FA 100 - Creative Acts Part Two

This week, in my search for creative acts, I thjought I would stray into the field of music.

Back in High School, I had a passing interest in the guitar. I brought it back this Christmas with the intention of learning to play it, but I had never gotten around to it (such as the story tends to go). And shortly after I got back, I heard a familiar tune.

"I saw Three Ships" it was called. A Christmas Carol. The song brought back a nostalgic feeling in me, and I was taken by the desire to play it. Initially, I searched for tabulature on the internet, but my search turned up nothing.

That was when I remembered the old friend that gave me that interest in the guitar three years ago. He was a talented musician, and one of the things he could do was figure something out by ear. He could listen to it, determine a note on the guitar that sounded like it, and eventually figure out the song that way.

I decided that, for kicks, I would try to do that myself. It was painstaking, but I stuck with it. I relied on the singing training I received in my last year of high school as I was going into a bit of musical theater. I would sing the first note of "I saw Three ships", holding that note untill I found a note on the guitar that sounded similar enough. Then I would progress to the next note, and the next note, untill eventually I had something that sounded very much like "I saw Three Ships".

If I were to consider this seriously, I would probably say that I subconsciously had an audience in my roommate. He was the one from which I heard the song from as he was playing it on his flute. Perhaps I had a little bit of competition in my head?

Socially, politically, this did not mean much. It was a development of a neat skill, and I was impressed with myself. Like most of the times that I create, this was based more or less on a whim.

In this and similar scenarios, one of the dominant thoughts in my head was always "Why not?".

FA 100 - "Creative Acts" Part One

In the readings for this course, many people seem to agree that creativity is a hard thing to pin down, but when it happens, it's a wonderful thing.

For a while now, I have been working on a story to put into the form of a novel, or a script for a film, or something else of the like. The working title for this story right now is "Identity", though that may be changed or not depending on wether or not I find a better one.

The device I have used to develop my story is something called F.I.T (Fabricated Identity Transplant). In the story, F.I.T was developed under the guidance of a group of scientists/criminologists that treated 'identity' as a physical organ. This procedure, this transplant, is a technology that erases a person's identity. (Identity being a person's memory.)

The theory being that, in a person who behaves in a criminal manner, their identity is diseased. What else do you do with a diseased organ? A blackened lung, or a nonfunctional kidney? You get a transplant. F.I.T was a technology developed to that end.

A great many of the ideas that I had in mind for this story were born from the many questions F.I.T gave rise to in my own mind. If one were to have no idea what kind of person he truly was, what kind of horrors could you have committed, completely unbeknowst to you today? What kind of wonderful, magical things could you have experienced, now completely blocked from your memory?

In my own mind, F.I.T is evil. This story was more or less born of the themes or ideas of sci fi and fiction that have excited me in the past. One of those ideas was that point that those few special stories have in them, when the characters discover something so evil, so terrible, that their goal becomes very very clear. Despite all of the conflicts, all of the troubles that have plagued this group of people, their minds become perfectly clear and the goal becomes very simple. This evil thing, whatever it may be, must cease to exist.

Moments like that have always been, in my eyes, a hallmark of a great story. Such drama as this is what I am trying to incorporate into my own story. There's a man who was (formerly) a dangerous criminal. A woman who loved him before he was changed. A victim forced into silence. F.I.T continues to be a great source of ideas for me.

I did not imagine this with any particular audience in mind. Stephen and Burke's thoughts on the impact of audience remind me of the reason I came to university, choosing my area of studies in Theater and Writing. I have a love of great stories. I want to create them, to be a part of them. That is more or less why I wanted to create a story such as this.

As for Social and Political ramnifications... who doesn't love a good story? Theater has existed as an artform for nearly two and a half thousand years. Perhaps I can inspire others to write, to continue the trend; but that's not exactly important, to me.


To reflect upon how I create... It definantly seems as if something has to inspire me. Perhaps some kind of film sequence, or some thought I had at the time. Whatever it is that inspires it, it spreads like a wildfire. As the cliche goes, "It just seems to flow". That one thought... that great film sequence... that video game... and my mind starts working.

In the readings for this course, many people seem to agree that creativity is a hard thing to pin down, to quantify. But when it happens, it's a wonderful thing.

"Transophobia on Facebook"

So... I stumbled upon a Facebook group a short time ago, a group that bore the above title. I thought, why not learn more? I'm bored...

So, apparently, there was a woman who decided she wanted to be a man. She got the appropriate surgery and became a he, documenting her path on her facebook profile. When her surgery was done, the newly made man took a picture of the newly male chest he was so proud of, and posted the photo on his facebook profile.

Facebook proceeded to ban his profile.

The group I found thought that this was 'transophobia'. And they were right, right? It was no longer a picture of breasts, which would definantly be considered innapropriate, but of a male chest. and facebook banned that profile for bearing such a picture.

Was it "Transophobia"? Did facebook have appropriate grounds to ban this newborn male?

Discuss. *prompts audience*

Kicking this thing back into life!

I have not blogged in months and months and months. But, fortunately for my crowd of rabid followers *weeps at the emptiness of the room*, I have returned, to blog another day! And bonus, I have reason to continue this thingy and write more and more and more.

I have recently started with a course called "Fine Arts 100 - Creative Being". That requires me to write weekly about certain 'creative acts'. Basically, I do something creative and then I write about it. It is not evaluated on the creativeness of my creative thing, but more on the fact that I am doing creative things or not.

Keep an eye out for my creative acts.