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4B - Thursday, April 3, 2008
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
FILM
From Page 3B
shooting "Bilal's Stand" consisted of 15-
hour workdays where the filmmakers didn't
even have accessto the footage they'd shot.
"It was a very sort of grass-roots, bare-
bones experience," Sharrief said. "There's
a normal level of drama on a film shoot.
We probably upped the ante like two-fold,
three-fold because we were young people,
inexperienced people and people with no
money. And eating day-old bagels every
day."
With a cast of mostly non-professional,
CLASSICAL
From Page 1B
tinguishable styles, classical
composers and artists blend
together too easily. While this
should call for a strong move-
ment by artists to distinguish
themselves and the music they
play, such ambition is rare atV
best. Fortunately, in what is
beginning to seem like the last
hope for classical concerts, ven-
ues are starting to make identi-
ties for them. The University
Musical Society is one.
UMS is the group that arrang-
es and hosts nearly every classi-
cal performer who comes to Ann
Arbor. They brought the Royal
Shakespeare Company last year,
Mos Def this January and the
San Francisco Symphony just
weeks ago. Hill Auditorium, as
the society's main concert venue,
has something scheduled almost
every weekend and often a fewM
times during the week. UMS also Michael T
uses Rackham Auditorium in the same way.
In comparison to their contempo-
raries, UMS has been wildly successful
with selling out their performances, and
not without good reason. If the 2007-
2008 season is any indication, they are
focused on bringing impressive names to
Ann Arbor. This has been the year of the
headliners.
In November, Yo-Yo Ma was the first of
local actors and a crew consisting of high
school and University students from all
walks of life, there was bound to be conflict.
But Sharrief was quick to note that every-
one came together and that, ultimately, the
shoot served as a bonding experience for all
those involved.
"That's what the program was about,"
Sharrief said. "People were bonding across
age groups, across community groups,
across socio-economic groups and across
racial groups. It was almost like a summer
camp kind of experience."
For Sharrief himself, it was a way to tell
a story he'd wanted to share since first see-
ing those children playing on a street cor-
ner. With "Bilal's Stand," he hopes to open
people's eyes to the struggles faced by kids
from low-income areas when they apply to
college.
"I think that experience (of applying to
college as a black student) was also deval-
ued because of affirmative action," he said.
"So part of me too wanted to tell that story.
I wanted to tell that to all the people who
think that it's easy to get to Michigan,
because it's not, and then too for all the
people who are going through similar expe-
riences and let them know that it's do-able.
I combined that with this idea of Detroit
always being 'the slums.' And I was like,
'Someone needs to tell this story."'
Thomas conducting, has made
an impact with their name. By
building a reputation for their
exciting programs, which mix
modern classical with recog-
nizable favorites, the SFS has
done exactly what the rest
of the classical music world
needs to do.
Last night saw the per-
formance of the last of these
giants, Lang Lang, the Chi-
nese pianist. Perhaps the
most memorable character
of these three performers,
Lang doesn't hesitate to dis-
tinguish himself with on-
stage antics and his wildly
emphatic style. While this
may irritate some critics, it
has done nothing but good
for his reputation, as last
night's sold-out performance
goes to show.
The art form of classical
music is in a dangerous posi-
tion, but not in Ann Arbor.
SCY SYMPHONY Student attendance is still dis-
appointing given that some of
the best artists in the world perform here,
but it's improving.
UMS programs, such as Arts and Eats
and half-price ticket sales, are mov-
ing seats faster than ever. Perhaps most
importantly, powerful advertising and
distinctive artists are making it easier for
everyone, students and community alike,
to identify with (and simply identify) the
concerts they attend.
KLEIN
From Page 3B
Facebook example, putting upa still
from an obscure film as your profile
picture with a quote referencing the
film even more obscurely projects,
however glibly, an image of yourself to
friends and strangers alike. The gum
you prefer, your perpetually tangled
hair and the way your shoes sound
when they hit wet pavement all fall
to the wayside in favor of a pruned
image. Your life is "represented," not
actualized.
And yet this action of incomplete
"self-referencing" is a huge part of
how we generate our culture, our
encyclopedic entry in human history.
Larger answers can be gleamed, not
individual ones.
"When O'Hara includes, in his
poems, urine and sequins, aspirins
and Strega," Chiasson wrote, "it's not
because he is addicted to reality - on
the contrary, he is addicted to artistic
transformation, and is distressed by
the fact that bits of the world haven't
been subjected to mimesis, and pres-
ervation by it."
We list the albums that matter to
us, comment on the political blogs
whose ideologies we hold dear, and the
process isn't really about ourselves.
It's about what moves us collectively,
the sum of thousands of anonymous,
one-on-one and me-against-the-world
interactions. It's about O'Hara's "traf-
fic halt": "and even the traffic halt so
thick is a way /for people to rub up
against each other/ and when their
surgical appliances lock /they stay
together /for the rest of the day (what
a day)." Except we don't do this face
to face - at least, not as much as we
used to.
But the Internet, our construct of Os
and is, somehow provides us comfort
and intimacy..People do find love and
happiness on J Date and Match.com
and even Craigslist. More poignantly,
PatientsLikeMe.com, headlinedbythe
New York Times as a "MySpace for the
afflicted," is a community of patients
suffering from common ailments.
Hundreds with Alzheimers, Parkin-
sons, multiple sclerosis and AIDS list
their prescriptions, regimes, therapies,
weight and moods in an impressive
poolingofprimaryresources.
"Patients Like Me" recently added
a space for people with mental dis-
orders. What started as idle clicking
through profiles became a window to
my own struggle with clinical depres-
sion. I saw the medications I once
took analyzed by dozens of people,
their mood swings displayed in graphs
over the past day, week, month and
year. Numbers could now quantify
the afflicted mind; everything has
a reference point outside of its own
experience.
I'm sure Patients Like Me can, has
and will help people with medical
problems of all stripes. But even there,
you create a profile with a picture and
a bio. You project away from what is
actually you in order to be part of a
temporary community. At the end of
the day (or night) you turn off your
computer and deal with yourself.
You breathe air from the room you're
in and go to bed, to class or to work.
Your experience on the Internet is a
short-term memory, plumbed again
and again.
While medication helps thousands
with mental illnesses, what helped
me through the rough parts was one-
on-one therapy, having someone to
talk to. The best prescriptions come
with such contact: You can't assess the
mind without knowing the person.
. Are we diluting ourselves? Are we
now unconsciously "representing"
ourselves as small fractions of a whole
when it comes to the Internet? The
Internet isn't a sign that people regret
life, but it can be a turning away from
your own body, your own you.
"It may be that poetry makes life's
nebulous events tangible to me and
restores their detail," O'Hara wrote
"or, conversely, that poetry brings
forth the intangible quality of inci-
dents which are all too concrete and
circumstantial."
The Internet is not so interchange-
able. It is its own nebula, and no
matter how widespread its hyper-
acceleration of culture, it will never be
flesh and blood. This isn't a doomsday
scenario; this isn't a denunciation of
all-things Internet. But we are per-
haps in the motions of a cultural shift
toward disingenuousness, toward not
even the lowest common denominator,
but a fraction of the common denomi-
nator.
In the end, we have what we have
of each other. The mind is meant to be
distracted and sidetracked, but don't
forget what's in front of you: your
hands, your feet, and the rest of the
world.
This is Klein's farewell column. E-mail
your gratitude to andresar@umich.edu.
Q
6
S
ilson Thomas conducts the San Francisco Symphony,
several big names, giving a concert that
left the audience nearly in shock. For many
students drawn by the recognizable figure,
it was more than they expected and exact-
ly what was needed to rouse interest.
Then the San Francisco Symphony vis-
ited in March, easily selling out Hill and
leaving many students waiting in line for
the rush tickets they would never receive.
The SFS in particular, with Michael Tilson
I
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