Fun_LateNightToo

Captured via photographic technology, this is a kinda-sequel to last year's "This Is My Late Night Conversations;" it's actually a casualty of a social experiment I undertook junior year: I wanted to see if it would be possible to live with Yalies for a year and feel absolutely nothing towards them at year's end, like perfect strangers, meanwhile examining the emotions that come from self-imposed isolation.

The big goal was to see if by actively seeking and imposing isolation on myself, I could manipulate and master everything I've felt since Freshman Year, which I could then use to improve or inform my art since I feed off of my feelings to operate creatively, like an actor.

My suitemates seemed like nice enough people, but I did everything in my power to maintain that early unfamiliarity, since that would only leave room for isolation's misery and discord to form, if anything.

The golden rule was simple: Don't interact with them (not even visually) unless it's unavoidable. This was a response to how I would drop everything to interact with my Freshman Year suitemates.

My bid to stay emotionally uninvested in my junior year suitemates was a success: I don't know what three of the four(?) look like, and I can't match voices with faces.

In the process of avoiding them, there were some big misunderstandings that erupted over the year, but I chose not to clarify their confusion, letting them speculate all they wanted behind their paper-thin JE walls. They impressed me with some beautifully ugly passive-aggression that helped accomplish the main purpose of my experiment: to manipulate misery.

After one of their particularly painful, poignant moves, I stole away to WLH and drew on some blackboards, riffing off of pure emotion. The result doesn't look too good, as is usually how that sort of drawing goes, but it felt great. Really great.

I love Yale. I loathe May 2010.

Reuxben