may 27
the news came down like some strange creaking from the gates of heaven - all courses miraculously passed and the thesis approvedtoday:i've been nearly relaxing ever since. monday we leave camp swarthmore.
so that's why.in early may i gave a talk at swarthmore. i've been a student here for years, doing web stuff on the side, occasionally a professor would mention seeing that i eat my semen in some random magazine, but otherwise i figure that most people don't know much of what i've been up to. and if i give talks in copenhagen, shouldn't i give a talk at home?
so i gave a talk. wilson went, and probably like thirtysomething other people, wilson said "it was a lot about me me me" (me meaning chester) and of course the title was "what i saw on my way back from the digital revolution: the social implications and educational potential of the world wide web." and you do something like that and your friend seems to say that it was kind of self serving, but then later, weeks, sometimes never, but in this case, weeks later you find out why you did it
and today i found out, a professor of mine, a rare professor that i've had more than one class with (everyday things and film), t. kaori (like "cowrie") kitao, in the art history department, she took me out to lunch and shared her vision for her own use of the web, based on my own meanderings online and my explanation thereof at the talk. we talked and taught and now she has a web page. it's great - i love seeing people make media, and she expressed an interest in sharing unpublishable (read: percieved irrelevant) texts in little chunks on the web, so more power to her.
and i realized meanwhile how out of date my html tutorial stuff is. oy! so i'm gonna rework that.
and last night amidst the festivities here, i was drunk and high wandering about and thought - yeah, my computer, i love my computer. so i sat down in the dark at my keyboard and thought, yeah, i'll just make stuff. but nothing came to me. i even bothered to open photoshop. but i couldn't do nothing. i ended up kibbitzing with my friends, talking shit, getting drunker and higher.
then this morning, when i had decided to pack, i found myself roped in to updating ayla, charlie, swarthmore semesters, quantum physics, footers, all sorts of stuff - the creativity, working on my web page, i have no choice but to work on my web page when i surf my own site. there's so much missing! and if it's not missing, it's definitely dated. like i read this page about julia benton, and i'm like, what? i used to write about all this intangible sex stuff i read it now i feel/sound like a dirty old man. so the alternative is to write about ayla? the platitudes - nice stuff? hey - whatever i learned. teaching, learning is fun. vague sex from a long time ago? how much do you like sticky sheets? if you're not rolling around in them all the time, you gotta clean them eventually. but then, replace it with what? a honey-dipped memory of vague traits? terse description of telling physical characteristics? or a link to a her favourite poem, jazz chick by bob kaufman?
and then i play some croquet with random swatties, all beautiful people, and come in third because they all forfeit for dinner.
|
today's muzzik: jazz and some new orleans, ambient from outside, during charlie and rob's daily croquet and gin & tonics (daily for senior week) hugh masekela & the union of south africa - their motown album i think some americanized stuff maybe. good grooves. great grooves. gosh.
|
justin hall | <justin at bud dot com>