Tonight's entry is brought to you by the fine people at "Random Thinking Inc. - Where Lines of Thought Don't Have To Make Sense."
Yeah, I somehow made a new friend tonight at La Salle - another senior, who I don't believe I had ever seen before tonight (that's the weirdest part I think) when I visited someone else tonight. It's refreshing...and kind of strange, that even with an institution as small as La Salle is, there are still people that I've never seen. Strange and humbling, I guess...I thought I knew, or could at least recognize most of my class, or at least be like "Oh, she roomed with my friend's tennis partner during the first semester of sophomore year."
So, what else of my life? Life has been class and rehearsal pretty constantly these last couple of days. Class is class...everything is going well, the grades are good. Saw "The Godfather" for the first time tonight, for Film History. It's one of the best, if not the best, films that I've ever seen. I'm finally caught up in my reading and writing assignments for Democratic Vistas...more on that below.
Godspell continues to come along. I continue to both amuse and amaze myself with the show: amuse myself at not being able to learn the choreography on the first try, and then amaze myself a few tries later when I nail it...only to forget it a few seconds later. We still have a heck of a lot of blocking to do, and we open 2 weeks from tonight. I'm nervous, but enthusiastic and confident, and the cast seems to feel the same way, generally.
I mailed my acceptance off to Villanova today - filled out and signed their little postcard and dropped it in the mailbox at the corner of 20th and Olney. I've made a decision, I think, and a large part of me is relieved and grateful that there is now some certainty to the next couple of months. Until I have to find a place to live. Until I have to find a job. Until whatever little decision has to be made is made in order for the huge decision of Villanova to work is made.
On another idealistic tangent... (This came up tonight, I swear.)
The most beautiful sound that I've ever found is the sound of a person's true laugh - that sound that you can tell eminantes from deep within a person's soul and escapes the mouth with absolutely no self-consciousness, self-awareness, or judgement to echo and explode with others around to hear it. Whether it be a cackle, a roar, a snort - whatever. It is, in my opinion, the most beautiful sound in the entire world. You can tell when a person is holding back on laughing, or when self-consciousness enters the picture...or maybe it's just me. I tend to notice sometimes...I guess its as good as currency for someone involved in the theater. One of the quotes in my email signature file is: "The applause of a single human being is of great consequence." -- Samuel Johnson I think laughter falls along the same line.
Finally, some quotes from Richard Rorty, the current theorist that we're reading and debating in "Democratic Vistas." (Hey, I did this with Emerson too...)
In his essay "Education as Socialization and as Individualization," Rorty states,
"The point of non-vocational higher education is, instead, to help students realize that they can reshape themselves - that they can rework the self-image foisted on them by their past, the self-image that makes them competent citizens, into a new self-image, one that they themlselves have helped to create."further on, in the same essay:
"Socialization has to come before individuaization, and education for freedom cannot begin before some constraints have been imposed. But, for quite different reasons, non-vocational higher education is also not a matter of inculcating or educing truth. It is, instead, a matter of inciting doubt and stimulating imagination, thereby challenging the prevailing consensus. If pre-college education produces literate citizens and college education produces self-creating individuals, then questions about whether students are being taught the truth can safely be neglected."and finally, further on:
We Deweyans think that thge social function of American colleges is to help the students see that the national narrative around which their socialization has centered is an open-ended one. It is to tempt the students to make themselves into people who can stand to their own pasts as Emerson and Anthony, Debs and Baldwin, stood to their pasts...To hope that this way will only be somewhat different is to hope that the society will remain reformist and democratic, rather than being convulsed by revolution.
Rorty is an advocate for reform rather than revolution in a democratic society. What strikes me from the quotes, which I don't claim at all to completely understand at this point (they require some reflection and discussion tomorrow,) is the idea of ownership of education, and the idea of education as the development of the individual away from the societal mores that are imposed as one grows up. To me, he reads quite similarly in this vein to Emerson, my current intellectual/philosophical great, in these regards. Rorty also is an advocate of a simple four-letter word called hope - in the essay's case, hope in the future of democratic society. If there's anything that I've learned in my 22 years, it's that hope is probably the most important belief for any thing - a group, a person, an organization, whatever - to have.
Man, this was an incredibly tangiental entry...but I've said what I wanted to say.
Quote for today, as it's been kind of a rough week to this point:
Try to take it down a notch. I spent 40 days and nights in the desert, but I don't feel like reading a novel of your exciting (or rather not exciting) life. Sometimes I just think to myself, I died for this. I died so you could have this blog, free of sin. Amazing. Think about that next time you feel like writing so much blog.
Posted by: Jesus on April 1, 2004 09:39 PM