Here’s the view from the campus office, where we live next-to-corner-office wishes and sixth floor dreams. Also, I share this office with my lovely bride, though we are seldom there at the same time. Offsetting office hours make that happen this semester.
Anyway, just look at those clouds. There’s a certain elegance in the clouds when they thin and march out like that. I wonder if that’s how earlier artists were inspired to take on the challenge of forced perspective.
The office has lights, but I do not know if they work. Plenty of natural light comes through that window, and I’ve never tried turning them on.
The office has the four travel posters that commemorate our honeymoon. And there are a few other framed things on the wall. I should add some of my own. And there’s a bookshelf, but I should add some books that are currently sitting in the basement, looking awesome. We have a rug we need to bring in.
I have also been collecting vintage local sports pennants. I’d all but completed the set when countries started shipping things to the U.S. The baseball pennant I bought two months ago from someone in Canada is somewhere stuck in that morass, so I’m getting a refund. But I need a new vintage baseball pennant, so back to E-bay, I guess. Then we can get a giant frame and hang that on an office wall.
In my mind, this will look really classy and cool.
The first problem is that there’s a lot of cool stuff I could put on a wall. The second problem is the nails. Or, more precisely, the nail holes. It feels very permanent, and I don’t mean in the photo that’s been on your grandparents’ wall your whole life sense of permanence. This is silly, there are several high quality putties and sealants and a fresh coat of paint goes a long way, but puncturing drywall is a real commitment.
This also explains all of the things not hanging on walls here at home, where I could also put up some other cool stuff.
In Criticism today we watched the new documentary on British Olympian Tom Daley.
It left something to be desired, from a critical perspective, but Daley was an executive producer, and I’m sure that figures into it. He’s going to tell his story his way — and why not? With that in mind, much of it felt a lot like a sort of oral history he was recording for his children.
It’s also an unconventional documentary in some respects. He’s watching footage of himself on a big screen, footage from throughout his life, because there have always been video cameras. And he was such an incredibly high profile athlete throughout his diving career, there were always broadcast cameras, too. Plus, I’m a big believer in the need of time and space away from the subject of a documentary. Maturing, evolving, crystallizing perspectives and all of that. This doc ends with his Paris Olympics. (And it felt rushed at the end.)
It got a mixed response from the class, now I’ve just got to get them to explain aloud why. But criticism is a learned process, and we’ve got some time yet to go this term.
In org comm my god-brother-in-law came to talk about his work. He’s a professional mountain biker, a filmmaker, a storyteller. Brice is also pretty great at all of those things. So he talked about niche storytelling. He was great at that, too. Here’s one of his films.
What was gratifying to me was to see how so many of the students were engaged in what he was saying, even though he is in a niche field, and this was not their niche. Well, most of them. One guy in the room, turns out, rides a bit, and they got nerdy with the vocabulary in a hurry, which was amusing to watch. There were suddenly industry specific terms flying all over the place and everyone else in the room came to realize they had no chance of catching up, or even catching on. It’s a niche kind of storytelling.
And look, I ride bikes. I tell stories. I do niche things. I teach this class. I was taking notes on what Brice was telling us.
I have some more things to grade, but if I did that tonight, what would I do tomorrow? Plenty of other things, of course. So I’ll just grade (tomorrow) instead.
See how I do that? There’s a certain elegance to it.
