Sunset Leaving Barcelona, September 22, 2013

Summer/Fall Culture Project 2013

Introduction to Project

Jenee` Crayne

             After three… now four… now eight weeks, damn now nine of culminating ever shifting ideas, reading many books and online journals (listed below), partaking in conversations and interviews, wondering how I am going to configure this project, doing a great deal of looking, listening, criticizing, enjoying, attempting to find God, desperately trying to zen out, realizing you cannot find god, being completely un-zen, eating, bitching, loving, attempting to write (but each time it all comes out either as drivel or pretentious bullshit), drinking, living on a cruise ship for five weeks: sleeping in a bed just bigger than a cot... with my man, sleeping in a room no bigger than a closet with no natural air or light, attempting to write, coveting other peoples windows for the first time, having lunch with four thousand other people on Mondays, thinking I am finally ready to configure this project, speaking atrociously in three languages, not understanding other people in at least five different languages, knowing how damn fortunate I am although I feel as if I live on a floating hell; attempting to write again, taking lots of photographs, being disgusted with people taking lots of photographs... including myself; living back on back on land, staying with a Spanish family, in apartments, a moldy studio, an old cloister, feeling what culture really is, communicating in four languages, feeling terrible that I have not yet configured this project, again attempting to write, understanding where god is, getting married to myself, being blessed by a German Cardinal, confessing for the first time and finding out that not living up to your potential is not a mortal sin and only gets you three hell Mary's, giving up trying to write, giving up the masterpiece, and ending up in a Tuscan Villa ; I no longer think I am ready to start configuring this project because this whole journey has been the configuration; arriving home and I just hope now that I can finally complete all the many pieces of writing I have attempted along the way.

            One of the reasons this project has been a challenge to configure, but because I did not have a syllabus given to me at the beginning of it. I also have not been given writing prompts each week. I have had to be my own prompter. This has been a challenge. At first, I likened it to the world outside of school where you do not have teachers presenting material to you and guiding you through the thought process of the material, but working life quite often has superiors laying out duties and responsibilities, too. At the newspaper I shoot for, I have an editor who gives me photo assignments. I also have clients, which come to me with specific photos they want me to take. Working life is not all that different from scholastic life, except hopefully you get paid.

            So, here with this project I have been feeling a bit out to sea, literally at times and figuratively, on how to pull all of this fragmented empirical data together into some sort of cohesive whole. Part of the project is the desire of how to tell the story of what it is like to live on a cruise ship and be a part of its culture for six weeks, through the eyes of an individual and collective perspective. What it is like to continuously port in a new amazing European city six days out of the week, but somehow feel cheated because you only have a few hours to experience the culture and beauty of it before you have to race back on the ship, because it will leave without you and your man will get fired. What it is like to live in the in between: I neither work on this ship nor am I vacationing on it. I feel somewhat like a stowaway, except that I do not have to hide...well not all of the time. How to write about all of this, without coming across like an asshole, has been my charge to myself.

            I keep failing at this charge, and my culture is partly to blame. I have felt that I to complete it all on my own, individually. I did not reach out to you for guidance, for some reason I thought I had to do it alone.

            Below was the outline I made for myself on week three. I have been working on completing it ever since. I will not be sending you my work in progress. I plan to have it completed before term two begins. I do apologize for being a victim of my culture and not sending you my work as I stumbled along.

Below is a basic outline (written on week three of nine) of the all the fragmented empirical data put together into some sort of cohesive whole:

A. The overall main goal:

1. Present and back up the idea that a Liberal Arts/Studies education is important in understanding the Collective Culture of Humans. This Cultural understanding helps us understand ourselves more fully and therefore helps us understand each other better, which hopefully will lead to recognize the fact that we are more similar that different.

a. Main Paper: How a Liberal Arts Education helps expand the individual   perspective.

B. Minor Goals: (this list is a work in progress)

1. Culture Defined  (1. Short Reflection Essay).

2. Write about the culture of Cruise Ships from a perspective of an in-betweener (one who is neither working nor vacationing on a ship AKA- me):

a. The Great In-between: Jenee Crayne... Just Cruising (2. Short Reflection Essay).

b. Dante Descents Analogy of Hell: History of the Constant Good Time (Poem).

c. Yellow Cards and Then The Rest: The Great Divider (Poem and photo).

d. Likes, Dislikes, and Why They Keep Coming Back: Interviews with the Crew (Short Reflection Essay).

e. The Crew Bar: The Great Equalizer (Poem and Photo Montage).

f. The Symbol of a Window: Is It Day or Is It Night? (3. Reflection Essay and photo).

g. Finding Freedom in an Electric Car (Poem and Photo & Video Montage).

h. Chivi: a Love Song (Poem and Photo Montage).

4. Reflections on Culture experienced in the European Cities

a. Rome: Past Past, Distant Past, Past, Present, Future (Short Reflection Essay and Photo Montage).

b.  Uno, Duex, Tre: How Language brings us together and keep us apart, a personal perspective (Prose, Poem, Song, or Short Essay... not sure yet).

5. Write about how we are becoming second person observers of our lives because of photography:

a. Culture Snapped: How We Are Becoming Second Person Observers to our own Lives (4.Reflection Essay).

9. Photo Series

                  Shipscapes

                  Cobble Stones

C. Books I brought for the project:

1. Rome: Eyewitness Travel Guides (432 pages) (thanks Peggy)

2. History of God by: Karen Armstrong

3. Philosophy for Beginners by: Richard Osborne

4. About Looking by: John Berger

5. Physical Science in the Middle Ages by: Edward Grant

6. Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo  Translated by: Stillman Drake

7. Simply Yoga by: Yolanda Pettinato

8. Time Magazine August 12, 2013 Articles of interest: The Child Free Life and Pope & Change

9. The Inferno by: Dante  Translated by: John Ciardi (Bought in  Firenze)

Other books that I might not get to:

9. The Great Transformation by: Karen Armstrong

10. Interior Castle by: St. Teresa of Avila

11. Dark Night of the Soul  by: St. John of the Cross

D. Online Journals

1. The Creature and The Culture by: WALTER SHEAR

2. From the Bible as Literature to Literature as Theology: A Theological Reading of Genesis as a Humanities Text  by: William Franke

3. Christianity, Identity, and Cultures: A Case Study by: Gerald A. Arbuckle

4. The Existence of God: Can It Be Demonstrated? by: LAWRENCE DEWAN

5.  Faith and Reason In An Age of Humanity 2.0: by: Steve Fuller

6. Chains of Dependency: On the Disenchantment and the Illusion of Being Free at Last (Part 2)  by: PAUL SMEYERS

7. The Value of the Humanities and Arts By: Michael Purdy

8.  Journeys in Poetry, Painting and Philosophy  by: EARL MACKENZIE

9. Developing a Conceptual Framework; Philosophy, Articulation, Alignment, and Coherence by: Jeanine M. Dell'Olio

10. SCIENCE OF RELIGION AND THEOLOGY: AN EXISTENTIAL APPROACH  by: George Karuvelil

11. ‘What is it, then, between us?’ 1 A Response to Two Responses BY :Natasha Synesiou

12. Online info about St. Cecilia

13. How Cruise Ships work by: Josh Briggs

14. Norwegian's Freestyle Monthly September 2013, Issue 55 (This is the Cruise Ship's monthly newsletter that it gives to all crew members).

E. Ports of Call

1. Barcelona (Spain)

a. Montserrat

2. Napoli (Italy)

a. Mt. Vesuvius (NO)

b. Pompeii

c. Hot Springs

3. Roma (Italy)

a. Civitavecchia

4. Livorno  (Italy)

a. Pisa

b. Firenze

c. Lucca (cooking school)

d. Cinque Terra (NO)

5. Marseille   (France)

b. Avignon

c. Mary Mag Church ??(NO)

6. Mallorca   (Spain)

a. Palma

c. Port de Solier