Meet The Fourteen - Sophie Amoss

Here is the second of the Meet The Fourteen interviews starring the lovely Sophie Amoss and her side-kick, Bacchus.  You may be saying to yourself, "I thought you said these would be posted Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays?"  I did.  I did say that, but I did the math on it and discovered that if I held to that schedule, it would take six weeks.  SIX WEEKS!!!  So I decided to speed it up a bit and release them when they become available.  Tomorrow, mid-western heart-throb Phillip Shinn of F*ck You fame will be introducing himself.  In the mean time, I'd like to introduce Sophie Amoss.

-Nix

and Soph!

iMovie & Speech Pathology.

I've been editing some of these interviews that I've been sharing with you.  I made the decision to keep editing to a minimum. There's something pretty magical about watching an interview subject process a question.

It's also proving to be a fairly interesting learning experience in listening to myself and watching the audio spikes that happen right before I begin speaking.  Most of these are fairly well edited before they reach your ears in the videos on the page, but, trust me, an immediate career in voice-over work is not at my door.  There should be an interview with the lovely and talented Sophie Amoss & Bacchus gracing your computer screens shortly.  I hope you enjoy it.

"Much speech is one thing, well-timed speech is another."
- Sophocles

-R

Tabula Rasa.

Today was a bit of a short day for me today.  My presence was not required at lab this morning and in Andrea's class today we continued the arduous journey toward vocal liberation (one that I'll write more about as the total picture comes in to a sharper focus), so there's unfortunately not much to talk about regarding the program.  That being as it is, and in dire need of something to enter into the blog tonight, I am afraid I'm going to have to arrogate tonight's blog post to explore something that markedly wounded me tonight.

I was buttonholed in to a conversation tonight by one of my classmates at The Heights, a bar a few blocks down Broadway from our main hub at Schapiro (which I am beginning to lovingly refer to as "the pit").  What started out as a conversation on my friend's insistence about her feelings about Monday night's classwork exchange with 2013 and their perceived reception of it quickly turned into an all-out sortie on my character.  I could tell you who I am; how I view myself, but that would be incredibly trite.  I healthily assume that if you're reading this, you've had some sort of personal interaction with me, and that you've formed some sort of opinion of me which, to me, is far more important than anything that I could tell you.  Actions... words... you know.

The criticism that I received is one that I have received for much of my adult life: "I feel like I have to watch what I say and do around you, because I don't know how it's going to effect you."  Despite my best efforts to not be a moody jerk-face, I have apparently not yet shaken this... sense of myself that I seem to out out into the world.  I have found myself inching closer and closer to this particular topic with a few people.  I don't know if it's because I'm hanging around artsy people again, but generally in my life over the past three years, I've had very few experiences where there's been a sense of, "You're X; you need to be Y."  I feel like people are trying to fix me, which would be absolutely fine if I were asking for it.  I consider it way out of my purview to actively go out and change somebody else and I really take offense at being told how to live my life.  It's frustrating... immensely frustrating.  I'm content.  I know who I am and what I'm about.  I'm content, and that to me is of importance, which may sound selfish, but for me, it's the foundation of being able to operate in the world.  I have no intention of changing of cowing to anyone's will, BUT, there's aways opportunity for further self-refinement.

The part that really hurt about the whole exchange wasn't coming to face the fact that I'm seemingly failing in my attempts to not be a barbous, social brute, but that I was completely broadsided by it.  I didn't see it coming; I had no idea that she felt this way in slightest... not even an inkling, which, I suppose, says something about my observational skills and my ability to be truly conscious of how my actions affect people.

I'm a work in progress.  Always.  I relish conversation and debate, even if it's heated, ugly or difficult.  The conversation makes us stronger, but I hope that I never put up a wall that says, "You can't talk to me."  Well, no, that's a lie, there's definitely one person who immediately comes to mind upon typing that last sentence that frequents my life that I immediately jump behind the ramparts for purely in the interest of self-preservation, but that's an entirely different story...  one that I'm still working out.  Work in progress.  What was genuinely shocking was that I received a verbal portrait of myself from a person that I have no reason to mistrust which shows some features that I do not see in my own self-portrait.  Perhaps it is entirely possible to have a clear picture of the self and yet not; perhaps we paint each other with our own impressionism.  Either way, there's enlightenment to be found.

My opinions; ideas; philosophies, admittedly, are constantly in flux.  Permanent definition scares me.  It's a label; a mark; a sign that you can't wash off.  It's the reason I don't have any tattoos.  It may be my Piscean nature, but I prefer to be a bit more mercurial.  As much as it was thoroughly terrible to be accosted and pinned to the wall and, as I interpreted it, informed that I am a person that (inadvertently) censors the experience of an other, there's something to be taken away.  A harsh reminder that these eyes of mine can only look outward, and there's much of myself that I cannot see without the aid of a mirror.  Wow, that is an interesting concept.  But the aide-mémoire is that I unquestionably know nothing about anything.

The Romans once used wax tablets to write on which they could later reuse by heating and smoothing over the surface.  So, I'm off to go heat the wax of my experience and smooth away the etched-in grooves of my perceptions of the world and look on tomorrow with fresh eyes.

Thank you for the study, Cajun.


"It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of truth."
-John Locke


Breathe in.  Breathe out.

-R

DeNoble. (Imagi-ninja)

Today was a stressful day.  For quite a while this afternoon, I was fretting having to come home and write about it because I really didn't want to relive it for you in front of my computer screen.  Much of what I was planning on revolved around the idea of teaching and terror as a tool to accomplish that goal...  I'll leave it at that.

I hadn't slept much last night.  This is an admission: I may have done a little too much blogging (re:journaling) last night.  There.  I said it.  After class today my sole purpose in life was to get home as fast humanly and MTA-ingly possible and enact Operation: Nap Time (which was a resounding success), but I found myself falling in to my usual pattern of engaging in a little verbal horseplay on the way to fetch things out of my locker.  I ended up in a conversation with Ms. Toni Ann DeNoble.  She's an actor in my class, and she's spectacular.

On a quick tangent:  I did the exercise in Larry's class that I had posted about earlier this week with Toni Ann and made a comment to her about having three fully-grown imaginations.  Seriously, the woman in imagining on planes of existence that only three-year-olds can fully harness, such is the power of her imagination.  It's a flabbergasting thing to see.  It's a little like being a ninja in ninja school and watching one of your fellow student-ninjas ninja-sword fight with her feet... and win.  It's ninja-impressive.

Back to the conversation: we had gotten involved in a conversation about the concept of age and what it means to people.  I found that she's of  like mind with me, where it becomes an annoyance to be constantly asked, "How old are you?"

I, for my part, have a bit of fun with this, and generally don't share right away with people my true count of sun-revolutions because, to me, it becomes an instant label to be confined in.  In my life, it's almost always one of the first questions asked when meeting some one.  It's like being sorted for future reference.  Ideas are formed and my personality gets assigned weights based on measures of other people, rather than just being allowed to have someone learn about who I am the old-fashioned way.  It's almost like:

Name: Jim
Age: 34
Political: Conservative
Religion: Mormon
Marital: Married
Children: Yes
Job: Dentist
Education: College Graduate; Dental school
... and so on and so forth

And, yes, these things come up; and, yes, they do define us, but there can be certain judgements that arise when certain other factors don't add up to a person's age.  There's an assessment based on someone else's standards, like when you hear that there's a woman who's thirty-six that's never been married/no kids and is a manager at a watch store in the mall in the town she grew up in.  You might think to yourself, "What's wrong with her?  She should be doing a lot better for herself at thirty-six."  I find that it's usually people in their fifties and people younger than their early twenties that tend (to me, at least) to assign so much significance to this number.  The 50+ like to remind me about how I'm not married (because that's a fail, right) and how "much more" they had accomplished by the time they were my age.  By people not old enough to drink in bars, I'm, "Old-as-shit, dude.", before I get assaulted with a litany of things that this person is going to do to be in a much better place when they reach my age.

This was essentially the nature of the conversation, and how this one little piece of information can so quickly define you in the eyes of others.  It's such an inconsequential thing.  It's nothing to be ashamed of, and yet it becomes the heavily-guarded secret by someone like myself, and as I discovered, Toni Ann, because you want people to know who you are and what you're about before offer them a little nugget of information that can help them make a snap decision.  It's like a way of respecting yourself... maybe.  Besides, isn't it much more exciting what you can learn about a person when you don't ask the expected questions?  Anyway, that's the philosophy behind it, and one that we both, I found, share.  I was so rapt in our chat, that I opted to take the train home (which adds an extra 20 minutes on to my commute to Astoria from the Upper West Side, just so I could squeeze in about ten extra minutes of brilliant conversation with her.  It was good.

I had discovered myself thinking while listening to Zarif today in Andrei's class that I really do enjoy the faces of the people who I get to share these next three years with.  I mean, they have some really excellent, look-worthy faces; and thanks to these great little accidental moments with Toni Ann, I get to appreciate what goes on behind the faces that I'm coming to adore so much.

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To continue to honor Anika's demand for "More Photos!", here's a picture of some faces back from collaboration weekend.  Tonia Ann, sadly, whom this post has been titled for is not present, but you can see for yourself some of the look-worthy faces that I mentioned earlier.  Aren't they a good-looking group!?!?  Also, this should please Sheyenne who constantly reminds me that I don't give her the attention she deserves.

"I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery."
- Rene Descartes 


Doo zee Fool!


-R

Hubris, The Gods & You.

We had a really great discussion in Niky's class today about the recurring motifs and values of Greek drama.  Chief amount them, hubris defined by Merriam-Webster as "exaggerated pride or self-confidence", for those of you that may have never had cause to either study Greek drama or frequently utilized the word.  I rarely accuse people of being hubristic, anyway.

Many of you may know, but I'd be remiss if I didn't include it for the people who may be reading and may not know, but we get the philosophy of 'moderation in all things' from our Classical Grecian friends (among many other ideas, like democracy, pillars, bath-houses and the Olympics), but I'll save them for you to read, because, let's face it, if you spent much time learning things from me, the world wouldn't be an entirely safe place to live.  You should really fear the day when I'm able to teach at a collegiate level.  We as a class turned to define hubris as any excessive behavior which causes pride and borders on obsession. You can look at the cliché example of hubris in Oedipus Rex; we opted to take a different route and cite examples of hubris in the contemporary zeitgeist.  Sophie mentioned the film All the King's Men wherein the character Jack Burden receives an education on power and its temptation to corrupt.   She had inferred that Willie Stark had been exercising in hubris, which led to his downfall.  I wished to instance (but couldn't... our conversations move very quickly) both the Ridley Scott film Kingdom of Heaven and Herman Melville's Moby Dick, specifically the scene where Bailian de Ibelin rejects Princess Sybilla's offer to murder Guy de Lusignan, marry her and rule over Jerusalem and maintain her departed brother's peace with the Saracens; and the section where Captain Ahab reveals his intentions for the whale that took his leg and unmasted his ship, and inspires his men to heave their superstitions about the creature and summon him, repeatedly,  by name, "Moby Dick."  Both characters to me represent obsessions that lead not only to their own destruction, but the loss of innocent lives that they have sworn to protect.  Bailian wishes to maintain his perfect honor as a knight and loses Jerusalem the lives of many of her citizens and the possibility of maintaining a peace with Saladín (I should mention that despite using historical figures, this movie is utterly fiction, but so... so good) and Ahab loses his ship, his life, and the lives of his crew (save Ishmael) to the whale he single-mindedly pursues for revenge.  Both, I think are glittering examples of hubris.

Sheyenne brought up Kanye West and his ability to let his excessive ego shine at a whim... sometimes infamously, which prompted us to discuss both his apparent faults, the American obsession with celebrity and it's self-infatuation with the American dream (definitely a discussion in it's own right) before the conversation turned to her representation of the goddess Aphrodite in her monologue from the play Hippolytus.  It was argued that the gods were themselves capable of hubris as was apparent when Aphrodite sacrifices her follower Phaedra to impose her divine will on Hippolytus who has sworn to remain chaste.  The goddess in the play does seem to be rather prideful, but, to me, I believe that the gods of ancient Greece are exempt from hubris for a very specific reason, which thanks to the forum here, I would like to contend with you now:


I, for my part, am under the conclusion that the gods must be absolved from flaws such as hubris because the gods are, at heart, an abstraction.  Aphrodite is the manifestation of Love; Thanatos the manifestation of Death;  Poseidon the manifestation of Water; Demeter, the Harvest; Ares, War; Artemis, the Hunt; Hephaestus, Crafting; and so on and again.  They embody a concept, and they have no choice but to represent it fully, immortally, with no opportunity to amend or withdraw.  It would be unjust to punish a creature for an act that they have no choice but to take, for the gods have no free will.  They exist by design, specifically human design.  Our design.  They exist to bring beauty, meaning and poetry into the world.  The Greeks saw all of nature on two levels: the sun could shimmering of the surface of a rippling stream, which they would see, but would also perceive the dancing of water-nymphs. Think about it, that's visual poetry and a magnificent thing (and, unfortunately, something arresting that beloved science has robbed us of, and replaced with it's own elucidation).  The gods are meant to instruct and inspire man, but we are not creations of the gods, they are our creations and therefore cannot be, must not be, subject to the same rules that govern, laud and damn us.

Time (or Chronos, if you're still a follower of the old gods) had cut our conversation short and left some of our ideas stunted on the vine.  It did give me some things to consider about religion as a whole over the break, which out of respect for brevity, I'll not share at the moment; but I would like to ask you, reader, what you think?  Especially if you're in the class and were apart of this burgeoning topic of conversation!

Sound off and leave your comments below, or in the comments section on the Facebook link.


     ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on th'other. . . .

Macbeth Act 1, scene 7. 25–28


If not now, when?


-R