4B - Thursday, January 27, 2011
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.eom Al
4B - Thursday, January 27, 2011 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom ~
V
THE HILL' (2000), OVERCOAT
Still not over 'Hill ' a decade. later
By EMMA GASE
Daily Music Editor
While today's breed of folksy, envi-
ro-friendly poetry lover is blindly wor-
shiping the bearded ilk of iron & Wine,
the Avett Brothers and Bon Iver to sup-
ply that dose of acoustic singer-song-
writer music, it's unfortunate that nine
out of 10 of these flannel-clad follow-
ers have unwittingly missed one of the
greatest things ever to happen to the
genres of Americana and folk in the last
few decades. For shame, artsy people of
America.
In 2000, small-time musician Rich-
ard Buckner made a decision that would
quietly outshine even the most revered
of Americana musicians. He put Bon
Iver's Justin Vernon in his rightful
place as Mr. Whimper of the aughts,
and reminded us that Monsters of Folk
is merely a vehicle in which four huge
egos perpetually stroke each other.
That year, Buckner set Edgar Lee
Masters's 1915 volume of poetry "Spoon
River Anthology" to music. Named
after one of the poems in the volume,
The Hill was originally released as a
staggeringly perfect 34-minute, sewn-
together single track (later, iTunes
made the songs available individually).
More like a campfire tale or a Larry.
McMurtry novel in musical form than
an album, The Hill is one of those radi-
ant works of art that is oblivious to the
notion of time.
Though the lyrics might not be his
own, Buckner could not have more skill-
fullyrendered asettingon which to place
them. Each one- to two-minute track is
named after a person from Spoon River,
Ind. and focuses on the nature of his or
her death.
Whatever the morbidity may sacri-
fice in lightheartedness, it makes up for
in sheer power of emotion as Buckner
channels the victim's voices: a woman
dying in childbirth or an old man wast-
ing away from illness. On opening track
"Tom Merritt," Buckner details a mur-
der between two lovers that could raise
goosebumps from the hardest of hearts:
"I meant to kill him on sight / But that
day / Walking near Fourth Bridge /
Without a stick or a stone at hand / All of
a sudden / I saw him standing / Scared
to death / Holding his rabbits / And all I
could say was / 'Don't, don't, don't' / As
he aimed and fired at my heart."
Perhaps, more than anything, Buck-
ner's voice is the most valuable asset
The Hill has in its arsenal. Inherently
intimate, melancholic, weird, guttural
and purely American, his trademark
lilting warble at the end of each vocal
run adds the rare X-factor that makes
the other 99 percent of folk singers
sound positively vanilla in comparison.
Remember the year 2000? "Rock"
was being reborn with The Strokes, The
Vines and The Hives; Destiny's Child
wanted us to say their name; Christina
Aguilera and Britney Spears were duk-
ing it out on the charts. Fads, people,
only fads. What about longevity? What
about creating Art?
Richard Buckner's
follow-up explored
Spork Creek.
The Hill is a grounding and endur-
ing stamp on the dateless, the classic,
the ambiguous. This album could have
been recorded in 1915 (sans the electric
guitars) or last month.
It's the simplicitythat does it. It's the
acoustic guitars that sound like they are
being played in your living room, the
warm electric ones that trace the songs
CONDUCTORS
From Page 3B
you have the right to lead it."
It takes more than mere musical
details or theory to be successful in both
the rehearsal and the concert.
"A lot of conductors stop at pitch
and rhythm of the song," Khaefi said.
"That's the very basic mechanics of a
piece - it's not even music at that point,
it's just mathematical proportions."
While Khaefi is in front of an ensem-
ble, he has a million thoughts running
through his head.
"When I'm conducting, I'm thinking
about tone, diction, unity, the ensemble
and balance," he said. "I'm thinking of
interesting ways to teach a passage,
innovative ways to get the choir to bond
on a sound, the rehearsals coming up"
Since the University conducting pro-
gram is small and allows the students to
have plenty of conducting practice, stu-
dents like Khaefi get the experience and
feedback necessary to continue improv-
ing and learning to balance the aspects
of leading a group.
Khaefi said the University's pro-
gram is the ideal place for his dream to
become a reality because of its comfort-
able atmosphere and positivity.
"There's no negativity or mean-spir-
itedness that you might find at other
music schools," he said. "I've seen
departments around the country that
don't have that camaraderie. This one is
fantastic."
Ultimately, the type of person who is
inclined to pursue the challenging yet
highly rewarding profession that is con-
ducting need to truly love all aspects of
music and the desire to unify and lead a
group to its greatest potential.
"Are you a person that's in tune with
the people you are working with?"
Khaefi asked. "Are you able to be com-
manding and inspiring? Can you inspire
people to perform the music they are
performing better than if you weren't
standing in front of them?"
It's these qualities and more that
allow aspiring conductors to paint
music across theater halls and into the
hearts of listeners.
COURTESY OF OVERCOAT
Get off of my hill.
like fine embroidery on a cozy quilt,
the mandolins and tambourine that
garnish the record with their jubilant
underlying presence. Simple instru-
ments, simple lyrics, simple production.
We seem to have forgotten one of the
most rewarding qualities of truly great
art - the virtue of subtlety. We live in
a world of singles with flashy hooks,
booming beats and raging techno
anthems - all of which constantly pile
on top of each other in an exhausting
(and raunchy) rat race to be declared
The Next Big Thing. In 2000, Richard
Buckner was not The Next Big Thing.
In fact, he has probably never even been
described (or besmirched) by a phrase
as stupid and meaningless as The Next
Big anything, and if he were, he's most
likely Above It.
The Hill stands - no, towers - above
its peers. Trendy alt-country bands
can't touch this record with a 10-foot
pole; no folksy troubadour could sound
more authentic if he roamed the Appa-
lachian Mountains hunting deer with
a harmonica dangling from his neck.
Edgar Lee Masters laid the foundation
with his poetry, and Buckner's emotive
voice cements "Spoon River Anthol-
ogy" into true timelessness - almost a
century after the poems were written.
When the first moments of the album
dissolve from instrumental feedback
and swirl into the opening chords and
underlying strings of the first two-
minute segment, the effect can only
be described as revelatory. Why can't
all music sound like this? Shouldn't
all music sound like this? So thank
you, Tom Merritt and other tragically
deceased citizens - though you don't
survive in Spoon River, you will live
forever on The Hill.
NONFICTION
From Page 1B
It takes a mediator, someone to coax that
hidden ego out of its protective shell, to
break it down into its component parts
only to build it back up again. That some-
one is John Rubadeau.
Rubadeau began teaching sections of
English 325 (Art of the Essay) and Eng-
lish 425 (Advanced Essay Writing) at the
University 24 years ago after a brief stint
as a writing instructor at Purdue.
"I wish I could say it was by design,
but it was more by accident," Rubadeau
said of becoming a professor. "I had
been a social worker in Europe as a field
worker for the Red Cross, and then I got
into teaching by accident, and I just fell
in love with it."
To facilitate the labor that goes into
producing these miniature memoirs,
Rubadeau said the first three weeks of
his classes are devoted to personal intro-
ductions. A considerable amount of time
is spent on classroom bonding - the stu-
dents chat freely during class periods,
finding out about each other's lives and
their professor.
"The pedagogic reason behind this is
to develop a sense of community before
we discuss essays that are often extraor-
dinarily personal and intimate," he said.
As he likes to call it, it's a process of
"making the public private."
This camaraderie is further facilitat-
ed by an unexpected visitor: Rubadeau's
facial hair. On Halloween, he dyes his
fully grown beard orange to resemble a
grinning jack-o-lantern. During Christ-
mas, he comes into class bedecked with
twinkling Christmas lights and a few
spinning dreidels. On the rest of the
days, he has been known to wiggle the
whiskers in question in front of unas-
suming girls' faces.
"I've gotten a couple good beard rubs
from John Rubadeau," Hlebasko said of
her time as his student.
The beard is only one example of what
Rubadeau considers to be the secret to
being a good teacher: enthusiasm.
"If you aren't enthusiastic, feign
enthusiasm," he said. "But here's the
thing: I've never had to feign enthusi-
asm. I'm always so enthusiastic because
I'm teaching kids what they need to
know, what they need to know for the
real world.
"It sounds so strange, but I look
forward every day to going to class,"
he added. "If I could design my life, I
couldn't design a better life. I'm never
going to retire. I want to die when I'm
about 100 writing on the chalkboard,
talking about dangling participles."
Tell the truth, but tell it slant
Once the community and level of
comforthave been established, how does
one begin the essay?
"First you start out with a statement,"
Rubadeau said. "How do you integrate it
into the story that you're trying to tell?
And then you give details - I mean, it's
so simple. The writer who writes doesn't
even know his intention, he just writes
because it's a therapeutic process."
Then comes the main argument, the
thing the essay will signify.
"Pursue the answer to a question that
you genuinely want to know the answer
to," Pollack said.
This is a guiding principle in Pollack's
book "Creative Nonfiction," which was
published two years ago for classroom
use. Through she currently presides over
graduate-level work, Pollack sustains an
interest in the field of personal mem-
oir, and instated the creative nonfiction
writing program at the undergraduate
level several years ago.
"Scratch your itch," Rubadeau
explained. "What interests you? What
bothers you? What do you have ques-
tions about? Write about that, but dis-
passionately."
But issues will start to arise a few
paragraphs into the essay. For instance,
how much faith can a writer put in his
own hazy memories of an event long
past? How much creative liberty to take
in describing a scene that one barely has
a memory of? There's a certain ambigu-
ity associated with the work of a non-
fiction writer, a struggle with fitting a
messy, fractured life neatly into a con-
fines of a few blank pages.
Pollack puts it in simpler terms: If you
feel instinctively that whatever you are
saying is dishonest, you shouldn't write
it down.
"There are some people that say, 'Oh,
memory is faulty' or 'We're always mak-
ing things up' - they see nonfiction as
just as much an act of memory and imag-
ination as fiction," Pollack said. "I don't
really buy that. I think that we all know
when we're telling the truth to the best
of our abilities and we know when we're
not quite sure of something."
Pollack went on to mention the extent
of the truthfulness that readers expect
from a writer.
"If you said, 'I climbed Mt. Everest'
and you didn't, they would feel cheated,"
Pollack said. "If you said that you were
breaking up with your girlfriend in a bar
one night and Linda Ronstadt was sing-
ing 'Blue Bayou' on whatever goes for a
jukebox today, and we found it really was
Lucinda Williams singing 'Car Wheels
on a Gravel Road,' nobody's going to feel
cheated, right?"
Entering into conversation
But the writing doesn't stop after the
first draft is handed in.
"I have a whole big lecture - I say, you
know, your brothers and sisters said I
was a good teacher and all that shit, but
it's because I have high expectations,"
Rubadeau said.
Each session after the first three
weeks of his courses is devoted to cri-
tiquing and praising all of the 20 essays
produced by the 20 students in the class
- one student and one essay per day. To
prepare, every student is expected to
write at least five to six pages about that
session's essay, leading to an individual
collection of papers that often surpass-
es the 200-page mark by the end of the
semester.
"Oh, man, every Mondayand Wednes-
day night I would be on my laptop all
night long," said Engineering junior
Jacob Flood. "Your grade is dependent
mostly on what you write about other
people's papers. (Rubadeau) says, the
more you critique somebody else, the
more you'll learn about your own writ-
ing."
"I know that sounds like an ungodly
amount of work, but you definitely knock
those out way quicker than a traditional
analytical English paper," Hlesbasko
added. "It's just kind of you in dialogue
with the paper and this person that cre-
ated it."
After all, you never write in a vacu-
um - a large part of crafting a personal
essay is sharing it with others. In writ-
ing peer critiques, the writer creates
the discourse space needed to discuss
remarkably intimate subjects in a more
objective manner.
"Revising your essay wasn't just about
mechanics you worked on," Flood said.
"It had more to do with substance - what
you wanted to know more about."
By extension, this collaboration leads
to greater classroom bonding.
"We were incredibly close," Flood
said. "I feel like more so than comma
splices and misplaced modifiers, we
were in a class to articulate and express
profound things that we had in ourlives.
And that would connect us as friends
more so than in any other class.
"The one class period that really
stood out for me when this guy talked
about this abusive relationship he had
with his father, and it was just so ... it.
just seemed to transcend any normal
classroom experience," he added. "And
we weren't talking about trite mechan-
ics at that point, we were talking about
something that was clearly still affect-
ing him, it was something he was look-
ing for and in that class I think he finally
found it."
In having students pen these evoca-
tive, raw experiences, the ultimate
objective of English 325 and 425 is to
bring light to these encounters, to reiter-
ate themes about the world that fiction
writers couldn't have articulated any
better - just by nature of the essayists'
proximity to real life.
Rubadeau distilled the goals that he
wanted to leave in his students in a few
brief sentences.
"I want them to fall in love with the
language and the etymology of words,
make them aware that the things I'm
trying to teach them can't be put to
memory," he said. "I want to them to get
at the human condition."
Poets perform to
hometown crowd
By LUCY PERKINS
Daily Arts Writer
Poetry is timeless. It fills volumes
upon volumes with sonnets, iam-
bic pentameter, odes and couplets. It
provides insight to
the unexplainable, Horn r
commenting on the ew
smallest aspects of Tonight at
humanity. It can be 7 p.m.
typed, scrawled or
sung - but tonight, Lydia Mendelssohn
it's spoken. Theatre
"I think a lot of Tickets from $5
people - not myself
personally - think of boring old white
men reading and writing poems back
in the olden days and get turned off
by that," said Peggy Burrows, a 2010
University alum and a member of
Ann Arbor Wordworks, a local poetry
group.
The concept of poetry is completely
different for Burrows.
"It's spoken word," she said. "Really
beautiful things that you wouldn't have
thought of are brought to the table."
Wordworks was formed by a group
of students who had been involved
with the Volume Youth Poetry Project,
an after-school program that works
with high school students to write
poetry and learn poetic technique.
Today, Wordworks is composed of 15
members who attend a variety of uni-
versities throughout the state and pro-
mote poetry through performance and
speech.
This Thursday, the group will per-
form poetry in its biggest event of the
year, entitled Homegrown.
"Every year we find a new vein to
run through the whole show. This year,
it's sort of the evolution of our writ-
ing," said Ben Alfaro, a junior at Wayne
State University. "Some of that will
entail poems we wrote when we were
really young.
"There are so many strong voices in
Ann Arbor Wordworks that in a span of
15 minutes, you're going to get a set of
voices that are powerful on their own,"
Alfaro added. "It sort of builds this
chord of sound."
According to Burrows, the perfor-
mance won't be what many would
expect of a poetry reading.
"You don't quietly snap when
you hear something you like - it's a
very interactive, high-energy per-
formance," Burrows said. "We try to
engage the audience - we have fun
pieces, serious pieces and group pieces
so you can see we're a unit, not just
individual people."
Burrows, who started writing when
she was a kid, always knew she liked
poetry.
"I always wanted to write and be
creative ... and I sort of latched onto
this form," she said.
At first, it was difficult for Burrows
to write her poems without worrying
about how the audience would inter-
pret them. She would try to mold her
writing to what she thought the audi-
ence would like best, but that didn't
work out well.
"I stopped thinking about other
people readingit and for me, that made
it a lot easier," Burrows said.
Now she writes for herself, which
also has benefits when she performs.
"The audience feels more con-
nected to it when it's honest and real
- it's very obvious that you feel this
and you're not just saying this to have
something to say," she said.
Homegrown is
Wordworks's
largest event
of the year.
0
As the audience will see in Home-
grown, Alfaro's style has evolved as
well.
"I used to write more about fam-
ily and relationship stuff," Alfaro said.
"But now my writing is sort of turning
this corner. I'm talking about bigger
issues going on around me ... I'm sort
of trying to give my poems social con-
text."
He added, "I think it personally
grounds it more."
Apart from school and Wordworks,
Alfaro holds a weekly poetry workshop
in Detroit for high school students.
Based on what he's observed, Alfaro
noted that poetry is changing.
"It's starting to make this shift
towards more of a hip-hop platform
or a performance platform," he said.
"That aspect is what more young peo-
ple want to do.
"Poetry is going to be hard-hitting
and powerful - that you have to hear*
out loud. That's where it's going."