Riley MacLeod

rcmacleod@post.harvard.edu

I'm not a big picture-taker, so the only pictures I have of me are of me playing the sax in my marching band, The Rude Mechanical Orchestra. I'm the short one with the sax. The picture is from an event called "Folly Day" that local brass bands do every year, where we are provided with the rubric for some kind of scavenger hunt as an excuse to run around town, encounter each other, yell and/or play a song and/or tackle each other, and then run away. I don't understand it either.

This is my third semester at Queens College. I have a BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU and a Master's of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. I'd like to work in an academic library. I'd also like to save the world with research, a la Giles from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," by shouting "To the books!" at a pivotal moment in world history. I also want to one day write a book about religion and punk rock, after I've saved the world. So I think these are pretty good life goals. 

My favorite books are Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson, most everything by Solzhenitsyn, The Immoralist by Andre Gide, and I'm currently working my way through all of Remembrance of Things Past by Proust.  I don't see a lot of movies, but I sometimes watch tv on the internet in order to procrastinate on everything. I recently got a tattoo of the time machine from "Doctor Who," so that's an insanely nerdy fact about me.

Besides the band, I like to ride my bike, write, play a variety of other instruments, and do activism regarding queer rights and prison abolition. I have had a variety of wacky adventures involving boats, which could either be catagorized under "hobbies" or "life-threatening and absurd adventures," which I suppose is also a hobby.

I actually think most social media applications are overused and unnecessary, so I'm interested to gain a new perspective by taking this class.

I think we have to add our Flickr account here? Here!