This photo was taken at Passion Puddle, located on the border of the Cook and Douglass campuses at Rutgers (you can’t see the lake itself too well in this photo, but I only had a few minutes before the bus left, and at the time I was busy taking some freshmen on “vacation” — an activity that involves a Saturday afternoon bus ride to Sears, where we enjoy napping on real beds for a few hours). According to legend, when a male from Cook College and a female from Douglass College hold hands and walk around the water three times, they will soon become engaged. This myth seems to have been slightly modified since the merging of all undergraduate liberal arts colleges at Rutgers and changed simply to a male and a female — though I don’t think we’ve progressed to the point of incorporating same-sex hand-holding into the passing of the legend. I’m not sure I mind being left out, of course, because Passion Puddle is primarily known for another myth involving the very unromantic excavation of a body from the bottom of the lake, which leads me, in a very morbid transition, to Virginia Woolf…

This past week I finished reading Mrs. Dalloway for the second time in one of my courses, and during a class discussion, the subject of food was brought up in relation to the way Virginia Woolf’s anorexia seems to affect the meaning attached food in her writing. The passage we spoke about involved Miss Kilman eating a pink cake — Woolf’s description of this act is unmistakably resentful, with Miss Kilman’s eating directly paired with her own feelings of worthlessness and the narrator’s repulsive depiction of her. The image of food itself, though, is somewhat glorified — there’s a subtle sense of indulgence in the very hateful way she writes about food, with great care taken to describe in detail the way Miss Kilman speaks while handling her food, and finally swallows the last bit of her eclair, and then wipes the chocolate from her fingers, and then finishes with a cup of tea. A friend once jokingly suggested that the reason anorexic women so often work around food or otherwise aspire to go onto culinary school is because “it’s like porn for them” — and I think that’s the kind of withheld desire evident in Woolf’s writing… that there is something almost pornographic about the experience of watching someone eating while personally abstaining from food. When a person spends so much time thinking about and obsessing over food, I think that obsession can manifest itself in all sorts of ways, whether it be through one’s profession, writing, or artwork… I’m thinking Fiona Apple’s The First Taste provides an interesting musical comparison to Woolf (or perhaps Paper Bag, with its more blatant references to hunger and loneliness).

What I also wonder about, though, is the presence of Elizabeth in the pink cake scene, and how her relationship with her mother, Clarissa, might complicate Woolf’s ideas about food. It seems to lend to to the idea that eating disorders often develop out of an inadequate relationship with a woman’s mother, which would certainly make sense in Woolf’s case, given her mother’s death at such an early age. Either way I think that understanding Woolf’s relationship to food adds another dimension to the novel I hadn’t picked up on before now…

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In seventh grade, I broke my leg pretty badly. With one fractured tibia and a screw in my ankle, I ended up with a cast that reached all the way up to my hip and a wheelchair to prevent any further mishaps. I was allowed to use crutches at home, but the doctor told me it was too dangerous to go out without a wheelchair, as my leg couldn’t handle any stress after my surgery. This proved difficult during school, even with the ramps (we measured them once during a math project — the angle is so steep it’s technically illegal). During gym and other activities I couldn’t take part in, I was brought to the library, where I sat overlooking a tiny courtyard that could see into classrooms across the way. A teacher of mine joked that it was the exact plot of Rear Window — that a murder would soon occur and I’d be the only one to notice it, all from the confines of my chair by the window.

It wasn’t until this past year that I finally watched Hitchcock’s Rear Window. I saw it in my Writing & Photography class — which, of course, was the class that inspired the photoblog aspect of this site. Anyway, I finally began to feel like the voyeur in the film when I went to the top floor of my apartment building to take some photos the other night. I first went up there with a friend on the fourth of July to watch the fireworks (it totally beat going to a park or some such thing — the view is so great from the 12th floor that we were able to see 11 different displays in nearby towns). Later on, I decided to take advantage of the view and bring up my camera.

Luckily no one at the restaurant across the street could see me, so I didn’t look like a total creep. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with these images just yet, but I’m thinking of creating some sort of time lapse video, as I’ve got a number of different pictures with the same view as well as access to that photo spot for the rest of the summer.

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Recently, there have been some horrendous sounds coming from the bathroom in my dormitory. A late night trip to the restroom revealed to me the source of this problem: speakers hooked up to an iPod belonging to someone whose iTunes library apparently contains nothing but rap music. After discovering this, I also realized that one particularly annoying song, which Google has informed me is called “Crank Dat Soulja Boy,” has become very popular not just in my bathroom, but everywhere. I can’t walk around campus or go to the mall or do much of anything without hearing people singing about cranking dat Supaman.

Despite the widespread popularity of this song, I had a difficult time deciphering the words. My Google search proved useless here, as after reading the lyrics, I still had no idea what the words actually meant. Never have I heard “Superman” in this context before. I thought Superman was just a fictional character, and I’m not sure when the word became a verb. At this point, I turned to Urban Dictionary to help me. What I’ve learned is that when you “superman dat hoe,” you ejaculate on a girl’s back and attach a sheet or blanket to her so that it sticks like a cape. Apparently, this is how to “put a bitch in her place” if she refuses sexual activity, which somehow makes her a “hoe.”

I’m slightly confused by this message. First of all, the song contains the words “soulja boy” in the title, which I’m told should be read as “soldier boy.” Does the rapper mean to imply that soldiers are sexist, horny bastards who have no respect for women? Or does he mean to give off a more respectable image by implying that his disgustingly sexist ideas make him a strong role model for boys? I’m also confused about the spelling of “soldier.” Since when is there a ‘j’ in there?

From the message of the song to the music itself, which sounds more like a lot of banging on loud instruments and screaming, this song comes across as very confusing to a listener like me. As I’ve explained, it took me a long time to hear, decipher, translate and understand the words, and I’m still having difficulty. If you’d please excuse my ignorance and answer some of these questions for me, I’d greatly appreciate it. Perhaps if you would also find some artists with a decent amount of talent and begin making music with a more understandable and respectable message, this confusion would happen less frequently. There was a time when music contained melody and soul, but it has deteriorated into what I can only describe as a mess of ignorant, money-hungry celebrities with no talent other than screaming or looking pretty who like to masquerade as musicians, defacing what many others love and respect dearly.

I hope you understand how unfortunate this problem is and that you will do your best to save the world from horrible music, as they are becoming more and more corrupted by the day. Yesterday I saw a 12-year-old girl preforming what has been dubbed the “soulja boy dance,” and I can only hope the poor soul will one day learn and have the chance to appreciate what real music is.

Sincerely,
Concerned listener

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