The end draws near...

and I am so sad. This has been one of my favorite classes ever in life ever. 

But on with the self-reflection for the second half of the semester. 

Well, I stopped looking for seams. I stopped caring and began to care more about analyzing how pieces worked as a whole and what I could learn from that. It definitely allowed me to enjoy everything much more because I wasn’t so focused on picking things apart and scrutinizing; I was taking things in as they were presented to me and trying to see what made the piece/story/whatever turn into whatever it was that it became. (That was a horrible sentence.)

Another thing that I said I wanted to do and I think I at least attempted, which I have to give myself some kudos for, is stepping away from the narrative. As seen in my workshop, I tried not to make it so much of an actual plot as contemplation, I guess. That’s the best way I could describe it. My success is debatable, but at this point I’ve honestly stopped caring (in a good way).

Throughout this course I’ve stressed and stressed about doing things correctly. But there is no correct way to mix-up, mash-up, collage. I may not have always done the best or most impressive; I could certainly improve and I intend to. I truly think this was a valuable course because it helped me to look at writing in a completely different way and that is not an opportunity afforded in any other class offered probably anywhere at any time. Ever. I do think I improved over the course of the semester. I hope? Perhaps, I don’t know, really.

Regardless… I loved this class and no other class will ever live up to it. Thanks guise, you so great.

And good luck to you seniors going off on your boondocking, TBS-interviewing, Alyssa-I-don’t-know-what-you’re-doing-but-good-luck-with-it, endeavors! 

More stuff

http://flavorwire.com/95303/daily-dose-pick-chad-person

Chad Person shreds US dollar bills and makes collages out of the pieces. (He also deducts any money used in the collages from his taxes haha)

Newspaper Blackout

Found this on tumblr:

http://newspaperblackout.com/

You can submit the poetry you write via newspaper print and a black marker. :D

Tailoring

Like Alyssa said, the only way to trace where you’ve been is to mark the pages. Well, at first I didn’t think of that, but after last night when I was done I thought that I wanted to remember where I had been. I didn’t remember the order or anything, and I was actually glad that I wasn’t able to recall that or keep an exact order of what I did, but I did go back and check off what pages I had seen already so when I went back today I could pick back up. It would make me worry to think that I had missed out on something. I think that’s why I read on to the next page initially instead of following directions as I mentioned on Monday.

Anyway, the parts that tell me to choose a random page I think are a little more disorienting, at least for me. In the rest of the book, I get used to being told “if you want this, go here; if you want this, go here.” But when it tells me that I have the choice to do literally whatever I want, I get worried that I’m going to “mess it up.” I think, however, that that is the beauty of this collage—there really is no way to mess it up. No matter what you do or what order you go in, as long as you keep going you are pretty much guaranteed to end up on every page eventually. Every story is altered slightly, tailored to the reader. 

so many strands raveled together

I'm learning that the deeper you go into this book(?), the more disorienting it becomes. It really is like a maze; I feel like I keep cycling back to the same pages over and over, hitting dead ends, trying to find a path that takes me somewhere new. Sometimes I'm halfway through a page before I realize I've read it already. Or I think maybe I've read it, but I'm not really sure, because there's so much repetition throughout. Which can actually turn out to be pretty interesting, because I'll pick up on different things than I did the first time around. It also brings to the forefront the idea that in a work like this, how do you come to "the end"? How can you know (other than keeping track of the pages) that you've visited every single page? Are there pages with no pathways that lead to them? With the constant invitation to deform and change the work, it seems like this work has no end. It is constantly evolving with the reader as an individual, and each new reader who comes along. In a weird kind of way, it's almost like it's alive. So...yeah. Cycles, growth, adaptability. Yet more fun attributes to play with in collages.

Also, I liked this quote: "That thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you is usually what you need to find, and finding it is a matter of getting lost."

Breaking Rules (like not posting on time...not intentional, promise!)

First of all, let me just say that I am TOTALLY into Galerie. I know I make comparisons to this all the time, but it really reminded me of House of Leaves, except it was much more... light, I guess. Sort of how HoL  is supposed to be this clusterfuck of mind-bending stuff with all this weird experimental writing, but Galerie in itself is a whole different kind of "mind-bending" for me. It's challenging in that it requires that you 'choose your own adventure' but that you also 'break the rules'. But if the one "rule" of Galerie is to 'break the rules,' who's to say we can't just read on straight ahead and never stray from that path?

Okay, I know that's not the point, but I just had fun trying to figure that out. Anyway, Galerie is so mesmerizing because it essentially feels endless. If you ever read something collage-y like House of Leaves, you're guaranteed an ending. But with Galerie, it doesn't seem like your 'adventures' through the text could ever even be the same, unless you'd written down your paths and followed them to see & remember where you'd been and what the book had to tell you. I wish I had written down my path, because after I'd read so many I made myself stop because I want to begin completely over for Thursday's reading.

This book is so compelling and all of the different techniques used to make it are impressive & inspiring. Lots of good ideas for works like this that we could do... 

Deformation

To collage Alyssa's work who was collaging Rachel:

idea of deformity, breaking down and arranging the "normal" or "expected" into something new or strange or even frightening, bringing to light the underlying question of what isdeformity and the suggestion that deformity is inherent in life, inherent in our own selves.

I think this is probably one of the strangest things we've read for class. Maybe not in content, but definitely in exhibition. I found myself getting caught up in the letters to Gloria bits, occasionally purposefully searching out those pages to read them. I actually got gripped by the story, until I realized the the author IS Gretchen and there is no Gloria. (Yet, even now I have my doubts...)

I actually like a lot of the abstract bits. Usually, those just annoy me and make no sense or make me sleepy. But these were really cool. I felt like the book was challenging the reader to come to terms with something--perhaps their own deformities, their tendency to deform, or the search for hearts?

I also liked that the pages are constantly telling you to wreck them (Have you ever seen Wreck This Journal or Wreck This App?), but I haven't yet cuz (collaging Drew) I paid good money damnit!