The Van Burens are believers in intertextuality, the concept that we derive all of our creative ideas from past experiences, that there are no “new” ideas. We think of the unwitting recurrence of past experiences as rhymes or echoes of the voices and faces we’ve been lucky enough to be surrounded by. Recently I have taken up two discrete hobbies: climbing and beer brewing.
The unlikely combination of a couple craft beers and the urge to pull my body UP seemed all-too-natural an idea to me, as though I didn’t invent the concept, until I remembered that I hadn’t. When VB members lived together with friends in Providence in the summer of 2007, we lived with the avid climber, Buddha. On Tuesday evenings, after work, he would bring home a six pack of Honey Brown Ale and engage in a ritual known as “Drunk Tuesdays.” After two and a quarter beers, Buddha would be ready to climb every doorway and window frame on Power Street, and sometimes even the grad center if he was feeling especially saucy. As part of our beanseries, we bring you the Buddha ringtone: Climbing on a Tuesday. Click on the cowed out Buddha hanging with P Bear to access the tone.
“Climbing slowly and gracefully”
