Soul on Ice

Six months later... Guess I HAVE been working on that dissertation thing! Well since my last post I've accomplished a few things, namely, I'm now ABD. For those of you who have nothing to do with academia (i.e. the sane), that means All But Dissertation. Yes, I successfully defended my proposal last December and am forging on! This means the blogging was put on hold for a bit, but now I intend to catch you up on my past six months, as not all of it consisted of grad school anxieties (although that's a healthy chunk of the everyday). Let's start where I left off - on my way back from a conference in Little Rock Arkansas, I had an overnight lay-over in Los Angeles, so my pop picked me up from the airport and the parental units just happened to be babysitting my cute nephew, Soul Kaya Mecenas. I wanted to tuck him into my backpack the next morning on my way back to Honolulu, but we'll wait til the little guy can jump into some waves and make a shaka with his hand!

Home of Bill

Hey y'all I'm in Little Rock Arkansas, home of Bill - William Jefferson Clinton, that is. On display is the former president's Presidential Library. The Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) conference is pretty cool. Saw a panel of grad students from Michigan State speaking on cyber feminisms - one speaker was Robyn Tasaka, pictured here with me at Bill's library. Saw another panel on feminist transnational issues and rhetoric - a lot to thinking about. Then I had to work on my talk which is tomorrow morning - hope all goes well. Looking forward to eating BBQ and having a beer afterward.

Manifesto!

That was the title of a poem by deceased Hawaii poet Wayne Westlake that the audience read, initiated by fellow poet Richard Hamasaki. Memorable line: "Hawaiians eat fish and the fish eat the Hawaiians" or something like that. This night at the Louis Pohl Gallery, Al Wendt gathered together a group he called his silver-haired friends: Hamasaki, Imaikalani Kalahele, Mahealani
Kamau`u Wendt, and Haunani-Kay Trask.



In the audience: UH English Dept. Graduate Director Paul Lyons, UH South Asia librarian Monica Ghosh, and grad student/poet Brandy McDougall in the background.

September's Showdown in Chinatown

Theme: Conspiracy
Props: a shovel and an ashtray
Line of dialogue: "Open sesame"

So were the guidelines for this month's Showdown in Chinatown, Honolulu's 48 hour short film challenge and monthly party for local film afficianados and the Hawaii film industry crowd. The twelve entries were screened at NextDoor in Chinatown (hence the name) on Saturday, September 8, and somehow I got to be a judge for the night. Totally random and unexpected, but completely a good time.
Showdown in Girltown
Saturday, November 17 at NextDoor
Theme: Overcoming
prop: a tape measure
Line of Dialogue: "Do you think you know me?"
For more info, visit the Showdown in Chinatown website:
http://www.ourfilm.org/index_flash.html

First Friday: GirlFest at Arts at Marks

The mix-media sculpture in the middle of the Arts at Marks Garage drew curious looks from the more than 2,000 (!) visitors during September's First Friday gallery walk in downtown Honolulu. California artist China Tamblyn's contribution to this year's GirlFest visual arts exhibit elicited hesitant responses, such as that from Professor Val Wayne, from the UH English Dept.: "It looks so real." The all-natural materials fastened together in skeletal shape evoke a view of the body we tend to ignore: organic material in various stages of decomposition...

From the heady to the surreal to the documentary (Ed Greevey, who has the honor of being the first male participant, showed images of women from the Kanaka Maoli renaissance), the ten artists of local, Kanaka Maoli, and continental origins offered their individual takes on this year's theme: "Legacy." New Yorker Alice Mizrachi's "Rebel Women" (detail below) illustrates African American women who rebelled against slavery in America.
"Legacy" is on display from September 6 - October 6, 2007. For more info: http://www.artsatmarks.com

First Friday, Honolulu: Al Wendt

Albert Wendt has spent the past three years in the UH-Manoa Department of English, teaching literature of the Pacific (co-taught with his partner, Reina Whaitiri), fiction and poetry. In between his Citizen's Chair duties, he has also spent time meditating on the Koʻolau Range, visible from his Manoa Valley home. We can view his contemplations on canvas, at the Louis Pohl gallery in downtown Chinatown.
I stopped by during the September First Friday and was lucky to catch Al and Reina during a rare lull in the crowds. Several of his paintings had been snatched up by an anonymous buyer from the West Coast. But it was a wall of paintings that were not for sale that I noticed; these, Al explained, were for his family - the top painting a soaring pattern of birds spread thick across an indigo and gold sky: "My mother," the artist explained, then pointed to an equally characteristic painting below: "My father." Other paintings showed Al's passion for the sky, for volcanoes, and the ocean but these - the "family" wall - stayed with me for the rest of the night.

Hey there.

This year I'm supposed to be writing a dissertation, not a blog. So I figured I'd name my blog "Discourse Disco" for a few reasons.
A) Disco is the etymological root of discourse, really.
B) "Death of a Disco Dancer" is one of my fave Smiths songs, and I'm thinking of titling my diss "Death of a Discourse Dancer"
C) Oh never mind.