Week 7, Theme 3

Prompt: Explicitly in “Grammar Questions” and “French Lesson I: Le Meurtre,” but almost always in some manner, Lydia Davis’s stories meditate not only on experience but on how we talk and write about it. Use this approach in a theme to explore what is odd or revealing about our ways of framing and describing some aspect of our lives. Consider casting the theme as an essay taking this approach, or as a story illustrating it. Your theme might be a parody or pastiche of some official discourse or discipline, or some form of genre writing (the detective story, the romance).

Art: Facebook

All of the socially relevant kids know about it. Unless you’re too cool to have a Facebook (only acceptable for short amounts of time before social suicide inevitably sets in), you have looked at a well-done Facebook album and thought more of its maker. Facebook albums crown the sorority princess, install the hipster leader, make the poor kid rich. Conversely, Facebook albums can rule out people from the social “it” list – I know that you wouldn’t want to be seen lunching in Berkeley with the girl who just uploaded 200 unedited, repetitive Photobooth pictures of her making funny faces; I certainly wouldn’t be caught dead with her either.

So how do you do it, while avoiding missteps, kitsch, and pitfalls? It’s simple, really. Go through the photos you’ve taken recently (you should be taking photos at all socially meaningful events) and find a theme. A winter adventure to East Rock with certain A-list Theta girls and a few cute guys? Perfect – as long as there was a flask involved. No one wants to be caught doing something fully wholesome for an entire album. No more than a 1:3 ratio of non-people to people-containing photos; remember, this album is about who you’re with, not what you’re doing. It goes without saying that you’ve de-red-eyed and blemish-removed, unless you want the cool kids to untag themselves faster than you can say “pimple.” No repeat poses, unless something embarrassing or funny happens: if someone falls in the snow, you better have at least a six-shot sequence of her tumble. End the album with a darkened shot of the prettiest girl in the group, looking away from the photo, sipping something out of a mug with a mysterious smile on her face. And finally, the title – something that says nothing significant about what you’ve done, but is a witty wordplay. How about “Perils of the Tundra?”

There – simple. Now, enjoy your rising social caché. Don’t get sloppy, though. One album slip up and you’ll be right down where you started.