I’ve been there only the past two, but what an amazing ten years CMS has had. For the past few months, I’ve been putting together a history of the program, which is available at cms.mit.edu and on Scribd:
On Friday we held an all-day symposium, featuring about 40 alums, this year’s ten graduate students, and dozens of guests from around MIT. But the highlight by far was on Thursday, when we welcomed back former CMS director Henry Jenkins for a Communications Forum, where he spoke of a career at MIT. I happened to be sitting directly behind the Dean, who briefly shrank to almost nothing when Henry’s first words were, “I hate this fucking place!”, not realizing he was citing the old MIT student slogan (since adopted by other institutions, including the military service academies).
The Bat Segundo Show Podcast. The best audio interviews with writers about their books and craft. The show is up to 80+ interviews, and in just the last two weeks they’ve interviewed Kate Atkinson, Francine Prose, and Kelly Link.
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For Writers
Ever since that one phone company came out with the “KRAZR” to follow up their “RAZR,” I’ve been wondering if someone in their marketing department is a James Brown fan:
Get down with my woman, that ain’t right
You hollarin’ and cussin’, you wanna fight
Don’t do me no darn favor,
I don’t know karate, but I know KA-RAZor
It’s one of the top three badass lyrics of all time. As a writer, do you think you could create a character badass enough to pull off a line like “I don’t know karate, but I know ka-razor”?
Creative writing began, well, as creative speaking. The first thing you learn in 9th grade World History is that the first fancypantsers did their fancypantsing through speech.
So let’s move back to that, now that we can. The intimacy of audio distribution has returned.
At the beginning, it was voice —> air —> ear. Very intimate, but very limited.
Then it was voice —> tape —> production —> tractor trailer —> stores —> many ears. Not so intimate and still pretty limited.
But now it’s voice —> computer —> many, many ears. Intimate in everything except physical presence, and limited only by folks’ unwillingness to use it.
Some literary journals are moving ahead, finally following news sites’ lead, making good use of audio in podcasty and non-podcasty ways. And to their credit, it’s a mix of audio readings of stories and poems already in print but also of extra goodies, recordings that complement a litmag and extend its mission.
