(A Few Months After) Spring Cleaning

I cleaned my house yesterday. For anyone who knows me, this is a magnificent accomplishment. My philosophy is a clean room is the sign of a cluttered mind. So, my house isn’t really messy per say, just an appropriately disorganized environment for my creative consciousness. I have a friend who complains that he can’t come visit me without leaving with some sort of paint, or marker stain on his clothes. I tell him it’s a souvenir, from the most magical place on earth.

But every once in a while, it gets a bit much and I have to clean up. When I finally get to the cleaning part, I actually really enjoy it. There’s something oddly relaxing about mundanely removing a mess. Apparently, I’m not the only one who gets joy from getting rid of junk. Studies performed at Arizona Statue University show that maintaining a clean home makes people feel “happy, satisfied, comfortable, and healthy”. Associate Professor of Psychology, Carol Nemeroff, Ph.D., says, “The urge we have to clean may be a trait that is biologically programmed into us,” says Nemeroff. “And, because we know that good hygiene leads to good health, cleaning may ultimately be related to a basic survival instinct.”

According to research from the U.K., 57% of the population finds a feeling of satisfaction in cleaning. I guess I’m in the other 43% of the test subjects. I have a roommate in the fall for the first time in a year and a half. My biggest worry is that she may not be able to handle the mess that results from my liberal lifestyle. Whoever lives with me has to be well prepared. It’s not that I don’t like a clean house, it’s just that I don’t mind so much when it’s not. I’ve met other people who share similar opinions. I feel like it’s one of those things that very defined in a person, either you can handle a mess or you can’t. Research shows that 38% of women and 24% of men feel real stress about living in a messy environment.

Then there are people who really can’t. People who have clinical issues with cleanliness, to the point where it begins to control their lives. In the United States, approximated 3.3 million people suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, that’s 2.3% of the population between ages of 18 – 24. That means that 1 in 200 American adults have OCD, and twice as many have reportedly had OCD at some point in their lives. OCD is on the long list of anxiety disorders, like agoraphobia and post-traumatic stress disorder, that terrify me. Whenever I see disease like this, in the frequent Grey’s Anatomy reruns I’ve been watching all summer, it just stumps me a bit. I can’t imagine having a chemical imbalance like that, affecting my life in every way.

It makes you realize how much chemistry and arrangement of neuron affect who we are. There’s more minor versions of this chemical control on our personalities; ticks, habits, addictions, they’re all rooting in brain chemistry. The realization that so much of ourselves is determined by biology shifted the way I interact with people. I accept that there’s certain decisions my friends make that I can never understand (Though, there’s probably many more of mine that leave them puzzled). Once you realize certain aspects of someone else will be inherently different due to their genetics, interaction between people gets beyond dominating the conversation, winning an argument, or changings some else’s opinions to your own, and there’s nothing left to do but learn.

I’ve always been a firm believer in the idea that ignorance is the root of prejudice. One of my gay friends used to always instruct the homophobic to get a gay friend. It was the best advice against exclusion I had ever heard. Friendship is one of the most powerful tools in fighting malicious ignorance.

So yes, there are certain decisions that other people make that we have to accept we can’t understand. But, the closer we get to people with differing opinions, the more we begin to, if not understand, at least respect their viewpoints too.

Falling Asleep to Television

When I was younger, I always thought I was the only one who fell asleep to television. When I was finally old enough to discover the sleep timer on my tv remote, I was thrilled to know there were others. According to a study conducted at the University of Maryland Medical Center, “many people fall asleep with the television on in their room. Watching television before bedtime is often a bad idea. Television is a very engaging medium that tends to keep people up”.

Still, every so often, I’ll be visiting a friend's place or crashing on someone's couch and still be shocked when I learn that they share my nighttime routine; thirty minutes, preferably set to a late night talk show.

The most recent friend to share my sedative said something that stuck with me. “It makes me feel like people are talking to me,” he said. Not the first thing one would associate with sleep, yet there is something oddly comforting about falling asleep to the sound of people, there’s something safe about it. Probably because it reminds us all of younger days in cribs, listening to family continue in the next room. Or maybe that was just my experience. Being Punjabi, often considered the Irish of India, my family has always had that unique quirk of expressing enthusiasm through volume. I’m sure many a young night was spent falling asleep listening to the sound of my father telling a new joke or my mother trying to add her two cents while fighting back chuckles.

Yet most sleep therapists don’t seem to accept my nostalgic views. They advise patients who are having trouble sleeping to “remove all mind-stimulating electronic devices from your bedroom”. Bringing a TV, iPod, or computer into the mix of the bedroom trains the brain to see it as a space for things other than sleep, making it more difficult to fall asleep when you want to.

Falling asleep with the television still on, or other types of auditory stimulations, disrupts REM cycles making it harder to fall into a deeper sleep. Making it harder to dream. I thought about it last weekend and realized I can’t remember the last dream I had. I have a vague sense of when it was, maybe three or so years ago, but I’ve almost completely forgotten about the sensation of dreaming.

This realization depressed me for a while until another friend told me that she’d been trying for months to get rid of her dreams. But she didn’t use the word dreams, she said nightmares instead. She told me about how she hadn’t been able to sleep, for months now, because of the nightmares. After hearing that, I was glad I no longer had dreams. I remembered nightmares again, the complete and utter lack of control you have when you mind takes you through its darker alleys.

But what keeps me excited about the world of dreams is the other extreme, dreams where you have complete control. There’s a scientific term for this, lucid dreaming. Lucid dreams are dreams where the sleeper is aware of the fact that they are dreaming. This allows them manipulate their dream environments, literally giving them the ability to create their dream worlds.

Lucid dreaming is such a powerful psychological phenomenon that therapists are using it to fight cases of chronic nightmares. At Ultrecht University in The Netherlands, the Department of Clinical Pyschology took 23 nightmare suffers and treated them with lucid dream therapy. When the study was over their lab report noted, “the nightmare frequency of both treatment groups had decreased,” leading them to conclude that, “Lucid dream therapy seems effective in reducing nightmare frequency, although the primary therapeutic component remains unclear”. These results show that dreams can be a formidable tool in eradicating chronic nightmares and anxiety but even the scientists who performed the study can’t tell us exactly why.

This leads me to ask several questions, starting with, what exactly are dreams? If they have the power to stop insomnia and fight anxiety, what else can they do? We all know dreams hold a significant space in our psyches, but when it comes to articulating this significance, even the scientists seem at a loss for words.

Apparently they’ve been trying for a while to define our nighttime delusions. In 1991, the year of my first birthday, the Lucidity Institute published a laboratory study entitled Other Worlds: Out-of-Body Experiences and Lucid Dreams. The report compared the experience of a lucid dream with the out of body experiences dying patients often experiences. The report says,

“We have concluded that OBEs can occur in the same physiological state as lucid dreams. If you believe yourself to have been awake, then you are more likely to take the experience at face value and believe yourself to have literally left your physical body in some sort of mental or "astral" body floating around in the "real" physical world. If you think of the experience as a dream, then you are likely to identify the OBE body as a dream body image and the environment of the experience as a dream world.”

When they’re dreaming, these people literally feel like they’re leaving their bodies and going to heaven, Nirvana, or whatever term organized religion chooses to put on the euphoria the comes from complete satisfaction. You may not want to reach god in your brain, but you have to at least be awestruck at the magnificent show your mind is putting on.

So the next time you’re heading to bed, stop before you set that sleep timer. Take a second to think about the worlds of wishful thinking you could be missing out on.

Valentine's Day Across the Globe

originally written for The Emory Wheel: Arts & Living(www.emorywheel.com)

Roses are red, violets are blue. Sugar is sweet and so are you. We all remember scrawling this, in some form or another, and folding a red sheet of paper in half to make a heart; an incredible discovery when you make your first one. Valentine’s Day remains ingrained in most of us as we’ve grown up. Anonymous Valentines were slipped through lockers in middle school; we sent cupcakes and roses through school-funded Valentine’s Day events. Even today, as we crawl across campus, we see chalkings for Valegrams and other sentimental gifts to get us into the season.

But, where did it all come from? When did children start using safety scissors for construction papers hearts? When did every Feb. 14 become a day for couples to rub the rest of our faces in their romances?

Some speculated that St. Valentine sent the first Valentine. In reality, St. Valentine is as associated with the creation of Valentines as Jesus is with Easter eggs, so not at all. St. Valentine was a persecuted Christian during the reign of Roman emperor Claudius II. For some unknown reason, Claudius wanted to interrogate St. Valentine in person. Quickly impressed by the soon-to-be saint, Claudius tried to convert St. Valentine from Christianity to Roman paganism. St. Valentine refused to give up his faith and was sentenced to death.

The night before his execution, it is said that St. Valentine performed a miracle, healing the blind daughter of the jailer. In the American Greeting Card’s telling of this legend on History.com, the ending is amended to add that St. Valentine sent the world’s first Valentine to the jailer’s daughter, signing it “Your Valentine” thus coining the phrase. Completely unproven, this part of the story is considered a commercialized addition.

Like every good English major, I’ve learned that when unsure of the answer, look to the dead British guys.

Interestingly, my major’s method works when searching for the origins of St. Valentine’s Day. One of the most famous, and longest dead, members of the literary canon helped me out on this one: Geoffrey Chaucer. He was said to be the first to associate the day of St. Valentine with romance.

In “Parlement of Foules,” Chaucer writes:
“For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.”

For those of you who have forgotten your middle English, this translates in modern English to, “For this was Saint Valentine’s Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate.”

The couplet was written as part of a poem honoring the marriage of King Richard II and Anne of Bohemia. From his marriage of birds, Chaucer’s imagery seemed to solidify Valentine’s Day as a holiday for lovers.

Looking to the years after Chaucer, romantic traditions continued to be a core part of Feb. 14. Some even turned the day into a legal matter. In 15th century Paris, men and women were constantly facing issues with courtship. On Valentine’s Day in 1400, a “High Court of Love” was created.

Following legal procedures, the court would be made up of tribunals, with 10 to 70 women who heard cases in the form of complaints from lovers. The court dealt with love, adultery, flirtations, betrayals and violence against women. They would ruminate on romantic matters and rule in favor of the one they believed had better followed the “rules of love.”

By the 18th century, Valentines were an established part of popular culture.

So much so that in 1797, an enterprising British publisher decided to help young men who were not so well-versed in romance. The Young Man’s Valentine Writer was published, containing a large collection of romantic love poems for those who preferred to copy and paste rather than write their own.

In different parts of the world, traditions began to develop as all cultures caught the love bug. In Norfolk, the children believe in a character called Jack Valentine who brings sweets and presents for them. In Portugal, Valentine’s Day is referred to as Dia dos Namorados, which translates to, “day of those that are in love with each other,” or, more simply, “Lover’s Day.”

Not everyone seems to feel the love though.

In some countries, like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and Malaysia, religious political parties have tried to impose a ban on Valentine’s Day-related items. But even politics can’t stop the Valentines.

Saudi Arabia’s ban supposedly created a black market, purely for roses and wrapping paper. Florists in Pakistan say they still sell an excessive amount of red roses on Feb. 14 every year.

Some countries chose to take it in the other direction, seizing the holiday from romantic lovers and turning it into a day for friendship, as well as love. In most of Latin America, Valentine’s Day is celebrated along with the tradition of amigo secreto, or Secret Friend, where people give gifts to assigned friends in a manner similar to Secret Santa.

In Finland, Feb. 14 is Ystävänpäivä, which translates to, “Friend’s Day.” A similar type of festival is celebrated in Estonia.

Sharing the love with your friends as well as lovers is not a new notion in this country either. More than half of the Valentines sent every year are given to family members who aren’t a spouse, and many go to children. In fact, the people who receive the most valentines every year are teachers, monitoring their classrooms during construction paper activities.

So maybe the secret to surviving Valentine’s day when you’re single isn’t about finding a significant other for this special day, but about remembering those who significantly affect you everyday. Whether it’s a boyfriend or a best friend, make sure you take a minute to tell someone you love them today, because today is a day where, as another dead British dude once said, “all you need is love.”

Superstar Hahn Mesmerizes with Violin

originally written for The Emory Wheel: Arts & Living(www.emorywheel.com)

I first heard about the world-class violinist Hilary Hahn a few months ago. My friend Katie, a proud member of the Emory University Symphony Orchestra, burst into my room, barely able to contain her excitement and yelling that Hilary Hahn was coming to campus. “She’s like a rock star to me, you don’t understand,” she said.

Hahn, 31, is truly treated like Hendrix in the concert orchestra community. Hahn has played with some of the most prestigious orchestras in the world, such as the New York Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 1996, at the age of 16, Hahn signed a contract with Sony Music for a record and is now a two-time Grammy winner. For Hahn, the fame is still something she’s getting used to. “Now I notice when I go to a music school or I’m visiting a class, I see the faces like I was when looking at my idols. And it feels so weird.” Hahn said in an interview with the Wheel. “I mean, I really appreciate it, but I remember being that student and just want to say, ‘I’m just like you.’”

Hahn is no stranger to the world of musical mentors. When she was 10, Hahn entered the coveted Curtis Institute of Music as the youngest student at the school. Hahn noted how collaborative the atmosphere at Curtis was compared to the competitiveness at other conservatories. “The older students watched out for me, and I was performing with professional artists at 13,” Hahn said. “I actually had a lot of support, and it was not uncomfortable at all. It was much more cushy than middle school would have been.”

For Hahn, performances have always been a part of her; she feels she never had the time to develop nerves. “I think everyone, hopefully, gets a rush of adrenaline when they perform,” Hahn said. ”I’ve always found that to be a good thing; performing is like giving a gift to the audience, and they say thank you with their applause. I’ve always felt like the audience isn’t judging me; they’re here because they want to enjoy this music.” She offered advice for those who do feel uneasy as they take the stage, explaining that practice makes perfect, no matter what the venue. “I just recommend perform[ing] a piece three or four times before moving on to the next performance,” Hahn said. “If you have a big performance one week, just schedule a bunch of little performances around then, even if it’s just going out on the street and busking.”

Hahn’s newest project is called “In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores.” It’s a collection of short pieces for violin and piano Hahn commissioned from various composers from all over the world. Hahn will be playing 13 this season and the remaining 14 next season. “This is a project I’ve been working on [in] the back of my mind for a while,” Hahn said. “It’s the first time I’ve done anything on this scale with new music.” Hahn performed the full program last Thursday at Emerson Concert Hall in the Donna and Marvin Schwartz Center for Performing Arts to a sold-out crowd.

A hush took over the crowd as Hahn and her piano-playing partner Valentina Lisitsa took the stage in beautiful red and black gowns, respectively. Hahn began with a casual hello to the audience before breaking into “BIFU (Breeze),” the first of the contemporary pieces, by Japanese composer Somei Satoh. From her first note to her final fiddle, Hahn enraptured the audience. Her perfect diction with the violin caused College senior Alex Baumgartner to say, after her final note, “That’s the definition of a virtuoso.”

“In 27 Pieces” blended together such a wide variety of styles for the violin. They were all played on the same instrument, but each had its own charisma and style injected into the music by the different composers telling their own distinct stories. “Memory Games,” composed by Avener Dorman, which was inspired by the classic video game Simon.

Concurrent with her common theme of embracing her mentors while aspiring to be inventive, Hahn interspersed classical composers alongside the contemporary ones. Hahn also included the classics in her performance. In addition to the short pieces, Hahn played Bach’s “Violin Sonata No. 1,” Beethoven’s “Violin Sonata No. 2” and Brahms’ “Sonatensatz.” Hahn’s showcase embraces the new, rather than confining listeners to just the classical. “When composers put ideas down on paper, the aural world takes on a greater dimension,” Hahn said. “My hope is that these particular contributions will showcase the range of music being written today, while bring enjoyment to listeners and performers alike.”

Irish Blood Bath Ensues in ‘Inishmore’

originally written for The Emory Wheel: Arts & Living(www.emorywheel.com)

Cat slaughter is not a common theme for comedy, but Theater Emory’s production of “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” turns feline massacre into a riotous, gory comedy that had the almost-packed Mary Gray Monroe theater audience laughing as they left their seats.

The play opens with young Davey, a character played impeccably by College sophomore Cody Read, discovering the corpse of Wee Thomas, a cat that had been killed on the side of the road.

He brings the body to Donny, the person he presumes to be the owner of the cat, but learns that the cat in fact belongs to Padraic, a member of the Irish National Liberation Army, which he joins after being kicked out of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) for being “too violent.”

Donny and Davey then scramble to cover up the feline fatality before Padraic’s return.

“It was so violent,” College junior Jenny Fernandes said. “Just so Irish.”

Not only was the cast armed with precise Irish accents, but in true Irish style, the play was bloody and brutal when it came to violence.

Whether it was chopping up corpses or rolling cat heads across the floor of the stage, director Donald McManus wasn’t afraid to go gory It’s a necessity when dealing with Irish drama.

“It’s funny ’cause people were willing to get up and argue about the stupidest things,” College junior Timothy Harland said. Harland played Joey, a supporting character in the play. “Killing a cat or shooting someone in the eyes wasn’t a big deal at all compared to the ‘more important things’ like honor.”

Even though the play was a bloodbath, it was entirely a comedy. Like the Irish have done for years, the actors used humor as a cure for the carnage. Tim McDonough had the audience rolling in their seats from his opening “feck”-filled warning up until his last few lines.

Professional actor Mark Cabus, College junior Jake Krakovsky and Harland also amused the audience by showing them what the IRA would have been like if it had let in the Three Stooges.

Bobby Jones Scholar Jonathan Durie played the maniacal Padraic comically, torturing drug dealers with ease, yet reaching near tears when he hears that his cat doing “poorly.”

Don’t be too quick to dismiss the deeper meaning of play because of the light tone the cast and crew take.

“I want the audience to walk out wondering, was it okay for us to laugh at that? Maybe?” Harland said.

Though the language stays casual, the lines are filled with allusions to Irish history and Irish nationalist ideals. There are many metaphoric lines that an attentive audience member can catch.

“The Lieutenant of Inishmore” will be playing from Oct. 5 to Oct. 8 in the Mary Gray Monroe Theater, so make sure you catch some of the bloodshed before it’s gone.

An Inside Look at Cafe Unity

originally written for The Emory Wheel: Arts & Living(www.emorywheel.com)

The first poem I ever performed in public, I performed at Café Unity. I was dragged by an upperclassman friend during the fall of my sophomore year. He offered to accompany me on the harmonica as I read. It was too close to Dylan-ness for me to refuse.

We arrived that Thursday evening, and like any first-time performer, I was nervous. But as the evening began, I got my first glimpse of our campus’ creative collective. Alum Anirudh “Eka” Dhullipalla wowed me with his wordplay. Now junior, then freshman Daniel Weingarten taught me about the power of “Virgin Swag” through his poem of the same name. Current senior and Café Unity President Ariel Wolpe strummed softly on her guitar, playing sweet melodies that were stuck in my head all week.

They were casual, comfortable. It wasn’t so much a performance with any of them, but a conversation, a sharing of who they were and what they really think about the world. Everyone was genuine. So by the time I stepped to the mic in front of those dozen or so people to read, I wasn’t nervous anymore. It felt like sharing with friends; I’d gotten to know so much about them as the evening progressed.

Two years later, the friends have turned into family. For the creative-conscious on this campus, Café Unity isn’t just about performing their work, it’s about monthly family reunions.
Your people get busy. The performers get bogged down by academics. There’s the EMT class, the labs, the midterms, the meetings. It’s often hard to reconnect with everyone’s artistic side. That’s why when we ask fellow regulars if they’ll be at Café Unity, it’s not so much said as an event, but as a Sunday dinner, a time for the family to reconnect.

For me, Café Unity was where I found this family. Before my first performance, I had barely begun to explore the artistic outlets on this campus (there was no Chalk Girl). Café Unity showed me the creative consciousness that exists on our campus, and though it’s not always the most visible piece of Emory, it’s such an inspiring collection of people that have truly changed who I am.

When I first walked into Common Grounds for Café Unity, this collection was relatively small. Fifteen to 20 people sat in the couches and pulled up a few chairs from the tables. This year as I walked up to read that same poem I did my first night, I saw so many more faces waiting for me to start. About 30 people now fill Common Grounds for Café Unity, with chairs lined up to the back wall. It’s growing, and I say that not with egotistical ambitions, but in the way parents look with pride at teenagers, excited about how they’ve evolved. It’s also always expanding. There were 15 scheduled performers last Thursday; some were the regulars, but most of them were first-timers. The family is always open to newcomers.

Jordan Explores Ethics and Art

originally written for The Emory Wheel: Arts & Living(www.emorywheel.com)

Growing up in a communist regime, junior Mariangela Jordan learned about the revolutionary value in art and its ability to change the course of human events.

Today, she continues to fuel the power of art as co-president of the Ethics and Art Society at Emory, a student arts organization whose mission is to explore the intersection between creativity and ethics, and the role art plays in inspiring positive social change.

Jordan grew up living in Soviet-occupied Romania.

“Living under communism in a family which defied the regime was a rather traumatic experience,” Jordan said. “However, under my father’s guidance, I quickly learned to escape the bleakness of our immediate existence by employing my imagination.”

Imagination opened the door for Jordan’s artistic inclinations, despite the war-torn nation she lived in.

She learned quickly that “books are worth their weight in gold.”
For Jordan and her family, art was essential.

“Poetry was a cathartic form of political resistance and freedom,” she explained.

Today, as a well-established member of the Emory community, Jordan continues to catalyze change through creativity as one of the founding members of the Ethics and Arts Society.

The Society began as part of Carlton Mackey’s Ethics and the Arts Initiative, a program in the ethics center with a variety of partners: the Atlanta Opera, High Museum of Art, Alternate ROOTS, The Alliance Theater Company, WonderRoot, the Atlanta Music Project and others.

“As the first president of the Society, together with the society’s first artist members, alums Anirudh Dhullipalla [(’11C)] and Shreyas Sreenath [(’11C)] and senior Ian McCall, who is my current co-president, I was entrusted by Mr. Mackey with the opportunity of envisioning, articulating and setting in motion the Society’s vision,” Jordan said.

Jordan is constantly developing relationships with local artists and organizations for events such as the Society’s Best in Show Performance this year. The Society collaborated with activist music group Voices in the Treetops, headed by long-time “artivists” Paula Larke and Kim Nimoy.

As the year continues, the Society is working on developing a music program that offers young Burmese refugees in Atlanta an opportunity to learn music, as a platform for cathartic expression.

“We are also hoping to connect Emory music students with this program, in order to expand the number of music teachers as well as the number of youth participating in the program,” Jordan said.

The Society also organizes art events on campus throughout the year. For this fall, the Society is hosting the Ethics and Arts Café, a collaborative arts symposium organized by the center for Ethics and WonderRoot Atlanta. The event is about “bringing artists from eclectic backgrounds ... [in] varied art forms together under the umbrella of ethics,” Jordan said. “The event offers an opportunity to spark challenging conversations about various ethical issues.”

In addition to organizing on-campus art venues, Jordan is also constantly looking for a way for art to make an impact off campus.

She recently began teaching English as a Secondary Language (ESL) course to members of the refugee community in Atlanta.

Rather than sticking to previous ESL curricula offered by the resettlement agencies, Jordan plans to build her own curriculum for the course in collaboration with a local musician.

“[It’s a] primarily kinetic, culturally-sensitive technique of teaching English that integrates the use of photography, instructional songs, music and movement, and the awareness of rhythm and cadence of the English language,” Jordan said.

Jordan explained she plans to return to Romania in the future.

She hopes to one day become an ethnographic filmmaker. In an effort to integrate her interests in film and human rights, she is currently developing a non-governmental organization (NGO) to promote human rights in Eastern Europe.

“Unfortunately, even after the collapse of communism, corruption remains prevalent in Romanian journalism,” Jordan said. “The mission of my NGO is to recruit local ethical journalists, photographers and documentary filmmakers who will offer people who do not have a voice, as I once didn’t, a platform of expression and a way of stepping out of their invisible cloaks.”