Spring Phase

Alright, we are in the final portion of the year here at St. Benedict's; spring phase is a month long class unlike any I have ever taken.

Dr. Wolf and I are the moderators of Kayrix, the student literary magazine. We meet for five hours a day and need to complete our magazine by the May 25. The days are long and we are still finding a rhythm, but it is enjoyable. We spend each day reading, writing, and reviewing submissions. Our editors were selected today and a professional will come in a couple days each week to help with layout. It is an incredible opportunity for the guys here that are interested in writing, magazines, publishing, etc...

We spent all of Friday in NYC and were lucky enough to meet the staff at the Hudson Review, ask questions, read some of our work, and share lunch. The review has been going for over 60 years and has had only two editors-in-chief. Though they have additional support staff for editing accepted submissions, the day-to-day operations are all done by four staff members. They have a tight office tucked away in the fourth floor of the Spanish Cultural Institute on Park Avenue. It was quite a maneuver to get the eighteen of us into the office to get a tour!

After lunch, we walked to the Whitney Biennial. With only an hour to spare, I didn't see much beyond the permanent collection. It is not a very big museum and the material is very contemporary, but I did enjoy the experience. After getting tickets for the guys, Dr. Wolf and I stopped downstairs for a coffee and he told me a story from the last time he was at the Whitney:

Two years ago on a rainy Friday, he led the same field trip and found himself almost alone in the cafe downstairs. He saw a very striking woman in line in front of him getting coffee (he emphasized striking several times, so take note). After he got coffee and found a table, he saw that this woman was not alone at her table. She was accompanied by a very slender old man in the blandest clothes he had ever seen, a big rain hat, and glasses. As he was taking in this vision, he kept wondering- why is she with him, what could he possibly have to offer? While getting close to the bottom of his coffee, he saw that she laughed at everything he said and they clearly loved each other. so, as he is leaving he walks by their table and gets a closer look: It's David Bowie and his wife Iman!

The coffee and conversation were good, but sadly we did not have another Bowie sighting.

We got back from the field trip after five and I was too tired to do much Friday night. So, I did two fun things Saturday to make up for it - I bought my first new record ever and I went to a costume party at the Bell House in Brooklyn. Though I have hundreds of used records, I have never payed full price for a shiny, untouched, new record. The record is Actor, by St. Vincent and I have listened to it at least seven times since Sunday. I heard about St. Vincent last Spring when this record came out, but I never got around to listening to her. Then, last Saturday I caught a few minutes of her on Austin City Limits and her guitar skills caught my attention. Her music can be very dark, but I kind of dig it. Some of my favorite tracks are Actor Out of Work, Marrow, Laughing With a Mouth of Blood, and The Party. Here is a track that is not on the album, but hints at the guitar work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lan-UQfN0zs

Later that night I went to the "Rite of Spring" costume party in Gowanus, Brooklyn with my friend Rafael Sanchez. The theme of the party combined spring/frightnite, was run by an avant-garde performance group, and took place in a recently converted factory. There was a projector playing really bizarre videos made by the group, and midway through they went on stage and did a choreographed dance. To give a better description of the scene, hundreds of wonderful costumes decorated the cavernous space, from spandex to zombie and everything between. The DJs were great, and though I was out way too late, it was a lot of fun!