Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw by Donna Leishman

     I completely misunderstood this piece while interacting with it. When I went through it the second time to take a screenshot, I found other sections that I did not find the first time. At first, I believed it was about a girl with a terrible relationship with her family who had a type of mental disorder she was dealing with. The piece was extremely dark and a bit disturbing. It is interactive and had no real order to go in. Once a certain section of the piece was completed, another part of the piece would pop up or the scene would change.
     The setting was a landscape with various buildings. One seemed to be a hotel with the sign, "Blue Lagoon" on top of it. There was a church in the distance, trees that would shake and drop objects out of them, and a big (what appeared to be) television or movie screen taking up about 1/3 of the piece at the top right corner. On almost every section, there would be flowers or a tree that when touched with the mouse, would bloom or shake it's leaves.
     The main character, Christian Shaw, could be found hiding behind buildings or trees. When the piece focused on her we found out strange things. She had a book which had a few pages describing who she was, like a diary. Then the pages all had a huge square cut out of them as if to hide things in the journal. Her journal had insects taped on the pages and when the mouse touched them, they would run away. When the screen showed Christian Shaw, she was often spaced out, staring at things. She could also be seen flying, vomiting, bent at odd angles, and sleeping.
     In one scene, she is at a doctor's office with her father, while another she is naked with marks all over her body. When the mouse touched certain parts of the screen, a creature would appearing next to her, it's arms outstretched as if connected to Christian.

     After finishing the interactive piece, the viewer has the ability to read the text explanation. The interactive piece is not meant to be understood completely or even at all. The explanation discusses a young girl, Christian Shaw, who was said to be possessed by a demon. She exhibited many of the characteristics of the accounts of the Salem Witch Trials which were four years before Shaw's accounts were documented. The report was anonymous but in them it states that Shaw would often move things towards her without touching them, she could fly across rooms, she would often be in a trance-like state, she would vomit up strange objects, and her body would bend at strange angles. The screenshot I've included shows the interactive section of the work where Shaw is vomiting up strange objects. There was another creature that was all white and when the mouse touched him, he split open to reveal his red, pulsing insides. A small gray creature appears and crawls out of the hole down his middle. I am still confused as to what part of the story this signified.
   I greatly enjoyed this piece because it seemed to be a modern description of this demonic possession from the late 1600's. It was confusing and disturbing, especially with the music that accompanied many of the more creepy images that appeared. While I think it was smart to have the text accompany the interactive piece, I find works like this are more effective when they are less confusing. Perhaps there should have been more journal entry type sections where the viewer could understand a bit of the intended story.

To view the piece by Donna Leishman click here:

Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw

Ekphrastic Poetry/Fiction

I found this image on the internet and it made me think about the image of a muse. I imagined the musician as a muse playing in someone's head.

     I believe in listening more often than you write. In allowing a song to cripple you, breaking apart everything you thought you knew about your own musical taste and stitching yourself back together with a completely new view of the world.

     I believe in controlled chaos. In using every single instrument at your disposal to create a cacophony only you can hear the beauty in. In blending every different genre in just three minutes, allowing every nerve ending to get chilled.

     I believe in headphones on the bus to drown out the inane chatter and silence while you walk to enjoy the music in everything organic. In approaching every new song with an open-mind and ignoring the gut reaction to be critical.

     So please, bring me to my knees every time a song manifests itself before my eyes. Allow it to shatter my senses and leave only ice creeping its way up my spine. Visit me in my waking hours instead of my dreams, where as I gain consciousness you quickly flee. Leaving me with only a whisper of song or phrase in my head. Allow me to appreciate the words and measures you’ve already brought me. Give me strength to harness every bit of chaos into perfect consonant cacophony. 

Response to "The Dreamlife of Letters" by Brian Kim Stefans

     I think Stefans' "The Dreamlife of Letters" is one of the most original online poems I have ever experienced. I am a huge fan of Poetry, especially spoken word. Though I probably did not understand the full meaning of this work, I found it very interesting.
     I felt that this poem was making a statement on sexuality and gender. Words such as "gender", "sex", and "phallic" were used multiple times. The poem starts out going by letter, and it does this somewhat consistently throughout, but it makes exceptions. For example, during the "s" words, gender came up multiple times.
     Also, when the word "gender" was the main focus, the words bent and moved across the screen. Perhaps this is a statement on the flexibility of sexuality and the spectrum of gender and gender roles.
     On the screenshot below, you can see that this poem can be very confusing and disorienting. I found that I struggled to understand if Stefans was attempting to make phrases or just nonsensical words. Perhaps that was the point of the poem. If it is a statement on gender or sexuality, then maybe the viewer is supposed to be confused. Just like gender and sexuality isn't completely understood, "The Dreamlife of Letters" is not completely understood. I think it was a definite stylistic decision to make this poem a bit confusing, but if I had done an online poem in this format, I would've put some phrases down, to give the reader something to definitely understand every so often.
     Overall, I really enjoyed this poem, even though it is not the way I would present my own written work.

Here is a link to the poem:
Dreamlife of Letters

Life of a College Senior

When a 100-level professor tries to tell me I need to fix my paper:

Homework?

 When my mom asks how many places I've applied:

When people ask what I'm going to do:

When I think about not being able to drink all the time:

When people tell me they're working on their thesis or applying to Grad School:

When I think about graduation:

 And how I feel overall:

Puppies...need I say more?

Just a collection of my favorite Dog gifs on the internet. Let the cuteness commence!

Where'd it go?

 Almost got it!

 I'm...stuck...

 Oh, fuck.

 Corgi butt!

I'm just gonna chill here...

 I'm gonna bite yo face!

 Chill the fuck out, Cat.

 My paws are getting overheated.

 Licklicklicklicklick.....

 *Pounce!

 Oh, hello there!

So I'm graduating in May...

Graduation. Possibly the worst thing to ever happen to a college student. You spend four years getting comfortable, making friends, finding the best places to get coffee or cheap food and then they throw you out on the street with a BA in Definitelywontbegettingajob. 
 
Now you're expected to be on your own without any money or experience. Well, I say "Fuck it." Sure I will apply to places this semester and during the summer but I have a few things I want to do before I am forced into slave labor for the next 40+ years of my life.

Ten Things I Want to do Before I Get A Job:

1. Travel. England, Italy, Amsterdam, France, Ireland, Germany, Australia. I'll take just a few right now. I just want to experience other cultures.

2. Finish all of the books that remain unread on my bookshelf.

3. Learn guitar. Took some lessons last summer. I'm basically retarded when it comes to the guitar, but I want to at least have 5 songs I can play/ remember how to play.

4. Visit my high school and play Viola again. My orchestra teacher of six years passed away last year and I hadn't seen him for two years before that. All of the alumni are invited back any time since an alumni filled his spot permanently. 

5. Gain skills that will be useful in my career. Copy-editing, proof-reading, whatever. I just don't want to go in blind.

6.Visit Harry Potter World!

7. Find a relatively cheap apartment in Brooklyn or Queens so my eventual commute doesn't suck so bad.

8. Play Kingdom Hearts 3. I hope I have a job by the time this game is out because if not I'll be broke as fuck but either way, I'll have to make time for it.

9. Finally beat KH 358/2. I'm in the last few hours of game play but I'm stuck. God damn you, huge pterodactyl in Neverland.

10. Go to Comic-con in a sick cosplay.  

Me thinking about my impending doom and the reality that I probably won't accomplish at least half of this list:

Chelsea Market 2013

I used this as a writing sample for an internship application but I kind of like it so here you go:

Chelsea Market: August 2013

Have you ever had one of those moments in life that made you feel like you were doing the right thing? Like the soggy puzzle pieces of your life had finally, somehow fit together and created something more beautiful than you had originally expected.

Probably the closest thing I’ve had to a defining moment happened this summer. It was a sunny, sweaty Friday in New York City. I had trekked all the way to the crowded Chelsea Market just to find an empty seat in an air conditioned building. Sure enough, others had the same idea so it was packed. So packed, in fact, that there wasn’t much of a difference in temperature once stepping inside. 

Nearly every seat was taken and seeing as I am too much of an introvert to ask if I can share a table with anyone, I ended up sitting on what looked like a bench. I later realized that it was a piece of artwork- carefully crafted and molded to sit in the famous Chelsea Market, to be photographed and stared at for the polite amount of time. I had been sitting on it reading, internally complaining about how its uneven surface was digging into my tailbone and making my butt fall asleep. I’ve never claimed to be an artist.

I sat on it reading for nearly 3 hours. People came and went: ate a danish next to me, took a picture sitting on it. I smiled politely at first, but after a while I started to focus on my book. At about the 2 hour mark, I had a roughly 28-year-old man sitting next to me. I noticed he was holding a very professional looking camera and snapping pictures every so often. I couldn’t tell you how long he was sitting there before he asked, “What’re you reading, if you don’t mind me asking?”

            First thing you have to know about me is: I normally hate being disrupted when I’m reading, especially by someone who is just making conversation. But maybe I was having a really great day, or had gotten enough sleep the night before, because I wasn’t at all annoyed by his question. He seemed genuinely curious. We exchanged a few words, I explained what the book was about, and just before he left he said, “Sorry to bother you, I’ve just never seen someone so engrossed in reading in such a busy place before.” And that was it: the stars aligned, the lights flickered, whatever other clichés you want to come up with. This was the first time in my life I had ever had a complete stranger make such a spot-on judgment of me. The way I see it, if my passion for books is apparent to that man in Chelsea Market, then maybe it’s what I’m meant to do. Maybe it means nothing, but for a moment, it felt like it did.  

Mark Grist's "Girls Who Read" Video

Amazing poet, Mark Grist's video for his poem, "Girls Who Read".

For more from Mark Grist: 

http://markgrist.com/index.php