Caryl Churchill's Far Away

I'm writing this, as we speak, with no idea what I'm going to perform on Monday.  I imagine this is what's going through everyone else's minds as well who is performing, and to that I say:  I'm sure you'll be fine.  It won't be worse than mine.

With that, I'll give my impressions of Caryl Churchill's work that we studied in class this week.  It was fun to be able to perform it in class on Wednesday, and being able to hear it out loud, being read, I felt was beneficial.  I personally liked the play, and its ability to be so indirect in its explanations of the setting with which the play was taking place.  I especially enjoyed the idea of the 2nd Act.  In order to explain this massive, seemingly planet-wide conflict that has become the way of life within this play,  Churchill doesn't directly state to the audience the problems that are taking place.  In order to do that, she uses hat making.  An absurd profession, made even more absurd when we understand that the hats that are being made are being made for prisoners being sent to be executed.

This scene makes us ask some absurd questions that lead us to imagine a world that has totally been led astray, versus simply telling us that it has been.  How could a person have a business solely based on making hats for prisoners?  What economy would even support this?  There must be a great deal of prisoners then...there's a college for making these hats?  There is an educational program, even an institution, dedicated to this profession??? Well there must be quite a demand for this.  What kind of world is this that can not only support a profession like this, but an entire educational program devoted to it?  This example of a world going completely astray, I believe, is very clever.

Overall, I think the three acts serve as the stages of a conflict of this magnitude:  the first act provides the ideal, the motivations for a war that is so large and without guidance or definition.  Morality is subjective, questionable at best, and any crime acted within the confines of the war will find someone to argue its validity.  The second act provides a window into the war at its full absurdity.  The third and final act shows the strain of a war that has no end.  Alliances are being made with anyone and anything, in the vain hope that it will bring about the end of this war.  Victory or defeat.  I believe the characters representing the hearts and minds of everyone in this world are stretched so thinly, they believe in any alliance they have heard of.  The absurdity of the alliances noted in this act aren't truthful, they're just evidence of a people so thoroughly consumed by something so large, irreversible, and endless, that they will believe animals are against them.  They will believe animals have rallied to their cause, whatever that may be.  They believe rocks are with them/against them.  Water, air...same thing.  They don't know anything other than this war anymore, and it is making them doubt and believe everything.


Oh, and:  sorry in advance for Monday.

A Belated Gertrude Stein

Though this is horribly late, and I will not be as well-written as I would like about it, I feel like I must do what is right and divulge my thoughts about Gertrude Stein.
I wish I could be one tenth as confident about my writing as Gertrude Stein is about hers.  She was prideful to a fault, it seems, disavowing her own brother for merely joking about her writing style.  Though I'm fairly certain I wouldn't do that, that level of confidence in oneself is most certainly necessary when you are doing something so radically different, so radically clever.
That being said, Four Saints read to me like essentially all of the poems I have read from Gertrude - meaning that it was stark, rhythmically jarring, and altogether exciting to read.  I do not have a problem with not being able to explain personally the technical, social, or artistic ramifications for her work, or the justifications and inspirations behind them.  Those things are for scholars and Gertrude herself to do.  I, as recognized as a student, should not be able to do so.  I could take a swing at it, and from what I've read about her, I might be able to be in the ballpark. 
What I really believe I should do with her writing is explain what feeling it gave me when I read it, not try to define why I feel that way.  As a student, and therefore a consumer of writers' works; I am also, mainly, merely a consumer in the crowd.  Therefore I should be able to say I am either entertained or not...and I was.  I was even more entertained with the energy in the performance we watched.  Being able to watch, and hear, the music and lyrics come together in a way completely outside of my mind was exciting.

And I'm sorry I sound like a douche.  And for this being a week late.

Opening Statement

Where to begin about me.  Well, I suppose I could say thank you to anyone who decides to read this first and foremost - after all, affording some of your own time to share with my ramblings is very selfless of you, and is appreciated by me.  It's of course hard to convey in a public forum (no matter how minute a public forum it may be) who I am, or more specifically, why you should be interested in who I am.  To begin, my name is Matt Catania.  I am currently a student at Eastern Michigan, in the Creative Writing program.  To say I knew I would be saying that about myself even two years ago would be a lie.  Two years ago, I was wasting my time fighting Kent State University, back near where I grew up in Ohio.  When I graduated college, my first choice of college was Ohio University.  Not because I wanted to go there, but because I was chasing a girl.  It was a silly dream I realize now.  After one year at OU, I left and went home.  I couldn't stand being away from home.

At Kent State, and for the next...four or so years, I spent my time dabbling in math, history, and finally english.  I can't properly explain, however, the distain I have for that school.  From the commute to the staff to the programs they offered, Kent State was the definition of bad college to me.  Granted, EMU shares a few of the same characteristics, as I imagine many colleges do, but Kent State will always hold a special place in my heart as the worst college experience I could've had.  When I was there, I felt truly lost.

To keep myself from rambling any more, and to fulfill my obligations for this assignment, I will make the next few years of my school life shorter.  I met my girlfriend back home in Ohio.  We fell in love.  She couldn't stay in Ohio anymore, she had just graduated from Hiram college and was working a shitty job.  She had to do something more; she decided to get her Masters.  I was still wasting my time going nowhere in school; she got accepted into the graduate program at EMU for Art Management.  I said I'd go with her.  I found the Creative Writing program here, and assumed it would be perfect for me to finish my schooling with.  After all, writing, reading, immersing myself in poems and poetry is the one thing I could see myself finishing school with.  So far, the Creative Writing program hasn't provided me with what I wanted, but I will be done soon.  Hopefully.

So here I am.  That took a little longer than it should have, and I apologize for that.  Regardless of my experience at EMU so far, it will not deter me from exuding my best effort for this class.