I Moved!

MegKramer.com

Elevator Music [AUDIO]

Music for Elevators by Meg Kramer

Nothing Broken / Nothing Burned [AUDIO]

This is an excerpt from a work-in-progress. Scratch vocal...well, scratch everything. But shareable.

Nothing Broken Clip by Meg Kramer

On the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque"

I've been wanting to write something about this, but couldn't quite find the words. I wrote the lines below as a response to a friend's Facebook post, and it seemed just about right:

I am not prone to bouts of patriotic fervor, but I am proud to live in a country which protects its citizens' right to practice the religion of their choice, and I am inspired beyond measure by the tolerance and openness practiced every day in the city I call home.

Prohibiting the construction of a house of worship is much more an affront to my values than the building itself could ever be, no matter how unpopular the religion in question.

If you have questions about the Park51 project, check out their FAQ.

A public place is a portal...

I took a break from my big non-fiction project over the last week or so. Seems like I've needed to take a step back from it. In the meantime, I've been revisiting some unfinished stories and new ideas. I think the time has been good, but I ought to get back to the big one.

So, the big non-fiction project is a series of essays and tangents that all relate back to the public parks in my hometown. When I started working on it, I didn't expect it to be any longer than maybe 15 pages (typed, double-spaced, one-inch margins). I had a whole bunch of ideas about what it might be, but I didn't think it would really be something that I would invest a lot of time working on. But, while researching the parks, I've discovered that these public places give me access to moments in time that I normally wouldn't reflect upon - moments of my own history, and that of my community. Some of those moments are nice. Some of them are dark, and difficult to write about. The places act like a prism, filtering the components that form a culture, and culture is complicated.

So, back to it...

Learning by doing

Project Waldo (Image by Nate Simpson)

Last fall, my roommate Hermann (who has since returned to Iceland, boooo!) sent me a link to a blog called Project Waldo, by a fellow named Nate Simpson. Nate quit his job back in January of 2009, and planned to create a storyboard for the film he'd been dreaming of making for ten years. But few months into the project, he scrapped the film and decided to create a comic book instead.

The blog has documented his progress as he has learned "how to make a comic by making a comic," and I think it's fascinating. I've often heard people say that they don't want to read work on making art - writing, making music, etc. - unless the artist is famous, or has attained some kind of recognition for their work. I think that what those people usually mean is that they don't want to hear pronouncements on how art ought to be made, unless it comes from someone they respect. But there are other ways to write about, and talk about, the process of creation, and I like to hear what it's like for other people who, like me, know that they don't have the answers, but can share their failures and successes as they try to figure out how to make their art live up to their dreams.

That's what I hope this blog will eventually be - a document of things that I've tried, strategies that worked, and snapshots of those occasions when I've fallen flat on my face.

Tally-ho!

Hey, nose! Meet grindstone.

Not an actual grindstone

I am still in the thick of this nonfiction project I've been working on all summer. It's starting to look like it wants to be a lot longer than I imagined at the beginning. I've been kind of stuck lately, because writing about real people brings all of these ethical issues into play, and it just makes me want to stop writing and start watching television or playing video games or developing some kind of hobby that doesn't involve pressuring myself to create something that kicks ass. But let's not kid ourselves. I love the pressure.

And now I have all of these ideas for other, new, shiny projects just flooding in, and I haven't been letting myself work on anything else all summer. Maybe this is a mistake. Sometimes it's right to really focus on one thing until it's finished, but when I have multiple projects it often seems like they end up feeding one another, and they all end up better than they would have without the others. So I think it's time to try branching out for just a little while, to let myself get some perspective.

The summer reading is going well. I've been taking advantage of the public library, and I have a great pile of books on my mantle (yes, I really have a mantle). I stumbled across this fantastic little collection of Soviet short stories, and it has some gems. When I'm done, I'll post a review up here.

Photographic Memory

I'm kind of in love with this photo. It was taken with expired B&W film on the Diana Mini camera I received as a graduation gift. I took it about a month ago, but it looks like history, or somebody else's memory.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about different ways to represent the ways we experience different places, and the way we experience the memories of a place. The sort of territorial, proprietary feelings we (okay, maybe just I) get about the places we've lived, whether we loved them or hated them or were just passing through.

I've lived in my current apartment for about a year and a half, and I have no plans to leave in the immediate future. Looks like this is going to be the longest I've stayed put since I was eighteen. I've been immersed in a writing project about my hometown, so I've been spending a lot of mental time in Southwest Missouri circa 1990...but I think I am just about ready to turn my focus to the city.

The NorthSkirt & the Happy Hacker Dance [VIDEO]

This video fills my heart with joy.

Meredith Scheff made the NorthSkirt out of a hacked NorthPaw kit, home-made flexible PCBS and conductive thread.

And love.

[via Bad Astronomy]

Summer Reading and Quickie Reviews

Round One - Done and Done

Bolaño, Roberto. Monsieur Pain - Didn't rock my world like Bolaño usually does. But a fun read, with good surprises.

Perec, Georges. A Void - A novel written in French without the letter E, translated to English without the letter E. Recommended only if the idea of a novel without Es really excites you. I was all wound up about the idea of it, but found the book tedious after the first few chapters. Still, the E-less re-working of Poe's "The Raven" made it all worthwhile.

Richards, D. J. Zamyatin; A Soviet heretic - This was a mistake. I meant to get the book called A Soviet Heretic by Zamyatin. This was a slim little book about Zamyatin - very meh.

Hrabal, Bohumil. Closely Watched Trains - Good. Love me some Hrabal. Now I need to track down the film.

Larsson, Stieg. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - Because a girl's gotta read something on the airplane.

Markson, David. The Last Novel - Still thinking this one over.



Round Two - Aaaand GO!

Nabokov, Vladimir. The Original of Laura

McCann, Colum. Let the Great World Spin

Zamyatin, Yevgeny. A Soviet Heretic

Various. Soviet Short Stories

And I'm still waiting for a haiku collection.

A Short Leash [IMAGE]

Something For Your Ears! [AUDIO]

It's been a while since I posted any sound. So here's a song:

I Let It Stay by Listing

We recorded this one in January of '09. I think we've been keeping it all under wraps long enough...

Under Construction

Big life changes in the last few weeks. Mostly good ones. I graduated, got a job, and made some decisions.

I'm working for a tech startup, and it's pretty fun and exciting so far. I have been learning a lot, and I'm getting opportunities to write, to be creative, and to take on responsibility. It's a big change from my last few jobs...in a very good way. The funny thing is, I applied for this job the week before graduation. I had signed on with a temp agency as a last resort, because all of my resumes were going out into the void with no response. Temping wasn't quite what I had in mind for myself when I went back to finish my degree, but I was down to the wire with no good leads. Still, I had this superstitious kind of feeling that if I kept looking, I would find something at the very last minute that would be perfect for me. And then I did.

The mixed blessing is that I'm only working three days a week right now. This makes my checking account sad. I'll have to figure out a way to make more money before too long, but I'm scraping by for now. The upside is that it's giving me a lot of time to focus on some personal projects, and it seems like this is a good time for me to be frugal, go to the gym, spend some time on my own, do some cocooning, make some progress, and figure out some long-term plans for myself.

I'm participating in a writing workshop this summer, and I hope that it's going to help me gain some creative momentum. I worry that - now that I'm out of school and don't have deadlines or assignments - I won't be able to find the motivation to keep working on my writing projects. I'm probably going to apply for an MFA program in creative writing, and I can imagine it being very easy to keep putting it off until next year, then the next, then the next. So, in the workshop, I'm trying to get rolling on the project that I'm planning to use as my portfolio. It's a non-fiction project that is rather close to my heart, which makes it easy to think about and talk about, but it's difficult to meet the standard that I have imagined for the piece. I think I may have had a breakthrough on the subway yesterday, though, so hopefully I've reached a turning point. The goal is to get it in shape by the end of the summer, so I can send out applications at the end of the year...

Shadows, Textures, Reflections

Photography Final Presentation from Meg Kramer on Vimeo.

A photography portfolio.

Onward and Upward

Where there is change, there is opportunity. That's one of those things that people say to other people, when that second group of people is freaking out about, say, job-hunting.

I am job-hunting, but I'm not freaking out...yet. I'm embracing the opportunity that will, doubtless, present itself to me, but not without much searching and effort on my part, because that is how a quest works. I'm writing cover letters that, hopefully, express with some sincerity my many fine qualities, useful skills, and general strength of character. I'm graduating in one month and I am not freaking out. But I'm really going to miss The New School and the freedom it has afforded me to explore so many different interests. And I'm also going to miss doing most of my work in my pajamas.

Hello, Sunshine

The park across the street is a Wi-Fi hotspot, and the weather forecast predicts high temps in the 70s for today. So why am I still in my pajamas? C'mon laptop, let's get us some vitamin D.

Hello, sunshine. Hello, springtime. Hello, sandals. I've missed you.

CHAdeMO: Resurrecting the Electric Car

What’s a coalition of automotive heavyweights without a little whimsy? CHAdeMO wants you to drink green tea while you charge your electric car.

Read the article on Temporist.

Microactivism: If We Ran the World

“We want to tap the single largest pool of untapped natural resource in the world: human good intentions that never translate into action.”

Here's my post on Temporist.

Updates

So, the big news right now is that I've just started contributing to futurist blog Temporist. This means that I am spending ever more time reading science news and trying to imagine what other people will find interesting. I, of course, get excited about it all. I'm trying hard to work my way to a bloggier/informal style, but gosh, it's hard not to skew academic when writing about stem cell research.

The other biggish news is that I've started sending some short stories out to journals for consideration. Already got a rejection letter and everything. I'm not discouraged about it; this is rite of passage. It would probably be some kind of jinx if my first piece were to be accepted somewhere immediately. One nice thing about the process is that I had to write a short personal bio, so I spent some time thinking about how to make myself sound like I've accomplished things in my life (and I HAVE accomplished things, I just haven't been paid for any of the work I'm proud of). So watch for my "About Me" blurb on this blog to change sometime soon. You'll be surprised at how cool I am. And to think you never knew...

My projects for my life right now are:
Write about the future.
Continue working on the electricity piece. (I think it wants to be a book!)
Wrap up some short stories that have been lingering unfinished.
Stay in touch with people who have been supportive or encouraging.
Keep up with the schoolwork.
Update my resume.
Find a JOB!

Human Embryonic Stem Cell Treatment Approved for Trials by FDA (Temporist)

In March of 2009, President Obama issued an executive order that lifted barriers on human stem cell research. One year has passed, and the FDA has just granted orphan drug designation to the a human embryonic stem cell derived therapy.

Read the full story on Temporist.