Why Kenyon College kicks ass

from Liberal Arts

Top 3 question I've been asked since moving from Portland, OR to Charleston, SC for med school - Where'd you go to college?  

I've learned that this question has three right answers - Clemson, USC (hint: not LA), or token small Christian college in South Carolina.  I feel like the odd one out.. my answer: uh, I went to a small liberal arts school in Ohio called Kenyon College - it was mostly rich hippies' kids.  

For all of you that don't know Kenyon - I thought I'd explain why Kenyon College kicks so much ass.  Here's the top 4 coolest things produced by Kenyon College:

4) Liberal Arts

The latest film from the star of How I Met Your Mother Josh Radnor (Kenyon alum).  Liberal Arts is about an alum of a small liberal arts college that at age 35 still can't figure out what to do with his life.  If it sounds like your life - you just might love this movie.  Plus, it was huge at Sundance.

3) Artists

HUGE shoutout to my friends who are seriously pursuing art.  Kenyon has a knack for incubating young people who say - I don't care about having a normal 9-to-5 job/2.5 kids/white picket fence, I just want to do something COOL with my life.  

I admire that attitude of not giving a shit what the world wants you to do.  

Follow Your Heart

Matt Davis [link to his website], - to explain Matt - whenever I hear about one of his projects I say to myself - only Matt Davis could come up with something that weird.  

My favorite - a collage entitled Follow Your Heart, in which Matt ran from Gambier to Granville - a full marathon - while wearing an EKG device that recorded every beat of his heart.

Sarah Dougherty, living in NYC (sidenote - I'm super jealous, is there any better city for an aspiring writer?) and repping her English major on her blog - Salt That.  She is passionate about language's right to absurdism.  

Geoff + Kathy = heart

2) Geoff Anderson

Another Kenyon artist, but one that deserves a special shoutout for just getting engaged to Kathy Lin, which he means he made his fiance the luckiest woman in the world.  He also put up with living with me for two years.  He doubles as a teacher and published poet - "Amen" [link here].

1) Walk The Moon

Sidenote - it's easier to be an artist when you're in the safe environment of the Kenyon College bubble, but after picking up that diploma it gets a lot harder - college loans pile up, your parents email every other day with temp job websites, all while your friends are getting paid and living large.  Except Walk The Moon didn't conform. They said fuck the world and kept doing what they love.  And they blew up.  

Maybe you've heard their song Tightrope on the new HP commercial.  Their first hit "Anna Sun" is equally amazing - it's named after a sociology professor I had at Kenyon.  In the words of lead singer Nick Petricca: 

"It's about college, don't be afraid to play."  

Huge shoutout to Walk The Moon, Matt, Sarah, Geoff and all the other unmentioned dreamers from Kenyon College.  Please keep playing.

See you on the other side,

from ken

That was in the beginning, there was a hum

Today is the first day of the rest of your life, what will you do with it?

In the beginning...

That’s the question that awakened the writer within me last summer. In that first post, I raised the idea that you should stay in the moment and love your life now. It’s too easy for people to think: my life would be so much better if I had a job or my life will be exactly what I want as soon as I find a great woman.

Of course, this is not a novel idea, people have been talking about it, probably for about as long as people have been talking. I recently read the classic novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the take home message is that you can easily ruin your life by mindlessly pursuing goals. Clearly, people are aware of the dangers of obsessing about the future and not doing things you love in the day to day.

Knowing it is one thing, but living that life is a completely different plane.

My perspective has come a long way since that first post. I don’t know if it’s much different, but it’s certainly come a long way. I’ve written about 80 posts, read about 40 or 50 books, and spent countless nights sitting in the dark thinking about life. Sidenote – this was my favorite post Thank you running, and my favorite book was The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Both are my favorites for the same reason – they bleed emotion, and that’s what good writing should do, it should be infectious with soul.

This is why I love artists. I don’t particularly love art. I can’t remember the last time I went to an art museum, and I probably couldn’t tell you the difference between Mozart and Van Go. That said, to pursue something off the beaten track, it takes a whole lot of resolve to say, no I’m not going to follow the track set out for me by society. Instead, I’m going to carve out my own path, and work way harder than other people have to, so that I can live my dream out, every day.

I spent the other day filming a Justice Conference promo with two inspiring artists, Nate and Jarod. I’ve never filmed anything, so it was a novel experience to work with them, and to see into the eyes of film-makers. They had day jobs, but they also spent their weekends making films, trying to launch a career in film making. I would consider myself to be a hard working person, but if I work a ten hour day, I’m probably complaining about it all night. Here were these guys, waking up at 6 AM on a Saturday, shooting all day, wracking their minds to figure out how to reach people through their art, scavenging the Mt. Hood trails to find that perfect one second shot of me running between some trees.

As I saw into their day and heard their stories a little bit, I saw more. I remembered, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life, what will you do with it?” Seeing Nate and Jarod that day, I saw two guys who were really alive, and on fire for their dreams. More, they weren’t preparing to live their dreams, they were living their dreams, that day. They spent the day creating their artistic vision into reality, so they could communicate a small message of hope to the world.

As for myself, I feel like I need re-evaluate my life a little bit. When I spent the day with Nate and Jarod, I left inspired, knowing that someone out there was living the dream, but where did that leave my own life? If someone spent a Saturday with me, would they leave inspired, knowing that someone out there was living the dream?

So, today is the first day of the rest of your life. What will you do with it?

from ken

Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.

Stuff White People Like, Book Review

I just finished Christian Lander’s Stuff White People Like. It was hilarious. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Lander makes fun of white people, particularly the kind living in Portland. He goes ahead and lists out 150 topics and writes about a one page summary of why people like it. Some of Lander’s targets include Farmer’s Markets, hating corporations, gentrification, knowing what’s best for poor people, etc.

Anyways, as I neared the end of the book, I didn’t feel like the book got me that badly, and I was thinking high and mighty of myself. Psh Christian Lander thinks he can nail all young people, he can’t get me, but he did get x, y, and z white people that I know. They are such stereotypes. But not me, I’m totally original. And of course, the second to last topic was “Self-Importance/blogging.”

To paraphrase, he explains how this topic epitomizes white people, and actually provides the explanation behind every other topic in the book. White people like farmers markets and scarves, not because they like vegetables and being warm, but because it makes them feel important and cool. Through blogging, white people have taken the thoughts that they previously recorded in personal diaries, to a public platform, and concurrently taken self-importance to a whole new level.

All that to say, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past ten months. I specialize in concerns about the future, over-analyzing insignificant events, and thinking about myself. And I’m ok with it. I think telling stories, relating with others, and helping lift the weight of others is the point of life. And maybe my story can tell others, “Yeah, it’s ok to think about yourself sometimes, and yeah, it’s ok to think about life sometimes.”

It’s like David Foster Wallace’s famed commencement speech at Kenyon College a few years back. It starts with a story of two young fish swimming through the river, and they see an older fish that greets them, “Howdy boys, how’s the water?” and goes by. Later, one of the young fish says to the other, “What’s water?”

Maybe it’s not necessary for everyone to keep an online running commentary of their thoughts, as here. But I think it’s good for everyone to think about life sometimes, and now I’ll defer to the wisdom of a story-teller far superior to myself:

“Our business is to give our world and ourselves tools to imagine and create and heal. Stories that cherish the quiet moments. Stories of a world that works for everyone. Stories about a world worth saving.”
- Brian Andreas

from ken

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

Why hip-hop?

I just finished reading a brilliant guide to writing by hippy Christian Anne Lamott called bird by bird. The premise of the book is that writing is not about being published or finishing a screenplay. Instead it’s about opening your soul to reveal unspeakable truths.

This insight is precisely why I wanted to write. I wanted to be open with myself, admit my struggles, allow others to connect with my struggles where they might, and not worry so much about the judgment of the majority that won’t connect. Since making this realization my appreciation for art and artists has grown tenfold.

There are certain truths that cannot be revealed through speech. There is something inherently beautiful about the metaphor in a beautifully depicted novel, a perfect moment captured via photograph, or through a simple but catchy beat. Of all forms of art that catchy beat might be my favorite.

I love music for its availability to everyone. Movies, art, and books tend to be on the high culture side, but music is much more of an equalizer across all corners of society.

Especially through pop culture, music has the ability to crack into the mainstream. Whereas the average person might not want to listen to a lecture about poverty in the developing world or read an article about how injust the world is, it’s a whole different story to listen to a song that speaks to those same injustices. Music can be an amazing vehicle to get people thinking about truth.

One of my favorites is the Somali-Canadian rapper/poet K’naan. You’ve probably heard of him from his 2010 World Cup promotional anthem “Wavin’ Flag.” But one of my other favorites is “ABCs”, a song that highlights the violence that comes from the helplessness of poverty. He describes his own music as “urgent music with a message.”

Breaking through rap stereotypes, his music shows everything that is still relevant about modern hip-hop. Similar to other hip-hop greats like Nas’ "If I Ruled the World" and 2pac’s "Changes", K'naan writes about the state of the world, specifically the struggles he saw growing up in war-torn Somalia.

His music, a mixture of American hip-hop and Ethiopian jazz, is so catchy that his message is unavoidable. It’s really a blessing that his message is one of thinking outside the small compartment of ourselves. Such a relief that there are still mainstream artists out there trying to tell a truth.

from ken

Are you trying to change your life? I'd love to hear about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com