Southern Renaissance

A little while back I read a book of Flannery O'Connor's essays.  It's been a while since I've read any of her work or even thought about the grotesque movement in literature, but the coincidental reminder was welcome. 

It was nice to see that the South had once held an esteemed place in the culture of America--it wasn't always seen as a joke.  And though people and situations down there can be crazy, I feel like something is changing.

I've been living in California since leaving Costa Rica in September 2012 and the lesson that keeps coming to mind every time I move to California is that it's a nice place to visit, but not live.  But there's been guilt about wanting to go back to Austin.  I do feel the pressures to live somewhere more "cultured" and "full of opportunities" but the more I hear that from people, the more I realize those opportunities are available in places other than the Great Idea of California. 

Austin is a not only a booming economy, it's also a growing and successful idea-space.  People have more freedom of expression there than I've noticed out here, more exuberance, yet less pretentiousness.  It's growing and will come to lead the way for future growth as a new cultural hotspot.  In all earnestness, I believe that Austin will become the new San Francisco within the decade.

I don't just have high hopes for Austin, either.  New Orleans has inspired me recently, but I am a cautious optimist when it comes to Louisiana. 

Another inspiration for this train of though is the documentary "Beauty is Embarrassing" about Wayne White's work and life.  He's a creative Tennessee boy who succeeded in spreading his ideas and baring himself to the world.  Not only is he inspiring, but the documentary also pointed out a cultural flow from the East Coast to the West Coast that I don't think has reached an end. 

Fuck Baudelaire

OK, two things:

I apparently know some crazy ass people and drugs seem like a crazy amazing adventure.

I've always wanted to explore. Explore everything. Every kind of everything.

A friend of mine just told me about speed balls and when he was living his crazy, horrible, ghetto ass, fucked up, amazingly interesting life he could do two of those in a row.

And oh my god he will testify to what kind of shitty life he was living at the time, but I don't know what that's like and I want to.

The derelict and impoverished (both financially and every other sort of way) side of life have some horrible beautiful appeal.  It is another frontier I have yet to cross.

Antiquated infatuation

Sometimes I feel like I'm obsessed with the past.  I have trouble relating to politics today because I only know about the roots.  Same as with literature--I have no idea what big trends are happening right now, but ask be about turn of the century and a little after (and of course before), I'll talk your ear off.  It feels alienating because I'm unable to talk to many people.  About half of my current friends didn't go to college, don't have any interest to go, and some are all out intellectual-haters.  I don't know how it happened, but maybe it's just *insert regionalist slur*. 

But then sometimes I look at the big picture and it seems like a bunch of society is doing it.  Think about how many efforts are out there to restore art and architecture.  In ways unlike before, we are studying the past without destroying it.  This is somewhat due to innovations in technology--we no longer have to cut open mummies, we have ultrasound, etc etc.  But it also seems to be something that appeals to us at this moment.  Vintage clothing, retro style is all about cataloging the past and incorporating it into the present.  It seems like this is happening to the extent that today, we don't have an identity--everything is a mashed-up, borrowed combination of every previous trend. 

This reminds me of Girl Talk and other mash-up musicians.  I wonder about the authenticity of their craft.  Yes they are creating, but not from individual materials.  But if you think about music specifically, it's pretty much been impossible to make anything new for centuries.  There are only so many notes, so many novel combinations.  But listening to his music, it's impossible to say that his songs don't evoke different emotions than their original pieces.   Yet, when I recognize the components, it just reminds me of how I feel when I listen to them individually. 

And even still, writing about this idea that nothing is new, everything is done, I can't help but think about Baudelaire and how not much has changed in 150 years.

A wa re

There's probably no escaping me talking about literature since it's such a huge part of my life.  It's what I study and it's what connects Everything to Everything.  So here's another post about it.

One of my favorite books is The Tale of Genji.  I'm not quite sure why, but I've been thinking it through recently.  I think a part of that book for me is feeling like I can relate to certain aspects of that world.  At least I find some of it appealing.  In a strange way, it feels like nostalgia, though I know I wasn't around during the Heian period.

I feel a longing for that kind of world where all that exists strives to be beautiful, and that beauty exists not only topically, but on a spiritual level.  Being beautiful is being godly.  But since nothing on this plane of existence is truly godly, everything will pass, will fade away, will lose it's shine, will be reduced to nothing.  That is あわれ, the inherit sadness of all things beautiful.  It's a type of pleasant sadness that is very appealing and universal.  Nothing can escape the flow of time; that is what destroys everything.  As each moment passes, it will no longer exist.  It is lost forever.  Memories are a sort of pleasant torture.  There's happiness at having felt/experienced whatever emotion, but sadness at knowing that it will never again be.  It is nothing that can be combated against; all there is is to accept it and try to appreciate every passing moment.  No matter what, life is sad.

Creativity

Recently I've been feeling great urges to Verb.  I want to do everything, try every single thing out.  What's getting me the most is kind of silly...  I want to write a trance album.  Nothing too spaced out, think DJ Onyx.  I haven't tried writing music in almost a decade (doesn't that kind of sentence make you feel old?).  But I've got some stuff to work with.  I've also been drawing a lot more pictures, but none are quite finished yet.

I'm not sure what I should do first, since all seem to have equal urgency on my list of wants.  So I keep ending up spastically switching between things with extreme focus until something in the real world pulls me away.  Last night I was late to pick up my boyfriend from work because I was so busy working on my food website and editing all sorts of different pictures.  I feel like my drive to be awesome is coming back, though it is hard to fight the laziness (damn you Baudelaire!).

Rosario Castellanos

I'm currently taking a Spanish Literature class called "South American Literature since Post Modernism" and when I signed up for it I didn't know what I was getting in to.  I've taken more than one lit class, but they've mostly been in French, and we barely made it past WWII.  For the first time in a while (in a lit class) I was a little lost.

But it's turning out to be awesome.  I've discovering a whole new world and new ways of thinking.  (One thing that I love most about literature is the philosophy behind the movements.  And I can't even decide which one I like the most.  For a while it was the Enlightenment, but then I started learning about the Romantics and after that resurged my love of Poe and came my discovery of Baudelaire and then how his way of thinking influenced the modernist movement and how everything comes from everything else.  I just get overwhelmed with the awesomeness of literary evolution that I can't even write a proper sentence.)

I feel so inspired everyday I walk out of that class.  And I never gripe about doing the readings.  Sometimes it even makes me want to write myself.  The modernists inspired poetry in me, and I plan to start working on that soon.  I've also grown the desire to become a cosmopolita ensayista and write about the world.

And today we talked about Rosario Castellanos.  I've always been a bit weary about feminist literature because most of what I've been exposed to was stereotypes about the feminazi and that just wasn't appealing to me.  It's true that I had read some works in high school that stuck out to me, but I never moved on past those.  The two that have stayed with me are "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin and and essay "I Want a Wife" by Judy Brady (Syfers).  Both left an impression on me, and I enjoyed both very much.  I like sad, dramatic, meaningful endings and irony.  They're different from one another but share the same feminist message.  Rosario Castellanos was very similar to both of them.  She has a sharp irony that doesn't hide her meaning.  And one thing I thought about today was the fact that feminist writers have to be extremely talented.  Their message and ideology rely on the fact that women are just as good as men (sometimes better) and to prove that they have to Be better than men.  To prove their worth as writers, they have to surpass their male peers in their shared craft.  They have to be extremely ironic, witty and knowledgeable to even be noticed, and this leads to the development of writers of extreme talent.

Right now I am majoring in French and Spanish.  I do plan on teaching abroad, but as far as continuing my studies goes, I've been considering delving into Comparative Literature.  Today's lecture made me start considering focusing on the feminist movements in both regions (the only problem is that I don't know a whole lot about France's feminist movements, so I'll have to get working on that).

I'm really grateful to be in school.  Sure there are dumb greedy burecratical issues, but there's so much knowledge to be gained I almost can't stand it.


Update from 5/21/13:

I've found myself returning to Latin American literature.  The spark came one night when M, S, R, and I were drinking in a park at night and two strangers approached.  One was a poet and loved to talk ideas.  We talked about the art of today--the poetry and break dancing, music and movement--and where it comes from.  It got me thinking in old veins.

A few days ago I was temporally stranded so I took shelter in the library nearby and checked out multiple books, one of which is  "Interviews with Latin American Writers" by Marie-Lise Gazarian Gautier.

The first interview is with Isabel Allende who recognizes that she comes "from a continent where women have had to make twice the effort to obtain half the recognition in any field" (21).  Especially when it comes to writing.  Writing handles Ideas and "[g]aining acceptance into the world of ideas has been the hardest task for women" (21). 

I think that this is a truth on more than her continent but it is one that has been surpassed to some extent.  Maybe surpassed is too strong a word then, because we haven't gotten rid of it completely.  Women are accepted in most fields, but still not quite seen as equals.  We still need to prove ourselves by out-doing everyone else.