Drama 16 Stage Lighting

1) 2/24/14, 7 pm-ish

2) Lights in the top floor windows of Enterprise

3) I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but the towers on the residential side of campus all have faces. At the top of each tower, the way the windows are positioned on the uppermost floor and the floor just beneath it make the buildings look like they have two eyes and a mouth. I don’t really know how to describe this. Picture two narrow rectangles for eyes and a wider rectangle (one bigger window beneath the other two) as the mouth.

Every time I’m walking back from the gym and those lights are on, the residential buildings turn into a colony of giants with stoic faces. Normally it’s Enterprise that catches my attention. The geometric features of its face (rectangle mouth with clenched window pane teeth) don’t lend themselves to a smile or a frown. The giant just looks like its face hurts, as if it accidentally injected itself with too much botox and is stuck. Or it’s just sick of bracing against the cold winter wind. If it could speak it would probably say “HNNNNN!”

When the lights are off, the botox-infused, winter hating giant is sleeping, I’d guess. I think these giants are nocturnal, because next to sunlight, it’s hard to tell whether those lights are on or off, and it looks like they’re asleep. Against the black night, the eyes and mouth of the stone guardians stand out because they’re so full of light. That is when they’re awake. I feel camaraderie with these buildings. They’re night owls, like me.

1. Wednesday, Feb 8, 2012. 3:43 AM, My dorm room

2. My room is dark and quiet except for one string of multi-colored christmas lights that stretches from my door to just above the headboard of my bed. They cast a dim reddish light across the room, with each light projecting a tiny halo on the wall of the room.

3.The christmas lights in my room cast just barely enough light to see the outline of my furniture. Everything in this half light is shadowy, warm and close. It makes my room feel small and sweet and mine. The halos around each tiny individual light are bright and rich, projecting little fingers of beauty in small circles around them. The light they give off isn’t very strong, but it radiates pure colorwonderful that reminds your heart to beat slow and deep. The warmth and familiarity of something so simple as christmas lights takes me back to hot cocoa and peppermint ice cream, and laying under my christmas tree in Baltimore. With my heater on and The Mountain Goats playing through my speakers, late nights with my christmas lights are the most peaceful and comforting life ever gets at Hofstra.

1)2/23/11, 3;17am, Room 1408 Enterprise

2)Objective: Looking out the window at the all the lights of the city.

3) Subjective: Late night but early morning light descends upon the sky and the city lights gleam. Looking out the window at all the colors and lights mixing together to create a bright and beautiful view. It has an ambience all its own.