Captured Thought: Shakespeare Not Serious?

It's like a headline in a bad British tabloid.

SHAKESPEARE INTERESTING

MILLIONS OF TEENS ENTHRALLED

Never in a million years would anyone believe it. And yet it's possible.

I regret to say I don't have a particularly long relationship with Shakespeare's works. I'd obviously heard of him and knew a moderate amount, but until middle school I'd never read any of his plays or poems.

I tried reading Romeo and Juliet in seventh grade and failed miserably. I think I got about a quarter of the way through Act II and had to stop because it was so boring I was dying. Teachers had always told me that Shakespeare was one of the greatest writer of all time, if not the greatest, but I couldn't see it. There was nothing interesting about a centuries-old romance, especially not when the idea had been copied by so many more works. My chances with Shakespeare weren't looking good.

My eighth grade English teacher had other plans. We spent about two months doing a unit on a much more lightweight work - The Comedy of Errors. I initially found it hard to believe that anything as old as Shakespeare could qualify as a comedy, but I gave in.

Boy, am I glad I did.

The Comedy of Errors took me totally by surprise. It had the all characters of a Monty Python skit, the one-liners of a Fast and Furious movie, and the slapstick humor of an episode of the Three Stooges. It was unbelievable. Not only that, it didn't ever get old. We watched two performances of it and did our own during class, but our teacher still didn't think we'd gotten enough out of it.

So we did our own filmed version. I was cameraman, director of photography, and special effects designer. The combination of these three tasks allowed me to shape the story hundreds of different ways, and the true quality of Shakespeare's work was made known to me. I will never forget that class.

The biggest lesson I learned form that project was that old didn't mean serious. I'd seen a lot of "archaic" literature, and due to both my own bias and the subpar teaching of some of my elementary English teachers, I was unable to see any humor or lightness in anything, only fancy words for things that were boring regardless of how they were put. For me, Shakespeare changed this unbreakable stigma. The Comedy of Errors remains to this day one of the funniest pieces of literature I've ever read — amazing considering that hundreds of years of humor have gone by.

iMedia: Dancing to Dubstep

About a month after its release, this video was catapulted into the internet spotlight. It is a five-minute dance to a dubstep remix of Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks."

This video demonstrates a number of cultural phenomena that are reshaping both music and dance.

Most obviously, it demonstrates the rapid increase in the popularity of dubstep. Derived from two-step, breakbeat, and drum and bass (DnB), dubstep combines relatively slow (less than 60 bpm), sparse drumbeats with complex synth parts and a totally unique type of synthesized bass (called wobble bass), the sound of which is difficult to describe (you'll hear it after the bass drop at 1:28). The bass drop, another integral feature of the genre, is the culmination of the intro, which is usually amorphous in comparison to the rest of the song.

Whenever I introduce dubstep to friends, I append four words onto the end of my spiel: "It's an acquired taste." Dubstep is, for most people, nothing like any music they've ever heard. The sounds that come out of it are difficult to replicate with any instrument, or even the human voice. For many people, it's discomforting to hear. Keep in mind that the song in the video is extremely "soft" dubstep - "hard" or "hardcore" dubstep uses significantly more distortion on the drums and bass, and usually utilizes minor keys and lots of tritones.

Why, then, is the genre so popular? Blog searches for "dubstep" (especially on Tumblr) yield such confusing results as "IT MAKES MY ARMS FEEL LIKE CHAINSAWS."

It is my personal opinion that dubstep is the poster child for a whole set of genres that are changing the way we see music. For a very long time, music has been limited to use in specific activities - dancing, for instance, or religious ceremony. Of course, many genres of music are best enjoyed when sitting back and paying close attention to the notes themselves. At this point in time, however, I think many genres (dubstep, DnB, dream, ambient, neo-orchestral) are being used almost as a sort of background music - that is, turn it on and let it run for a long time, regardless of what you're doing. Many dubstep mixes are written to be seamless, multiple-hour works.

The video also points to a phenomenon which, in my opinion, is making music better: remixing. Remixing, in the modern sense of the word, has been around since the late 60's but has recently taken off in a totally new direction. Remixes of popular songs were usually restricted to genre - if I wanted to remix Run-DMC's "It's Tricky," it would sound pretty similar to the original, just with different organization. More recently, however, cross-genre remixes have begun to emerge, where a DJ will take songs from literally any genre and turn it into house, dubstep or the like (Beethoven's 5th is a fairly common techno remix, and MGMT's music has seen popularity with all electronic genres). Even more interesting is experimentation with converting techno and electronica into rock or orchestral. The remix in the video is a perfect example, as it uses almost exclusively samples taken from the song itself.

Though I am not a dancer, I can distinguish between different styles on sight, and I'm especially good at recognizing more modern, "underground" styles. Dubstep has had a profound effect on the underground dance scene because it doesn't feel like any other genre. There is no "approved" way to dance to dubstep. While styles like house have very distinct and continuous four-on-the-floor beats, the feel and energy of dubstep varies wildly from one song to the next, and even between sections of a single song.

This early in its life, a lot of people have dismissed dubstep as being a fad that will be forgotten in a few years' time. I, for one, will not forget the impact that it - and the culture it brings - has had on music.

Captured Thought: Developing Worlds

          As I was going through my old CD case a few months ago I came upon a disc which I had not seen for many years. It was Myst, one of the first computer games I ever played and to this day one of my favorites.

          Myst is a game which challenges one's thinking skills more than one's hands. It is a game not of twitch reflex but of keen observation and critical thinking — truly, a challenge which stands alone in its class. But that portion of the game was not what made me nostalgic; no, it was memories of the worlds that Myst created.



           Myst centers around Ages, which are manifested as small islands with no physical connection to one another. Each of the Ages is distinct: the architecture, music, and story told by each is unlike the others, but all are intertwined in the mystery which the player must solve. It is this aspect of Myst which I recall so vividly — worlds so immersive that one could become lost for hours in their magic, much as I once did.

          After finishing perusing my old games I sat down at my desk and, after carefully blowing the dust from the disc, installed and loaded the game. I was struck at once with a flood of thoughts as the introduction rolled by and I was thrown back into the world I had loved so much.

"I realized the moment I fell into the fissure that the book would not be destroyed as I had planned. It continued falling into that starry expanse, of which I had only a fleeting glimpse. I have tried to speculate where it might have landed, but I must admit that such conjecture is futile. Still, questions about whose hands might one day hold my Myst book are unsettling to me. I know my apprehensions might never be allayed, and so I close, realizing that perhaps the ending has not yet been written."

          But something was different. Something was not the way it had been my first journey through the Ages. The ecstasy of discovery was not present as it had been. I realized the true power behind the Ages of Myst.

          The first time we see a world, there is an emotion which results — an emotion which can only come from the astonishment of coming into a world that is new, unexplored...pristine. Not a foot has been set there, and you will never again be able to see the world untouched.

          It is that feeling that I have fruitlessly chased for so many years. It is novelists like Orson Scott Card, musicians like C418, game developers like Markus Persson — these are people who understand the joy of discovery.

Since that time I have tried to find that life and put it into my work. It is difficult to channel: once I find a world that I find interesting I am either lost in it or fail to fully render the idea on paper. The ability to fully convey a fictional world to another is one that I admire and desire, and will continue to pursue throughout my life.