Final Piece Writing Process

This piece posed a challenge in that, as usual, I wasn't really sure how to make it into a "narrative story" other than by giving an attempt at a vivid retelling of the events that took place to make this a story worth telling. As such, there's a lot of recall of events that don't actually take place within the story itself, and I'm pretty sure the piece caught some flak at workshop for that. As it stands now, I think the flashbacks work reasonably well to bring the reader into the moments that caused such controversy on Kalamazoo's campus, despite the fact that they combine to give it a rather long word count. So perhaps this is not as well suited for an Index article, because they don't print pieces longer than 1000 words, and this is about five hundred over that. It would require a great deal of overhaul for an audience other than our campus paper, though - even moving the publication to the Gazette would obviously require some significant changes.

My difficulty in making this into a "narrative story" points to one of the greater difficulties I have with narrative journalism - I just want to get the story out there, I have less of an interest or even tendency to "show" like narrative journalism is supposed to. I just want to give the story in plain terms, tell people what's up, explain things to them, not have to think about developing characters, flashbacks, foreshadowing, and all those other devices storytellers/novelists use. In short, I think I prefer hard newswriting or even arts journalism to the narrative style. Good newswriters and arts journalists, I'm sure, use these techniques, but their work seems to depend less on it, which is fine by me. I'm interested in telling a story, I'm just not always as interested in doing it this way. It's difficult for me, and maybe if I do more journalism in the future I'll grow into it. As this piece perhaps shows, I'm not fully comfortable with the form as yet. I don't write creatively or with these kinds of devices often. I need more time to adjust.

The piece also could use more voices, and part of this is my own failure because I for a long time was unsure of where I wanted this to go. Only having two interviews happened because I didn't have time to follow up on the people I was recommended to talk to, since by the time the interviews happened it was almost crunch time. An interview with the Arcus Center people didn't happen either because of lack of time. So I would like to have more people talking here to tie the two events/people together, but it did not happen. Picking a subject that I have a little more familiarity with and maybe more passion about might have helped in this scenario; I kind of felt like I was scrambling with a half baked idea most of the time. The piece didn't prove itself too difficult to write, because I had good quotes (despite losing most of an audio recording of one interview to technical difficulties), and strong stories for each person, but it could have used more threads linking it together.

Final Piece Revised

Gender Roles: How They Play Out On K College’s Campus

This quarter’s Index has been a hotbed of dialogue about gender, from hard news reporting on events around campus creating discussion about the topic, such as Elaine Ezekiel’s May article about a panel on sexual violence, Brittany Worthington’s April article describing the Arcus Center’s participation in a transgender study. Op-ed articles and letters to the editor responding to events happening all over campus also abounded. Among these were Hussain Turk’s March response to a drag show, Elinor Epperson’s May response to a humorous Index post, Ellen Smith’s May op-ed and the numerous letters written in reaction to it. Ellen’s op-ed and the circumstances that produced it deserve closer analysis in light of what these things say about the campus community of Kalamazoo College.

Frelon. Spring Quarter 2011. April the 28^th, 29^th, and 30^th. Thursday-Friday-Saturday nights. Each night Dalton Theatre filled to capacity; tickets for all nights sold out. A multitude of voices bounce around the large open space, making it hard to register even one’s own internal thought, let alone talk to a neighbor. The lights dim, spotlights draw the eye to center stage, and dancers appear. Men and women float, glide, slither, shimmy, stomp, and flaunt their way across the stage—in pairs, individually, in groups—to music drawn from a spectrum wide as the tastes of the participants. Pop music, world music, all kinds of music now fill the theatre, and the dancers move to it, now languidly, now laconically, now dramatically.

The dances fly by. Begin the “Man Dance,” a dance that has occurred throughout Frelon’s history, showcasing talented male dancers, begins. The dance affected Ellen Smith, a senior who has participated in the past three Frelon dances and describes herself as a “fairly active feminst leader,” intensely. “The way I read it […] it was reinforcing this idea of men as really dominant and sexually aggressive, and women as sexual objects,” she said. She went on to elaborate that the male stripping could have played with gender roles, but in the situation, where the women were in a lowered, vulnerable position, this didn’t come across to her.

Ellen went on to write her response, dated on the Index’s page to May 3^rd, which caused a stir on campus. In the Index, the web article received an unusually high number of comments, most of which basically said the issue being raised wasn’t a big deal, according to Ellen. A facebook note containing the op-ed was published by a current director of Frelon as an open forum in which current and former directors could respond to it; at least one comment on the note was along the lines of “somebody needs to screw this girl so she’ll loosen up” and stop being so concerned, which “made me very uncomfortable,” said Ellen. She wrote against what she perceived as “an astonishingly offensive display and reinforcement of problematic gendered power dynamics,” with emphasis on heteronormativity; in effect, a woman spoke out against the hierarchy and there were immediate attempts to shut her down.

More official responses to the original op-ed followed. Several groups wrote letters to the editor that came out in the Index’s May 11^th issue. A letter from the directors of Frelon provided a different approach to the topic, explaining why the dance was choreographed the way it was, its original intent. A group of male faculty and students also wrote a letter to the editor for that issue of the Index, supporting Ellen’s article and denouncing the hostility that had arisen against her. Smith said that it was “powerful to have men stand up and say, ‘This is not okay.’” A third group, a diverse group of students of different years and faculty, further supported Ellen, and spoke out against the hostile backlash that she had experienced. The reactions were mixed, though on the whole Smith received support from people she talked to in person; the anonymity and space allowed by the Internet she thought made it easier for others to attack her without fear of consequence.

Friday, May 14^th. Spring Quarter 2011. The day before Crystal Ball. This is a bright day, full of light and uncomfortable warmth. A man enters the Humphrey House in time for the 2011 edition of Bruce Mills’ English Junior Seminar. He wears a vivid blue sundress, with a plunging neckline and no back. Max Wedding is in drag for the day.

Max, a junior and co-leader of Kaleidoscope, surprised nearly everyone that day in the Humphrey House. He is openly gay, but typically dresses to match the gender role assigned him in society, wearing more masculine clothing – sweatpants, ripped jeans, hooded sweatshirts, t-shirts. He has dressed in drag the day before Crystal Ball this year and the last, experiencing similar reactions to his clothing each time. His sophomore year it was somewhat accidental – he wore a skirt and feminine top to speak at the Community Reflection on Crystal Ball that day and was not able to change before his next class, so he wore drag all day. He described last year’s most memorable experience: “What comes to mind the most – the most shocking – one worker at the caf started laughing at me. It would have been very uncomfortable if I was expressing myself.” While the incident was addressed with campus authorities, that doesn’t mean that things were completely different this year. This year, Max’s dressing in drag for the day was intentional, done to see if it would elicit similar reactions.

And they were. Max spoke at the Community event and attended classes as normal. But that bright sunny day he recalled that “people would be passing on stairs and let out chuckles [...] [they] treated me differently than they would every day.” He was catcalled and received positive compliments on the dress, and in Bruce’s Junior Seminar taken as an example for the text being discussed that day in class – Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, a fiction work about, broadly, marginalized groups of people. Being called out, he said, made him uncomfortable, and had he actually been expressing himself it would have made him even more so.

Max says that, gender fucking, dressing in drag this way, is his way of messing with society, of refusing to conform to norms of, in this instance, clothing. So though Max was made to feel uncomfortable while in this situation, at the end of the day he was able to take those clothes off. A male whose preference is gender expression through wearing women’s clothing, however, would have faced a much more difficult choice – stop dressing in drag and wear “normal” clothing or continue to dress in the desired fashion and face at least alienation, if not ostracism of some sort.

This goes to show that though Kalamazoo College is home to a vocal LGBT student organization, has a relatively high number of LGBT students, and is known as probably the most liberal/progressive college in Michigan, the subject of gender is a hell of a lot touchier on this campus than its members might like to admit.

What do these reactions say about the campus as a whole? Smith felt that her article, and the surrounding responses, brought to the fore the “tension between a lot of people who want to move forward, want social justice dialogue […] butting up against more mainstream viewpoints. As much as it sucked to have so much public attention, [this] brought a lot of stuff to the surface.” There were mixed reactions; the college community from different sectors attacked and supported Ellen for her article. The fact that such attacks can happen in a supposedly progressive space points to the touchiness of gender issues; as Max said, “the responses to Ellen’s letter showcase the hostility we have on campus.” He also added, “K’s not quite as progressive as we say we are.”

It’s an issue that’s difficult to take on. Max says that we have a lot of dialogue on this, but “until it turns into something it’ll just stay dialogue. Unless we start having talk on a regular basis, shock will remain” when we see a person acting outside of their gender role. The goal, of course, would be for campus members to feel safe and comfortable while expressing their gender, a point that this college community does not yet appear to have reached. Max expressed a desire to have both male and female friends gender bend, something that might help other members of the community normalize these expressions of self. Smith also believes that the dialogue brought up can help the community move forward in the long run, and credits the Arcus Center for Social Justice for attempting to facilitate a positive sex culture on campus. The Center has held many events in the area designed to provide safe spaces for dialogue between different members of the community to occur, including the recent Mapping Desires Workshop. Through these dialogues and events – both Center and student initiated – there is hope that K College as a whole will meet these issues, grapple with them, and eventually overwhelm them.

Strutt Profile Slideshow

Here's a link to the slideshow I made about the Strutt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25go5jPoNDg

Acting Out: Gender Roles on Kalamazoo College's Campus

Frelon. Spring Quarter 2011. April the 28^th, 29^th, and 30^th. Thursday-Friday-Saturday nights. Each night Dalton Theatre filled to capacity; tickets for all nights sold out. A multitude of voices bounce around the large open space, making it hard to register even one’s own internal thought, let alone talk to a neighbor. The lights dim, spotlights draw the eye to center stage, and dancers appear. Men and women float, glide, slither, shimmy, stomp, and flaunt their way across the stage—in pairs, individually, in groups—to music drawn from a spectrum wide as the tastes of the participants. Pop music, world music, all kinds of music now fill the theatre, and the dancers move to it, now languidly, now laconically, now dramatically.

The dances fly by. The “Man Dance,” an off and on dance that has occurred throughout Frelon’s history, showcasing talented male dancers, begins. I did not attend this year’s Frelon, and thus I leave the specific telling of this dance to Ellen Smith, whose op-ed about the dance featured earlier this quarter in the Index.

The piece opened with a woman showing off her butt for an audience of other women judging her, as per the opening dialogue of “Baby Got Back.” Then the men came onstage, proclaiming their appreciation of big butts. The women left, only to walk seductively back onstage to catcalls and leers from the men as “What a Man” began.

As the music shifted to “I’m Too Sexy,” the women entered once again, this time crawling on the floor. To end the number the men stripped for and danced over the women, who were sitting on the stage with their legs spread open to the — standing and dominant — men.

The dance affected Ellen, a senior who has participated in the past three Frelon dances and describes herself as a “fairly active feminst leader,” intensely. “The way I read it […] it was reinforcing this idea of men as really dominant and sexually aggressive, and women as sexual objects,” she said. She went on to elaborate that the male stripping could have played with gender roles, but in the situation, where the women were in a lowered, vulnerable position, this didn’t come across to her.

Ellen went on to write her response, dated on the Index’s page to May 3^rd, which caused a stir on campus. In the Index, the web article received an unusually high number of comments, most of which basically said the issue being raised wasn’t a big deal, according to Ellen. A facebook note containing the op-ed was published by a current director of Frelon as an open forum for current and former directors to respond to it; at least one comment on the note was along the lines of “somebody needs to screw this girl so she’ll loosen up” and stop being so concerned, which “made me very uncomfortable,” said Smith. Ellen spoke out against what she perceived as “an astonishingly offensive display and reinforcement of problematic gendered power dynamics,” with emphasis on heteronormativity; in effect, a woman spoke out against the hierarchy and there were immediate attempts to shut her down.

More official responses to the original op-ed followed. Several groups wrote letters to the editor that came out in the Index’s May 11^th issue. A letter from the directors of Frelon provided a different approach to the topic, explaining why the dance was choreographed the way it was, its original intent. A group of male faculty and students also wrote a letter to the editor for that issue of the Index, supporting Ellen’s article and denouncing the hostility that had arisen against her. Smith said that it was “powerful to have men stand up and say, ‘This is not okay.’” A third group, a diverse group of students of different years and faculty, further supported Smith, and spoke out against the hostile backlash that she had experienced. The reactions were mixed, though on the whole Smith received support from people she talked to in person; the anonymity and space allowed by the Internet makes it easier to attack someone without fear of consequence.

Friday, May 14^th. Spring Quarter 2011. The day before Crystal Ball. This is a bright day, full of light and uncomfortable warmth. A man enters the Humphrey House in time for the 2011 edition of Bruce Mills’ English Junior Seminar. He wears a vivid blue sundress, with a plunging neckline and no back. Max Wedding is in drag for the day.

Max, a junior and co-leader of Kaleidoscope, has worn drag the day before Crystal Ball this year and the last, experiencing similar reactions to his clothing each time. His sophomore year it was somewhat accidental – he wore a skirt and feminine top to speak at the Community Reflection on Crystal Ball that day and was not able to change before his next class, so he wore drag all day. He described last year’s most memorable experience: “What comes to mind the most – the most shocking – one worker at the caf started laughing at me. It would have been very uncomfortable if I was expressing myself.” While the incident was addressed with campus authorities, that doesn’t mean that things were completely different this year. This year, Max’s dressing in drag for the day was intentional, done to see if similar reactions would be elicited.

And they were. Max spoke at the Community event and attended classes as normal. But that bright sunny day he recalled that “people would be passing on stairs and let out chuckles [...] [they] treated me differently than they would every day.” He was catcalled and received positive compliments on the dress, and in Bruce’s Junior Seminar called out as an example for the text we were discussing that day. Being called out, he said, made him uncomfortable, and had he actually been expressing himself it would have made him even more so.

For Max, gender fucking, dressing in drag this way, is his way of messing with society, of refusing to conform to norms of, in this instance, clothing. So though Max was made to feel uncomfortable while in this situation, at the end of the day he was able to take those clothes off. A male whose preference is gender expression through wearing women’s clothing, however, would have faced a much more difficult choice – stop dressing in drag and wear “normal” clothing or continue to dress in the desired fashion and face at least alienation, if not ostracism of some sort.

All of this goes to show that though Kalamazoo College bears the nickname “Gay K,” is home to a vocal LGBT student organization, has a relatively high number of LGBT students, and is known as probably the most liberal/progressive college in Michigan, the subject of gender is a hell of a lot touchier on this campus than we’d like to admit.

What do these reactions say about the campus as a whole? Smith felt that her article, and the surrounding responses, brought to the fore the “tension between a lot of people who want to move forward, want social justice dialogue […] butting up against more mainstream viewpoints. As much as it sucked to have so much public attention, [this] brought a lot of stuff to the surface.” There were mixed reactions; the college community from different sectors attacked and supported Ellen for her article. The fact that such attacks can happen in a supposedly progressive space points to the touchiness of gender issues; as Max said, “the responses to Ellen’s letter showcase the hostility we have on campus.” He also added, “K’s not quite as progressive as we say we are.”

It’s an issue that’s difficult to take on. Wedding says that we have a lot of dialogue on this, but “until it turns into something it’ll just stay dialogue. Unless we start having talk on a regular basis, shock will remain” when we see a person acting outside of their gender role. The goal, of course, would be for campus members to feel safe and comfortable while expressing their sexuality, a point that this community does not yet appear to have reached. Wedding expressed a desire to have both male and female friends gender bend, something that might help other members of the community normalize these expressions of self. Smith also believes that the dialogue brought up can help the community move forward in the long run, and credits the Arcus Center for Social Justice for attempting to facilitate a positive sex culture on campus. The Center has held many events in the area designed to provide safe spaces for dialogue between different members of the community to occur, including the recent Mapping Desires Workshop. Through these dialogues and events – both Center and student initiated – there is hope that K College as a whole will meet these issues, grapple with them, and eventually overwhelm them.

Week Nine Reading Response

This week brought longer-form narrative stories to the forefront, and I for one really enjoyed it. Ted Conover's "The Road is Very Unfair" was an intricately interesting read, although the subject matter it tackled...was immense. At times, it felt less focused on what it purported to be about, AIDS in Africa, and more about poor infrastructure and dangerous conditions (threatening militias, other spreadable diseases) present in the various countries Conover traveled in. Still, the writer gave us an incredible insider's view of what's going on in Sub-Saharan Africa today, through the eyes of those who are supposedly spreaders of AIDS, truckers. The way they live is fascinating, and it was interesting to compare the stereotypical US trucker, who is looked down upon, with these men, who are privileged above many other Africans. One scene that stuck out in particular to me was when Conover wanted sympathy from Obadiah about having smashed his finger in a volleyball game, showed him the beat-up finger, and only then noticed that the other man was missing that same finger on his hand. Powerful stuff indeed.

Aaron Aupperlee's work didn't disappoint either. I particularly enjoyed his three part series about heroin. For these pieces, at times I found myself forgetting who minor characters introduced early on were, as they were only later involved in the action, but this was a minor blip in the reading process. The series does an excellent job of illustrating how terrifyingly powerful heroin is, and how seriously the drug destroys lives, all while providing something of a positive message in the end. It accomplishes this by using a recovering addict as an example, showing that despite the pull of the drug one can attempt to fight the urge, and showing what the government, educators, and groups of people are doing to fight the cycle of drug abuse. This positive message was particularly striking as I remembered Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's story "Trina and Trina," about a crack addict who simply could not give up her habit, and whom the writer eventually gave up on after too numerous attempts to help. This series, while it had echoes of LeBlanc's story in that heroin addicts do often return to the drug because of the incredibly strong hold it has on them, was able to end more positively because of its focus on community efforts to end the drug cycle and its focus on a recovering addict who truly wants to reclaim his old life.

Strutt Profile Piece Revised

Who at Kalamazoo College hasn’t heard of the Strutt? It’s that corner building jutting out like the prow of a ship into the intersection of Stadium and Academy. It masks itself as an average college-town coffee shop, and that’s certainly what one finds entering the Strutt by day. Light fills the establishment. An array of unmatched tables and chairs dot the main room – pine and oak, light and dark, they, along with a comfortable couch, fill the hardwood floor, home to weary business people stopping for lunch, to students looking for a place off campus to study, or people looking for a place to socialize with friends.

Night brings a different side of the Strutt into view. The tables and chairs are cleared off; the only light comes from the bar and outside streetlights. Pay the cover fee to support whatever musical act is performing for the night, receive Sharpie’d Xs on your hands and a wristband if you’re underage, walk through the gateway and immediately your attention is focused on the stage. Stars glint from the ceiling in the low light, amps line the sides of the stage. The room is littered now with drum kits, tables for band merch, band members, and concertgoers, drinking and talking and laughing and waiting for the opening band to stop tuning and start playing, goddamn it. The musicians get going. The speakers punish a listener’s ears pleasantly when the music’s supposed to be loud, or soothe with sweet melodies if it should be soft; variety is the order of every day in a music venue that brings acts seven days a week. It’s this side of the Strutt that’s rejuvenating the Kalamazoo music scene and bringing live acts like this town has never seen mere footsteps from K’s campus.

The Strutt is the corner’s latest incarnation; it opened in 2007 as Dino’s, and changed its name to the current one in 2009. Musically the building’s roots can be traced back into the early 90s, when Boogie Records resided there, though since that time the businesses at the corner have come and gone nearly every year. Seniors and maybe juniors at K will remember thinking the Strutt would be just as transient as its predecessors, but the establishment has had staying power.

Part of this is luck, part proximity to Western, Kalamazoo College, and Kalamazoo’s downtown, part good management; a more unique part is bringing the kind of musical acts this town hasn’t seen since the Kraftbrau Brewery closed in 2007. Its closing left a hole in the city’s music scene; Kalamazoo was deprived of the good folk, acoustic, alternative, and rock acts that it brought to town before the Strutt opened its doors and began a campaign to convince musical groups that Kalamazoo was interested in bringing these kinds of music and more to town.

Andy Catlin has been employed as the Strutt’s booking agent since the establishment was founded, proof that making a music venue out of the place has been part of the business plan since it opened. Catlin says that the place has made itself into a functioning music venue, able to draw reasonably well known Michigan or even national acts, “about as fast as you could,” for a company without a huge overhead or helping hands in the music industry. He says that there’s a “lot of excitement in this town about music, rooted in the fact that Gibson Guitar started here. It’s always been this music town.” And, as a convenient midway point between Detroit and Chicago, it’s a great place for bands to stop during their tour and play a smaller show.

Duncan Zigterman K’13 has experienced the upswing in diversity of musical acts since coming to K. He first went to a Strutt show in fall of 2009, to see Michigan ska band Mustard Plug, but didn’t go to many others that year. This year though, he says that he’s been to 15-20 shows, a dramatic increase. “I think they’ve been making a more active effort to bring bands from out of the area here,” said Zigterman.

Alexis Wright K’13 has also been a more regular attendee at the Strutt’s shows this year, going to around 10 or so thus far. She’s also noticed an upswing in the variety of shows offered. “I was really surprised when I got the flyer for September/October, with Lightning Bolt, Xiu Xiu, and others.”

The Strutt has accomplished this increase in artist diversity and number of shows by building relationships with booking agencies over time, and sinking enough money so they’ll know the venue is interested and can give the amount of cash needed to bring a band to town. Andy Catlin has been working hard to accomplish this. “Why we’re getting all these national acts now is because for the last three years I’ve been e-mailing these people,” he says. It’s all rather depressingly fiscal – “Booking is this really weird system based on money,” says Catlin. A band can love the venue and want to come, but it’s all up to the booking agents and the exchange of cold, hard cash between the venue and booking agencies. Sink a certain amount of money and interest in a company and they’re more willing to send bigger acts your way, says Catlin.

On top of that, the variety to now be found at the Strutt is important in keeping it fiscally sound. Catlin says that showcasing many different genres is the “only way you can survive doing a music venue,” that you “can’t just depend on any genre.” Different kinds of acts bring in more fans, hopefully bringing in more revenue so the business can stay afloat. Sean Hartman, the Strutt’s other booking agent, was hired about eight months ago, and has since then brought an even more diverse group of bands to the venue. He says that the “focus here is on variety for sure” and that he tries to bring in more experimental music.

Catlin and Hartman are also open-minded musically, translating into more diverse music for fans in the Kalamazoo area. Catlin says that “who I am as a music fan […] I’m super into all types of music. I truly do appreciate all these different genres.” Hartman also tries to bring bands that most have not heard of to town, attempting to “turn people on to new bands” – something you don’t find at every music venue.

The Strutt fills the niche left by the departure of the Kraftbrau in ’07 while not stepping on the toes of other venues in town. Catlin says the place brings bands most similar to Bell’s Brewery, though that establishment is more jam-rock centered. Louie’s Trophy Bar and Grill plays host to a host of punk, noise and in general louder rock bands, while The Union downtown has constant jazz offerings.

In just three years, the Strutt has been able to bring a long list of relatively well known artists: Chicago based reggae band Deals Gone Bad, noise rockers Lightning Bolt (described by Wright as “the best show of my life thus far”), Japanese experimental psychedelics Acid Mothers Temple, Grand Rapids ska locals Mustard Plug, experimental/indie/electronica band Dan Deacon, and will have doom-metal band Earth, based out of Seattle, in June. That is spanning the genres. The Strutt also has rap shows on occasion, often has local folk and rock bands, and hosts an open mic night every Tuesday night.

All this, for a ticket price that ranges from $5-$15, and it’s not even a dive. As Catlin said, “90% of places you play are a black rectangle with some asshole selling High Life for $7.” But not the Strutt. “It’s a refreshing place for musicians and I think music fans too.”

Writing Response, Week Seven

Reading Gail Griffin's The Events of October was quite the experience. It evoked a whole host of emotions in me; I was by turns sad, proud, and toward the end, paranoid. Above all, I was intellectually stimulated by the writing, which catapults one directly into the horrific murder-suicide and makes one consider the reasons why this happen, and what one should take out of observing such an event.

I was impressed by the sheer amount of sources Griffin had for the book. Any possible source of information on the event, and events surrounding the event, she had to have somehow learned of, tracked down, and interviewed. The only major source missing is that of the Odah family, the lack of which is later explained. I found myself wondering how the author managed to make all of her various sources comfortable in order to hear their stories, to get the information needed to make her project possible. The interviewees were probably spread across the country - did she conduct mostly telephone interviews, or did she drive cross-country to hear them in person? Driving to sources might seem preferable for talk of such a personal subject, but would mean much effort on the part of the interviewer. That said, how did Gail manage to tactfully tease out the stories of all these people? It's such a sensitive subject, I believe we in this class would have a lot to learn from how this was accomplished. I also liked the IM conversations as they were utilized in the book - I imagine that Maggie's family would want the whole story of their daughter told, and thus made her computer available for research purposes. And, given the massive amount of sources Gail used in order to put this book together, I'm also interested in how she as an author decided to weave these stories together - how she decided to put what pieces where. I look forward to learning how this hugely impactful piece was put together from the author herself.

Profile Writing Response

This piece was moderately difficult to write. I had a little trouble getting what I wanted to say about the Strutt down into a workable, small enough draft - the piece is aimed at the Index and right now is hovering around 1200 words, so it needs to be cut down a touch if it continues to be written for that audience in my next draft. I had four interviews on the subject, two of which (with Andy and Sean of the Strutt) were pretty dense with information and other things of note, which made it a little difficult to pick and choose what to emphasize.

I also feel somewhat like this is more of a straightforward journalism piece, and while it attempts to tell the story of how the Strutt has developed as a music venue over time, I'm not sure how much dramatic tension, character development, etc. it has. We're constantly told to show, not tell, but I was having a hard time doing much description at all, with all the facts that needed to get on the page crowding that sort of thing out. I didn't have a concrete event to talk about other than the interviews I did, and I'm wondering if some sort of description of a show at the Strutt might help to flesh out how the place actually functions better. Also, I kept thinking that I was supposed to have a Franklin outline for the piece, but simply could not make it work. The only "complication" I could think of was Kalamazoo's music scene becoming anemic after the departure of the Kraftbrau some years ago, and how the Strutt coming into its own resolved that problem, but the piece is supposed to be about the Strutt, not Kalamazoo's music scene.

Other than that I feel the piece works together as a whole and it wrote itself rather smoothly, but it lacks a little life. Perhaps making it more of a story would help with that.

Strutt Profile Piece

Who at Kalamazoo College hasn’t heard of the Strutt? It’s that corner building jutting out like the prow of a ship into the intersection of Stadium and Academy. The student that makes the ever-so-arduous and oh-so-time consuming voyage – in reality, as most of you know it’s only about ten minutes from campus, depending on traffic – can reap many a benefit, however: the Strutt has good food, if a little more than the average college student likes to spend to fill his or her stomach, good hot chocolate – I can’t speak for the coffee because I myself don’t drink it – and what looks to be a nice bar. They also have free wireless, a decent music selection on at pretty much all times, comfortable chairs, and to top it off photographs and art prints grace the walls, making it just as good a place to study as Hicks or the library (if you don’t mind the noise) if not better.

But what I have in mind about the Strutt has little to nothing in common with studying. What I want to tell you about is the music. Not just the stereo playing in the background while you read whatever college-related text you’re currently focused on, lovely and convenient though it is to be able to bottle up and store music for later, for when the mood is right, for when it is time to study. What I want to talk about is music, and how the Strutt—that establishment that looks like just your average college-town coffee shop, just five minutes off Kalamazoo College campus—is rejuvenating the Kalamazoo music scene and bringing live acts like you’ve never seen to a place just footsteps from campus.

The Strutt is that corner building’s latest incarnation; it opened in 2007 as Dino’s, and changed its name to the Strutt in 2009. Seniors and maybe juniors at K will remember thinking the shop would be just as transient as its predecessors, but the establishment has had staying power.

Why has the Strutt stuck around and not any others? Part of it is luck, part of it is decent proximity to Western, K College, and Kalamazoo’s downtown, part of it is good management. I’d argue that one of the biggest parts is what makes the place distinct among all the bars and coffee shops in Kalamazoo – the live music.

The Strutt hasn’t always been a focal point for music – on first glance, most would probably peg it as a typical coffee shop. But lately, those involved with music at the Strutt have been taking steps to bring more, bigger, and better musical acts to the venue. Making a music venue out of the Strutt has been part of the plan since its opening; the fact that Andy Catlin, one of the Strutt’s two current booking agents, has been with the company since it came into being stands proof.

Andy says that the place has made itself into a functioning music venue, able to draw reasonably well known Michigan or even national acts, “about as fast as you could,” for a company without a huge overhead or helping hands in the music industry.

Three years ago, there was only the occasional band that I and my friends would consider worthy of attending: I remember seeing Michigan bands Great Lakes Myth Society and The Hard Lessons in spring of 2009, both good shows. I attended exactly zero shows my sophomore year; there was just nothing there that interested me. Junior year I studied abroad for over half of the school year, but I’ve still gone to more shows this year than any year previous: a measly total so far of three, but I plan to and am excited to attend far more later in the quarter.

Duncan Zigterman K’13 has experienced a similar effect. He first went to a Strutt show in fall of 2009, to see Michigan ska band Mustard Plug, but didn’t go to many others that year. This year though, he says that he’s been to about 15 or 20 shows, a dramatic increase. Why is this the case? “I think they’ve been making a more active effort to bring bands from out of the area here,” said Zigterman. Accordingly, there have been more bands he’s been interested in seeing and going to the Strutt for.

Alexis Wright K’13 has also been a more regular attendee at the Strutt’s shows this year, going to around 10 or so thus far. She was unable to attend events her freshman year since she was not yet 18, but even so, said that last year “there was never anything I wanted to see. [My roommate] Megan would go, and I would make fun of her, cause she thought she was cool, going to the Strutt.”

She’s also noticed an upswing in the variety of shows offered. “Last year, the shows were local or shitty, which are sometimes the same thing. I was really surprised when I got the flyer for September/October, with Lightning Bolt, Xiu Xiu, and others.”

How has the Strutt accomplished this stuff? It all has to do with building relationships with booking agencies over time, and sinking enough money so that they’ll know a venue like the Strutt is interested and can give the amount of cash needed to bring a band to town. Andy Catlin has been working hard to accomplish this. “Why we’re getting all these national acts now is because for the last three years I’ve been e-mailing these people,” he says. It’s all rather depressingly fiscal – “Booking is this really weird system based on money,” says Catlin. A band can love the venue and want to come, but it’s all up to the booking agents and the exchange of cold, hard cash between the venue and booking agencies. Sink a certain amount of money and interest in a company and they’re more willing to send bigger acts your way, says Catlin.

On top of that, the variety to now be found at the Strutt is a necessity. Catlin says that showcasing many different genres is the “only way you can survive doing a music venue,” that you “can’t just depend on any genre.” Different kinds of acts bring in more fans, hopefully bringing in more revenue so the business can stay afloat. Sean Hartman, the Strutt’s other booking agent, was hired about eight months ago, and has since then brought an even more diverse group of bands to the venue. He says that the “focus here is on variety for sure” and that he tries to bring in more experimental music.

Catlin and Hartman are also open-minded musically, translating into more diverse music for fans in the Kalamazoo area. Catlin says that “who I am as a music fan […] I’m super into all types of music. I truly do appreciate all these different genres.” Hartman also tries to bring bands that most have not heard of to town, attempting to “turn people on to new bands” – something you really don’t find at every music venue.

In just three years, the Strutt has been able to bring relatively well known artists Deals Gone Bad, Xiu Xiu, Acid Mothers Temple, Mustard Plug, Dan Deacon, and will have doom-metallers Earth in June. That’s really spanning the genres, with ska, funk, electronic, psychedelic/experimental, and metal making appearances. The Strutt has rap shows on occasion, often has local folk and rock bands, and hosts an open mic night every Tuesday night. All this, and it’s not even a dive. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is debatable, but as Catlin said, “It’s a refreshing place for musicians and I think music fans too.”

Reading Response, Week 5

This week I really enjoyed viewing the various slideshows Marin linked us. I didn't view all of them - there seemed to be about sixty - but I'll probably be working on seeing them all over the next couple of weeks, they were so enjoyable. The use of black and white photos was striking - illustrating the story of a tuxedo-purveyor (that's probably not his proper title, but we'll go with it) with such lack of color seemed like a perfect choice. For most stories, this choice worked well, though for others - such as the story of the taxidermist - I felt color photos could have been used to better effect. I also loved the stories that were told - the people had such character. However, it was a little strange to watch the slideshow and then be presented with a little snippet of text providing more background on the person - sometimes, but not often, background that I wanted to learn about the person in the slideshow itself. This probably wasn't included in the show itself because it wasn't relevant to the story being told, and perhaps others didn't have this problem because as I have just discovered, you can view this 'About' at anytime, even previous to the show. A minor point.

The slideshows seem so simple - a person tells their story, a photojournalist snaps some photos of the scenery, and voila! you've got the product. But so much work must go on behind the scenes, work in finding the right person, getting their story out of them, taking the right photos, let alone editing it all together in such a harmonious way. I hope that my final project will be a fraction of what these slideshows are.

Moving on to Kristof. His topics were always interesting, for which I admire him. He also always provides resolution to his stories, general as some of his conclusions may be. His stories are concise and to the point, providing a perfect snapshot of whatever his opinions may be. However, for whatever reason I found his voice somewhat bland. He definitely has a voice in his pieces, but the way that he puts things/phrases things is just so...normal. I can't think of a better way to describe it. Doesn't mean his writing is boring, but it doesn't give me a sense of mood or tone so much, I suppose. I was interested in reading more about a couple of the subjects he wrote about - the American prostitution story in particular could have been so much of a bigger piece, particularly having recently read Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's in-depth piece, "Trina and Trina," but for what it was I liked it. Overall I enjoyed Kristof as a writer but would like to read more of his long-form work.

Choose Your Own Assignment - Profile Focus

I didn't expect to enjoy this piece as much as I did, but there you have it. Here's a link to the profile I picked for the class to read this week: http://www.slate.com/id/2291929/pagenum/all/#p2

In fact, when I clicked on the page to read the story, I felt similar to how the profile's author, Vanessa Friedman, felt when she was asked to report on this story: cynical. How could a fluffy little piece on a professional hair stylist be of much interest to me? But just as Friedman's assumptions about Vidal Sassoon were proven wrong, so my expectations that this story would be boring and of no merit were disproven. Sassoon is an interesting character, and though Friedman doesn't go overly in-depth into his life, the details, large and small, she pulls out about him - that he vaguely knew Marlon Brando, was one of the first to become interested in Pilates as fitness, and completely reinvented the hairstyling profession to become the one that we now know - attract the reader's interest. He's a remarkable guy, and I think this illustrates well one of the tenets we've been told of profile writing - pick an interesting person to write about.

In addition, some of turns of phrase - Friedman's description of Sassoon as the "Bill Gates of hair" and the quotes she obtained - regarding Michelle Obama's hair - "Oh! What wonderful straightening techniques they have today" are well done. The author also creates an identifiable voice for herself that stands out, which is interesting to observe. This may be no profile of a serious event or person, and it's certainly no New Yorker profile - I decided against posting one of those after going through several 10 - 13 page long articles, seeing as we won't be writing pieces that long anyway - but it does paint an interesting, descriptive picture of a person, which is what a profile sets out to achieve.

Additionally, I found this while looking for profiles on the Nieman Storyboard, thought it might be an interesting read for people looking for more information on writing profiles: http://sonofboldventure.blogspot.com/2011/03/profile-writing-basics.html

Personal Essay, Second Draft

This is pretty heavily rewritten. Here goes.

The outline is supposed to be:
Complication: Relationships consume Ellen
Development:
Ellen breaks relationship
Ex rejects Ellen
Ellen fears loss
Resolution: Ellen releases control
If that doesn't match up, then I've got something of a problem.

I’ve never been what you would call “boy-crazy,” though maybe you wouldn’t know that from the moving in and out of relationships I’ve been doing during my three years of collegiate life. I’ve loved video games and reading ever since elementary school, though these days Kalamazoo College’s hectic academic schedule keeps us apart for protracted periods of time. I’m not the type of girl who planned her wedding out in third grade, or tried to figure out what the name of my future husband would be. I didn’t have my first boyfriend until freshman year of college.

Now I’m a junior and I’m on number three. So I have some experience with this boy thing. Maybe it’s because of my inexperience with dating and love until so recently that when I fall for someone, I fall hard. I’ll cling to a relationship like there’s no tomorrow. Friendships in themselves mean a lot to me – I don’t make friends easily, so when someone ends a friendship with me, my stomach flips along with my world. I wrap myself up in relationships, platonic or romantic; I’ve often had the thought that they matter to me more than the academic aspect of college. So when I found myself, in November of my sophomore year at Kalamazoo College, forced to choose between two potential suitors – my ex-boyfriend of freshman year, Stewart; and the freshman guy I’d been dating since around October, Shafer, I knew that I was making an important decision regarding relationships. What I failed to realize was how far this would impact my friendships, and how tightly I myself would attempt to cling to the now cold corpse of a formerly vibrant friendship.

It begins what seems now far back in the spring of our freshman year, now two years ago, when Stewart and I decided to end our relationship. Politeness abounded on both sides – the whole idea began, of all places, in a facebook message that he wrote to me. In that logically thought-out message thread, we revealed our fears about the “long-distance relationship.” Never mind the fact that the great insurmountable obstacle of distance was being located two and a half hours apart, he in Chicago and myself in the small town of Niles, Michigan. Stewart wrote of his past problems with this kind of relationship, and I recalled the hard time I’d gone through in the month-long separation we’d had over our school’s winter break. In the end, we decided that it was of benefit for us to break up at the beginning of summer instead of subjecting our relationship to the stresses of distance, so that we might avoid a possible implosion later on – our already crumbling social group could not endure an explosive falling out on the two of our parts.

We entertained the idea of dating come next year, come close proximity again. I fell in more with this idea than he did, and clung to that raft of an idea over summer as the distance grew hard on me, as I realized that I still had feelings for this guy. I texted him a long message about how I missed him, how I hoped we could be together again, about how I loved him. He told me that maybe I didn’t really know what love was, a crushing blow.

But this wasn’t really where our relationship broke. Despite this, I cherished thoughts of a reunion come fall, hiding them deep down inside. For summer and much of fall, we stayed friends, hung out, remained close. A mutual friend of ours, after seeing us over summer, actually thought we were still together. Mentally, psychically, we may have been – we acted the same way we always had, without the physicality and formality of a relationship. The experiences of fall and winter of sophomore year were what worked to tear us apart. I pined after Stewart – I saw him nearly every day, we got along the same as we always had, we played the same games. I wanted our old relationship back, but I couldn’t tell him. After all, he had told me no. He would have to be the one to bring us back together.

Every weekend, often during the week as well, I made the lonesome nighttime trek from his dorm room suite – a place of gaudy, goofily arranged Christmas lights, stadium seating featuring two (2) couches (one on a homemade wooden platform behind the other), and copious amounts of video games – where he and many of our friends congregated, across campus to my single dorm, and loneliness. As I walked back night after night, fantasies of Stewart running out of his dorm after me, realizing that he really did want me after all, ran through my head. But it never happened, and slowly but surely I began to realize that it probably wouldn't.

Then I fell into the second of my college relationships with Shafer. After five months I was finally moving on from a guy I’d pined over all summer and part of fall to a potentially great new guy. However, Stewart didn’t end up seeing it that way. Being the game nerd that I am, I met and began to get to know Shafer at a Super Smash Brothers Brawl tournament, where we played the card game Magic: the Gathering. We ended up back in Stewart’s six person dorm room suite that night hanging out with all of my friends, Shafer’s head of Greek/Syrian, massively fluffy shoulder-length hair conspicuously in my lap. Stewart saw us together, and now he wanted me back.

I took him back – for a day. I remember that day of golden sunlight on the suite couch, my head in his lap, his hand stroking my back. It did not last. Shafer protested, shouting my name across upper quad, writing persuasive message about how “Stewart had his chance” and that I should come back to him. And I did. Something probably broke in Stewart when that happened, and I still regret having wrenched someone’s heart from joy to despair like that, all in one day.

Stewart and I tried to remain friends in the face of this. Over the course of months, we still hung out with the same people, played the same games, ate in the same cafeteria together. But in the end it couldn’t work out that way for him. We held many a discussion on the artificial plane of facebook, and eventually decided to grow up and actually talk to each other in person. One winter night in January, he came to my room. He sat in my chair. He told me, “I love you.” Tangled up in my desire for Shafer, I could no longer have any of that. I felt no reciprocal love. I wanted his friendship and nothing more, and I couldn’t see how much that simple fact hurt him.

When all this failed, what he did next was logical. This turned out to be the real world version of “de-friending.” He completely cut me out of his life, a surgeon excising a cancerous tumor, a doctor cauterizing a wound. Out of nowhere he simply stopped social interaction with me. The texts, the friendly bandying-about, even seeing each other over dinner – they were gone and my world began to flip.

Another winter’s night, I pinned him down to find out what was going on. He sat in the green and white striped club chair on loan from my parents’ house, I on my bed, the room dimly lit by my small decorative silver lamp affectionately named Horatio. He didn’t meet my glance when I looked at him.

Distinct memories of our conversation that evening do not survive. Emotion clouds it. Nor do I want to put things he didn’t actually say into his mouth. He told me that he connected me too much with the person he had been freshman year, a person he wanted to move away. That our connection was tainted, that he knew no other way to act around me other than as a lover. Complete severance of our friendship would further his attempt to move on from me, something he had found impossible to this point.

I cried. I told him that even if he came back to be my friend after finally working through his issues about me, I would always remember what he had done to me. I told him I hated him.

Why couldn’t someone I had considered my best friend look at me with a friendly face?

Why had I lost him, and how could I get him back as a friend? Because despite my assertions of hate, that was what I really wanted. Moving on I could understand well enough, but my feelings of rejection and loss were overwhelming. Why wasn’t I good enough? How could he remain friends with everyone else from last year, and not me, the person he’d been closest to? I didn’t know what to do other than fight, and fight I did, with more tears and angry words. To no avail.

Where Stewart’s friendship had been, there was now a vacuum, a black hole, pulling in feelings of happiness and spewing out hatred and rejection. At one point, Shafer, who strangely became fast friends with Stewart, invited myself and Stewart over to eat some leftover pasta and play cards in his room, without telling either of us he’d invited more than one person. I showed up first, heard that Stewart was coming, and then my stomach plummeted. Stewart showed up, saw that I was there, and almost promptly left, staying for a few short minutes to have some of the pasta and converse with Shafer.

I lost Stewart, and he’s not coming back. He’s moved on: while we still have some friends in common, he has a new girlfriend, and a new set of friends. A year later, I still haven’t talked to him. Just last weekend, he was invited over to a friend of mine’s apartment to play cards. I looked forward to the prospect of maybe becoming friendly again. Stewart came, but not when I was able to be there. He pointedly avoiding being around me because of group “politics,” a friend later told me.

At this point, however, I think that I’ve finally come to grips with the matter. Dealing with loss of this kind is difficult, and extremely frustrating – it’s like having lost your keys. You search and search, wishing that your keychain had some kind of tracking device on it that beeped, anything to help you relocate that most precious of objects. In this case, however, it’s like I put my keys on a conveyer belt and expected them to be there again when I wanted them. It wasn’t reasonable of me to expect Stewart to simply sit there and stay being my friend, keep being there for me, while I carried on my new relationship with Shafer right in front of his face – trying to do so probably broke part of his heart. He needed to act, and so he did, in the most reasonable way he knew how.

He doesn’t want to be my friend on account of a number of painful associations our friendship has, and that is understandable. My attempt to hold onto our friendship when he no longer wanted was the opposite of how a friendship should be; it’s a mutual contract, and once one person has signed off on his or her part, there is little the other party can do about it. One must simply relax and let them go, difficult as that may be. It’s not worth it to chase after those that don’t want you; time spent in the company of those who want you is time much better spent.

Tom Franklin Explains It All

Reading Jon Franklin's Writing for Story proved quite an experience. As I ran through the pages, I found many concepts that I instinctively agreed with along with others that left me a little confused but eventually accepting. Overall I hope that the text will help smooth the writing process along for me. Though I can't exactly say I used too much of his structure in writing this post, so fasten your seatbelts, this might be something of a rough, bumpy ride.

First of all, the things we hold in common. I enjoyed his section on outlining - the process is one that I myself, to an extent, attempt to or need to do in order to write anything complex. But the way I outline is far less refined and adept than his. His explication of how precisely one should outline is one that I want to use in my writing from here on out, and hopefully that'll be a resolution that I stick with; the process brings clarity and logic to writing, something we could all use more of.

His idea that one should begin at the end and work from there I also agree with. How can you really know what you're introducing the reader to if you don't quite have it set up yet? I also attempt to utilize this technique when I write. But here, again, Franklin's knowledge and experience with craft trumps mine, since when I do the writing that I most often do (critical writing, in my case), I usually jump headfirst into the development, the evidence I have for my argument, as opposed to starting with the major resolution part. It's what I did when I started writing this piece - skipped the introductory paragraph in favor of getting to the meat of the writing. Since I haven't quite got it in my head what I want to say about Writing for Story, I sit down and write it out first, then try to come up with an introduction that encapsulates what I've written, and a hopefully punchy conclusion.

This points to another problem I encounter when writing - not knowing exactly what I want to say yet and attempting to just sit down and write it all out. Which is where the idea of outlining - strictly structured outlining - will hopefully come in handy in the future.

Consistent use of active verbs is another writer's commandment I've heard preached ever since I've come to college - and if I had a better memory, I'd probably remember hearing some of that even through high school. It's something I'd like to improve on, though in crunch time more passive verbs or static 'to be' verbs sometimes present themselves as easier, or at least require less thinking about what word to use. Franklin also discusses word choice and the matter of getting the just-right word for the occasion. He says that the thesaurus on the whole isn't of much use to writers. Here I might have to disagree with him, because I've found the thesaurus in my word processing app useful over the years. Sometimes I'll come up with the next-to-right word, but for whatever reason there's an impassable block in my mind to that word that's just crying out for me to use, the one that I know but can't remember right now. Out comes the thesaurus, I look up the almost-right word, and there on the computer is the word that my memory has been scrambling for. It's also great for when you've been using a word over and over and over; you're sick of the word, you know whoever eventually reads what you've written will get sick of it, and with your handy thesaurus you can come up with something fresh and new.

Franklin's advice on how to structure your stories will be of great help to me; I have hardly anything of a creative writing background, so any words on how to show instead of tell are of use to me. His breakdown of the piece into transitional, preparatory, and climactic narrative also helps to see that writing isn't that complicated or intimidating of a beast, when you get down to the small parts. And his descriptions of the various storytelling techniques - foreshadowing, flashback, among others - make these things more graspable for the uninitiated writer that I am. His last chapter, about the artist and art, left me feeling a little left out because I've never felt the gripping need to write stories to change the world, or the distinction that I'm a special artist. In fact, I've never wanted to be an artist. All of which is helpful in evaluating what I want to do with my life; something I didn't really expect to contemplate when reading this book, but good nonetheless.

Personal Essay Writing Challenges

The personal essay piece was a challenge for me to write for several reasons. One, I don't do much story writing in general, meaning that I've never done this before. I have done some journalistic writing of stories, but never one that hit so close to home, never one with myself as a central character. And I wish I would've read Lopate's essay that stressed fleshing out the "I" character before sitting down to write this, because the tips in that text would have been quite helpful in alerting me to the fact that most everyone reading my piece doesn't really know who "I" am.

Getting down to more specifics: As has been noted in some of the comments I've received, I'm not sure how well the key story transitions or relates to the story I wanted to tell about loss. I agree that could use some work. Additionally, looking back I'm not sure how well this shows change in my personality, which was an important part of the assignment, and so in my next draft I would like to emphasize that more, possibly through further fleshing out some of the secondary examples I mentioned and cutting down on the key/moving into apartment elements of the piece. Lastly, I had difficulty making the essay feel like it had a point, like there was something to be learned from what I experienced, and would like to hit on that more. I did enjoy the writing process, however, and look forward to improving it with everyone's help through workshop.

Loss and the Dealing With Thereof

I recently moved into my first apartment. Well, at least the first apartment I’ve had to pay electric and cable for, and clean for myself in, seeing as I did do a fair amount of cooking and whatnot when I lived in an apartment in Greece while I studied abroad in Athens. It’s felt like I’m taking my first steps into the “real world,” as young and naïve as that may sound, as I ordered the electric and cable, bought furnishings to fit out the apartment, paid bills, and even had a minor meltdown about possible bed bugs.

Though really this whole experience is like living on my own (with a roommate) on training wheels – my parents have struck a deal with me so that they’re really the ones paying the bills for now; at least through my undergrad they pay for my room and board. So in some ways apartment life feels like a continuation of dorm life, with stricter consequences for messing around.

Several of my friends are also new to living the apartment life, as neighbors, roommates, and the like. Recently one of them, Mike, managed to lose his keys not once, but twice in the past three days, whether because due to his own fault, accidental displacement by another, or sheer bad luck I cannot say. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t yet located them again from the second go-around. He’s dealing with this loss in a way I might myself deal with it—telling himself they aren’t lost yet and that they’ll turn up eventually, that everything will be just fine despite the fact that the situation seems a little out of his control, especially because he doesn’t appear to be doing anything to fix the problem.

But who would, considering that the what he’ll probably have to resort to is paying a hefty fine of around $75 to replace keys and lock, with the alternative—waiting and hoping they turn up, with an added dash of searching when not otherwise occupied—is so much easier. This loss has proved extremely frustrating, for my friend, as he feels somewhat helpless in his attempt to regain what is missing, what now seemingly resists being found. What course does he choose now? Should he continue the search, scouring his apartment in hopes of finally finding the lost item—all while putting the contents of his and his roommate’s apartment in some danger of being stolen from—or buckle down and pay the fee to get keys and lock replaced, with the accompanying paranoia of one day relocating the hunted object and feeling a damn fool.

The basic feelings that Mike’s been feeling lately should be well known to all who’ve had to cope with loss, whether it be big or small. Feelings of frustration, anxiety, worry, and thoughts of “How do I go about dealing with this?” assault the mind, in greater or smaller degrees depending on the loss. This particular example of losing one’s keys does pale in comparison to the feelings of loss that accompany death of one close to you, or losing a lover, even a friend to a fight. The point is that loss is a label that applies to everyone, one that we all can identify with, in greater or smaller amounts depending on what we’ve lost. What is crucial to focus on in the wake of such occurrences is how the person in question deals with loss, what reactions ensue, and what knowledge can be gained even in the face of a potentially horrific loss.

All of which may seem horribly off topic in an essay purporting to concern itself with “Modern Love.” Worry not; I’m getting there, though in a very indirect fashion. The two topics, love and loss, can be seen to go hand in hand, though this requires use of a somewhat morbid lens. As I see it, anyway, love tends to come with the inevitability of loss. A thought that’s been had countless times before, I’m sure, but one that is always strikingly depressing to me. A relationship, a friendship, even a bond with a pet may begin with an overflowing amount of goodwill, love, friendliness, or what have you, but things process unceasingly toward an end, however it may come. Significant others grow apart, friendships disintegrate due to neglect over time or implode in a fiery explosion of words, the pet (or owner, perhaps) dies. Marriage, the everlasting bond, you say? Till death do us part, I say. We all die in the end; mortal bonds are inevitably broken, whether they be your attachment to your keys as an essential part of daily life or the highest flowering of love you feel toward the person you’ve partnered with for life. College seems a particularly intense time for love—of all sorts, not merely romantic—to run high, and loss to occur to capitalize on these feelings. I’ve seen it happen to others around me, it’s happened to me, and I don’t expect it to stop any time soon, especially seeing as it’s happening to me, in the right here and now.

Last year, when I was a sophomore in college, I began getting into the processes of dating a freshman guy, after determining that my boyfriend of the year before and I were not, in fact, going to get back together as we had originally thought of doing, for reasons probably too complicated to go into here. I saw it as finally moving on from a guy I’d pined over all summer and part of fall to a potentially great new guy, as strange and contorted as this new relationship eventually grew to be. However, Guy Number One didn’t exactly see it that way. We were still very close, and shared a group of fairly tight-knit friends; as such, we saw each other nearly every day, and when he began to see Guy Number Two, who became integrated into our group and friends with Number One eventually, and I together, he ended up quite jealous. He wanted me back, but that wasn’t what I wanted.

To cut something of a long story shorter, we tried to remain friends, having made something of a promise the year before to attempt to do so in the potential face of breaking up. Over the course of months, we hung out with the same people, played the same games, ate in the same cafeteria together. But in the end it couldn’t work out that way for him. He confessed to still being in love with me on two occasions, and when all else failed, what he did turned out to be the real world version of “de-friending.” He completely cut me out of his life, the way a surgeon would excise a malignant, cancerous tumor. Like you’d cauterize a wound. Out of nowhere he simply stopped most forms of social interaction with me, avoiding me like I was the plague.

By the time I sat him down and talked to him about what was going on, I was hurting badly down inside. Why wouldn’t someone I considered my best friend at one point even look at me with a friendly face? Why had I lost him, and how could I get him back as a friend? Finding out the reasons why he no longer wanted to associate me didn’t help much at the time, either—he connected me too much with the person he had been freshman year, and that was a person he wanted to move away from being, plus this would further his attempt to move on after me.

Moving on I could understand well enough, but my feelings of rejection and loss were overwhelming. Why wasn’t I good enough? How could he remain friends with everyone else from last year, and not me, the person he’d been closest to? I didn’t know what to do other than fight, and fight I did, with tears and angry words. To no avail. Those keys were never found again, and there is no price to pay in order to replace what we once had. I’m happy he’s found happiness now, but his separation from me did much in wrenching parts of our group of friends apart, to the point where I don’t see several of them as often as I would like.

And examples could continue; a friend of mine, Jake, had a similar—but still more explosive—falling out with his former roommate for seemingly no other reason than that their personal habits and mannerisms grated on each other too much over the year while living in close proximity. Another friend of mine appears to be distancing himself from myself and my current boyfriend, possibly even our entire circle of friends from last year, for seemingly no reason at all, and I’m still not sure how to react to this. Do I try to talk to him, or simply give up caring about things and let him go his own way? Is lying down and accepting the loss, in hopes of maybe reconciling later, better than putting up a damaging fight that might leave lasting, incurable wounds on the relationship?

I still don’t know the answer to that question, and I’m not sure I will ever find the correct stance for dealing with loss of love, be it romantic or platonic. Does one react with passivity and tact, or come in guns blazing trying to figure out a solution to the problem? Adaptability to the situation is surely key, though that’s such a broad statement it likely does little to help anyone dealing with such problems. Merely going through life, which inevitably both gives us love and takes it away, which puts us through significant amounts of loss, does give one the experience to perhaps deal with loss better when it happens again. A rather pessimistic stance, but a pragmatic one. What conclusions we take away from loss are our own, and specific to scenario, but in so far that these experience help us to know ourselves and perhaps others more fully, they are to be valued.