Last night I spent about 2 hours waiting for an audition, only to completely let myself down. I was auditioning for Sigma’capella. It is the most competitive acapella group on campus and they have some really creative people involved. I hadn’t made the pre-sign up, so I just went around 9, when the auditions were supposed to end, because they indicated that there would be time walk-ins. What began as slight nerves progressed to full-blown anxiety. I can blame no one but myself, but my state was aggravated by the people who were waiting near me. Their attitudes were toxic. I didn’t speak to the three of them, but was subjected to an extended amount of time listening to them quietly judge, ridicule, and weed through the larger group of auditionees that surrounded us. What’s more is that every time someone from Sigma would come out into the hallway, the three of them would be overly chummy, chatting it up and acting like old friends. Who knows, maybe they were good friend with all of them, maybe they are qualified to pass these judgments, but I could hear them through singing through the walls just as well as they heard the others. Talent they had, but nothing that made them stand out from the crowd of about 60 talented singers that showed up yesterday.

No excuses, though, I psyched myself out and by the time I entered the audition room, second to last, I was in no state to set myself up well. Despite their drunken demeanor, the members of Sigma managed make the experience fun and inviting. I enjoyed as much of my time with the group as possible, but left, without so much as a request for scales, feeling as if I’d wasted all of our time.

Auditions. I’m accruing good stories and bad, successes and disappointments. I made it to this one, meaning I’ve taken a step forward from skipping it all together last year. Ultimately, it is progress, which is all I can ask of myself.

-Samson

On a Wednesday afternoon while sitting in ENGL 115, Shakespeare’s Early Plays and Sonnets, I received the following text message from my 7[8] year old voice coach: “Opera Scenes is holding auditions tomorrow (5/4) at 4:00 in NAB 010. Tell Isabel Milenski you are my student and sing Pieta Signore or anything you feel like.”

…

Josh and I have been talking about this class, which is a section of something called MUSIC 020, an advanced ensemble music course, since the beginning of this semester. I had assumed that I would audition at the beginning of next semester as was indicated in the course outline. How foolish. Further foolish was my decision to not look over the song prior to 4pm, Thursday. I did not realized until arriving that I had yet to sing the song without the music in front of me. With no copy, I was set out to sea without a raft and doggy-paddled my way through. Isabel was very nice, as was the accompanist who had to metaphorically hold my hand through the song as I got about 4 lines in and suddenly forgot the words. The words were, as indicated by this post’s title and the title of the song, in Italian. So there I was, after getting lost in the NAB, interrupting Isabel’s rehearsal with another student, bringing an art piece to an Opera Scene audition (this may be a bit esoteric, but it is preferable to sing an aria in this situation, art songs are more for practice, arias are better fit for auditions as they will be what I would perform should I get into the class), slightly bewildered, and forgetting all of the words. Eventually she just stopped me, informing me that she would miss her bus if she didn’t run, but “beautiful job, we will be seeing everyone again to determine who will be in the class.” Yet to receive an email.

Moral of the story is: do not pretend to speak languages that you do not speak.

-Samson

Of course his father, Charles Reigh, post only to dressing himself in the appropriate mourning attire, signed all the forms to have the infant legally under his adopted care. Therefore, for only three days was Simon parentless (the paperwork had to be shuffled and filed for the necessary twenty four menial hours, and the shufflers and filers had to take their weekend break – Simon was born early on a Saturday). From then on he was very well loved by his father.

Simon grew up the aesthetic miniature of his father, so much so that the adoption papers acted as only a laughable testament to the bizarre legality of Simon’s small, pious birthtown. No one questioned the two despite their different surnames. Charles was a great advocate of independency. He believed he had no right to change the given name of his own son without his infant son’s expressed permission, and so Simon, unable to fully communicate his antipathy towards his own identification without words of developed motor skills, retained his maiden, given name.

Often Charles would take Simon to work with him and Simon would spend the day sitting on three telephone books on the front seat of Charles’s taxicab listening to the intimate stories of backseat passengers that only surface in the environment of strangers and the drone of rolling tires. This was Simon’s education: Charles showed his son the library for book-learning and his cab for the literary masterpieces of human narratives and after that felt no need to stunt his son’s natural curiosity through formal schooling. He did not take into account, however, that this left Simon cut off from his peers throughout a great deal of his childhood, so when he developed quiet, and that sort of odd that is normally whipped out of one by the jeering of grade school cruelty, upon reflection, Charles determined his son suffered only from the genius of a uniquely cultured child. The only peculiarity that ever troubled Charles was his son’s completely absent guilt for the death of his mother.

When Simon was nine economics began to whiten his young father’s hair, as money usually does in the middle class. Simon saw Charles’s stress and an advertisement for “The Exhilaration of Amateur Skydiving” and put the two together, one as a sort of cure for the other, to shock some color back into his graying tips. The advertisement assured Simon that the activity, contrary to any sort of common sense, was perfectly safe. Knowing that there are certain things that even marketing schemes can’t lie about, Simon felt reassured and showed the clipping to his father who understood his son’s logic and booked himself a go; Simon was too young still to jump, although neither of them knew why it was safer for a full grown twenty eight year old man to hang from a parachute than a nine year old boy who was just shy of the average weight and height for his age. So Simon watched from the ground as his father fell out of the sky and ruined the perfect record of the West Side Skydiving Company. Then he was moved to an orphanage where there were no more spare parents to back up his bizarre luck.

The next nine years of Simon’s life are hardly of interest to you. They were rather unextraordinary and had a counterintuitive lack of influence on Simon the man. In fact, let’s skip the next fifteen years and begin by discussing Simon Charles Whithers as the twenty-four year old man. Anything important that happened in the lapsed time will come up.

At twenty four Simon was embodying the dream. He was that rare thing: an artist appreciated in his own time. His masterpieces sold for their worth making him a rich man. His paintings were, for the most part, portraits, studies of subjects that were generally credited for their “unbiased observation.” Less romantically, he was applauded for displaying the truth that accompanies detachment. His home, Mablique Manor was on the sea, as he desired; it was comforting to him to live so close to where he fancied his passion resided, a sunbathed chap listlessly floating in and out. But he lived close enough to the city to maintain the lavish, bachelor life style expected of a success story and so thrust upon him.

Beyond any material things and looking at Simon as a person, he was something like a turtle who waited too long to first pop its head out of its shell, blinking in the sunlight as if seeing the world for the first time all the time, everything having been warm darkness before.  He was charming at first glance. Women – the kind of myriad women at his glitzy gallery openings or all too stylized restaurants – found him “delightfully unthreatening.” Outside of these controlled settings Simon was very much the same: his hair was still chestnut brown in an unassumingly tidy cut, his eyes were still hazel, his height was still just on the short side , his build still agile, like his manner. He was quiet, always; he stared for hours at his large aquariums without letting his eyes fall out of focus; he played with the flames of open candles; when he took showers, he closed his eyes and looked blindly into the shower head thinking of tempests.

He continued to drive his father’s cab some nights as a sort of unnecessary part time occupation, unassiumingly picking up strangers and dropping them off for pocket change. Maybe it was some indebted quest for continuity, maybe he felt as though he hadn’t quite graduated his father’s academy. Most likely with Simon, though, it was something far more reasonable and more apparent. Simon never had or did read poetry and so he looked just to the left of everyone else’s gaze. Whatever the reason, though, he didn’t tell anyone where he went or what he did when he strolled off to the city. He wore a nametag with “PETER” printed on it. When he wore it, everyone called Simon: Peter.

And the same time that Simon was twenty four a girl named Jezebel was nineteen. She rathered people called her Bella, had long, waving auburn hair and creamy, deep cocoa eyes like a chocolate factory. After showering she always dried herself off openly and alone while listening to Edith Piaff, making subtly sure that the lighting was perfect and golden. She sang out loud in libraries and made lingering, deliberate eye contact with strangers she passed on the street, sometimes tossing her gaze over her shoulder to see them wondering after her. She brought inappropriately elaborate foods to crowded movie theaters and cried quietly when the score was fitting.

I apologize for my silence and absence! Alas, the responsibility of my studies has kept me away and I fear that my quota was not met last month. However, although my creative quota was not met I have been stretching my writing and research skills. I wrote my first anthropology paper! (I actually wrote it twice haha, I have for you here a legitimate second draft — the first of which was basically scrapped and sold for parts) A crash course in analysis and clarity. Here it is (don’t feel obligated to read it, its rather dry); but alas, just proof that my pen has not been simply accumulating dust:

Human Rights: A Transnational and Cross-Cultural Conundrum

The United Nations is its own sort of nation with its own culture of, as Sally Engle Moore describes it, “transnational modernity” (Merry 31). This culture has its own vernacular and population of well educated, cosmopolitan – generally male – frequent attendees, either governmental or NGO, that have grown used to working with one another. Although each of the UN’s “citizens” represents his or her own nation or cause, it is important to remember that they themselves generally belong to this unique culture. The UN world is mainly secular and universalistic with an entrenched  idea of law as the overarching problem solver. While each nation theoretically has equal say and sway, especially within the idea of creating consensual resolutions and norms in the name of legitimacy, there are definite disproportions in power due to economic constraints and each nation’s susceptibility to international pressures. These inequalities generally fall on economic lines and, going further, along global lines of North and South. It is within this culture of transnationality that consensuses on the modern idea of human rights are born (Merry 37-44).

In this paper I will argue that because human rights are created within such a distinct and distant culture and thus are inherently adapted to the context of the United Nations “state”, they naturally conflict with the differing social, political, economic, and historical settings of the localities they wish to reform. By focusing on gender rights within the inheritance and reproductive rights issues in contemporary India, this paper will first discuss the UN’s interpretations of the term “culture” and its use in the creation of human and gender rights legislation. It will then, through a juxtaposition of first the goals of the United Nations and India in regards to women’s rights and then their respective cultural contexts, express how universal legislature can become distorted at the local level. Finally, this paper will explain how a more fluid definition of “culture” utilized with anthropological research may “translate” UN rhetoric into the vernacular of local communities in order to more successfully achieve human rights goals.

A Brief Look at the Use and Abuse of “Culture”

“Culture” as a term has become almost problematic by its own ambiguity of definition. Much dialogue and literature to come out of the UN points to the fact that “culture” within human rights discourse is seen as either “tradition” or “national essence” (Merry 12-13). These definitions invite oversimplification which strips cultural practices of their political and economic ramifications, implies a false static quality, and assumes all people of a nation conform to certain inhumane or discriminatory practices when in actuality those customs may only be performed by a fraction of the population (Merry 12-4). So following, these interpretations problematically view “culture” as an accumulation of generally harmful practices that must be eliminated in the name of human protection as well as something foreign to the UN.

This unofficial bias towards culture creates a line between “in here”, the land of the United Nations or other modern urbanity – usually Western – where culture and tradition are thought to have progressed into modernity, and “out there”, where it is believed more rural and “backward” groups cling to their cultures despite the progression of more advanced societies (Merry 101).  However the UN often denies its cultural distinctness, focusing less on the solidarity that arises within a group of similarly classed, educated, and goal-oriented beings than on the exoticness of each country that respective delegates represent. In a world driven by the subtleties of language (Merry 38-44), such misunderstandings echo throughout human rights discourse and literature until they finally make their way into international legislature. Yet human rights authors remain blind to the fact that they are writing laws that are best suited for the goals and practices of their own transnational state rather than the localities they wish to reform. Thus, such clauses as Article 2f of CEDAW, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, are published, requiring all states “To take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women” (Merry 74). Conflict arises because within such demands human rights authors overlook their own inherent cultural insertions as well as oversimplify the vital roles that cultural practices play within various settings in a community.  The following comparison of UN and Indian cultures will illustrate how such seemingly straightforward literature can be lost in translation when moving from one political and social setting to another.

Impacts of different priorities

While the goal of the United Nations is international cooperation for the betterment of all mankind, the goal of UN politics is consensus. Consensus, more so than a majority vote, creates an air of legitimacy in a document where “all of these measures depend on the good will of the states parties” (Felice 571). For this reason, UN delegates strive for it as a requisite to actual human rights implementation beyond the theoretical. This is illustrated in the final draft document of the 1975 Mexico City meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women, CSW, where “the 133 government delegations continued to press for different agendas…In the end, the delegates enshrined rather than reconciled their ideological differences. They forwarded three separate types of documents” (Zinsser 147). When disputes arise the nature of the UN is to either add the input of all parties into the published legislature or use vague enough language to satisfy the most apprehensive delegate (Merry 38-9). Granted, the politics become even more complex as power plays begin to surface as economically and politically powerful states resistant to international pressures dominate states more susceptible to the lure of international aid and influences (Merry 47). But for all intents and purposes broad, all-encompassing legislature suits a nation striving for cooperation.

Outside the UN, however, such broad language lends itself to the various interpretations of states with different priorities. One example of unintended interpretation of human rights legislation is the implementation of women’s reproductive rights in India. While much of the transnational world views reproductive rights as a step towards women’s empowerment by ensuring reproductive and sexual health, India’s implementation alludes to a priority of demographic control, a practice only publically eradicated in 1996 (Datta 28). An international cry for women’s accessibility to contraception, health care, and health personnel was translated into India’s population policy announced in February 2000 which “still articulates a long-term objective of stabilizing the population by 2045” (Datta 29). For instance, the policy only promises health insurance to those living beneath the poverty line who undergo sterilization after two children. Many people worry that “accessibility to contraception” will translate into the forced sterilizations and targets of contraception that were popularly employed by the state during the days of population control (Datta 28). Thus differing priorities lead to different interpretations of human rights literature.

Another example of local interpretations of gender rights conflicting with human rights goals is within the Indian implementation of abortion rights legislation. Data collected within the rural town of Tamil, Nadu India indicates that while access to safe abortions are interpreted by transnational leaders as a general right of women to their own health and body, husbands within the local patriarchal society interpret the legislation as insurance for non-consensual sex and sexual abuse (Ravindran 96). The misinterpretation is illustrated within the report of “Young woman, ever-user of abortion, no. 17”: “If I reject his desire to have sex, he says: ‘It is me who will be meeting the expenses. If you conceive you can go for an abortion’” (Ravindran 96). Thus, the vague language of a gender rights demand allowed for open interpretation at the local level which, when implemented, led to a conflict with human rights.

This is not to say that vague language allowing for myriad implementation strategies was not the UN’s goal, for the UN remains cognizant of the fact that the “state remains the primary actor responsible for implementing international economic and social rights” (Felice 567).  The UN does not have the economic resources or time to go over individual cases and most resolution drafting sessions take place without any anthropological data on the locations committees hope to impact (Merry 60). For these reasons, the UN depends on states to adapt human rights language into local legislation. The problem is that transnational actors write human rights documents with their cooperative goals in mind while local legislators, such as the aforementioned leaders in India, translate those documents to suit their own goals. If the UN does not recognize that its reformative language is crafted for its own unique goals and thus inherently suited to successfully affect a nation with similar conditions to its own, conflicts will continue to arise over seemingly straightforward demands misconstrued by local actors with different priorities.

Competing internal priorities are not foreign to the UN, however. In 1963 the CSW was formed amid a society of male delegates by women advocating “discriminatory customs and traditions as impediments to the economic transformation envisioned by the first UN Decade for Development” (Zinsser 145). A decade later, similar advocacy for discrimination driving an unequal economy won the CSW the first international women’s conference. The subsequent three conferences, held 1975-1985 in what is known as the Decade of Women, exemplify the journey of women’s rights from peripheral to the forefront of international discourse. It should be noted that these conferences, unlike most prevalently male UN committees, were run almost exclusively by women (Zinsser 140). At the first conference held in Mexico City, women’s rights movements were reported to have received “justification only as part of the economic agenda and of women’s role in transforming the economy” (Zinsser 148). At the 1980 Mid-Decade Conference in Copenhagen, women’s rights gained more notice within the male-occupied development committees that had more international influence than women’s rights committees, yet women will still objectified solely within wider goals, and their rights were only an incidental goal of other economic priorities (Zinsser 153). By the 1985 End-of-Decade Conference in Nairobi, women delegates, through an argument that “Equal participation begins within the household…and reaches to ‘all aspects of international organizations and activities’” (Zinsser 160), were able to bring women’s rights to the forefront of wider UN goals, thus gaining influence and greater hopes of local implementation.

However, this swell of women’s rights within the UN only materialized as it became politically useful to the goals of other male committees.  Previous to this movement, “The UN’s own civil service, the Secretariat, was notorious for patriarchal attitudes, including blatant sexual harassment and a discriminatory administrative hierarchy…” (Zinsser 140). Even today, outside the women’s rights committees the UN remains predominantly male led. Thus, women’s rights were used for other political purposes within the patriarchal UN. On the flip side, this movement also illustrates women’s ability to manipulate other political agendas, such as economic development, for their own advantage (Zinsser 165). The noble outcomes of these manipulations within the UN stem from the noble goals of UN legislative interpreters.

The UN needs to recognize its own susceptibility to such politics, however, despite the righteousness of their priorities and outcomes within the UN nation, in order to understand how other nations with less rights-oriented concerns, such as India’s preoccupation with population control, is able to similarly interpret rights legislation for their own purposes. The only way for the UN to avoid this conflict is for them to realize that culture is “in here” and that it, through its goals, politics, etc., effects the legislation written “in here.” So following, rights-literature is best suited for the “in here” culture of the UN where it is created, not necessarily “out there” where social and political settings are different. Without careful concern for local cases, these demands are easily interpreted by local legislatives for their own goals, just as they are in the UN; the conflict arises because as their cultures differ so do their priorities, thus so do their interpretations.

Impacts of cultural contexts

These misinterpretations arise from the UN’s limiting definition of culture as “tradition” or “natural heritage” which disentangles seemingly solely religious or “traditional” practices from any political, social, economic, and judiciary intricacy. Such a bias materializes from influences within the UN’s own overlooked culture. Because consensus is the main political goal of the UN, they are able to structure their political, etc. settings around achieving this goal and consequently alleviate “out there” customs of their complexities within UN discourse.

Take, for example, the UN setting for the development of women’s rights. Historically women were left out of international law, and consequently men inadequately addressed women’s rights in relation to more “hard” issues, such as economics (Felice 566). In response to this social issue, CEDAW was formed as a separate outlet for the women’s issues and a vein for their empowerment. Naturally the new committee was staffed, more often than not, entirely by women (Felice 581). Thus, the UN was able to achieve their goals of creating women’s rights legislation by completely sidestepping the gender discrimination issue at hand – they simply created a new committee that focused solely on women’s rights staffed only by willing and enthusiastic members. The vacuum setting of such a committee is exemplified by the UN’s approach to deal with women’s rights separately from human rights, to treat them “as a specialized subset of human rights to be dealt with by distinct bodies” (Felice 580). Similarly focused groups have been created within the fields of “Economics” and “Trade.” Thus certain local practices are able to be dealt with within carefully categorized committees. The UN was even able to strip national politics from human rights by establishing the Human Rights Committee, HRC, “as an independent body of human rights experts. The hope was that these experts would prove to be more objective and less political in assessing human rights violations than the political appointments made by nation states parties” (Felice 571). Within such focused subcommittees, it is easy for cleanly categorized practices to appear as simply “traditional” or “religious”. Once gender discriminatory “out there” practices are stripped of their other roles within local society, the logical next step in women’s rights realization is to demand their eradication, such as in the aforementioned Article 2f of CEDAW. Within the culturally defined structure of the UN, such a method of reform would be successful.

However, other nations with different cultures, and thus different social and political structures and priorities, do not have the luxury of disentangling cultural practices from their wider ramifications within different fields. One example of this is India’s struggle with personal rights reform and gender equality, especially dowry and inheritance laws. Many international actors saw India’s general gender discrimination as a cultural problem yet failed to see how the implementation of women’s rights played into the hands of Hindu nationalists at the expense of Islamic sovereignty. Colonial legacy left India’s federalist government split between major religious and cultural groups, including Muslims and Hindus, which each retained their own personal systems of law that, through British customary law, became more intrinsically linked to distinct communal identities. These laws were often discriminatory against women. Consequently UN spectators demanded a national system of law that provided for a system of human rights to supersede provincial law. However, the universality of global human rights did not take into account the political ammunition that such actions afforded certain ethnic groups within India’s specific case. Hindus, as an overwhelming majority, were able to twist the gender rights situation into a critique of Muslim culture and an assertion of their own power within India. A national law in India, while providing women’s rights, would have almost certainly afforded Hindus greater national authority over minority Muslims, allowing for another form of submission. Thus, because “Hindu patriarchy, uncontaminated by Western influence, has once again emerged as the embodiment of preferred values…women must forget about gender rights to ensure community supremacy” (Merry 108).

Because of political ties such as these, when implementing human rights systems UN actors would do best to view the “complex intersectionality” of the complete context within which they create human rights literature (Merry 104-113).  This means accepting their own culture and the ramifications it has on their work. As an extension of these things, they must redefine their concept of “culture” to account for the impact of contextual ties.

Conclusion: legal anthropology and translating across cultures

Merry’s redefinition of culture that satisfies this requirement is culture as ‘contentious’: “a set of practices and meanings shaped by institutional contexts…both malleable and embedded in structures of power” (Merry 15).  To avoid conflict with human rights implementation at the local level, the UN must shift its perception of “culture” to a more fluid, modern definition that allows for evolution and accounts for a society’s economic, social, political, and judicial structures, as well as differing priorities. By accepting this definition, the UN will begin to realize the distinct culture of its own society, language, and institutions and how it effects their creation of human rights literature. Consequently, they must realize that all nations are culturally different from their own; they have different priorities as well as different consequences for the same actions. For this reason seemingly self-evident transnational demands become distorted at the local level. Nothing is self-evident. As with anything created in one culture and transplanted to another, it must be translated.

Here is where legal anthropology comes into play. Because transnational institutions lack the time and economic means to look at the particularities of the localities within which UN attendees hope to implement reform they are unable to deal successfully with “cultural” particularities. However, ethnographic research can be integral in creating institutions and legislation that may be successfully implemented in communities where existing conditions and historical legacies impede human rights reform. For example, without realizing the ramifications of an overarching woman’s rights law in India on partisan politics it would be difficult for UN actors with a general, transnational vantage point to understand why such steps towards gender equality were not being taken by the national government. Even more puzzling would be why Indian women would themselves be seemingly stepping away from assuming their rights (Merry 104-113). It is anthropological research, however, coupled with a working knowledge of human rights and legislation implementation which would make possible the recognition of such hindrances and work within the entire context of a locality to combat discrimination and violence, thus creating solutions that are stable in linked spheres of society.

This idea is known as “translating.” Ideas may be “translated up”, meaning that the complexities of a society are brought to the attention of national and transnational actors so as to influence the creation of legislation for local settings, or “translated down”, where activists take human rights discourse and use local symbols and language to make the ideas accessible to local people (Merry 192-217). Legal anthropology is necessary for translation as its success relies on a contextual understanding of different local systems, legislative procedure, and the media’s roles in funding and national and international influence. Thus legal anthropology, via its integral role in the translation process, becomes ingrained in the success of the human rights movement.

As Voltaire must be translated into English for an Anglophone student, so the ideas of a foreign transnational culture must be translated into local understanding. This is not done by eradicating culture, but by using it. By acknowledging the UN as a cultural being it may begin to acknowledge cultural differences between its society and other local societies and work towards more successful implementation procedures that utilize legal anthropology within cultural translations of human rights.

Bibliography

Datta, Bishakha, and Geetenjali Misra. “Advocacy for Sexual and Reproductive Health: The Challenge in India.” Reproductive Health Matters. Vol. 8, No 16 (Nov. 2000): 24-34. JSTOR. McGill University Libraries. 29 March 2010. < http://www.jstor.org/stable/3775268>.

Felice, William F. “The Viability of the United Nations Approach to Economic and Social Human Rights in a Globalized Economy.” International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944 – ). Vol. 75, No. 3 (July, 1999): 563-598.  JSTOR. McGill University Libraries. 4 March, 2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2623637>.

Merry, Engle Sally. Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Ravindran, T.K. Sundari, and P. Balasubramanian. “’Yes’ to Abortion but ‘No’ to Sexual Rights: The Paradoxical Reality of Reality of Married Women in Rural Tamil Nadu, India.” Reproductive Health Matters. Vol. 12, No. 23 (May, 2004): 88-99. JSTOR. McGill University Libraries. 29 March, 2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3775975>.

Zinsser, P. Judith. “From Mexico to Copenhagen to Nairobi: The United Nations Decade for Women, 1975-1985.” Journal of World History. Vol. 13, No. 1 (Spring, 2002): pp. 139-168. JSTOR. McGill University Libraries. 4 March, 2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/20078945>.

-Ulysses

After our major rehearsal session we all sat around and just played and sand with one another. We started with other artists music then started writing our own. It felt so organic and fresh. I don’t know how I could write music any other way. Must schedule more jam sessions.

Voice lessons are going well. Truly love working with my coach and his accompanist. The accompanist is one of the most lovely people I’ve ever met, and so knowledgeable. We had a great conversation last week. He is both a music and a theater person, making him extra special and extra easy to talk to. Apparently, he used to teach at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London (an institute I’ve been interested in for some time). I told him about the workshops we did at RADA and at the RSC and we discussed the differences between British and American theater training. The ultimate decision was as I expected, study theater in Britain, its the only way. Where that leaves me, I’ve know idea, but it was fun to talk about, nonetheless.

Most of the pieces we’ve focused on have been short Italian art pieces. Mostly a way to train my voice and (apparently) not pieces that I would ever bring to an audition or recital. Last week we started something new, though. A Shubert piece, in German, called Du Bist Die Ruh (I’ve not a clue what it means, but I’ll learn…) I think it’s gorgeous, but I was having trouble practicing because I’ve never spoken German and I didn’t know how it should sound. So, as I would do, I took to the internet to find a recording of the song to help me practice. And just look at (or rather listen to) what I found.

The video is irrelevant, but what a voice. New inspiration as my lessons continue is the incomparable Renee Fleming. Yes, yes, I’m setting the bar just a wee bit high, but why not. Reach for the stars, as they say.

-Samson

Also! Remember how my favorite instrument is the upright bass? Well, the sitar is giving it a run for its money. In a serious way.

Here’s a Warhol inspired photoshoppin’ of a photo I took a while back.

All My Best,

Gilgamesh

Oh yeah.

J.K. told us lies! He lives! And is a principal!

I can’t decide if this is a win or a fail.

All My Best,

Gilgamesh

I arrived a day later than one should.

The crowd had gone, the clearing lay empty

But for a man who in that absence stood

Full steady, keeping his own company.

Like me, he looked not round (I say, there may

Have been a man behind me that day), but

In shoes and jacket out-of-fashion made

Loyal gaze ahead. A fey may have put

Him there to rouse my curiosity

So slumbering, snoring away of late

In stubborn repose — Yes, well he woke me

By such a loudness in his lonely gait.

Thus done my sullen dreams I wondered some

Where all those from a day ago had gone.

-Ulysses

Absolutely hilarious.

All My Best ,

Gilgamesh