Bulletin Board of the Brain » Quotes

Narrative Cocktails

Kj — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:11:50 +0000

Time for another round up of Intiman Theatre’s specialty cocktails, some from last season and some we’re serving right now. I created a lot of these. I did not create the cute little quotes.

Try these at home.

The Year of Magical Thinking
By Joan Didion

The Gin Didion –
A mature, refreshing drink with the strength of a martini and a cool finish.
Muddle cucumber and lime and one sugar cube (peeled & blended cucumber works best)
6-count of Tanqueray Gin
Shake
Serve up
Top with Soda
Garnish with cucumber slice

The Ordinary Instant
A beautifully layered drink, pleasantly sweet but tempered with citrus and tonic.
Make directly on rocks
4-count Citrus Vodka
1.5-count Tonic
.5-count Chambord, poured over spoon to settle
Garnish with lemon

Abe Lincoln in Illinois
By Robert E. Sherwood

Drinkin’ with Lincoln
As comfortable as a slice of homemade apple pie.
Put a solid dash of bitters on a sugar cube, muddle with orange.
4-count Applejack
.5-count Goldschlager
Shake
Serve on rocks
Top with soda
Garnish with a cherry

The Mud Wagon
A drink fit for a Postmaster — or a President.
3-count Kahlua
2-count Dewar’s Scotch
2-count Drambuie
Shake
Serve up
Top with a generous amount of soda
Garnish with lemon

Black Nativity
Book By Langston Hughes
Music Direction by Pastor Patrinell Wright

The Poinsettia
Add a little sparkle to your holiday.
½ flute of champagne
1-count of Grand Marnier
Fill with cranberry juice
Garnish with lime twist

The Winter Warming
A cozy drink for a cold winter night.
Splash of honey in a cup/mug
Fill ½ with hot water
Stir with cinnamon stick to dissolve
Squeeze a lemon wedge, drop in
4-count of Makers Mark Bourbon
Stir & serve

Paradise Lost
By Clifford Odets
The Gold Standard
This smooth concoction is worth its weight in gold.
4-count Jameson’s Irish Whiskey
1-count Peach Schnapps
Serve on rocks
Top with Izze Sparkling Clementine juice
Garnish with lime

The New Deal
Find your own cure for the recession with this tart delight.
Muddle pink grapefruit
5-count Tanqueray GIn
1-count Campari
1-count Grapefruit Juice
Dash of bitters
Shake
Serve up
Top with soda
Garnish with grapefruit

The Thin Place
By Sonya Schneider 
Conceived and Directed by Andrew Russell 

The Shaken Rainier – Featuring locally-made Dry Soda
This elegant blend of muddled lime, Tanqueray gin, Green Chartreuse, and Juniper Dry Soda evokes the verdant forests of the northwest mountains.
Muddle lime
5-count Tanqueray Gin
1-count Green Chartreuse
Shake
Serve up
Top with 2-count Juniper Dry Soda
Garnish with lime (or rosemary)

The Sound – Featuring locally-made Dry Soda
Calm your senses with this delicate combination of lemon, Smirnoff citrus vodka, Chambord, and Lavender Dry Soda; rose-tinted like the sunsets over Puget Sound.
Muddle lemon lightly
3-count Citrus Vodka
1-count Chambord
Shake
Serve on the rocks
Top with 2-count Lavender Dry Soda
Garnish with lemon (or lavender)

Ruined
By Lynn Nottage

The Karibu (Welcome)
Let us welcome you with this delightful concoction. You’ll feel right at home.
Muddle lemon
2-count Captain Morgan Spiced Rum
2-count Brandy
2-count Sweet Vermouth
1-count Red Apple Schnapps
Heavy splash of cranberry juice
Shake
Serve up
Garnish with a cherry (dropped in)

The Sunbird
Fly into the sun with this smooth, refreshing mix of muddled lemon, Smirnoff Citrus Vodka, Amaretto, and Chambord. It’s like rich berry lemonade.
Muddle lemon
3-count Citrus Vodka
2-count Disaronno Amaretto
1-count Chambord
Shake
Serve up
Top with soda
Garnish with lemon

Kj’s Corner: Mythopoeia, Monsters and Jesus Oh My!

Kj — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 23:27:10 +0000

For my second Kj’s Corner in “Theology & the Artistic Impulse” I explored the concept of Mythopoeia as described primarily by George MacDonald, JRR Tolkein and CS Lewis. For part of the lecture, (screenshots below) I also used a scene from the documentary Monster Camp (see the trailer below) and the preview for the documentary We Are Wizards (also below), to look at some cultural examples of how we attempt to inhabit the narratives that either enchant our lives or drive us to escape our lives. Thanks again Chelle for the opportunity to teach a bit, and thanks to the class for your gracious engagement and conversation around my little corners.

(This image is “Lucy & the Lampost” by Bridget Beth Collins. I have a copy hanging on my wall.)

Suggested reading on Mythopoeia:

C.S. Lewis: “On Stories” & “On Three Ways of Writing for Children”

George MacDonald: “The Imagination” & Lillith

JRR Tolkein: “”On Fairy Stories” & The Lord of the Rings (duh)

Kristin Johnson: “Tolkein’s Mythopoesis” in Tree of Tales

The Christian Imagination edited by Leland Ryken

Kj’s Corner: Real Presences & Adaptation

Kj — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 09:38:16 +0000

This summer I had the opportunity to serve as research assistant to Dr. Chelle Stearns for her course on “Theology & the Artistic Impulse.” This meant I got to give two lectures on the class material. (At MHGS we don’t use student TA’s due to dual relationship concerns- so research assistant is a kind of newish thing). Struck with the utter surprise and amazingness of this opportunity, I sort of wondered out loud about it to Chelle, and her response was, that since I’m likely heading into academia moreso than ministry proper, it makes sense that as I got to practice pastoring in my program, I should also get a chance to try on teaching before I graduate. I guess its a good sign that the thought of having two whole hours of class to do with what I wish felt like receiving a ticket to DisneyWorld. Frankly- i would have loved even more time, but two lectures was PLENTY work for this crazy final term. So twice I got to facilitate classtime, focusing on any aspect of the readings- through whatever lenses I felt like bringing to it. Chelle dubbed the time “Kj’s Korner.”

1st lecture: The week’s reading was George Steiner’s “Real Presences,” an incredibly difficult but fascinating text. The amazon review gives a good idea of what I had to work with: “Steiner asserts moral and metaphysical issues are the basis of all art and that our experience of meaning in music, painting and literature presupposes the existence of God as a “necessary possibility.” Dense, difficult, rewarding, this passionately argued essay ranges fluently over aesthetics, linguistics, philosophy, post-structuralism, the range of Western culture.”

As I do with all things, I read, asking myself, “What else does this bring to mind? Where do I see this applied in a way that makes sense to me?” I quickly landed on Charlie Kaufman’s film Adaptation. I used quotes from the book to explore scenes from the film and scenes from the film to explore concepts from the book, etc. Here’s some images my my lecture, as well as the opening scene of the film.

Do You Remember?: Exile, Identity and Prince Caspian

Kj — Mon, 31 May 2010 04:01:38 +0000

For the C.S. Lewis class, four of us did a presentation on Prince Caspian. We focused on the novel’s theme of exile and return, viewed through the lens of Isaiah. Since I first read the book in 1999, I’ve been haunted by the image of the Penvensie children wandering around the ruins of a castle only to slowly realize its their former home of Cair Paravel, but somehow hundreds of years have passed. That feeling of being in a place that was once home, but is now completely unfamiliar or in ruins is resonant of other characters in the book who have been living exiled from their culture or identity. The tree spirits have gone dormant, the animals have gone wild and forgotten how to speak, or hidden their speech if they’ve not gone wild, dwarves have had to “pass” for men, and even the children have trouble recovering the memories of their Narnian identity.

We wanted to offer our classmates an aspect of this experience in the context of our own lives. We did this in three ways. First we completely demolished the classroom. As people entered the room, they had to sit amongst the ruins, or as some identified, the “war zone” remains of the classroom. Then, with many people on the floor next to turned over chairs and tables, we began by hearing portions of Isaiah 44, which in the context of the Narnia story and our sitting in the rubble of our classroom, held more potent meaning than I’d expected. Here’s a bit of the text.
Isaiah 44:21-28

21 Remember these things, O Jacob,and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you, you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me. 22 I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud, and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you. 23 Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it; shout, O depths of the earth; break forth into singing, O mountains, O forest, and every tree in it! For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and will be glorified in Israel. 24 Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who by myself spread out the earth; 25 who frustrates the omens of liars, and makes fools of diviners; who turns back the wise, and makes their knowledge foolish; 26 who confirms the word of his servant, and fulfills the prediction of his messengers; who says of Jerusalem, “It shall be inhabited,” and of the cities of Judah, “They shall be rebuilt, and I will raise up their ruins”; 27 who says to the deep, “Be dry— I will dry up your rivers”; 28 who says of Cyrus, “He is my shepherd, and he shall carry out all my purpose”; and who says of Jerusalem, “It shall be rebuilt,” and of the temple, “Your foundation shall be laid.”

Then, still in the dark and destroyed classroom, we played this video.
(It had music but we can’t seem to get it to play).
It works best (is most emotionally manipulative) if you play some wordless soundtrack music with it. We used Max Richter.
And the video ends at 3:32, but the powerpoint continues after it.

The Caspian Experience from Kj Swanson on Vimeo.

Then we led a more formal presentation and discussion time, but as we spoke, two of our group members slowly returned to classroom to its proper shape, so by the time we were done, the room looked normal again, except that no one was sitting in their usual place. Everyone was spread out along the edges or in clumps at some tables. Many of us had been “exiled” by the disruption of the space.

Hard to say how much of our ideas came across in the presentation or even in this blog post, but we loved doing it. I realized in the process that this was probably my last group project ever at MHGS, and I loved getting to work with people I’d never partnered with before. I felt like I was the old timer getting to work with the energetic whippersnappers who will be at MHGS long after I’ve graduated. Kind of like old Professor Kirke getting to hear Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy tell about the world they found in the wardrobe. It was wonderful.

Of Mice and Meals

Kj — Fri, 07 May 2010 19:08:55 +0000

Redwall by Brian Jacques

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Continuing in my process of reading books for young people that I neither read nor heard of as a young person, I’ve started the Redwall series. Actually, my friend Tucker holds Mossflower as one of the most influential books in his life, and I want to read that, but it comes after this first book, Redwall, so I read ths first.

It was sweet. Can’t say I was ever at a loss for what would happen next or which cranky bad guys would turn out to be good, or what monstrous villain would suffer a vicious death or which sweet mouse girl would marry the brave mouse hero, but the world of woodland creatures who inhabit castles, belong to mouse monk orders and gather dandelions for salads, was quite a reprieve from my graduate studies.

But putting the more-than-predictable plot aside, the true delight of this book is the descriptions of food and feasts the medieval woodland creatures create. I leave you with some incandescently hunger-arousing descriptions.

“Tender freshwater shrimp garnished with cream and rose leaves, deviled barley pearls in acorn puree, apple and carrot chews, marinated cabbage stalks steeped in creamed white turnip with nutmeg.”

View all my reviews >>

We’re On The InterWebs!

Kj — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:56:10 +0000

Here’s my 9 & 1/2 minutes on my Twilight & Evangelical culture research. Click here or on the links below to see more MHGS MDiv Integrative Project Presentations.

MDiv Integrative Projects – Kj Swanson from Mars Hill Graduate School on Vimeo.

And She Took All These Things And Pondered Them In Her Heart

Kj — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 21:51:35 +0000

Thanks friends.

Today

Kj — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:35:19 +0000

I’m giving my 8 minute intro/overview of my Twilight paper at MHGS.

Quite a few people have asked to read the paper. I’m happy to email a copy to anyone who’s interested. Just let me know where to send it.

Cheers, Kj

Weirdest Birthday Greeting I’ve Ever Sent

Kj — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 08:25:58 +0000

“If you were Queen Victoria under the controlling hand of Sir John Conroy, this would be the first day you could actually step into your power as sovereign. So glad neither of you ever had to sign a regency order. Happy 25th!”

Ah…the Pleasures of Juxtaposition

Kj — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:41:46 +0000

From Joshua, the consummate minimalist