Symposium Day

On Symposium Day, I attended presentations from Venues 7 and 8, which were the English and Creative Writing subjects. My favorite presentation was Joe Normandin's paper which compared his interpretation of beauty to the hardcore punk scene. He outlined valid beauty as the possession of judgment, taste, and value, and proved how each of these things is found withing the hardcore culture. He also explained how hardcore is split up into two subcultures, that of the straight edge members, and that of the do-it-yourself members. The straight edge culture revolves around not using any illegal substances, and not engaging in permiscuous sex. The DIY part advocates the self production of music without any help from corporations. He then finished by showing how all of these values and beauty come together at the Gilman St. venue. I really liked this part because he was so passionate about it and showed a true understanding of how important that club is to the real underlying meaning of hardcore punk. He was really effective in getting his audience to appreciate his ideas and to realize that hardcore punk isn't the offensive culture many people in the mainstream mistake it to be.

As far as what I could present at a future Symposium Day....I'm really not very sure. I am very interested in the function of literature as it evolves over the years. With the recent death of Kurt Vonnegut, who was possibly my biggest literary idol, I have thought about paying tribute to him at Symposium by proving how his works have changed the way we think about literature. That's just one possibility, but I know it would involve one of my great heroes and would try to point out how they've affected so many other great authors.