A tribute

A bit about this blog.

The name comes from a quote by Robert Kennedy. The full text of the speech, given shortly after Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down, can be found here: http://www.rfkmemorial.org/lifevision/onthemindlessmenaceofviolence/. The point of the speech is that we’re all human, so cut that violent shit out. Needless to say, RFK was similarly gunned down shortly thereafter. I imagine that he would have wanted to shout, “Weren’t you fucking listening?” At least, I would have wanted to yell that.

The URL to this page, revtransunciv, comes from the URL of the blog I wrote while studying abroad in Nicaragua. That one was called RevTransCiv.blogspot.com and was named after the program I was taking – Revolution, Transformation and Civil Society. RevTransUnCiv - Revolution, Transformation and a play on the word uncivilized - just sounded cheeky, so I used it.

I’ve just had my first few classes of the term. Thinking that it is the last time for a long time that I’ll have a first few classes is a bit depressing. So it goes. I am, however, excited to throw myself at my work.

I do this thing when I work. I seem to work much more than I do. I am often considered a very serious – even perfectionist – student. Unfortunately for my work and fortunately for my social life, I am less serious than I’d like to be. That will hopefully change this term. I think one (of the vast amount) of the things looming between my writing and that of the artistic scholars I listed last post is that they put an immense amount of effort into their work. I tend to spend more time relaxing from doing so much work than actually doing said work. That is, until the last few weeks of term. Then, as I scrape what is left of me off the road of academia, I get to say that my work wasn’t as great as it could’ve been because I did it all last minute. Convenient, right?

I often feel like my work roughly approximated Tenacious D’s song, “Tribute”. This is not the greatest work in the world – this is just a tribute. It’s not what it was in my head. It’s not the greatness I imagined it would be. It pays lip service to that thing. It is like a margin sketch of Guernica; it’s cool that you can do it, but no one wants a margin sketch. They want the real thing, or at least a good print of it, or something new and innovative.

Well, no longer, says I. Not this term. I’m going out with style. Or something.

Though, tonight I am going to a concert instead of starting my writing for next week.