Final Responses

Camillo- I like this profile of a fun, if somewhat typical, international student at K college. I think your kicker kind of describes the rest of the piece in that he's a motivated young African man who is definitely going places. I liked the idea you're using for your documentary better though, I'm interested to see the tension between local students and the international kids. Maybe Rufus sees one of the in state kids wasting a bunch of food in the caf, that could be dramatic. I don't know what I'd change here besides your subject, but I think I've just read too many student profiles.

Marni- I like this piece as an expose of a pretty selfish and misleading system, but I was kind of looking forward to you trashing it or flipping out like in class. I like all the people you chose to interview, especially students who don't have a meal plan presumably, it makes it more relevant to our campus. I also thought that in class you said you had interviewed a Meijer employee of some sort, or you said you couldn't, anyway I think it would be good to have some really weak, bullshit defense to support your offense. 

Schafer- Really good opening and I like how you characterize Bardeen from a student's perspective, which means it was idealized and made up. I like that groups of students intending on participating in illegal activities don't overlap, but rather vie for the location or intentionally ignore each other. Weird, nitpicky complaint, I think you use 'some' too often, some pot, some shad, some solar rays, it's not totally necessary, you know? Way to incorporate soil creep in there too, did you take Physical Earth? I think I would try to add some conflict between the people that frequent the spot. Like a scene of the security guard chasing out some pot-smokers, or get some stories from students about experiences there. 

Mary- Good job at profiling a culture and interviewing people that are really pertinent to your expose, as it were. It's really interesting how much you bring up the legal issues, and how you compare our naked culture to that of other higher education institutions. I was wondering where the elbow-breaking part was, I thought that was going to fit in right when you were talking about observers sexualizing nudity. You're writing is really tight as always, and I'm not sure I agree with Marin about you not including yourself in it. You insert yourself for a second which makes you seem unsure too, so say take the plunge or just keep your pants on, so to speak.

Emily- I enjoyed your descriptions of your relationship to Bourdon, especially the fourth paragraph and the kicker, it's really indicative of what you called 'search for role models.' I think you could have expanded on Africans being agressive towards her husband just to inject a little drama, and I think you slip a little too much into her history as opposed to the meat of her personality, you know? But that kind of thing is hard when you're just sitting down in the Strutt, you have to hang out with people for months to get their real personality on paper. She does come through in her quotes though, and I like her city persona. 

Maureen- This is an interesting profile, I think kind of a revisal of your last one, and this one is definitely better. I like the explanatory Pixely, and then the illustrative Javin. It's interesting he talks trash about the cliques, but that's really what he wants. I was wondering what his life was like back home, more specifically in high school. I really like your little details about who his neighbors are and a little bit of your interpretation of his habits quickly rectified by his interpretation of his habits. I like that he is so contradictory, saying certain things and feeling others, and so it was really good that you had Pixely's comment about counter-intuition in there. 

week 10 reading

Slouching towards Bethlehem is one crazy read. It did a lot to purify my view of the era which is usually only described through rose, or poop-colored glasses. I loooove the title as it describes everybody's search for the ultimate as it were, especially in the sixties, they were all looking for something. It's interesting that the kids that were attempting to create 'a community in a social vacuum,' would just hang out, defy the don'ts that their parents established, and talked in this kind of thematic language with grooves and trips. But can it not be simply explained by their need to reject those that brought them, 'saran wrap and nukes?'

The blackface scene goes a long way to illustrate the radical political culture, and how sometimes they just wanted to start some shit. But the characters are the best, i like how they are defined by their drug practices to a large extent. Whether they shoot crystal, do acid, STP, or smack is very descriptive of their social standing on Haight St, and their views and personalities. 

The only part I'm not sure about is the whole explanatory section where she tells the media how dumb they are, which was probably good for the time as a way to counteract media poisoning, but it upsets here deep method of show-don't-tell.

Movement

Movement

Lights flash over head as bass thumps in your chest, a quick one hundred eighty degree turn reveals that everybody is feeling the music in the rest of their bodies too, the buildings behind them stand silent and illuminated, ignoring the celebration below. Focusing back on the stage, your peripheral vision reveals a young woman snorting a pinch of cocaine off a key right next to a shirtless, older bald man frantically spinning glowing balls in front of his face. The DJ on stage switches back and forth between records, one maintaining the beat the other slowly repeating three words between scratches: Welcome to Detroit.

Memorial Day weekend is a good weekend for the ailing D, as electronic music fans and artists make the journey from all over to congregate in Hart Plaza for three days of dressing strangely, doing drugs and listening to music that defies the moody shadow that hangs over the city the rest of the year.

“Anytime you bring your money to Detroit you are welcome.” Muses a middle-aged Detroit resident. She doesn’t attend the festival but watches the procession with her husband, from the waterfront. “So the festival is definitely a good thing for the city.”

This is true this year more than ever, as the companies that own the buildings surrounding Hart Plaza lobby for government dollars and file for bankruptcy. The pride around old ‘Motor City’ is becoming more and more strained and conflicted, the contrast between the opulence of the monolithic, phallic GM building and the half-burnt outer city where the company’s workers used to live is stark. Detroit’s citizens are becoming warier of the GM logo that stares out like a blue and white eye of Sauran, over the industrial decay creeping ever closer towards it’s glass walls.

“I’d like to offer my condolences to the auto industry,” reports Columbus based DJ RJD2 (born Ramble John Krohn) in the middle of his set. “I’ve got a lot of friends that have been laid off and hurt by the downslide of the big three and that really sucks, man.” He and his fellow visiting artists know the situation and are proud to offer respite from reality, if only for a mere long weekend.

“Mother fuckers have nothing else to do this weekend,” jokes Los Angeles DJ Flying Lotus (Stephen Ellison), whose Coltrane lineage gives him strong ties to Detroit (his great-aunt is the late Alice Coltrane). His music owes a lot to his jazz genes as well as the electronic beats of local legends like the late J Dilla. Donning a shirt sporting Dilla’s name for his stint in Detroit, Mr. Ellison appreciates what the city and its people have done for him.

Even legends like Afrika Bambaataa have nothing but good things to say about the city. “The great Motor City’s got the great Motown, great funky techno, and all the electro, they done gone got their funk on!”

The undeniably diverse and influential music history of the city is apparent at the festival, and many of the local artists show that the movement is still going. But Detroit has had trouble harnessing the power of local artists into a revenue attractor. Motown itself moved to Los Angeles in the early seventies over royalty issues, but some have speculated that less focus on the auto industry and more on other marketable exports of the city could have encouraged Motown to stick around. And since Motown has heavily influenced so much of today’s music, keeping Motown and it’s constituents alive and in Detroit could have made it even more of a cultural hub for tourists and townies alike.

DJ Z-Trip (Phoenix native Zach Sciacca) proclaims during his set, “Detroit has so much musical history it’s incredible, but when people think of Detroit they only think of that building,” he points to the GM building looming disapprovingly over the stage. “Fuck that building, it’s about the music!”

The Tech Fest as it was originally called was a step in the right direction in the opinion of the organizers, music fans, and even city leaders when it was launched in 2000. There were no reported crimes, about a million attendees, and an estimate of $90 million for the local economy. But the huge attendance is generally attributed to one tiny fact: It was free. Subsequent shows were also no charge for entry, but even with almost a two million-person head count for 2001 and 2002, the festival started losing money. In 2003 the local government retracted it’s usual $350,000 fund and after two more years of failing to break even, the original event organizers had to hand the festival over to Paxahau, a record label and booking company based in Ferndale, MI.

Now the cover charge is $45 for a weekend pass if you buy it online and in advance. Despite this revolution in charging practices the line-up this year as well as the crowd, were substantial, energetic, and all were enjoying themselves.

            An older woman sitting on the grass surrounded by people drinking, playing hacky sack and comparing piercings still feels very comfortable. “It’s better than people watching at the airport,” she says, “It’s great here, everybody’s having a good time and getting along.” A man with a knee-length, blood-spattered lab coat walks behind her, his true identity obscured by an equally bloody surgeon’s mask, glasses, and a shower cap. He bumps into a large black man in an LA baseball cap, gold aviators and an oversized red t-shirt. After apologizing profusely they strike up a conversation concerning their respective costumes.

           

 

Article Post

Hey, so I forgot about the article posting with all of the missed classes, but I found a short one in the New York Times Magazine about someone dealing with swine flu in Mexico City.
Also I'm not sure if it's narrative, but there's this cool article, written in a series of tweets, by former New Yorker writer Dan Baum about getting laid off after seventeen years at the publication.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24lives-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine
http://www.danbaum.com/Nine_Lives/New_Yorker_tweets.html

Transitions (Revised)

Standing across West Kalamazoo Ave. you stare down the vortex of brown-brick archways, you get the feeling that not everybody is here for the same reason as you. You see to the left, a group of young African-Americans, popping wheelies and skidding on bmx bikes in the bus station parking lot. They are here to pass the time. In the foreground is a nervous caucasion, a waist high pile of luggage to his right, and a camper’s backpack on his shoulders. With every passing minute he becomes more unsettled. He stands in front of a blue sign on a brick wall that reads: Kalamazoo Metro.
Approaching the waiting room, you notice the archways are decorated with old-time, roman-numeraled clocks that are associated with train stations. As each pair of opposing clocks passes by, time seems to slow, the clicking of bicycle wheels to the left slows and deepens, the couple playing patty-cake to your right do the same.
You pull on the door softly and its handicap assistance takes over, mechanizing your entry into the waiting room. Cackling laughter echoes from every surface, intermingling with the sounds of rolling suitcase wheels belonging to a couple of muscular travelers who are only using this room as a bridge from the train to the world outside. “This is a nice restaurant,” one muses to the other looking over the walls before exiting twenty-five paces after his entrance. The laughter echoes on, fading but not going anywhere.
Walking to the left past the ticket kiosks and rows of uncomfortably angled benches you here a young female voice whine, “Let’s go home!” She has become bored of this place. Continuing down the windowed hallway, past an overweight janitor and a skinny, young man in a track coat and a ball cap talking in friendly and familiar voices with each other. Those that don’t leave the station seem to all know each other. Curious you ask the skinny one; “Excuse me, where are you trying to get to?”
“I’m still looking for somewhere to go.” Comes the reply. Confused you approach the bathrooms.
To the left is the men’s, to the right the women’s. Turning to enter the restroom, you are greeted by a full-length mirror revealing to yourself the hardened expression and demeanor of a traveler. A complementing mirror behind you creates the illusion of yourself repeating into infinity. In the top left corner of this unsettling piece of glass is a sticker that informs you that, “For your safety, this area is monitored 24 hours a day by surveillance cameras.”
It was here on August 17, 2000, where a University of Michigan student of social work named Kevin Heisinger was found in a pool of his own blood. A scream from a 9-year-old boy who stumbled upon the scene alerted authorities of the crime committed by a schizophrenic who had forgotten his medication.
It was lack of surveillance and the unwillingness of adults within a close proximity to the incident that caused a stir in the community, and drove Amtrak and the city to begin working on the new walls and benches, archways and clocks. It was the fact that five individuals were within earshot of the murder when it was happening that pushed for this change. It was the two men who went into the bathroom, saw Heisinger, saw the blood and walked back out and across the street for coffee that put the sticker on the mirror. “For your safety.”
At the time of this murder, the train station was darker, less inviting, arch-less, with fewer busses, no electronic display of arrivals and departures, no surveillance except in the ticket kiosks. It was a relic, built in 1887, a part of the National Register for Historic Places since 1975, and the mixture of dilapidation and culture clash was a volatile one.
3.8 million federal tax dollars later the station is adorned with lights, electronics, cameras, archways, more buses, more land, more room for people to inhabit and other people to ignore. The government has polished the walls that enclose the problem.
The transitory and absent-minded culture of the train station waiting room made the station itself into a permanent resting place for this young man. Those who mistake the station for a restaurant in their mission to get back to their lives don’t have the time or patience to help somebody in need, this room is just a bridge, and its not their problem.
The people that are stuck there during the day, in between trains, or just looking for a warm, dry edifice don’t have the empathy to deal with a traveler in trouble. They too are stuck in the limbo of the transitory area. They know what happens when the destined and the lost intersect.
The only escape for the lost seems to be to challenge the train tracks by foot or bicycle as many do. As you sit with the between-train-ers and stare out the window, every few minutes the flash of a cyclist or a couple laughing carrying plastic bags, or a woman pushing a baby carriage, or even a pony-tailed man on a Vespa appear on the tracks. They have given up on being trapped; they follow the tracks in search of a destination. But will likely only find another vortex of time, another limbo.
And there too there will be people with money and bags, headphones and laptops, people that step through this place without a thought, they are more comfortable when they’re not there. Maybe they’ll stop to use some of their money to buy a sugary snack, containing just enough nutrients to get them to their next destination. If they all gave some of their snack money to a limbo dweller, they could maybe buy a ticket and go.
But the destined have no time and the others just sit and stare, playing on oversized, digital solitaire devices, avoiding the patrolling policemen, talking to their fellow limbo dwellers, passing the time. The time that means nothing to them and everything to the fleeting because they have no time to waste here. But many have too much time to leave.

Week 7 Reading

I really liked the Road is Very Unfair, the story was inherently dramatic, and I liked that it explained a lot of the mindset behind why AIDS is so persistently spreading in Africa. It was a little long, but I feel like all of the imagery and issues addressed were necessary for the story arc and the message. He definitely needs to have himself in the story, as how the turnboys interact with him illustrate the culture he is describing. His quotes are really well placed and pertinent, the scenes were he is a complete outsider are very poignant like the one with the drunk Rwandan soldiers contemplating stabbing him. It just shows through how fascinated he is with these people and this place and how much he cares, but how helpless he is. 

Access wasn't as good I don't think. It was in a similar area socially and economically, but reading somebody complain about bureaucracy isn't quite as interesting as pure survival. I had a hard time keeping my attention focused on this piece. Also it felt a lot less personal, there wasn't the sheer number of colorful characters that developed over the story. These were good stories to contrast though, with ethical dilemmas of writing about your subjects in difficult situations, and writing about a world you are relatively foreign to. 

Telling True Stories was uninformative as usual. Maybe I'm just dense.  

Final Feature

I would like to cover the Detroit Electronic Music Festival and what it is doing for the suffering town if anything. First of all the show is going to be ridiculous and full of action, and also Detroit is always a good frame to put things in. I'll be there for three days and I can talk to audience members and maybe even some of the smaller acts.