Sunday, January 24, 2010

The itch that comes and goes.

It's technically tomorrow, I can post without seeming like a blog-whore in the timestamps.

All goes according to plan thus far, as the floor space entering my room turns from a narrow shaft to the computer and bed into a carpeted field of empty space. In this journey I've uncovered a dozen old essays, poems, and short stories from earlier in my college time. Some pockets of the collected crap in this room serve as a time capsule.

An essay about Korn, a journal of observations from campus-stalking/people watching, an old homework notebook. These things stand out more to me, mostly relating to the mandatory compositional writing course (111) from 2004. While some aspects of myself are still evident here, I am almost completely a different person. It's a slap in the face with a soft glove. It should be nice, but it's still a slap in the face.

I wrote a three and a half page essay about Korn, giving a half way decent bio of the band through their history. It's mostly opinion through the third person prospective, making it look like fact. There are some citations, but only enough to support the points I wanted to make. Giving it a critique now, I can safely say the following things:

-The style of writing does not sound fitting for an academic paper.
-My use of footnotes for fun was mostly a gimmick, and could've been easily (and more successfully) incorporated into the body of the paper. I blame Chuck Klosterman.
-I made a contrasting point between "nu-metal" and grunge, but I can now counter it by pointing out that neither genre's notable musicians could actually really play their instruments. They knew some power chords and could strum them in time with the snare. Neither was exceptionally revolutionary.
-I had a lot of ambiguous quotes/places for quotes. This was probably because I didn't realize that my friends were quotable people.
-I was too much of a fan boy for a band that only writes singles and filler.

All that said, I enjoyed rereading it, and I don't hate my writing all that much from this time period.

The observational journal, however, is another story. Since it's all observation/stream of consciousness-ish, I can't really rip it apart too heavily for the writing. I can, however, wholeheartedly say that even my ways of thinking have changed. My eye for detail has only gotten stronger, and my opinion of chicken ceaser salad has twisted from one of disdain sans dressing to one of overall displeasure compared to anything with ginger dressing and oranges.

It makes me want to write again, and more frequently. Not just blogging (not that I don't love giving you something to read, but I'd rather do something more in depth most of the time), but essay, story, and poetry. I miss it all so much. After this project is finished, I think I will. For now though I'm enjoying all the history I'm discovering.

I have much more to dig through. Based on trends, I will soon find elementary school work.

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