Letters to Juliet

Letters to Juliet: 5/14

Watching old people fall in love is … cool. OK, admit it — you became generally uninterested in The Notebook after Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling aged and became less glamorous. Letters to Juliet might suffer the same fate. In the film, an old woman attempts to reconnect with her former flame from the 1950s in Verona, Italy, with help from Amanda Seyfried and Christopher Egan. Seyfried and Egan, however, seem to have the charm to give this tale of years-gone-by, unrequited love some spark.



- By Sara Wakefield

MFA Poetry Reading

Last Wednesday, May 6, I was fortunate enough to attend the final reading of the graduating the poetry MFA program. It's nationally recognized as one of the best programs in the country, but it mostly goes under the radar around Grounds. This is regrettable as students are missing out on some incredible readings by very talented and thoughtful people.

This past week's reading was truly memorable and left me excited to see where the people in the program take their lives and poetry. Below I've posted one of the poems read by soon-to-be-graduate Sam Taylor, who has already published one book of poems. This link contains MP3's for each of the five readers. My favorites were Jazzy Danziger-Loyal's "The Psychiatrist’s Teen Daughter Self Evaluates" and Taylor's new poem, "Book of Poems" (which appear at 7:20 on Danziger-Loyal's MP3 and 11:40 on Taylor's). Check them out, come to readings next year.

SONG: INFERNAL


I was lost in the middle of my life
when the planes hit the towers,
lost in the middle of my life
when the glass gods, one at a time, cowered

and fell, when a bomb of blue sky
exploded a bride where she stood—
I was lost in the middle of my life,
far from a leopard, far from a dark wood—

when the night clerk at Circle K
handed me back too much change,
I was lost in the middle of our life’s way,
when an army of wings arranged

on flatbed trucks brushed past me on the road,
I was lost in the hallways of a glass dream,
trying to find my way out to the ground
turning in circles, crying secretly

in green languages, unknown even to me—
far from a lion, far from a dark wood—
with armfuls of fritos, and ribs, and iced tea,
and web pages circling through my blood.

There were wires all around, and siren wails
and people running about, bereft and intent
as I. I didn’t know whether to stay still
and wait for my life to grow transparent

there in my chair, with the sprinklers overhead
like golden showers of sorrow
and emergency lights flashing red
up and down the hall

or whether to run madly from stairwell
to stairwell, kissing women’s knees
and the foreheads of men, drunk on cries for help
beseeching and singing and weeping

entering one life after another
and leaping from each one. Yes, I
was lost in the middle of the tower
when I came upon my life.

Alderjam

It's halfway through exams, and the weather is awesome. But you're inside the bowels of Clark/Clemmons/Alderman studying Western European Politics. You don't care about Western European Politics and neither do I, but you have to care. How are you going to muster that extra bit of passion though? Seemingly, nay, completely out of nothing you have care about the workings of Germany's local parliamentary systems until your 9AM exam on Tuesday. You need something other than that grande Greenberry's.

We've all been there, and that's why I'm here, writing this post. Music gets me through those times. With the right type of music you, like my frail, soon-to-be-dead iPod and I, can endure. My recommendations below.

"1812 Overture" Pandora station. Why? because my fifth grade teacher told me classical music makes you smarter, and it fades to the background nicely. Sometimes though it gets interesting and you some real soundtrack type jams going on. Ideal for the last page of your ten-page paper, makes finishing it feel far more epic.

Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92 Aphex's beats were completely revolutionary at the time, but now the sounds are somewhat commonplace in music, making this album interesting, but not distractingly so. This early electronica collection is makes a good base layer to build your consciousness off of as you ignore the prick two cubicles in front of you who believes Stacks is the best place to call his mom.

Anything by Pretty Lights This DJ's sounds really are perhaps best described by his name. Like a pretty light, this music is enjoyable to listen to but doesn't really have anything artistic in it to distract you. It uses minimal amounts of vocals, like most turntablist DJ's, but it's not quite as engrossing as say RJD2 in his Deadringer days and makes for great study sounds.

Anything by Ratatat Unlike all the other ideas I've thrown up so far, I actually listen to Ratatat outside of a study setting. Their music is almost too head-nod-inducing to put on this list, but I've listened to their stuff enough that it doesn't distract me too much. And it's all completely a capella (skip the Remix mixtapes for your studies).

Shine Blockas - Big Boi ft. Gucci Mane This is actually not a study song. This is just something I listen to when I'm tired of studying and I need a morale boost. This is off the forever delayed Sir Luscious Left Foot and was undeniably one of the best hip-hop songs from '09; I still can't stop listening to it.

I'd also throw in any music you know really well. Vocals can be distracting, but if you know them well enough they're more easily faded to the background.

Tim Be Told - A Cville Band

Tim Be Told is a Charlottesville based and "former UVa band," according to their press release. In the vein of Parachute and Dave Matthews Band before them, they're hoping to hit the mainstream. Check out this video and nifty download thingy below if you like the song.

Lady Gaga and Muse at JPJ

One of the best qualities of Charlottesville is the disproportionate amount of music and arts events going on around us relative to population of the area. In addition to the numerous smaller venues around town, we of course have John Paul Jones Arena and Scott Stadium. In the past, some really huge acts have come through Charlottesville in these two On-Grounds venues, including Jay-Z and T.I., U2 and Muse, The Rolling Stones, DMB, John Mayer, Elton John, Metallica, and others.

I doubt these artists would have ever considered coming to Charlottesville without the reputation of the venues. That new tradition will continue this fall as Lady Gaga and Muse come through JPJ on September 8 and October 27 respectively. Both are renowned for having high quality live shows. Tickets have gone on sale for both acts, and can be purchased here. The videos above both show Muse and Lady Gaga have a taste for extravagant performances.