Road Trip 2: Nash-Nash-Nash

Where we last left our heroes… Nashville! Turkeys! Abandoned Places! Urban Sprawl! Bourbon!


While Nashville was cool, it’s not the best thing when the first part of your day is the best. Free breakfast was hard to beat; but the Parthenon was even cooler.

Nashville, for some ridiculous reason, has a replica of the Parthenon. Both Yoshi and I knew a bit about its arrangement, structure and purpose. That said, the coolest thing was definitely the size. The damn thing was huge. Really, freakin’ huge. We walked around it, and around the surrounding park, filled with joggers slogging through the heat.



According to the City, Elliston is a “young, trendy neighborhood.” We headed there hopefully, anticipating folks who had tattoos and liked The Magnetic Fields. There would be bicycles! Vanderbilt students carrying copies of Proust! Older folks playing chess with younger kids!

Not so much. Nope.

Elliston wasn’t really a neighborhood, but a street. An okay street, but a street. The two rock clubs weren’t anything during the day and there were only a few open stores. The interwebz announced, “No trip to Elliston Place is complete without a stop at the Elliston Place Soda Shop.” So, we stopped. I believe the trip would have been complete without the Soda Shop. The food tasted like high school lunch.

We were also told about “Elder's Bookstore, which has been serving Nashville's literary set since 1930.” Elder’s Bookstore was, as Yoshi put it, “the worst kind of library.” Dark, dank and unwelcoming, the walls were plastered with signs to be quiet and threats against small children. Conservative agit-prop decorated bookshelves. The bookshop owners sat in overrun desks, quiet and solemn.

From there, we saw Donny Smutz, a contemporary surreal artist who uses politically-loaded images. My favorite piece was called Rapture, showing a man staring at a painting that depicts him, moving through a space. At his right was an unplugged TV, showing a similar image. Upon seeing the art, the man had unplugged the TV. Or vice-versa – there’s no clarity of time. While my description doesn’t do it justice, it evoked feelings of introspection, artistic relevance, consumer culture and passivity, conception of self… It did a lot for me.


Next to that gallery, the Tinney were a few others, once showing SCAD artists, the other one involving redone bicycles.

Then, the Frist. The Frist was fascinating. A former Post Office, remodeled into a museum had an amazing art deco style. “Like Brazil,” Yoshi said. It looked prepared for a high-class cocktail party or a dystopian show trial.


The Frist alternated between traditional shows and new displays-- we just missed one on Body and Flesh. The first show was found was an interactive display to teach children how to make all sorts of art, from abstract representations to figure drawing and printmaking. It was very cool and very simple – a set of stations, most unmanned, with precise instructions on how to start artistic processes. If I had a child, I would totally take zir there. Also, the museum was very inexpensive: 3$ per college students, and kids were free. I will be using my Oberlin ID for much savings.

The second show was on museum design, displaying new structures from across the world. My favorite was the “friendly alien” museum in Graz, Austria. The idea of a building as a presence with personality and charm is hardly new. However, the Pixar-like charms of the museum strike me as something new – magical realism intruding in.

Besides having large reproductions of the architectural drafts, and models of the completed structure, the Friendly Alien building also had a video of how each nostril of the beast was made. it was totally a Miyazaki monster.


I also enjoyed the futurism museum in France, the Stonehenge visitor center and a totally unfeasible planned art/tech building in NYC. Many of the new museums took into account details like LEED, multi-use spaces and architecture’s relationship with the overall feeling in the museum. Form complimenting function. The Frist itself was an excellent study. The retro sleekness and the trappings of a post office made the building a foil for its works. The space itself required creativity, and added a layer of dept to each display.

After Frist, we went to 12 South, one of the allegedly cool walking areas in Nashville. While it wasn’t as empty as Elliston, it was a yuppie daydream, lots of restaurants, a salon, clean-cut kids. Alas. After driving through disappointed, we parked on a hill, and looked at a monument. erected on Armistice Day to memorialize the end of the Civil War. It showed the Spirit of Unity, personified by a rather bishonen boy holding two horses, the emblems of the North and the South. Rather like Equus, really.

We strolled around the park. Some squirrels had sex in front of us. We felt uncomfortable with the level of consent displayed.

Realizing that our blood sugar was tanking, we went to the “Frothy Monkey,” a coffee shop, for ideas on where to eat. The barista was a sweetie, a musician who was now taking university classes. Also, after a bazillion hours of only Yoshi and I, it was fascinating to speak to someone who was under thirty who wasn’t… us.
His best recommendation was a café/grocery in the town where the elderly stars of the Grand Ol Opry lived out their sunset years. At this cafe, especially on Sundays, they’d flock together on the porch and scratch out some tunes.

Imagine Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird playing some ball on the street. The best players in the business, not worrying about being the best. Just having fun. Now take out the basketball and make it country music.

Apparently, the café made pretty good fries too.

While that sounded amazing, we were hungry. After a few false starts, we ended up at Bosco’s: expensive and unsatisfying. Had a good talk, as a result. Not an easy talk, but something that need to happen.


Night driving. A false hotel, too pricey and full. A new hotel. Sleep.

Road Trip! Day 1: The Epic Kentucky.

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I am the pointy-head.

(Please let me not become a tool.)

Graduation: Suits, Sundresses and Speeches!

Say "commencement" and I think of the iconic hats in the air, formal attire, caps and gowns, long speeches, hugs, final goodbyes, traditions, pomp and circumstance, Latin diplomas.

But Oberlin students don't really do traditional. So I had no idea what to expect.

We got up at 6:30, leaving the house close to 8, so we could get our placement card in time (the placement office closes at 8:30). Then, we did nothing for a while. I got some coffee. Walked around. People-watched. Only about a third of the school wore caps and gowns. More folks wore caps, some decorated the tops. Some folks were really fancy, dressed in prom-best. Most folks I knew wore simple dresses, suits, button-down shirts. Yoshi wore a suit and a top hat.

And me?

Wednesday of Senior Week, Conversation with Beloved Parents:
Mom: What are you going to wear?
Aries: Uh. I don't really know. I don't have time to buy a dress.
Mom: You don't have time to get a dress? I thought you were done with finals now.
Aries: Guys, circus. Circus every day. No time to take a scenic trip to score a dress. I'll look nice. I got a few dresses from the swap.
Mom: ... all right.
Dad: No cap or gown? There's going to be a lot of photos.
Aries: No.
Mom: Wear what you want--
Dad: Just don't do it naked, okay?


The next day, I looked at Weather.com. Sunny, they predict. Warm, they say.
Perhaps... a sun dress?


Sundress. Not a shower curtain.



At 9:00, I lined up, though the illustrious "I" section was pretty small. Then, we waited and waited some more. I skipped to the bathroom, running into professors in their official regalia, as well as Ben Jones, Captain-in-Chief. On their parts, the professors were wearing formal academic regalia, fascinating costumes indicating what kind of degree they held. Their robes were huge, adorned with collars of all different colors. They looked like ... well... Harry Potter characters.

The marshals, who led the graduation procession, held batons that looked suspiciously like magic wands. As if they were charming the whole event to go according to plan.


Wands out.



As I left the bathroom, I heard the blast of trumpets. Before I knew it, we had marched to our seats. The ceremony begun: a prayer, introductions, greetings, then Honorary Doctorate Degrees. Though the winners were really cool people: pioneers, activists, scientists and administrators ... some of the introductions were on the long side. The presenters told us the accomplishments of the award recipients, talking about the awards they had won, the councils they chaired, and the foundations they founded...

Meanwhile, Weather.com didn't lie -- the sun was pouring down. As the speakers went on and on, I could feel my arms and legs heating up.


Ary and San. Notice the sunlight?


My favorite presenters were Lynn Powell and Dan Stinebring awarding degrees to Mary and Steve Hammond. It was a perfect match. Mary and Steve are the pastors at Peace Community Church and serve as amazing community leaders. Their work supports so many different groups at Oberlin, from long-term residents to homesick first-years. Dan and Lynn, a physics professor and a poet, are deeply involved in political and arts work. They opened up their house to the Obama campaign, to which they and their children contributed thousands of hours. In Dan's astronomy class (which I loved), he stopped class the week before the election and gave us a lot of voting-related information.


Dan, looking super-serious.


Lee Fisher, Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, gave the introduction for our commencement speaker, Richard Haass. It was an amazing introduction as the two were friends, graduating from Oberlin in the same year. While Haas won immediate success, Fisher had 7 rejection letter from top law schools. The speech was funny, unlike all of the introductions before. Fisher also shockingly humble, never mentioning that he's running for US Senate.

And then, the Commencement Speaker, Richard Haass, speaking on dissent. ... It was interesting. Take a peak here, if you like. Haass gave an apology, not a speech. He didn't make a strong case for showing dissent by working within the system, or how to gracefully duck away from a diseased organization (as he allegedly aimed). The trouble? He used himself as an example. Haass was a foreign policy adviser to both Iraq wars, and stands within the line of bureaucrats that enabled the current situation.

Moreover, the question of dissent in the workplace is not uncommon, but the extremity of Iraq is a bit... enormous. And, at this time, very clear. Most office issues are gray; they're tragic choices for employers and employees to make. They're personal, confusing and unclear. This was not a speech about shades of gray, the kind of thing a recent Oberlin grad is likely to experience.

That said, it was interesting. A speech from a top-notch alumnus speaking on really, really high-security decisions is pretty fascinating, regardless of whether it clarifies my office-place moral quandaries.


Conveniently, President Marvin "Much Adored" Krislov gave an excellent talk that was everything I could have wanted from a commencement speech. From Krislov, we expect brilliance. He's a Rhodes Scholar who took a case (Grutter/Gratz v. Bollinger) to the Supreme Court. His speech was about his unability to get a job after college until he took a part-time job at the YMCA ... it was encouraging. Sometimes, opportunity takes a while, he said.

We stood to receive the diplomas, crossed the stage to shake hands/hug the President-Much-Beloved Krislov and the Class President, Sir Derry. President Krislov gives good hugs, the sign of a great leader.

I walked back to my chair, dazed. When we'd all finally gotten our diplomas, the hats flew into the air. Folks started to hug all around me, wishing each other well.


Liz and I see each other...



And strike!



Everyone loves hugging Yoshi. Especially pretty girls.

The Job!

A week after the first interview, I got an email that I should come in to "answer a few questions." I flipped out a little. Put on a dress, my nicest/tallest heels, tried not to vomit. From the email, I wasn't sure who was getting a follow-up. 38 people applied for the two fellowship jobs, many of them very qualified.

When I arrived at the office, a bit shaky in my heels, Ben Jones was smiling. He asked me a few hard questions which I stumbled through.

Then, he shook my hand and offered me the position.




So... I got the job! I'll be in Oberlin for one more year!




Have a lovely summer.

PS:
From the Source:
Aries Indenbaum -- Web Fellow
Aries works in the Office of Communications assisting the director of new media explore third-party social networking opportunities for Oberlin, managing the Oberlin Stories Project and the admissions blog site, and generally maintaining a connection to the student body. She graduated from Oberlin two days ago with a BA in creative writing. Aries was born in Point Reyes, California, and went to school in New Rochelle, New York. "In my free time, I tell stories, contra dance, write, run, and do circus," she says. Before graduating, Aries worked in admissions and blogged about her experience as a student.

Senior Week (in Webcomics!)

There are two questions of commencement:
1. What are you doing next year?
2. How are you feeling?

I
The job search, in this economy, is very difficult. It causes a lot of stress for graduating seniors who aren't set up with something by commencement. Given the recent strains in journalism, publishing and academia, a lot of upcoming alums have difficulty getting jobs in the fields they want.

It's not a dead-end, but it takes longer than normal. More students are moving into entrepreneurship and starting up with new companies. There's a silk-screening collective start-up, a Chinese learning software company, a music clinic for kids, and a fair-trade Moroccan crafts business.

Environmental studies majors get more luck with the swell of green jobs. Given the billions in stimulus funds given to science research, biology, chemistry, neuroscience, physics and engineering majors (in total, about a third of Obies) are sitting pretty.

I just got a job for which I'm incredibly grateful and happy. And I'll talk about soon, I promise.

And it's not a job like this:


Yeah, I don't think it'll be like this.




II
As for the more difficult "how do you feel" issue...

Everyone takes Commencement differently. Seniors run though several different emotions:

1. Joy! No more papers! No more tests! No more cramming! It's beautiful and there are parties with cool people whom I need to say goodbye to!
2. Sorrow. Where are all my friends going? Should I live with my parents? I'm going to be so lonely...
3. Bliss! I'm ready for the real world! College was amazing, and I'll continue the things I learned here way out there!
4. Anxiety. The real world is scary. People are mean and cruel. What will I do after I get out of work?
5. Confused. I don't know what to feel. I'm going to miss Oberlin, but I'm okay with my plans.
6. Everything All At Once. Like below comic.







While other folks have had the time to feel/think about graduating, I really haven't. Between organizing another circus (we do a commencement show), finishing up a Creative Writing Anthology (Little Leaf), going to functions and freaking out about how cool my job is going to be... I haven't really been self-reflective. Surprised?




Savage Chickens understand me. Even if I don't really understand me.





But I'll try.



College has been better than any other time in my life. When I think about who I was when I arrived here, and who I am now... there's a huge difference. I am a fundamentally different person now. I met amazing people, learned great things, made many stories. I grew up in Oberlin. That's something that doesn't change when finals are over, or during Senior Week, or after I throw my cap into the air and hug all my friends. That change lasts for years.

Addicted to Bad Ideas: Punk-Metal-Rap-Ska Music Shows

Time: Tuesday Morning


There are tiny, intense bruises on my knees and elbows. My hearing is still iffy.

I can still feel the crowd's moshing, dancing and pushing, the way the ocean still moves you even after you've gotten out of the water. I can still see the crowd: folks making a space in the center of the dance floor to let couples kick-dance a demented carnival homba. When the Inferno changed the tempo, the circle exploded into a flying moshpit.

World Inferno Friendship Society. Bucketkickers.

This feeling is familiar.





Time: Sunday Morning (two days previously)


My ears hurt. My thighs hurt. I am super-duper happy.


Tonight: Music party at Harkness, with Andrew Gombas, Birthday Kids, and Dos Mil Días De Fuego. Before that, I saw Spring Back, a dance show, so it's been... a long night.




Spring Back!
The dance department here is growing, with more folks than ever enrolling in classes. We took in two new members of the faculty: Holly Handman-Lopez and Ashley Thorndike. Spring Back is part of the block of dance shows hitting around now -- Sprung, Colors of Rhythm, Essence's Steppin' in da Beat, Oberlin Dance Company and a lot of senior recitals. Warner, the main dance/theater building, is booked. If you dance, this is a good time for you.

The main focus of the dance department is modern, with contact improvisation, capoeria, bodywork and ballet getting some love too. Half of the pieces in Spring Back were modern, the others hip-hop, folk or break. As I have the dance awareness of a child, I seperate dances into:
- Emotive: You're communicating how you feel!
- Movement: You move amazingly! Your body is a work of art, a tool of creation!
There was a nice combination of both.

I must admit to a certain narrative inclination, which poses a problem in an unfiltered enjoyment of movement. Whereas in circus, I see tricks as, well, tricks... dance is an art form. It has meaning. So, to my plot-centric brain, it should have a narrative and relationships.

In the dance piece with three women, they were totally a mother with two daughters who had recently lost their elderly father in a tragic threshing accident. The daughters adjusted to the lost by throwing themselves with childish abandon into their farm tasks; while the mother dejectedly resumed normal functioning.

There were monks in brotherly love, a bride left at the altar, spirits of global warming wrapping their warlike arms around one another with apocalyptic glee...

Or, at least, that's what I saw.

I've had a few conversations with Kai about the difficulty of writing about dance. I can talk about how it made me feel, but not always so clearly about what occurred, without creating childish scenarios. The moves themselves were impressive: many of the performers wore kneepads, given the amount of times they flung themselves at the ground. All of the modern soloists controlled their bodies precisely. Their handstands landed slowly and gently-- they cartwheeled over and around one another.

With the folk/hip-hop/break dances, I find there's more of a vocabulary, because I'm less caught up in a search for story-meaning. They picked the crowd up. The hip-hop group did an incredibly tight piece that looked straight out of a music videos. SPARK rocked, showcasing their old heavies with their new blood. They popped, locked and broke, making Warner into their space. I've seen them do more ridiculous stuff in the past, but this act was so seamless.

I ran to Harkness, ready for action.
Question: Why don't dance concerts end with the audience having a dance party with the cast? Does strike really have to happen the instant the show ends?





Harkness Concert


Harkness Basement is a place of great joy. Amazing bands have played there, amazing food eaten there. It's a cafeteria: there are chocolate milk stains that will never leave the ground. The tables were rolled away and the ground was mopped. On the wall, there were still the co-op food posters on the wall by the drum set:
"Pros and Cons of Soy" and "Report Ideas to the "Fun Committee!""





Fun Committee of Harkness?




Andrew Gombas went first. You may remember him from Ma'ayan's post about Organs... He does music too! Acoustic and electric guitar and brilliant songwriting. Most of his songs are about some twisted, mangled love... like that time you went home with the prettiest girl and she was really into roleplaying games. Like the role-playing game where she's the "dominant young woman" and you're the "stupidface who took her to your home, got stabbed 19 times and robbed blind." That was a good song. It was a singalong.


I love this photo. Andrew looks like Mr. American Psycho.


Andrew:: "You may now know this, but I used to be an improv-style spoken word performer in the south side of Chicago. A rapper, one could say. So, I'll need two words from the audience to let me go..."
Audience :: "Watermelon!" "Somali pirates!" "Elk!" ""
Andrew:: "I heard... ''gun-related violence" and "attractive women."


So, Andrew rapped about ''gun-related violence" and "attractive women," which has a refrain that's so virulently not-PC that I don't think I should share it. Despite all of his evil-doing and disturbing lyrics, Andrew is a truly kind, warm and amazingly stable man. His nickname is Pickles.



Birthday Kids went up after: Liz, Ralph, Jim and Jesse, playing jam rock. Liz sang like a mellowed Janice Joplin; Ralph played the bass like a bear locked in a cellar for a few months. Jim controlled his drum set perfectly, and Jesse loved that guitar like a lover long-separated. The boys were all Connies (conservatory students): Jim is TIMARA, Ralph and Jesse are composition.


They have a lot of fun when they play: one of their games was "Mess with Jesse." Game was: Jim and Ralph would make a rhythm, and Jesse would solo. When folks got bored, they would raise their hands and Jim and Ralph would set a new tempo. Five hands determined the game, so it changed a lot. It also proved how ill Jesse is. That boy loves his guitar.



Liz and Jesse. Note how Jesse cannot see how gorgeous Liz is, due to his overwhelming love of his guitar. This is devotion, people.






After that... Dos Mil Días De Fuego!
Grey on rap/vocals; Sam on vocals; Khari and Sarah on the turntables, Ryan on bass; Jim on drums. It was awesome to hear them in a better venue (not a living room), even if I still didn't hear all of Grey's lyrics.




Grey spreads the word. Word, Grey.




They're an interesting band, with a lot of fluidity. Some songs are really furious and hip-hop/rap/metal, others are silly. Grey makes an excellent emcee, really pushing the crowd; Sam makes jokes and keeps things light, leading interactive dance sequences. She has a low, sweet voice, like a cup of hot chocolate in the morning. Khari and Sarah are sick-- they played amazing dj sets between each band, keeping the energy high. Their samples were tight. Ryan makes superb faces when he plays and holds the beat steady. And Jim? Jim is incredible. He played drums for both bands and after their intense, kickin sets, he smashed out a crazy solo.




Note: Ryan's face. It is superb.





Jim declared King of America.



It was an excellent crowd. We had enough space to dance -- Harkness basement is able to serve over a 100 members for each meal, so it certainly had space for 100 people to dance. There was a lot of good energy there: most people knew someone in the band, or really liked their style, so we had less general-party people and more open, happy, high-kickin' folks.


I left happy and sore, the way it should be.