MAKING HAPPY | one human life

The above photos were taken with that .99 cent crappy plastic 35mm I bought a while back. I can't say the photos turned out to be super exciting but they weren't bad/good either. I think part of the problem was that my test roll was a subject matter I don't usually photograph.

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I did indeed go to see bell hooks speak last night. As I expected, she was an engaging speaker with a good balance between reading, speaking about her ideas and relating personal stories. She has been criticised at times for her use of anecdote and personal experience in her writing, but I have always enjoyed that aspect of her work, even when I didn't agree with her point. I strongly believe that cultural theory outside of a living human context is interesting to contemplate but nearly useless beyond that. I am also always most interested in what life experiences draws a person to the conclusions they arrive at. That train of thought.

Ms. hooks has been a busy woman, having three books coming out in the next few months. She read from them and the two I am most interested in are on the subject of masculinity. The first is called We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity and the other is The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love.

Some things about bell hooks:

She has a fairly high pitched voice. This shocked me. It wasn't high in a "Hi, I'm Melanie Griffith. I'm like 40+ and talk like a little tiny baby" forced-hyper-cuteness-kind-of-way. But it was much higher than I expected. I have this thing with voices. When I read a person's words I have a tendency to anticipate and imagine their voice in my head. I know this is extremely biased but I still do it. I even do this with people I have email correspondence with. So often times when I meet the person I am shocked by the sound of their real voice.

She loves to use the word "diaspora"... a lot. We currently have a client who also uses this word a great deal. It's one of those words that when pulled out, makes the user seem very intellectual. I've made a mental note to introduce it into my vocabulary. "Histrionic" is a similar word. I haven't used that one in ages.

"Pedagogy" was another word in regular use last night.

Not only does she repeat the phrase "White supremist, imperialist, capitalist, patriarchy." in her writing, she does indeed pull it out when speaking. I have to admit that while I understand her reasoning for using it and appreciate that, I skip over it and sort of blur it all together when I read her books. I'm a fast and also somewhat lazy reader.

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