After reading Michael Pollan and Wendell Berry, I have a slightly better understanding of the economics of the food industry. Pollan very rationally illustrates the principle that matter cannot be created or destroyed, merely transferred from one state to another. The increases in yield per acre for crops like corn do not come without a price; for every acre of corn grown today, around 50 gallons of oil is used for tasks such as harvesting, transporting, and producing fertilizers.

I believe that every advance in technology comes with a price. For every progressive technological action, there seems to be an "equal and opposite reaction." Cars shorten the distance between us while simultaneously drawing lines against human interaction. They simplify travel, while creating traffic jams, urban sprawl, and harmful greenhouse gases. Electric cars avow a solution to one of these problems; now we just have to figure out what to do with all those dead batteries.

It seems the same with food. While nothing I read will immediately change my already-mindful eating habits, I would like to help affect change in the choices that are available to us as consumers. Berry makes a list of ways to eat responsibly. On his list is to "participate in food production to the extent that you can." Last year, I began a small garden in the backyard, unaware that the neighborhood association has a policy against planting vegetables. I don't know if a well-maintained garden brings down property values (shouldn't it be the reverse?), but it does seem a bit tyrannical not only to have limited choices at the supermarket, but also to prohibit one of life's basic tenants, the freedom to produce your own food.

These are my comments about Twitterives that were not presented in class.

Kelly McLaughlin - Reading With Analisa
I love this. Right from the well-written prologue, I was emotionally involved. But with each new chapter, my investment grew stronger and stronger. The organization is spot-on relevant: content grouped in chapters alternately scientific and romantic. Clicking though them was like reading the pages of a book. The parts based on research reinforced my conviction that reading to children is important, and the pages with personal stories brought the concepts life in an emotional climax--almost like a story!

I was impressed with the screen captures of tweets in the prologue. They have rounded corners and shadows behind them, and I want to know how to do this. The page with the book covers was such a good idea and well executed. In Chapter 4, I loved the detail of the narrative, like the bookmark that came from Chuck E. Cheese. These details really help create a realistic and poignant scene.

My only thoughts on revision: 1) I really hope that the interview to come is with Analisa. I feel like I almost know her, but want more. And if it is to be with her, I think putting it at the end is the right idea, like reading a book before you see the movie. And 2) I wanted to see a picture of you reading to her, or at least a picture of her face. This video would serve this purpose, and that might be enough. I like the pictures in the beginning, but they are distant and I kept remembering the picture that you have on your "About Me" page.

Pauline Tazewell - Love and Forgiveness
Wow, forgiveness is powerful stuff. I like the inclusion of "forgiveness is an action word" and that it is mentioned 145 times in the bible. This part of the Twitterive is powerful, and I can tell that the writer has experience talking about forgiveness. I think the repetend is strong: "I never gave up."  But I wonder if it sets the right tone for forgiveness. It seems like there are maybe two sides to the story, the struggle and the release. "Love and Forgiveness" is perhaps the second part of the story; maybe the first part is naivety, deception, or bitterness. Maybe these themes would be better organized on two pages.

I like the inclusion of the soon-to-be husband. It serves as a happy ending of sorts, but I had two questions. First, what is the reasoning for including a "current" diary entry at the beginning? And second, I want to know more about Reeves. Maybe this isn't the point of the story; I don't know. Maybe including too much about him would detract from the forgiveness theme; however, I thought that he got brushed over: a quick diary entry at the beginning and a wedding invitation at the end.

Ashley Pfaff - Letters to God
Using the repetition of letters is an effective way of telling the story here. I like that, while most seem semi-fictionalized, a photo of a "real" one is even included. This technique reminded me of the way the classic young adult novel "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret" uses letters to God to set off chapters. I can follow the dynamic main character's transformation from "non-believer" to "uplifted" through the letters. I also like the comments under "Symptoms of Depression:" they're almost like tweets! Running thoughts, add another dimension.

I think my favorite part of this twitterive is the small instance of three photos. It looks like it's the same photo, only each is progressively darker, like sinking into depression. I was wondering: might this be repeated towards the end, only in reverse? A picture gets lighter and lighter? Lastly, I noticed just a few common mistakes ("you're/your," "are/our," "christian's/Christians") that once corrected, will keep the reader from being distracted from the story.

Lindsay Jones - Car Crash
The images here are effective; we see phone screens, a smashed car, a girl in the hospital. They illustrate the narrative so I could understand what it felt like a little better. When the pictures of the smashed car appear in the story, the crash has just happened and it is night. However, the pictures are taken in the daylight. It shows the aftermath, but not the moment. Obviously, no one is going to recreate a car crash to take pictures, but it would be interesting to experiment with some photography of fragments of the night: a blurry traffic signal, the torso of a man running to help. It might take readers further into the story instead of daylight photos that might take them further out.

Two other thoughts: 1) There might be too much back story. There are a lot of events leading up to the crash that seem irrelevent. One possibility is to try leading off with the crash itself and work in details as needed. In lieu of extended backstory, the recovery seems ripe for expansion. I wanted to know more about getting back in a car, what it was like to conquer that fear. 2) The story doesn't really have an ending. I wanted to know: Does Monica heal? Do they remain friends? What is it like to drive again?

These are my summaries and thoughts of the Twitterives that were presented in class on February 28th.

1) WHO are the characters in your story?
I am the incidental character in my story, but I want other people to feel like they could be in it too.

2) WHAT is your story? WHAT genres/modes are you using for your story?
My story is about abandonment, loneliness, and disconnection. I am using photography, poetry, music performance, voicemail recordings, and drawings. The recordings of voicemails, for example, embody the spirit of missed connections, and the crackly, low-fi, far off sound hopefully evokes loneliness.

3) WHEN does your story take place?
My story takes place in the past. It is a place of memory.

4) WHERE is your place?
My place is the limbic system of the brain, which deals with memory and emotion.

5) WHY do you feel a connection/lack of connection to place?
I have a turbulent relationship with memory. I DO feel a connection to feelings of abandonment, but I am disconnected from the places where the memories exist.

6) HOW do you show your audience your connection/lack of connection to place?
The fragmented nature of the video shows a lack of connection.

Ahh, to reflect on the writing process. It seems like all I do is reflect. This post will discuss my writing process so far in this class.

Approaching Twitter to begin "making notes" was easy. I had no problem, at first, using text messages in lieu of a pen and paper to make observations. After a while, I noticed two things. First, a lot of my observations were internal. As much as I described the physical world I was experiencing, I tweeted about thoughts that occurred to me, revelations that appeared only in my head. Second, as I amassed a collection of followers, I became more and more aware of the people who were reading what I wrote. Gone were the carefree inaugural days of using a new social media platform. My notepad was now a glass slate with the world on the other side. My tweets became more focused on real things (promoting events, etc.) and less about ideas.

Writing on Weebly has had its own share of difficulties. I was initially scared to compose directly onto the internet. I try to be organized as much as possible, and I'm used to keeping Word documents in folders on a hard drive. It's a way of keeping everything central. But I don't really know what's more reliable: files scattered over an array of external hard drives that may someday stop working, or work scattered on the internet where I can find it always (probably). I suppose it's a wash, but it feels like I'm just adding to the digital noise. It feels like these words are cheaper per pound than Microsoft "Words."

Once it came to actually working on the twitterive, I didn't know where to "enter" the "story." I didn't know if it was a story, and I didn't know what form it could or should take. I needed restrictions, but I didn't want to limit myself before I knew what was possible. Finally, in distressed phone call to my girlfriend, I articulated that "if it was just a double-spaced thing on paper, I could do that, I could write a shitty draft." She replied, "Then do that. Start there. You can add things later." This now seems like the most obvious thing, which is usually how our conversations go.

Writing my micro fiction pieces was really kind of fun. I found a tweet I could work with, and then totally removed myself from the situation in which I tweeted it. It was like being forced into a backseat with a blind fold on, driven out of state, and left to fend for myself. I had to write myself out of it. Of course, familiar places crept back in. But I was able to keep them at an arm's length to avoid bogging down with unnecessary detail. After writing three such pieces, I didn't think it was helping me arrive at my twitterive. I thought maybe I was going the wrong way. I got discouraged and stopped working. This is the worst thing to do. Once I stop working, it allows for a whole host of unsubstantiated thoughts to creep in.

Finally, I told myself to just write something and go from there. I wrote a scene. I noticed rust on light poles. I noticed rust on coffee pots. I thought about what rust implies: neglect, desertion. I thought about the desert, and how nothing rests there. I thought about the necessity of water, how it functions in growth and decay. This was enough to convince me that maybe there was something to this. But I'm still not convinced.

So here are five questions to those who read my twitterive in progress:
1. Is this at all interesting to you, do you have a reason to care?
2. What does rust make you think of?
3. What are the implications of living in an emotional desert?
4. What do you do when you feel like no one cares?
5. What other kinds of modes or genres would work here?

P.S. Someone called me a deconstructionist. Part of me is hopeful that maybe there is a pattern to what I'm doing. And that the pattern reaches across modes. It's also kind of fun to think that maybe there is a name for it.

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As an experiment in collaborative writing, our class is putting on a mock wedding. I am playing the part of videographer. Here's a video I made in preparation for the event.

It's funny; it seems like everyone is talking about the idea of recombination this week.

I got the idea of cutting up my tweets from an exercise in high school. In order to form the final stanza of a paradelle in progress, I cut up the words of the first three. Here's what I ended up with:

Paradelle for Jennifer

I get confused when you play the piano of my soul
I get confused when you play the piano of my soul
And hide from me true melodies in your heart
And hide from me true melodies in your heart
I hide, confused, from your piano melodies
And when you play the true soul in me, you get my heart

In my dreams, the winds blow soft and caress your hair
In my dreams, the winds blow soft and caress your hair
It falls down as I kiss around your rosy cheek
It falls down as I kiss around your rosy cheek
I caress your cheek as winds blow down my dreams,
And the soft rosy kiss, it falls around in your hair

My vision fades when you walk down the road into the sun
My vision fades when you walk down the road into the sun
This unsure feeling rises blindly in my conscience
This unsure feeling rises blindly in my conscience
The sun rises unsure into this road
The vision blindly fades my conscience, when in you walk, my feeling down

The winds hide dreams as you blow your kiss in my cheek
I blindly play in your soft rosy hair
You get this unsure feeling of me when I walk around the piano
When true vision rises and falls from my confused conscience
Your melodies caress the sun down in my soul
It fades down the road and into my heart

Of course, one of the pioneers of cut and paste writing was William Burroughs. See it here, along with the copy and paste stylings of Led Zeppelin:

And the idea of playfully reappropriating words immediately brings to mind Dylan, in all his poetic glory:

But you don't have to go back to the 1960s to find examples of remix. It's everywhere! Mark Hosler has been doing this sort of work with the band/artist collective Negativland since the late 70s. And he's coming to Rowan this week! Hosler will present a multimedia lecture titled "Adventures in Illegal Art: Creative Media Resistance and Negativland" on Wednesday, February 15, at 7pm in Boyd Recital Hall. And he was kind enough to agree to meet me for a brief television interview! If you have any questions you'd like me to ask, feel free to post them below.

The poem on the left was inspired by my twitter feed. It consists solely of portions of the tweets on the right.

I'm not saying anything, but I might try to do one of these every day to get going. Just trying to sneak up on it. This microfiction is inspired by the tweet "Instead of showing me, they just told me where to go. Fake wood paneling."

I didn't even know if the film existed anymore. I had heard rumors, and when Lars Ellsworth from the Herald mentioned to me that he knew a guy at the police station who was cousins with the man who shot it, I was interested. We arranged a meeting on a Saturday. Lars would pick me up at 9 and we'd drive to the south side to this house somewhere in Parkview.

"Don't bring the camera," Lars said when I got in the car.
"I'm not," I said.

The air outside was cold, but inside the car I had to take off my overcoat. The violent glare of parked cars assaulted us in the enclosed space. The further south we drove, the shorter the houses became. They seemed to sink into the earth here, deflated by years of neglect. The brick walls grew darker, but the bright blue sky seemed oblivious. A woman with curlers in her hair was walking her dog. She stared as she crossed in front of us.

We arrived and two men met us on the steps. Instead of showing me, they just told me where to go. Fake wood paneling. A narrow stair case. Down, down, down. We got to the bottom and I froze. Not only was there a whole wall of film canisters, but there on the table, in a single pool of light from above, was a rifle that looked exactly like the murder weapon.