Ddr arrows out of sync autobiography
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a slice of my mind
also on mit admissions (actually this is my last admissions post for the foreseeable future)
there is a ddr (dance dance revolution) machine in the basement of walker memorial. i have known this fact for at least a year, but didn’t bother actually checking out the machine until around two weeks ago, because i’ve never been good at rhythm games and have relatively slow reaction times so i assumed ddr would be a struggle
the basic mechanics of ddr are as follows: there are four pads on the ground, each corresponding to an arrow direction (up/down/left/right). players choose from a variety of songs; when a song begins, arrows begin moving from the bottom of the screen to the top, and the player’s job is to step on the pads at the same time that the corresponding arrows reach the top of the screen; you get points based on how well your footsteps match the onscreen arrow movements. usually the arrow patterns are designed to match the beats and rhythms of the song, so if played correctly you should feel like you’re moving in sync with the song
i ended up enjoying ddr a lot more than i’d expected to, largely because the learning curve for beginners is well-designed and pretty satisfying. over the course of my first hour of gameplay i learned how to ke
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The Camp and the City (Eastern Times/Western Times)
Into what system are migrants welcomed? What are the prescriptions of the request?
EVERYTHING BEGINS before it begins, but also and always after: the ritualized encounter with one’s self, by the act of returning to repeat one’s self, to meet one’s self or one’s double in the tomorrow of today, which has just occurred or will be. Take a breath. (Everything in the world begins like this.) Open up. Squeeze the trigger, by which I mean your index; the finger but also the gesture of indexicality, the rush that comes from accretion, or its appearance — the link between availability and possibility, possibility and the primacy of dreams — the pointing toward an unconsummated yet consumable possession, which arrives upon waking, or walking, around Berlin.
What gaze prevents or presents an atrophy of being?
Like all performances, Berlin’s staging of history is a means not to remember so much as an attempt at exorcism, transmuting the past into something so public it can’t actually be seen; a city operating under the well-known artifice that everything today needs to be seen to be believed and yet nothing one sees can be taken for the real. Let me, too, be for others what I can never be for myself.
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At some point, if I’m