great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. (I worry we are slipping back into the prickly grey area of grandiosity. Just keep reading.) See, Nietzsche urged his audience to write with blood. “I love only what a person hath written with his blood” Nietzsche cries from his mountain of superiority, scribbling furiously onto a thin piece of paper. Fascinating though, isn’t it? To write with blood, to actually smear your lukewarm, oxidized, red, liquid life-force onto the page and call it “writing”. It is such a wonderfully melodramatic concept - I laugh at it even as I scramble towards it. 

Here’s my train of thought: If I could be made of something, it would be ink. Black ink. Thick ink. Ink instead of blood. Heavy ink. That’s what I would like, to be made of little words that run up and down the walls of my veins, searching for a way out. And if that is what I desire to be made of most - this thick, heavy ink - then it makes sense to me that my writing style is...like blood.

When I sit down to write there is at first a slow trickle, like a little puncture has been pierced in my brain. The wound widens; more is released. Words start to flow - phrases and images spilling out - and when I’ve had enough I close myself back up, leaving words to circle round my body while I lie unawares.