Perhaps I should preface this post by saying this week has been nothing short of a whirlwind. Final assignments, the last strings with Italy, and friends all prepping for graduation - it’s definitely a headache and a half. 

So the blog’s been on the back burner, no surprise there. Ordinarily I’d be frustrated with myself (not to say that I’m not, necessarily) but I’m going to have to chalk the whole thing up to Good Things experience: See the grey.

Remember when I decided to relaunch, back in February? The target was fatiguing, even in my mind’s eye, especially with a student’s schedule and all the elements I wanted to take on. And where am I today? Hanging out with professional bloggers, y’all.  

Enter BlogathonATX.

It’s still very early in the day, but so far I’ve met Austin mini-celebrity Hipstercrite, Slave to Fashion (who wants to take my picture, no less!) and spied several other bloggers from around town. Who knew! There’s a fantastic spread of food from around town, as well as a giant room full of really, really geeky folk. 

Needless to say, I think I’ve found my people. 

Where else can you complain about Google Analytics and post times and - this kills me - boners and still be working? 

If you’d like to know more about this event (and what I’m learning; Hermione, engage!), I’ll be posting throughout the day. This crowd is super-social media savvy, so you can also follow @BlogathonATX or #BlogathonATX on Twitter. 

Wish me happy blogging, everyone! 

• Tags
• BlogathonATX
• Austin
• blogging

Every so often - which ends up being quite often, for me - it’s nice to mosey off somewhere to get some writing done. My poetry portfolio and thesis proposal are both due soon, so I’m up to my eyeballs in writing assignments. Luckily, Austin Java was able to help me in the form of a Honey Nut Latte.

• Tags
• Austin Java
• Austin
• photography
• writing

One would think someone so interested in poetry - like, trying-to-go-to-graduate-school-for-creative-writing interested in poetry - would go to more poetry readings. Somehow that’s not the case for me. It’s not like the University of Texas doesn’t have infinite opportunities. Alas! To rescue my ever-dwindling pseudo-hipster cred, I popped my metaphorical poetry reading cherry last Thursday night at a reading by Brigit Pegeen Kelly and Gabrielle Calvocoressi. 

The reading took place at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, an outdoor venue in far South Austin that’s as beautiful as the lady it’s named after. The actual reading portion of the night took place in a lighted stone auditorium that echoed in all the right ways. Choice! And the grounds were blanketed a variety of native flora that I’d highly recommend visiting for any non-Austinites (or locals, alike!). 

Pictured below (from left to right) are my classmates (and fellow burgeoning poets) Cinny, myself, and Sara. To the right of us is my professor Julia (whom I’d highly recommend, to all you Longhorns) and poet S. E. Smith. 

The two featured poets couldn’t have been any more different: Brigit Pegeen Kelley’s work was flowing and incredibly engaging - sometimes her poems might have been four to five minutes long, and you’d find that you’d been holding your breath at the end.  Her naturalistic images (deer, birds, the human form, landscapes, swans) swirled around the auditorium, placing me at times somewhere high in the mountains, or beside a lake at dawn, or staring at the sky. When she closed her portfolio, I felt incandescent. You can read about Brigit Pegeen Kelley at The Poetry Foundation, or purchase Song (1994) here. 

Gabrielle Calvocoressi was another experience all together. While Kelley’s work was transcendent, Calvocoressi wrote in a very human - physical, raw, Friday-night-in-a-small-town sort of way. Her poems were much shorter, with the lines being deliberate and enunciated to convey horrifying truths about human life. The most stunning part? She writes in form almost exclusively. Calvocoressi also has a very distinctive way of reading; if you’d like to see her, this is a video of a reading at the University of Texas. Her most recent collection The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earheart: Poems (2005) is also for sale.

The reception afterwards was also lovely - and where we took the picture above! One thing I love about the poetic community is that they’re completely receptive to geeky undergrads like myself. I was able to meet Gabrielle Calvocoressi, whom, like her colleagues, was enthusiastic to share advice about entering into the field of creative writing. If you live in the Austin area and are able to come to any of these poetry events, I would highly recommend it; see The Harry Ransom Center and The University of Texas (April and May) for more details.

• Tags
• poetry
• Austin
• Brigit Pegeen Kelly
• Gabrielle Calvocoressi
• Harry Ransom Center
• National Poetry Month

Last night, in what might be forever written as the best concert of all time, I saw Spoon. To say that I saw Spoon might even be an understatement. The show was a benefit at Red7, a deliberately shady club on 7th Street that’s intimate in a grungy sort of way - meaning that I was about ten feet away from Britt Daniel. Enter an enormous indie fangirl. I experienced Spoon more than saw them. 

There’s absolutely nothing I can say to communicate the sheer impressiveness of these musicians. Most people love Spoon because they’ve shimmied along to “The Underdog” on the radio, but here in Austin, we’re welcoming home longtime natives. They’re phenomenal musicians. 

After seeing them at Austin City Limits two years ago, I knew that their live performances were impressively equal to their recorded quality. They played for two hours straight, coming out for an encore of not one, or two, but five songs. 

If these guys aren’t in your top ten bands of all time, you might want to bone up on your Spoon lore. Their most recent record, Transference, is actually on sale on Amazon for only five dollars all month. I would recommend snapping up that beauty as soon as humanly possible.  

And then indulge in the awesomeness of these guys. 

Something less fangirl-y, but from the heart nonetheless, is that I felt an immeasurable connection to Austin during the show. Something about my favorite band from Austin, playing in Austin, playing the songs that I was listening to the summer I moved to Austin - it was meta in a deliciously nostalgic and heartwarming way. 

Anyway! Get thee to some headphones and plug in. 

Photography courtesy of the New York Times. 

• Tags
• Spoon
• music
• Austin
• concert

There’s really something special about my city - it’s not that she’s full of genuinely nice people (many of whom are total 90’s era oddballs), or that she’s colorful and inviting, or that she’s a veritable indie rock songbird in a rather bland state - it’s that she manages to do all of these things while still being totally accessible to everyone else on the planet. 

Case in point? South by Southwest, perhaps the most awesome and equally obnoxious festival on the planet. 

For the majority of locals, SXSW means lots of free alcohol, shows and time to show off their hipsterness. It’s as though the entire city makes a pact to wear their hipster best for the rest of the world, to remind them that yes, we are in fact the Southern version of Portland. And we did hipster first. 

After you wade through the mustachioed, tattooed and overall tight-pantsed alternative crowd, then you’ll encounter the big spenders at South By: the professionals. These are the techies or photographers, the web developers actually hosting the parties rather than the guys snapping up the free drinks. 

Somewhere between all these weirdoes you’ll find celebrities, foreigners, budding musicians, the homeless, high schoolers looking to break in their fake ID, frat boys, unclaimed children, folks looking for a bathroom and me. 

That’s right, I’m part of the tattooed and pierced youth mob. Although I dig pretty hard on the SXSW fandom, the festival is near and dear to my heart. People tend to appreciate my city on a grand scale only twice a year: for SXSW, and for Austin City Limits Festival (ACL).  

South By always seems like an extension of this love, like Austin is wrapped in a giant heating blanket of happiness. 

Being that I’m not twenty-one yet (next week!) most of the important shows are off-limits. This is a pretty big bummer, but I can enjoy myself just as much simply people watching. Yesterday afternoon I walked from West Campus (for perspective, see this crazy map) to 6th Street to see what all the commotion was about. But not before slipping into a backlot show hosted by Urban Outfitters; DIVE was playing, and they were this synthy-pop aggro sound. Me gusta. 

So after that show started to fizzle out, I just started walking. 

Elizabeth Bennett and I have this habit in common. We walk, often too far. 

Before I knew it, I’d moved from West Campus to the thick of 6th Street. People everywhere: women with cutoff shirts and tight jeans in every color, sundresses, Ray Bans, men with boots and big belt buckles, mustaches, beards, sideburns, hipster glasses, geeky glasses, tambourines, accents, skin colors in every color, sunburns, tattoos of women, birds and memories, expensive cameras, random children, potbellies, messenger bags, running makeup, models and hopefuls. It’s a miscellany of anything and everything Austin. 

My mind was spinning with the nonsense and pure Austinness of the scene. Cameron tells me that I have an unfortunate tendency towards romanticizing the truly obnoxious. Where he sees a clusterfuck of hipsters pushing towards a stage at a concert, I thrive on the group atmosphere. The crowd is probably my second-favorite part of live music, besides the musicians themselves, obviously. 

If you’re an Austinite, how do you feel about SXSW? Does it drive you crazy? Are you one of the hipster horde that I’ve cited above? Let me know in the comments. 

Also! If you’re of drinking age, unlike myself, subscribe to SXSW Free Drinks - a pet project of my old editor at The Daily Texan and myself. We’ve been uploading and Twittering parties for the past week or so, and you can find out about all sorts of great stuff through our feed. Happy SXSW-ing!

• Tags
• SXSW
• South By Southwest
• Austin
• ATX

Sometimes I think the most flirtatious time of year is that lovely turning point between autumn and spring. Here in Texas, there is rarely such a thing as winter - we get a week or so of temperatures below fifty degrees, occasionally a freeze, then it’s right back to the mid-seventies and legendary sunshine. It’s flirtatious because there’s a honeysuckle smell in the air and the breeze still carries a bit of an autumnal bite - it’ll catch you the wrong way and tickle the back of your neck with a chill. 

It sounds rather gorgeous, doesn’t it? As an Austin local and good weather worshipper, I can tell you that it’s absolute perfection. 

There’s only one thing that can make this time of year even better, and it’s a marriage of my two favorite things in the world: chasing afternoon sunlight in the city.

Around about six in the evening, the sun begins to tuck away behind buildings, and then it’s all about following the peach and magenta stains swallowing the sides of the Capitol or reflected off the mirrored edges of skyscrapers.

I tried this out a few weeks ago after my late class; the shade felt so cold and I could see the most beautiful sunset hiding out above the hill of MLK (Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, for non-locals). So followed the light! Jogged, even. It was like a magnificent game of chase. And when I’d finally climbed the hill and was standing on the lawn in front of the Capitol, I couldn’t feel any more satisfied. Yes, I’m a nutty romantic. But it’s endearing, right? 

It’s easy to fall in love with my city. She’s such a tease.

There’s nothing more beautiful than the Capitol lit up with a light flare. Coming over the upper deck of I-35, you can see the whole city - sometimes I take the long way home just to see that skyline. She’s a beaut.

Looking to fall in love with your own hometown? Venture out in the honeyed afternoon. You really can’t go wrong with that kind of goodness.  

• Tags
• sunlight
• happiness
• Austin