The Creative Life: Final Day

Today the Creative Life group worked under a deadline for our most productive day yet. The group started the day off with some intensive editing and formatting work before the work hits print. We did close readings, worked to determine our overall aesthetic, and came up with a name for our literary journal.

For lunch, the group took a break to do a Literary Reading at a local coffee shop, The Purple Pit. Students read a work of their choosing and we enjoyed some down time before making the final push to complete our culminating project.

Shawn reading "I Hate Nature"

Johnny reading "Let the Dog Out"

Hex reading "Untitled"

Maryellen reading "The Night"

The end of the day saw the group working as a team to create our end product, “Stuck In The Mud”. It was an awesome week!

"Stuck In The Mud" hitting the shelves in a book
store near you soon!

The Creative Life - Day 4

Day four saw the group flex their artistic muscles in a variety of mediums. We started off the day by putting the finishing touches on our one minute films. The group did an awesome job with this as we completed narrative arches boiled down to 60 seconds.

After our viewing party, the group transitioned to Visual Arts and how to make a living through tattooing and mural work. We viewed a movie on the history of tattoo art and then tried our hand at drawing some of our own. This activity wasn’t limited to only tattoos however, as some of the group tried their hand at more detail oriented landscapes.

Visual Arts

Wrapping up our morning session, The Creative Life got to spend time with poet, sabermetrician, and all around great guy Carson Cistulli. The group created MadLibs to get our creative juices flowing and then spent time using this to tie into the week’s earlier activities.

Carson Cistulli

The afternoon session was spent working hard to polish, workshop, and edit a final draft for this week’s Literary Magazine. All in all, it was a great day!

Workshopping in progress.

The Creative Life: Day 3

The Creative Life met in the dining hall at 8am to discuss our plans for the day and to learn about our first assignment. Our first warm up assignment was a 20 minute writing exercise where we had to find an isolated spot on campus, and write whatever came to us. We will then use this later in the week to workshop and turn into a longer or more refined piece.

Film Analysis/Storyboarding 

Next, we went to Lane to begin our cool project! Today was the most exciting day for me because our theme was "Movie & Music". Firstly, we watched an interesting film called "Stranger Than Fiction." The film was about a writer and the character she created who happen to both live in the same world. However, they did not notice that until one day the man found out that there was always the voice of a narrator in his head that no one else could hear except for him. After a few days, the narrator said that he was going to die. Through the help from an expert professor, he found out that he was the character in a story, but he wasn't sure whether it was a tragedy or a comedy. Finally, he was able to meet the author for a face to face conversation. Ultimately, the writer decides to spare her characters' life and rewrite the conclusion. This was a really special film for us, as we all exchanged ideas and talked about the power of literature and film.

The group having a Skype conversation
with Hamilton Leithauser

Then, we had the chance to Skype with a famous singer, Hamilton Leithauser from the band The Walkmen, and ask him questions we came up with after listening to five of his songs. We had the chance to interview him about his career, the music industry, the writing process, and even learned about how his band got its name. His opinions were pretty different from the poet we interviewed yesterday, but it was cool to learn from a different perspective.

Film Prep

Storyboarding

In the afternoon, we had to use what we learned earlier in the day to make a one minute film in small groups. Everybody was itching to try it. We talked about what kind of film we were going to do, and chose places to take video after storyboarding. We did not only develop our creativity today, but also improved our writing our skills. Tomorrow we will finish our films and share them with the group.
- Hex L.

The Creative Life: Day Two

The Creative Life spent day two focusing on reading and analyzing poetry. We started the day off by watching the film “Riding The Highline” by Kai Carlson-Wee, which combined poetry and documentary film-making. After watching the author hop trains, we left the classroom and journeyed to Profile Falls in Bristol where we spent time writing in nature. We focused on communing with the water falls and wrote a variety of poems.

Students communing with nature at Profile Falls

After spending time in nature, we went to Plymouth and did some urban writing. We had to eavesdrop and observe to pick up bits and pieces of conversations to create our own “found” poem.

Students Skyping with Poet Kai Carlson-Wee

We wrapped up our day by having a Skype conversation with poet and Stanford Professor Kai Carlson-Wee. We discussed his film, his poems, and what it is like to be a working poet. We also spent time fine tuning our poems we worked on earlier in the day.

"The Creative Life" Aims to Inquire and Inspire

The poet Maya Angelou once said, “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” This week, The Creative Life hopes to embody this ethos and tap into the more originative side of the self as we work to deepen our understanding of what exactly it means to pursue a creative passion as a profession.

To reach our goal, the group will be provided with ample opportunities to write, think, and create. Each day will present a different artistic outlet, and by the end of the week each student will have created a piece of fiction, a poem, a short film, song lyrics, a literary magazine, and will have participated in a literary reading at a coffee shop. And as an added caveat, each will be able to label themself a published author!

Hamilton Leithauser (The Walkmen)

Beth Grosart

Kai Carlson-Wee

Carson Cistulli

Cynthia Brackett-Vincent

   

The group will also learn from working artists as we engage with working poets, professors, musicians, artists, and film makers.