Turn Around, Bright Eyes

Phew! It's finals week. Which for an MFA like me, it means time to treat the novel-thesis like a piecemeal writing test, to quote my boyfriend.

I'm not sure how it happened. One day I just decided I'd write ten pages a day. And so I attempted, starting Monday. I'm at Wednesday, and I can honestly say that 1) I know it's possible to have fun and achieve this goal, even though I have turned it into stress and tunnel vision; 2) My writing isn't high quality this way, but I think I'm okay with it. Oh, and 3) My hairdresser decided that this week, of all the weeks of our two year relationship, was the week I should go dark brunette. I'm a child blonde, folks. That means mommy decided I "should have been a blonde" and so starting at age 12, mommy started dying my hair blond.

A mixed bag, this finals week in which I treat my buddy the novel as an exam to cram for.

My novel has insisted I re-visit early 80's engagements with the big "S," as in sexuality. And when my writing forces me to research my main character's probings into sexual hood, I can't help but think about my own. Posted here is Mattel's Golden Dream Barbie, pictured without her transparent gauzy shrug, and also without her elbow-length gold gloves.


Around the time I tore her from her cardboard and plastic packaging, Bonnie Tyler was raking in the limelights with Total Eclipse of the Heart. After viewing the video five or twenty times this week, I wonder:

Is there something wrong with viewing this video that many times? When you're in treat-your-novel-like-finals mode, the answer is absolutely not.

Maybe whenever you are totally sucked into a project the answer is absolutely not. What if the way I behave when I'm finally sunk knee-deep into an artistic project is the same way sleep deprived, nineteen year-olds wearing black tights, short gym shorts and Ugg boots behave during finals week: crazed. repetitive. spirally in thoughts. over-caffeinated.

In a similar vein, how many times is "too many times" when it comes to pressing the youtube Replay on Air Supply's Making Love Out of Nothing At All video?

Sure, larger questions have arisen this week. Arose? Aroused? Like, the seventh time I viewed Tyler's smash hit video, filmed in Great Britain's Holloway Sanitorium (striking resemblance to my alma mater, Wellesley College, b.t.w.) she wanders the hallways of the candle lit preparatory school, ogling angular, fresh-faced boys engaged in a variety of sporting activities. She's their teacher! Did I, walleyed and gaping mouthed six year old, unconsciously absorb the rays of a cougar back in 1983? Did she, with her invisible, pulsing fist of a vagina, somehow shape tiny cougars and I was one of them?

But that's a divergence. To channel Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie Bradshaw formulaic newspaper columnist rhetorical question approach:

When it comes to creating, are we so used to treating everything as a test, that we turn labors of love into painful chores? And could a casual passersby tell the difference?

I dedicate tonight's post to all those undergrads in Louisiana State's Middleton Library tonight, spending more time clicking the "thumbs up" sign on Facebook than cramming Macro Economics. I'm sure we're getting something non-quantifiable and good out of this communal brain melt.