In case anyone cared...an introduction

Giving people information about myself over the internet isn't really a good idea, but I think it is my duty as a new blogger to at least give some context to any blog-viewer who happens upon this blog (blog blog blog). So, my name is Nathan Sacks, I'm 21, and I'm originally from Ames, IA. I go to Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, IA, famed for its use of the block plan (I'm not going to explain it: look it up.) I'm a junior and an English major.

I'm starting this because I seem to be at a creative high point right now, and while I am writing prolifically in many genres, I don't really have any method of publishing my work. Yes, I am so desperate that I would start a blog to get these ideas across, which probably means that they aren't that good to be actually published. No matter. This is probably more for me than it is for anyone else. For a while, I had a livejournal account, and it's actually still there, but it's time for me to move past the insipid high school Nathan and write about some real things. Not that I won't whine a lot. Basically, this is an attempt to get all my essays, poetry, prose, musings, longings, doodles, and drug-induced rants into one place. As such, it may seem schizophrenic--I can honestly tell you I am not actually schizophrenic.

Here are some things I am interested in:

Literature: Of course. I'm an English major. My personal tastes tend to lean more towards 20th century modernists and post-modernists, subcultural stuff ( from beats, losts, stream-of consciousness, etc.), and post-colonial literature, as well as a fair amount of creative non-fiction. Of course I'm a fan of Kerouac, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, James Joyce, Nabokov, Ishiguro, Pynchon, Philip Roth, as all college students should be. Personally, I am of the Harold Bloom school of analyzing works by their aesthetic qualities alone rather than through the lens of feminism or Marxism or what-have-you, although I've done plenty of feminist readings of books in the past and I definitely see the value in it, and I am very actively opposed to any set idea of a "canon," and I firmly believe that great literature is possible without being intimately familiar with Shakespeare or whoever.

Film: I spent a considerable amount of my days in high school educating myself with the great films of the past, by Welles, Eisenstein, Flaherty, Hawks, the usual. My current favorite directors include Todd Haynes, Richard Linklater, Jim Jarmusch, Wong Kar-Wai, Abbas Kiarostomi, and quite a few more that I don't feel like listing. I regard myself as a reformed auteurist. I spend a lot of my time reading film criticism. I don't believe that popular studio-based films are intrinsically less valuable than their independent or foreign counterparts, and I don't believe in guilty pleasures (this applies to literature and music as well): there is as much intrinsic value for me in Spider-Man 2 as there is in Diary of a Country Priest or whatever, and I have no trouble saying it. For that very reason, I am often critical of critics and award-givers alike who try to distinguish what is good "art" and what is good "entertainment" and try to determine which is more valuable.

Music: I can't claim to know more than a little about classical music, but I have an endless repository of knowledge about rock music. My last.fm account can be accessed here so you can get a better idea of what music I am generally into. I took piano lessons from when I was 5 to when I was 16, and I started playing guitar at the age of 15, which became my primary instrument from then on (I have also dabbled in bass, drums, mandolin, and a few other things). In high school, I was in a punk band called Espada Rosada that had a reasonable following amongst the Iowa State crowd (although not really at Ames High School...interesting). I would wager that music is the thing I spend the most time writing and thinking about, especially regarding the politics of popular music.

Politics: I don't want to simplify my views too much, but I would say that overall I am extremely to the left on social issues and slightly (slightly) hawkish on issues of national security, so in other words basically a New Republic democrat, except I'm not fanatically pro-Israel. My interests definitely skew American, and I have been following the 2008 presidential race religiously, despite having not chosen a candidate to support. Right now I'm leaning Kucinich. As an Iowan, I have an opportunity to be part of the Iowa Caucus, so I'll be sure to tell you guys about that.

Religion: Despite being raised in a reform (later conservative) Jewish household, I have never felt even a pang of belief in any sort of higher power, even when I was a young child. I consider myself to be an atheist even as I believe a label like that is unnecessary for people who think faith is a bullshit virtue (I tend to go along with A.C. Grayling, who thinks that non-believers should refer to themselves as "naturalists" who prefer scientific evidence of our surroundings). I am, nevertheless, very interested in the subject of religion, especially in how it forms our social circumstances and creates strife where there should not be any. I am absolutely of the opinion that the world would be significantly better without religion, and a significant portion of this blog will be spent debunking people who believe that people "need" the Bible, despite its faults, as a useful moral code. How can anyone actually believe that?

Girls: Something that I will rarely, if ever, discuss in this blog.

Academia: Something that is very interesting to me, of course, as a college student. The politics of Cornell College are extremely interesting, although I'm not sure how much I will be able to divulge and still have friends at the end of the day.

Psychological disorders: Something else I'm a bit uncertain about...certainly honest exploration of emotion is a given on any blog, but I don't want this to turn into a livejournal. In any case, I have a history of depression that I might want to explore at some point.

Of course that won't be all of what this blog is about, but it's a good start. Expect a lot of half-written, perhaps even badly written stuff. This isn't going to be a particularly outstanding blog, I can tell you. But it is mine.

I know my E-Mail seems to be smedley.smorganoff@gmail.com, but that's because this confounded blogger.com makes you get a gmail account. I would prefer it if you direct all questions and comments to N-Sacks@cornellcollege.edu. Please no bullshit about how I am a heathen, please.