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Christopher Burk, Paintings.

Gorgeous, mystery filled “nocturnes” by artist Christopher Burk who lives and works in Columbus, Ohio.

Don’t miss Supersonic Art on Instagram!

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Lizz Hamilton

Every Prayer Card I Had in My House (3rd Configuration)

Paper, plastic, and metal ephemera

2016

lizzhamilton.com

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things to do more of:

- write love poems

- read love letters

- love

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tips for grad school

everyone is different and every program is different, but i think these tips are generally applicable! regular caveat that i'm an english lit phd, and things may be different in social sciences + stem

do not do all the reading. not only is it physically impossible unless you're an incredible speed reader, it also is actually not helpful! 80% of what you read isn't going to serve you + your research, so reading it all is gonna get in the way of that. ruthlessly prioritize

get some sleep. you are a person, and your work should never come before your health + happiness. there will always be more work to do. not getting everything done is fine!

notes and citations are your friend. when reading an article, look at the works cited and look at the foot/end notes. these will give you a better idea into what the scholarly landscape looks like more than the body of the article will. likewise, write notes on everything you read so you don't have to go back and reread things.

talk to people. it's scary, but grad school is about moving from being a student to a peer— treat your professors as people, go talk to them/ videochat/ whatever; this makes the profs 1) less scary and 2) better able to write rec letters.

courses only matter so much. for a lot of programs, coursework is the bare minimum of what you do. get a job, join a research project, work on an individual project. it will help you not be consumed with the grunt work of courses, and will make you look better in the long run.

imposter syndrome is inevitable. hate to say it, but it's true. there's lots to learn and it's gonna feel that everyone knows more than you. but it's not true, you deserve to be there, and remember that everyone else is probably feeling it too!

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La Bruja Jewelry on Etsy

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*curtsies* So, I really, REALLY don't want to offend anyone, Duke, but a question has been bothering me for a really long time and I was afraid to ask it because I didn't want to piss off anyone and since you're really eloquent and knowledgeable, I thought I'd ask you. So here it goes: you always say that arts and sciences are equally important, but how can analysing Chaucer or ecopoetics or anything similar compare to biomedicine or engineering in improving human lives? I'm genuinely curious!

*Curtsies* All right. Let me tell you a story: 

When I lived in London, I shared a flat with a guy who was 26 years old, getting his PhD in theoretical physics. Let’s call him Ron. Ron could not for the life of him figure out why I was wasting my time with an MA in Shakespeare studies or why my chosen method of providing for myself was writing fiction. Furthermore, it was utterly beyond him why I should take offense to someone whose field literally has the word “theoretical” in the title ridiculing the practical inefficacy of art. My pointing out that he spent his free time listening to music, watching television, and sketching famous sculptures in his notebook somehow didn’t convince him that art is a necessary part of a healthy human existence. 

Three other things that happened with Ron: 

I came home late one night and he asked where I’d been. When I told him I’d been at a friend’s flat for a Hanukkah celebration, he said, “What’s Hanukkah?” I thought he was joking. He was not.

A few weeks later, I came downstairs holding a book. He asked what I was reading and when I said, “John Keats,” he (and the three other science grad students in the room) did not know who that was. This would be like me not knowing who Thomas Edison is.

One night we got into an argument about the issue of gay marriage, and at one point he actually said, “It doesn’t affect me so I don’t see why I should care about it.”

Now: If Ron had ever read Number the Stars, or heard Ode to a Nightingale, or been to a performance of The Laramie Project, do you think he ever would have asked any of these questions? 

Obviously this is an extreme example. This guy was amazingly ignorant, but he was also the walking embodiment of the questions you’re asking. What does art matter compared with something like science, that saves people’s lives? Here’s the thing: There’s a flaw in the question, because art saves lives, too. Maybe not in the same “Eureka, we’ve cured cancer!” kind of way, but that doesn’t make it any less important. Sometimes the impact of art is relatively small, even invisible to the naked eye. For example: as a young teenager I was (no exaggeration) suicidally unhappy. Learning to write is what kept me (literally and figuratively) off the ledge. But I was one nameless teenager; in the greater scheme of things, who cares? Fair enough. Let’s talk big picture. Let’s talk about George Orwell. George Orwell wrote books, the two most famous of which are Animal Farm and 1984. You probably read at least one of those in high school. Why do these books matter? Because they’re cautionary tales about limiting the power of oppressive governments, and their influence is so pervasive that the term “Big Brother,” which refers to the omniscient government agency which watches its citizens’ every move in 1984, has become common parlance to refer to any abuse of power and invasion of privacy by a governmental body. Another interesting fact, and the reason I chose this example: sales of 1984 fucking skyrocketed in 2017, Donald Trump’s first year in office. Why? Well, people are terrified. People are re-reading that cautionary tale, looking for the warning signs. 

Art, as Shakespeare taught us, “holds a mirror up to nature.” Art is a form of self-examination. Art forces us to confront our own mortality. (Consider Hamlet. Consider Dylan Thomas.) Art forces us to confront inequality. (Consider Oliver Twist. Consider Audre Lorde. Consider A Raisin in the Sun. Consider Greta Gerwig getting snubbed at the Golden Globes.) Art forces us to confront our own power structures. (Consider Fahrenheit 451. Consider “We Shall Overcome.” Consider All the President’s Men. Consider “Cat Person.”) Art reminds us of our own history, and keeps us from repeating the same tragic mistakes. (Consider The Things They Carried. Consider Schindler’s List. Consider Hamilton.) Art forces us to make sense of ourselves. (Consider Fun House. Consider Growing Up Absurd.) Art forces us to stop and ask not just whether we can do something but whether we should. (Consider Brave New World. Consider Cat’s Cradle.) You’re curious about ecopoetics? The whole point is to call attention to human impact on the environment. Some of our scientific advances are poisoning our planet, and the ecopoetics of people like the Beats and the popular musicians of the 20th century led to greater environmental awareness and the first Earth Day in 1970 . Art inspires change–political, social, environmental, you name it. Moreover, art encourages empathy. Without books and movies and music, we would all be stumbling around like Ron, completely ignorant of every other culture, every social, political, or historical experience except our own. Since we have such faith in science: science has proved that art makes us better people. Science has proved that people who read fiction not only improve their own mental health but become proportionally more empathetic. (Really. I wrote an article about this when I was working for a health and wellness magazine in 2012.) If you want a more specific example: science has proved that kids who read Harry Potter growing up are less bigoted. (Here’s an article from Scientific American, so you don’t have to take my word for it.) That is a big fucking deal. Increased empathy can make a life-or-death difference for marginalized people.

But the Defense of Arts and Humanities is about more than empirical data, precisely because you can’t quantify it, unlike a scientific experiment. Art is–in my opinion–literally what makes life worth living. What the fuck is the point of being healthier and living longer and doing all those wonderful things science enables us to do if we don’t have Michelangelo’s David or Rimbaud’s poetry or the Taj Mahal or Cirque de Soleil or fucking Jimi Hendrix playing “All Along the Watchtower” to remind us how fucking amazing it is to be alive and to be human despite all the terrible shit in this world? Art doesn’t just “improve human lives.” Art makes human life bearable.

I hope this answers your question. 

To it I would like to add: Please remember that just because you don’t see the value in something doesn’t mean it is not valuable. Please remember that the importance of science does not negate or diminish the importance of the arts, despite what every Republican politician would like you to believe. And above all, please remember that artists are every bit as serious about what they do as astronomers and mathematicians and doctors, and what they do is every bit as vital to humanity, if in a different way. Belittling their work by questioning its importance, or relegating it to a category of lesser endeavors because it isn’t going to cure a disease, or even just making jokes about how poor they’re going to be when they graduate is insensitive, ignorant, humiliating, and, yes,  offensive. And believe me: they’ve heard it before. They don’t need to hear it again. We know exactly how frivolous and childish and idealistic and unimportant everyone thinks we are. Working in the arts is a constant battle against the prevailing idea that what you do is useless. But it’s bad enough that the government is doing its best to sacrifice all arts and humanities on the altar of STEM–we don’t need to be reminded on a regular basis that ordinary people think our work is a waste of time and money, too. 

Artists are exhausted. They’re sick and tired of being made to justify their work and prove the validity of what they do. Nobody else in the world is made to do that the way artists are. That’s why these questions upset them. That’s why it exasperates me. I have to answer some version of this question every goddamn day, and I am so, so tired. But I’ve taken the effort to answer it here, again, in the hopes that maybe a couple fewer people will ask it in the future. But even if you’re not convinced by everything I’ve just said, please try to find some of that empathy, and just keep it to yourself. 

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aquiline noses in art // part 2

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I was thinking “I wish people talked more about being neurodivergent or mentally ill in the studyblr/langblr/academia community” until I realized I could do just that. 

So hey, you can be part of this community and be depressed. You can be part of this community and have learning disabilities. It’s fucking hard. So many of the tips you see won’t work for you and will seem like a joke. Try again, try something else. You have as much potential as anyone else, even though it seems like following the same path will be ten times harder. Don’t feel guilty because of something you can’t change. Don’t tell yourself you’re faking it because you’re lazy. Remind youself that you don’t have to live up to anyone else’s standard. I’ve been heavily depressed for four years now and every day has been a challenge and I have felt so useless compared to other people. I tend to forget I am working towards my goals despite my depression, and my anxiety and my constant tiredness. It makes everything so much harder but I have so much faith in myself and I do in you too. We will accomplish our goals. 

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Charlotte Brontë  — Jane Eyre

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heavenly bodies: fashion and the catholic imagination october 5, 2018 nyc

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   there’s always a voice inside me that says, ‘things won’t go that smoothly.’                whisper of the heart (1995) dir. yoshifumi kondō

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Hi I'm currently on vacation after exams so do you have any greek mythology book recs for me to read? Non/fiction, anything really I just need to brush up on my knowledge / pleasure reading :) thanks

hi!! okay so i feel like the easiest thing to do would be to link you to a couple of recs posts i’ve done (maybe i need a tag for these) -

“greek mythology for beginners” books

“greek mythology FICTION for beginners” books (disregard the glasgow stuff)

classical reception books (eg. books which use classical themes/events/motifs)

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happy father's day declan lynch, today and every day <3

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mythological women in waterhouse paintings pt 2

psyche in the garden of eros / hylas with a nymph / the siren / echo and narcissus / hylas and the nymphs / psyche opening the golden box / boreas / lamia

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at the next met gala i think someone should get murdered. i think it would be fun