College for Creative Studies News
We were recently featured on the College for Creative Studies’ news and events page in an article titled, Short film explores game-changing CCS sociology course that helps students tap creative potential. We’re honored to be recognized and look forward to future semesters of “Consciousness, Creativity and Identity”. “If you walked into Molly Beauregard’s classroom toward the end of each session, you’d find the room swathed in stillness and calm. You’d see every student sitting face forward, eyes closed, deep in silent meditation. The scene wouldn’t strike you as particularly unusual if this were a wellness room or a yoga class, but it’s not. It may well be, however, the first academic course of its kind at an American college. For more than 15 years, Beauregard has taught sociology — mostly,…
Community is Shared
I am a sociologist by training. I love to think about culture, people, interactions, identity issues and patterns. Emile Durkheim, the famous French father of all things sociological, argued that one must treat ‘social facts as things’. These “facts” become the subject of study for sociologists. Further, Durkheim believed that collective phenomenon is not merely reducible to the individual actor. Society, he believed, is more than the sum of its many parts. It is a system formed by the association of individuals that come together to constitute a reality with its own distinctive characteristics. Let me think of an example: how about language? Language pre-exists our birth and it continues after our death. Perhaps some of us will have the honor of inventing some new recognizable slang (LOL, duh),…
Introducing the Cutting Room Floor
A common discussion among filmmakers is the ratio between the total duration of footage created for possible use in a project and that which actually appears in its final cut. This is known as the “shooting ratio”. Truth is, sometimes the best stuff ends up getting cut – random jokes, funny accidents, things that are just too intimate to share with a large audience… We thought it might be fun to share some “lost” conversations from our transcripts. So, we’ve created a whole new blog category, “Cutting Room Floor”. We hope you love reading them as much as we loathed cutting them from the Tuning the Student Mind film!
The Translucent Revolution by Arjuna Ardagh
January 2015 Book of the Month For more than a decade, Ardagh has studied what he believes to be a profound revolution in human consciousness. This shift in awareness is marked by what he calls “translucents” — individuals who have undergone a spiritual awakening deeply enough that it has permanently transformed their relationship to themselves and to reality, while allowing them to remain involved in ordinary life. The Translucent Revolution tells the story of hundreds of individuals just like you who display characteristics of “translucence”. These individuals continue to quietly work and play at life with more happiness, more satisfaction and increased purpose.
Figuring It Out
When I first read the following quote, it really stuck with me. Mahatma Gandhi said, “A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, nothing else.” I think why this impacted me is because of how relatable it is to the way people’s lives are looked at sometimes: a series of actions or experiences and expectations. Interestingly, through Molly Beauregards Consciousness, Creativity and Identity class and making sense of my own feelings about it, I feel Gandhi might have been wrong. I have been told for a long time that people are who they are because of the situations they have gone through in their lives. I heard over and over variations of Gandhi’s words. And I believed this too. It made enough sense. I could rationalize…
Becomming the 2014 Auto Show Poster Winner
As a metro Detroiter, I’ve been going to the auto show for some years now. I was thrilled to be given the opportunity to illustrate the auto show poster. The theme is celebrating 25 years so I decided to capture something that has been constant with this event all of the years it has been in existence: the logo. I captured the logo as a woman, using the modern colors of the logo to create a piece that wasn’t necessarily about one specific car, but the event as a whole. I used the techniques I’ve learned from my fashion illustration courses that have shaped my own love for illustrating models and haute couture. With this in mind, I created this piece as a symbol to show the glamour and beauty…
Documentaries Trump the Dominant Narrative
The medium of documentary film is young but is rearing its head as the most powerful of all art forms. One could argue that music and books are more potent forces, but does music teach lessons as pointedly and do books reveal life as visually and aurally as a documentary? Not in my mind. I consider documentary films to be modern history books. I believe they will actually surpass history books in coming generations as the best tool for learning from the successes and follies of our ancestors. Unlike reading a book, documentaries allow viewers to see and hear life (albeit on a screen), thus creating a visceral experience that resonates more deeply. When shot and edited ethically, documentaries offer incredible insight into human beings and events as they are,…
Cultural Rehab
A healthy man needs to see a doctor after spending time around a group of contagious sick people because he too becomes infected. A clean individual who spends time around a dirty drug scene will eventually start participating and use the drug. If that behavior continues and as a result their quality of life goes down, the best thing they could do is seek help. Individuals in this situation need to learn how to be alright without the addicting drug. There is a type of institution for that. Its called rehab. The purpose of rehab is to remind you of who you were before you started using. Sometimes I wonder if it is difficult for people to admit addiction because they started down the path so innocently. Initially, they may…
Tetris Game Hijack
I came into the “Consciousness, Creativity and Bliss” class after a long and stressful previous semester. The promise of meditation lured me in as the stacks of boxes full of responsibilities kept getting higher and higher in my mind. Now don’t get me wrong, the boxes don’t just disappear when I meditate. Going to school and working is necessary, at least until I graduate. The problem arises when these boxes aren’t neatly stacked one on top of the other but rather dropped at random like a really cruel game of Tetris. Things inadvertently become misaligned. Every one of my classes has a box of its own. Every family member, with their unique and crazy respective problems, has a box just for themselves. Every hour I log at work is another, much…
Recycling Classic Style
I am currently a sophomore in college majoring in Media and Communications and minoring in Business. I go to a unique school in Fairfield, Iowa focusing on integrating the practice of Transcendental Meditation into our daily routine. For the past few years I have lived here, I have modeled for a friend who owned an eBay vintage clothing store. A few months after I started my freshman year of college, she announced she was selling the business and would teach the ropes to whoever bought it. My friend Chamolie and I were immediately inspired by the potential of this project and ended up buying the company in October of 2010. Owning a start up business in college is a thrilling yet ambitious project to take on. Chamolie and I go…