“He may seek rather to deepen its mystery, to raise round it, and round its maker, that mist of wonder which is dear to both gods and worshippers alike.”
I love love love to look at art and analyze what makes it tick. Having and maintaining a dialogue and discussion of technique, technicality, artistry and theme is just a deep calling. It’s fascinating to be able to make deep critical observations of even a seemingly transparent work.
I love stupid shit. I love Shrek the Musical, despite its issues, I love Love Never Dies, despite it being literally garbage pulled out of Andy Lloyd Webber butt. It’s just so fascinating to divorce Who I’d Be from the Shrek musical, or a single awful decision from a pile of batshit decisions. Why did the Beauty and the Beast on Broadway work when the Beauty and the Beast live action remake didn’t? How did individual piece of craft fail where others succeeded? I want to know what bad CGI and mediocre singing try to hide.
The key to mystery is to give clues. Understanding cinematography, score, diegesis, themes, metaphor, symbolism, and any other devices are the clues to a mystery. They are meant to convey messages, and if the wrong messages are conveyed, the mystery disappears.
I want to be given, or give, the tools to consume media with more thought. I do not take away the mystery by using my critics toolbox to inspire new creation. I don’t take away the joy and nostalgia of Shrek or Beauty and the beast by discussing the musical choices of either. My disgust and praise always comes from passion, and to some other’s passion will always be a mystery.
I never understood the pure hatred with which people spoke of fanfiction. Sure there’s low quality things, hell even harmful things, but the act of producing and consuming more content for the things you enjoy? Why is that in itself so awful. Why is a fanfic author denagrated but an amature author revered.
Writing is hard. It takes time and skill and patience and determination. If somone, anyone, is interested in making a thing with words, who am I to discourage them? There is joy in creation. There is joy in making something for yourself and there’s joy in producing content for a very particular audience.
(I mean, we could talk about how fanfic is a “”””woman”””” thing, but I can save that rant for a little while)
The first thing I ever wrote was fanfiction of Saint Michael the Archangel and Saint Cecilia the patron saint of music. They had a daughter (her name was Tara because she was just 10 year old me with WINGS. They were rainbow for the record). Now it wasn’t good, of course not I was 10, but it made me think about a lot of things young children take for granted. Dialogue, prose, action, character, and accuracy. I worked hard to produce all 27 pages of that story because it was a new exploration of media.
In order to write fanfiction you have to examine what you enjoy about a piece of media, translate mediums if that media is not a book, and channel that love into a new adventure. It takes work to create, and in order to spark that joy, to learn.
I learned about dialogue tags, grammer, sentence structure, formatting, diction, character, syntax, theme, foreshadowing, and a billion other thing. Did I suck for a while? Hell yeah. Did I really need that experience? Hell yeah.
And you know what? Sometimes it’s fun to write some stupid stupid bullshit. Last term I wrote a memoir-esque thing that was painful and harsh. It took a lot for me to write it, and you know what, I needed a break. Instead of just focusing on that, I wrote a fun fluffy fanfic where Clark Kent accidentally reveals he’s Superman to Lois Lane because cried during the Iron Giant. I want back to the memoir and finished it stronger because my garbage had given me a break.
Then in fanfic you can have literally whatever you want. I can have my stupid space gays to boldly go. I can have my flower shop owner and tattoo parlor owner fall in love over tea for the 3000th time. I can see someone like me, on a starship with her wife, and no one can tell me to be ashamed. No network can kill the one gay character I care about for cheap clicks. These stories are inherently representative of a neglected part of a fanbase.
Hell, even without the excuse, sometimes I just wanna have fun. Can I write a dumb fic where the captain of a starship and an ex borg drone bake a cake, or the wicked witch of the west accidentally adopts a puppy, or the reaper of death goes to pottery barn? Yes. I can just… Do that. And laugh about it. Fanfiction is fun. Go and write whatever your weird little heart desires.
In the bottom floor of the exhibit, there are 2 panes of glass suspended from the ceiling. They hang parallel to one another and have different sized holes in seemingly random places. They are just… there.
Everything is so opaque. I have no idea in the world how to ascertain the intention of these works. I can stare through the holes in the glass or trace the shadows but my mind is occupied by all the noise. So so so much noise. I suppose that’s the point? Noise of observation? Noise of hot takes, fluffy words, and calls to action that are there only to be filtered out.
That’s not what a bullet hole looks like.
I’m not gonna lie, it makes me feel dumb. I’m so divorced from the context despite it being right in front of me. Why does this go over my head? Why can’t I see through the glass?
That’s not what a bullet hole looks like.
There is abundant context projecting the intended meaning on something so clear. Feedback, there’s so much feedback from the chair, from everywhere, from everything. I can’t focus, I can’t keep myself from painting my own meaning on these works.
And here I am. I project my own noisy observation on window panes. I know we’re surrounded by noise, that’s why I was hoping for quiet.
You know the ventilation in the building is amazing. I mean, you have all these things hanging. There’s probably only and ariflow of like 25, but the place is really comfortable, especially with so many windows.
Why am I so disconnected? Branches and wires and bandaid tins and glass and cages and air vents.
So my dear friends, allow me to introduce you to the most perfect piece of musical theater ever created. An absolute killer 11’Oclock number to absolutely knock your socks off with some of the best storytelling and craft evert to reach a stage. I’m talking about Drive from The Lightning Thief.
Now, I assume some of you are thinking “Wait, isn’t that the name of that kids book with all the Greek Gods?”. And you would be right! The Lightning Thief, also known as The Percy Jackson Musical, is a rock solid adaptation of Rick Riordan’s books.
In the show, the children of greek gods and humans (halfbloods) attend a summer camp to master their godly gifts. While there our main character Percy, his Satyr friend Grover, and his new friend Annabeth, go on a Killer Quest to retrieve Zeus’ stolen lightning bolt. After they hit the lowest point in their journey Grover begins Drive by telling the trio to buck up soldier on.
Drive has 3 major strong points, it’s adaptational prowess, the lyrical expertise, and thematic strength.
The whole show is a rock solid adaptation, but this song is the highlight. A large chunk of the book is dedicated to the road trip from Camp Halfblood in Long Island to the entrance to Hades, a record company in LA. It uses the stage to its advantage, and maintains the integrity of the story through conventions of the medium. While I don’t want to focus on it, the show really is a dam near perfect adaptation of its source material, and the song itself is microcosm of that.
Most of the aforementioned Killer Quest is covered in the course of this song even though it took more than 15 chapters in the book. Not only that, but many of the lyrics are namechecks of chapter names. Instead of long scenes, an encounter with a chimera, a gorgon, Zeus’ storm, the Hoover Dam, Ares, and a Lotus Bed, all occur in 4 and a half minutes. The set pieces are all minimalist, matching the rest of the show, and make the montage feel organic and cohesive with the rest of the show.
Every lyric single lyric and note is packed with information. The pseudo folk sound is absolutely perfect for the unconventional rhyme scheme. I cannot overestimate the how utterly amazing the lyrics are. For instance, let’s just look at just two lines.
“Guys we got this, you ain’t shocked this, yo I know you’re train of thought is that there ain’t no way in Hades that we’ll win.
All your worries come in flurries but we bested freaking furys! Look how far we’ve come we can’t give in.”
The rhyme scheme is so different compared to any of its contemporaries. The internal rhyme of the individual lines is so so catchy, but the more traditional couplets that bracket the lines don’t alienate more experienced listeners. It uses an alternating Daytcal/Anapest rhythm, basically unheard of in the theater scene. The complex scheme of each verse is only augmented by the quickfire topics covered. Each of the other verses (modeled on the same rhyme scheme) all reference relevant pieces of Greek Mythology. Percy, Grover, and Annabeth get to riff off one another with engagain and witty rapport.
It’s also worth noting that this is a very complex rhyme scheme for a show aimed primarily at children. Very little children’s media has anything but couplets and iambic pentameter, and this level of rhyme encourages critical thought on language, whether the audience realizes it or not.
This song is fun. So many 11 O’clock numbers from other shows focus on a negative emotional experience. From the destroyed mother/son relationship in Dear Evan Hansen (Good for you), to a extra sad™ I want song from Cats (Memory) almost all of these show stopping numbers rely on making an audience cry rather than making them feel good for the main characters. Getting to this point in a show and not wanting to cry is so refreshing.
Drive is also one of the most inspirational songs to hit the stage in recent years. The upbeat guitar and stellar poetic elements are part of that, but a large part comes from its specificity. Generic inspirational songs may reach a wider audience, but the level of hope and determination conveyed through these characters has a lasting impact. While Memory may be meaningful outside the show, Drive is the perfect culmination of emotional arcs. I love this song. It exemplifies everything that can me done with the medium and cares deeply about it’s audience. So pedal to the metal and drive!
There’s a smell that all ice rinks have, like the smell after the rain mixed with bitter spice (really, it’s just gasoline and sweat, but we don’t have to talk about that).
There’s so much to the cold, the way it stings and the way it soothes. I may have a million bruises and a hundred scars but I’m still standing on 1/8th an inch of steel.
When you jump you’re only in the air for 1/4th of a second. You have 1/4th of a second to rotate 720 degrees and land on a perfect back edge. You jump and you fall and jump and fall and eat the ice until you finally eek out a landing and take a victory lap to celebrate.
You spin and the world blurs out and you feel your mind flicker. The cold and the pain goes away as you skate on, free.
In the south pole there is a massive particle detector buried under the ice. It’s a kilometer wide and 2 kilometer deep (.6 miles by 1.2 miles), with 80 strips of 60 viewers. Each viewer (called a dom) looks for rare streaks of light caused by a particle called a Neutrino. Most neutrinos pass straight through the ice (and all other objects) but on the slim chance it interacts with the water molecules, it impacts an atom and causes a release of photons. Since neutrinos are not affected by gravity, magnetic fields, and are rarely affected by matter, it is easy to track their trajectory, and give as a more comprehensive map of the universe.
Now was that so hard?
While there is a massive amount of math and technicalities behind that explanation, but a layperson can walk away with a general understanding of why there’s a giant lab in the frigid and dark south pole. It may seem rudimentary, but so many high level physicists can’t seem to understand why the phrase galactic astrophysical neutrinos is a daunting set of words. When a scientist can’t properly interact with the public it drastically decreases the impact of their work and can greatly reduce the funding available to them.
A hidden factor is the ability to communicate a scientific message to children. While it has no impact on an experiment’s bottom line, without some interest from a new generation of workers, a project can’t be passed down. Engaging a level of interest is not only good for sparking a child’s curiosity, but necessary in maintaining a scientific study.
But how do we go about it? Surely it’s not as simple as explaining a concept to an adult? Well, in reality, it requires retooling language, and using a concrete system to outline demonstrations (demos for short). IceCube for instance, has 2 major demos, an ice drilling demo, and a scale model of the whole detector. Both of these not only require proper technical operation, but require an understanding of how presentations resonate and how to use the properties of the demo to presenter advantage.
Doctor Patrick Morgan created a wonderful way of classifying and categorizing demos in order to make the largest impact on a audience. Scientists working through this framework have a key way to present key concepts in addition to being entertaining.
Let’s work through this model with the IceCube model (pictured below)
A basic description: This model is a to scale model of the detector. Each string of LED lights represents a detector, the color of light represents the time of energy detection. It’s a rather tame demo, which is why it’s so important to explore the outline.
0th This is a Stage demo, not one that people touch.
1st This demo requires no safety equipment or formal training, so it is staff or volunteer
2nd This is in between inquiry and lecture, depending on the type of the event
3rd The best way to present this demo is with wonder, by emphasizing size and scale of the detector
4th The novelty of this demo is that it’s built by high schoolers, while not the best source of novelty, it gets the job done
Through this outlined demo the key concepts of ice cube are conveyed, as well as memorable. The quickfire lecture structure can engage future scientists and secure the future of the IceCube experiment.
Cold Critical 