0 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 WRITE IN THE SUMMER E-mail gaerig@michigandaily.com for an application Get free MCAT Verbal Edge! 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