throw your hands up.

and screaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam.
it started the minute my crew passed over the bridge from pompei to italy. rumbles under the bridge, horrible screeches from the speakers. a strange fog sneaking through the cracks beneath our feet. a final night of terror at busch gardens.

i'm a theme park kinda boy - the food, the rides, the smells, the odd array of people. but i had yet to venture to one morphed into a spooky nightmare. it starts with my roommate, terry, who, despite being absolutely terrified of all things scary, routinely puts himself through these events. he knows the zombies will try to taunt him. he knows that the vines might be someone in disguise. he knows that blasts of air will stun him while walking through the maze. but it's the thrill of testing limits, i guess, which brings him back for the sixth time this season.

the scenery is quite incredible. from the green fog virtually eliminating our visibility to the singing skeletons positioned throughout the park, europe transforms into a harrowing adventure. the mazes are hysterical because, if you pay attention, you can pinpoint where the "surprises" will be. you can see the holes, you can watch the people ahead of you, you can get a hint to what your fate is going to be. this is why i'm a terrible companion on these things - because the logic dictates they can only do so much before they have to terrorize the people behind you. it's intriguing how we can profit off of fear and things which make our hearts jump. and how, in this land mirroring europe, countries are defined by their rides, not their names, cultures or language. i'm not going to germany, i'm going to the big bad wolf. duh. funny, more so, how we spent more time sampling beer than riding rides - perhaps an indicator of our priorities. or just terry's directive that he couldn't do this sober.

i recommend the trip for the people you'll encounter. like the trio from norfolk who kept trying to score a swig from our beer. despite our repeated declines. the ones who were clamoring to get out of norfolk. or the group behind us who became solid friends during the windy maze set to the pulse of a strobe light.

what's most amazing about this idea of fear is how, even in an amusement park, fear binds all people together. to get through it all. even if it's just a kid dressed in make-up for $7/hour.

my highlight came from the amazing 200-foot drop in complete darkness on apollo's chariot. it's a heightened level of fear because you're moving so fast on a track you know by heart, but you just can't see. and nothing is more terrifying than speeding ahead into the unknown.

morning walks.

carytown is strangely silent in the morning. hours before the shops open, limiting chatter and life to those sitting in restaurants for brunch and coffee. i've walked the streets this past week, winding around this little independent slice awkwardly thrust into richmond. i get frustrated with carytown because of how busy it is - which is a contradiction for a cultural observer. the slow moving traffic, the inability for people to understand crosswalks, the random pee smells, well, you get the drift.

it's a pocket of vitality, regardless of my opinion about it, full of energy, art and personal expression. making these morning strolls all the more intriguing because none of that exists. it's an eerie silence. the calm before the eye of the storm, if this was a hurricane. the morning imprisons the spirit of the sidewalks, even if the storefronts hint at the bubbling life hidden behind glass.

i can almost here myself think - a scary reality for a place always screaming for attention. and i wonder, in this silent moment, how it's not carytown unless it's annoying me. and my affinity for it, what it offers and why it matters rests in the absolute madness that pastes the blocks together. this makes me wonder if, in a culture we seemingly dislike for so many reasons, would changing the cultural obstacles actually change your opinion? because changing the personality alters the fabric of the culture. hmm.

if you see me walking in the morning, say hi.
it's awfully quiet. and, well, i guess i want some noise.

red hair on the highway.

The weekend took me to Syracuse, NY – a destination I swore I would never return to after I last visited in April. Syracuse sat on the cusp of spring and summer – a changing season I knew was changing in me. I wasn’t quite enchanted anymore with the city I spent the past few years. Sometimes you know when your time with a place is over.

Which makes the flutter of phone calls back in July all more bizarre. See, my roommate loves Tori Amos. And I don’t mean love – I mean obsessive, life-altering, idolize. Yeah, something like that. The U.S. leg of her tour would put her in Syracuse, NY. And, since it was a weekend, it seemed logistically possible to go. Before I could convince said roommate otherwise, we had eight-row seats, left-center stage. A crash course in the Syracuse version of The Landmark Theater – those seats fucking rock.

Memories pervade my drive up I-81. I’ve spent so many hours of my life passing trucks, stopping at Turkey Hill and creating games to test my speeding ability. This weekend was no exception. We stopped at Perkins in Hershey, PA. It’s a strange combination of Denny’s and a truck stop. Here, Randolph said to every table: “My name’s Randolph, I’m your server. What can I get youz?” Every time. Perkins smelled stale, the lighting looked a depressed yellow, and the restaurant bubbled with travelers, truckers and locals. It’s a strange energy. Because roommate and I clearly stuck out in tighter jeans, form-fitting shirts and styled hair. Clearly, we weren’t from these parts.

But nothing shakes the image as I approach Syracuse. I remember the first time my parents and I approached that puffy, marshmallow dome. And I told them this is where I would go. It’s the first image I see when I arrive and the last when I exit. It hits me, when a thousand emotions and memories rush back of the seven years in this space. This snowy, blustery, wickedly alive, yet dead, place. I instantly recall why I chose to come here, and why, after all those years, leapt out. It’s no coincidence that I returned on Homecoming weekend, but not because of that event.

A Tori Amos concert is an interesting exercise in musical appreciation and fanaticism. Between the vultures swirling around the merchandise table to the listless fans swaying in the bitter chill of winter’s preview – listening for the faint sounds of a soundcheck. Yeah, we were there – as my roommate proclaimed, “I think I hear something!” I love going to concerts with him, especially these. Because music, to me, is an emotional lift regardless of the end result. And no one in my life feels music more than he does. So it’s no surprise that the minutes clicking down to show time feel like death. That the minute the lights go down and everyone screams in anticipation, he is silenced by the sheer power of his idol peaking around the corner. That, if he dropped dead right then, he would be smiling.

These people are euphoric. They have special names for themselves “Ears with Feet” – a name Tori coined back in the day to describe her fans. Why? As one person said behind me, “we go to at least 7 shows a tour.” My roommate is going to three. Next up is DAR Constitution Hall in D.C. And we’ll continue the ritual. The drive consists of listening to albums, consulting setlists and imagining what the concert might entail. What songs would you die to hear? Which ones would you cringe at? I would love to hear Gold Dust – because it spins an incredibly lonely story that I want to see. But if I hear Leather one more time…

My roommate’s happened this Saturday when Tori unleashed a song he had waited for a decade to hear. Everyone has a defining song – this was his. Little Earthquakes – the final track on her debut album on Atlantic records. And it didn’t take much to rip him into pieces.

Set list:
Bouncing Off Clouds
Little Earthquakes
Juarez
Rattlesnakes
Beauty of Speed
Roosterspur Bridge
Professional Widow
Big Wheel
Parasol
Spark
improv
Cornflake Girl
Northern Lad
Caught A Lite Sneeze
improv
Yes, Anastasia
Never Seen Blue
1,000 Oceans
Taxi Ride
Code Red
Precious Things
Tear In Your Hand
Hey Jupiter

And I'll leave you with a clip from one of the better versions of Yes, Anastasia that I've seen:

wrapping strategy in religion (a cue from last march).

it seems appropriate on this night when we pitched thoughts on expanding religious dialog that i remember an assignment from strategic thinking last semester. we responded to how a conversation with a speaker (ben) entered in the marketing arena.

while it's not an original entry for this journal, i figure it offers some direction into where religion plays into my life. or doesn't. so, for the record:

Religion never fully ensnared my family. I come from two competing sides – Baptist on one side, Catholic on the other. And, somehow, my dad stumbled into the Methodist church. Church was something we did on Sundays out of blind allegiance. Until my mom became fed up with church gossip – the kind that favored personal vendettas than religious intent. My dad represented the family each week, and I chose to sleep during the services. We became more folks who believe in faith than devout followers of a Methodist tradition or teaching.

But religion is funny. And excuse the unfocused nature this will take – religion has never been a topic I can articulate in a logical flow. I find Ben’s implicit idea that you have “big-ticket” Sundays quite interesting. Because despite a fervent belief in connecting people to the words and beliefs of a chosen religious brand, the strategy revolves around filling seats. I almost liken it to higher education. The overall goal is educational – with higher education, the attempt is to provide tools for academic inquiry. In religion, the goal lies within articulating a way of living and believing the world. And while these two goals are similar in nature in understanding the way we go about processing information, they survive only when filling the seats. Jaded, no?

I’ve been battling this idea of religious brands for weeks now. The struggle of my childhood church to remain relevant and alive in people’s lives illuminates my dilemma. Growing up, Huguenot Methodist Church was the sole Methodist church in the Midlothian, VA district. Like a major network, it had its audience almost by default. The closest church was miles away. Huguenot preached a message its audience wanted to hear and to believe – until Mt. Pisgah opened in the mid 1990s. Both churches shared the same beliefs and the same texts, but framed the conversation quite differently. Mt. Pisgah spoke to a growing middle class discovering the roots of religion for the first time. Huguenot aimed more traditional, speaking to its established older crowd. Time killed Huguenot’s core base. Mt. Pisgah reached out.

For a while, I thought the strategy of religion was as simple as just spreading the message of that religious brand. But it rises far above that. It means making conscious decisions on who will listen to that message and, almost as important, who delivers that message. In some ways, I wonder if Mt. Pisgah’s strength came not only from reaching an untapped segment, but also from the messenger – a charismatic, young preacher not much older than the audience. At some point, whether in internal crises, poor strategy, or inconsistent messages, Huguenot failed to maintain its relevancy. And my dad stopped going. Others broke away. Now, the congregation is a mere shadow of its former size.

The battle, I think, came in what Ben mentioned – the constant struggle to define an identity. What did my church stand for? And what does it stand for now? When we talk about how everything matters in a branding strategy – the congregation of Huguenot usurped control of the brand through its gossip and bickering. Who was in control? Somewhere the mission of Huguenot fell apart – a struggle that remains unresolved today. Its members and its message remain insular and unfocused. Mt. Pisgah offered a challenge – a different frame to believe the same message. It was a challenge that energized an audience that continues to sustain and renew itself.

Is Mt. Pisgah some model for how things should be done? I don’t know. Sometimes things have a time and a place where all the components align perfectly. But I think part of thinking strategically is finding these tenets to create connections with people who are seeking them (or give them reasons to seek them). Religion, I believe, offers ways to rationalize and explain the challenges life throws. Which brings us back to those words of challenge and inspire. I think, in theory, that’s what thinkers, planners, creators, and destroyers do. They challenge and inspire new ways of thinking and constructing belief. But I would also argue that they act as catalysts. Fundamentally, religion sparks a desire to believe that jumps above just challenge and inspiration. And in preparing to create work that connects with people, being catalysts to their lives seems to be an end result I want to accomplish.

On a side note, though I’m not a fan of religious debate, I found the idea of this discussion quite interesting. I spent a lot of time at Syracuse University convincing my colleagues in Student Affairs that we’re in the business of connecting with students in the same ways advertisers do. We’re branding our offices by everything we do. We send messages, we have targets, and we want measurable goals. We’re buying and selling students. And we have to reach them when they’re most engaged. But this conversation challenged and inspired my thoughts on wrapping strategy in religion. And this notion of religious brands was something that, until now, I hadn’t quite considered.

fire in the streets.

friday night took me to richmond's hottest place for art. i remember the days of my childhood, wandering around a soon-to-be-deserted downtown area. i remember begging my dad for a piece of fudge from the 6th street marketplace. i remember there being a life to downtown.

which is why i think fire is the perfect spark for the monthly arts adventure called first fridays. it's an interesting construct - a virtual mix-up of young and old from all sorts of paths converging on these places, these galleries, to participate in an artistic search for meaning. why did the artist use this? or that? is that art? why does the right wall in 1708 resemble a collection of media flow charts? perhaps i'm at the adcenter too much lately?

i've seen a lot of mind-blowing art in the nearly two years i've wandered the pockets of broad street. but nothing captures my soul the way the fire spinners do. there's something inherently dangerous and mesmerizing about these artists twirling fire around their bodies, creating movement and speed. almost like an urgency because the fire, inevitably, will extinguish. i wondered what the motivations to do this are. how do you get into this? why do they remind me of a little family. and what do they think about all of us staring and gawking every month as they craft stories in flame?

the group in richmond is called the river city burners. their philosophy is
"The River City Burners aim to be a driving force in Richmond's art community. We are here to teach, entertain, and to reach out to anyone willing to expand their physical "beingness" and to open their minds to the wonderful world of self expression through the fire arts. We dedicate our time and energy into sharing our knowledge through performance and teaching others. Our lives have individually, and as a group, been touched, changed, and inspired through learning how to express ourselves in this unique and amazing artform. Not only do we want to show you how , we want to be open communicators and help spread the inner peace that comes with learning how to spin fire!!"

i suspect one of these days, i'll just ask them. i'm curious about how fire releases expression. and what that emotion is like. why fire? how do theatrics play into the mix? a whole bunch of questions. and why on earth did they theme friday's show to "the phantom of the opera"?

but, for the time being, i'll do the typically thing and point you to a site. where you can learn about the people i see every month. take a look at their photos. watch one of the movie clips. and i'll stalk through the forums. so sometime before this semester is over, i'll report back on what i discover about their artistic passion.

check them out:
http://www.rivercityburners.com/index.html

the cat came back.

in a day where i've watched smart people find smart ways to rescue the culture of new orleans, i've drowned in studies on alcohol and liquor. and all i have to show for it, at this moment, is this little tidbit:


so now to a human tradition: the toasting of a birthday. and the inevitable spanking. i mean, drinking.

the hodgepodge.

random observations from an exhausted adcenter student on a wednesday afternoon:

1. today i watched a man in jeans and a white t-shirt dance with the spirit of three hundred drummers. he waltzed and moved next to the bus stop across from the adcenter. i couldn't help but think that music can transform any situation. any life. any second. a bunch of people stared at him from the second floor of this building. but i bet none of them had the guts to go join him.

2. i ate teriyaki chicken from the thai cabin for lunch. i'll admit, i tend to travel the same routes around this building. coffee? to shockoe. sandwich? to southern railway. pizza? jo jos. same old streets for the same old addictions. so today i got food from a cart - for the first time since i've been calling this place my home again. i think i never thought the food could be good. call it my internal barrier. because the other places i frequent are such gourmet beacons. right. stupid assumptions.

3. i've been at my new apartment for a month now. and, in that time, my contact with my parents has dwindled to almost nothing. not because i don't want to talk to them. but i guess it's because i'm busy. or because there's family drama working it's way through. i wonder how often i avoid issues because it's easier to not drive farther down the street to say hi.

4. i'm being watched right now. by rebecca. she wants eternal glory in the blog space. i told her it won't happen. because clearly by not saying her last name, she joins the 129,093,423,498,483,290 of rebeccas in the world. so, joke's on her. ha.

5. i probably need to shower.

6. i can't wait for the fire throwing people on friday night.