On Monday Nov. 12, the Cybercafe at the Mattin Center hosted the premiere of Open Mic night at JHU. The event is the brainchild of senior Writing Seminars major Joel Aure, who also emceed. The forum is intended to allow poetic, musical, comedic and theatrical voices to shine at Hopkins. Aure kicked off the evening with three poems, "Katherine," "Katherine at the Ruby Lounge" and "Descending at the New Year's Party," touching on past loves and evoking one of the old masters. T.S. Eliot's verse ("The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock") found a postmodern echo in Aure's work when he spoke of preparing "a face to meet the faces that you meet".
Among the other participants were Emmett Luty and Jessica Schneider, both Class of '02 Writing Sems majors. Luty read an essay entitled "The Unfairness of Emmett's Utter Lack of a Love Life," which made those assembled laugh out loud at this affirmation of Hopkins' social life or lack thereof. Next up, Schneider recited her poem about a nudist colony, entitled "The Naketers," warming up the crowd when mentioning the travails of those with foreskins and the circumcised.
The tempo shot up when the first musical guest appeared on the stage, Jeff Blehar, a senior history major, who sang songs he had written and composed himself, while playing acoustic guitar. Blehar jokingly prefaced his first untitled song with "This is dedicated to the one I love." He went on to sing "Fake Plastic Trees" and "Nude or Big Ideas Don't Get Any." Blehar has a great voice and real sincerity when he is singing, both of which strike me as rare in the bubble-gum music world of today. An as-yet-unnamed jazz quartet was the next act. They all met as members of the Jazz Ensemble and decided to form a group. They were the opening act for Maynard Ferguson, a Grammy-nominated jazz trumpetist who appeared at Shriver Hall on Nov. 13.
Open Mic Night is inspired by Coffee Grounds, a similar type of event that took place during the 1998-1999 school year. Aure wanted to establish something that would give artists all of kinds free-reign to express themselves, but that would be completely independent of Hopkins. The ambiance of the place was friendly, with over 30 people showing up for its debut, but Hopkins' resistance to installing more lighting - candles and halogen lamps because of the fire hazard - keeps the Cybercafe from reaching the Greenwich Village-type coffee shop atmosphere amenable to this type of event. However, Open Mic Night is a laudable attempt to give the arts a place to breath at Hopkins. Last words of advice from Aure? "Show up, it'll be a good time.
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