Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Marlboro Lights
Question 1: Why did you choose Marlboro? 

As part of his ongoing obsession with all things Marlboro, old college chum Shaw is interviewing me via email. I'll be posting my responses here as I can get to them. Got no time for othermusing anyway.


We were living together off and on for a couple of years by then, most recently in a shared Somerville, MA apartment under the world largest willow tree. My fellowship at the Museum of Science was coming to an end, and the time felt right to go back to college.

But I also knew that most educational models didn't work for me. You've seen me in the classroom, Shaw -- I'm a bright guy, but I really need to be engaged with the material in order to get much out of it. And I got lost in those long, inevitable hours of background and knowledge that spun out time eternally between every subjectively resonant image, every mind-altering epiphany, in a classroom. It wasn't just a need for small class size, I also needed an environment where everything I was asked to do was, ultimately, something I asked myself to do.

Thank God Marlboro was that place.

I mean, sure, I was in a different place, too. When Darcie and I had dropped out of Bard together halfway through our Sophomore year, it was partially because the only thing we were really getting out the place was each other. Since then, my time as a public programs and school programs fellow at the Museum of Science had taught me that I had some mad skills, but more than that, it gave me a real curiosity about the relationship between the content of our presentations and the mass media models which lurked behind us, audience and presenter alike, and the way this shared awareness of narrative modes framed the ways we developed our demonstrations.

'course, I couldn't have said it like that at the time. That's what Marlboro was for.

Why did I choose Marlboro? Because it was ten miles up the hill from Darcie's parent's house. And Darcie had decided to move back home. And I needed one myself. And Marlboro was perfect.

posted by boyhowdy | 11:02 PM |

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Comments:

I somehow missed the fact that you two had been together through college :).

# posted by  Anonymous : 8:36 AM, November 30, 2006

 

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