I just love this.

Day 62: Sarah Kay meets Sarah Kay

While I find it annoying that there are so many Sarahs running around in the world, I find it amusing that there is another Sarah Kay in the USA. (hey, it rhymes!)

People like to call me Sarah K to distinguish me from all the other Sarahs they know. Somehow this has evolved to my friends writing my name as Sarah Kay which is more fashionable than just the “K”.

So when Megan Mc sent this TED Talk to me, I was prepared for awesomeness since the speaker is named Sarah Kay after all.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0snNB1yS3IE&list=FL0vshux8uaBgRe-f3h4HyKg&index=2

I was blown away. I think Sarah Kay is a great poet (the speaker, not me; I am terrible at writing poetry) and I love how she makes every word count. She has a powerful and compelling voice, and I only hope that one day I could be 1/10 as engaging as her when I give presentations and talk to people.

I love the idea of having a poet “perform” the poem in order to convey the deeper meaning than a reader could get just by simply reading the words of a poem.

Watching this TED Talk reminded of something my playwriting teacher at UMW, Mark Scharf, told me in class once: “There’s nothing like seeing a performance live with the actors right in front of you.”**

This is exactly how I feel about spoken poetry because with the rate of how fast or slow the performer talks, the intonation they use, not to mention the hand gestures they make, affects how the audience reacts to a word, a line, or even the whole poem in itself.

Sarah Kay mentioned that one of her activities she often asks her students to do is to list 10 things that they know to be true. They aren’t supposed to think too hard about it. They should just write the first things that pop in their head.

Here is what I ended up with:

1) I am American.


2) I am a girl.


3) I like photography and singing.

I just love this.
4) I like being a foreigner in Korea sometimes. Makes me feel special, like a unicorn.


5) I hate being a foreigner in Korea sometimes. I don’t like the attention.

6) I want to be a writer, but I don’t know if I am trying hard enough.


7) The beach makes me so happy I could cry.

I love this movie
8 ) People who like winter are crazy!!


9) My tongue trips and stumbles over words much like my feet over anything on the ground.


10) I think hugs are the best thing in the world.

Although too much of this kind of hugging might kill you

I find it interesting that all of what I wrote started with “I” or at least had to deal with me, myself and I. I suppose that I find it a lot easier to find truth in what I believe about myself, than is for me to make statements about other people or the world.

I have asked 10 people now (and counting) to tell me 3 statements they believe to be true because not only is it a great conversation starter, but I am generally curious what other people would list.

The most recent person I asked was my friend Gigi. Her list of 3 things she knows is true:
1) The sky is blue.
2) The road is hard
3) The store has a glass window.

Her statements had nothing to do with herself, but rather the external world around her. As for the other people I have talked with, their statements tend to range from all about themselves [the narcissistic lot, haha] to the people who only talk about environmental things.

All in all, spoken poetry is a topic I want to explore more as a listener and maybe a poet myself.  I am happy my re-introduction to this kind of performance art came from such a talented person as Sarah Kay.

**I am paraphrasing Scharf’s words since he told my class this in 2008 so my memory of his exact words is a little on the fuzzy side.

Day 53: The smell of rain

“Day 53: Make something in which the sense of smell is the essential component.”

Today should have been a day of baking cookies or making some other delectably delicious dessert.

But a quick roadtrip to Fredvegas took baking out of the picture.

It is impossible to capture smell in a photograph or a video… you can capture people’s reactions to smells, but that isn’t the same thing.

If you could have been with me when I took the photograph, you would have smelled the clean scent of rain in the air. The air smelled like damp earth and the promise of the spring to come. I wish there was a way to bottle that smell.

 

Graduation & life after!

After  eight semesters of hard work, plus a couple of summer classes here and there, I’ve graduated from the University of Mary Washington!

I’ve graduated with departmental honors and a BA in English: Creative Writing, summa cum laude.

Me & Meghan E --> Both of us received honors in English 😉

So now that I’ve graduated I’ve faced an exponential increase of family and/or random people asking me:

“So what are you going to do with your life now that you’ve graduated? Are you going into journalism? Are you going to teach?…”

Then they stare at me, unblinking, until I say something.

Like many of my fellow peers, I don’t really have a plan for my career yet (most of them fell through for various reasons), and thus, these questions get really old, really fast.

If I was smart I would say something random, like “I’m going to become a scuba diving instructor in Hawaii.” (I’m an actual Scuba diver but no-where near experienced enough to be an instructor! Although I would love to move to Hawaii for a few years!)

 

But really this is what I tell people I have planned for the next few months:

1) Figure out how to fit everything I brought back from my apartment into my room at home. My room here is the size of a cardboard box, no joke,  so this is going to be tricky!

 

2) In 11 days I am flying to California to meet up with my Australian friend Rose who I met in New Zealand last year.

postcard I bought last year. love it!!

 

Then we are going to travel together around  California, Arizona and Nevada for a little over two weeks. After that we are headed over to the East coast to do more traveling until she leaves in mid-July.

I am super excited because Rose is one of my closest friends and I haven’t seen her in almost a year. Also, while I’m from California, I’ve never been to Arizona or Nevada, so I am looking forward to traveling there.

Viva las vegas!

Vegas, anyone?

I’m also looking forward to showing off the best of America to Rose because she has never been to the U.S. before.

So definitely be on the lookout for more blog posts about her and our trip in the upcoming future!

3) Once Rose leaves its all going to be about applying for jobs or internships or seeing if I have any money left over to do more traveling. I got the travelin’ bug and I want to see as much of the world as possible before I’m 25.

Goal in life: Visit all the countries in the world plus Antartica. This can happen I just need to invent/write something that I can make bank on!

 

I am so there!