music

At the end of the day if its one thing most people look forward to is music. Music is another form of art, another way to express yourself and show your creativity. Yea we have all these professionals but there are allot of amateurs and plenty of people who like to sing in the shower or play an instrument. One thing we learned recently is that music brings people together. It may have been obvious by now but if you think about where and why it started to bring people together you'd be surprised. In our Humanities class we watched a documentary on jazz and the great depression. I'm sure music connected people before this but this time was truly a time where music was important. We were able to watch and witness how Jazz comforted people during this time. We said that it gave people hope and since it was free it became very popular not only that but it brought the best out of people. Luis Armstrong was a musical genius that transformed jazz and singing he really made it popular. When we heard one of his pieces I felt like tapping my foot or dancing my self, and I don't even dance. This is how you know how jazz is a great type of music . We said that Jazz opened the door to the black world for white people. It brought everyone together black and white, when you were out dancing and listening to jazz it didn't matter. This all led to the many types of music we have today. Along with bringing people together music also has created tension between people. Today we have people arguing about what type of music sounds bad or good. These arguments are still a form of bringing people together because now they are able to share opinions freely. The Internet is a great way to share your idea on music or even post a song that you've created. You can go on YouTube.com and watch a video of your favorite song and be able to read pages and pages of comments of people arguing or agreeing. Everyone wants to share their opinions especially on their favorite rapper or band. The point is that even today with all the different types of music (stemming from the Jazz times) it still brings us together.

Frida

Frida the movie was a very interesting movie. It is about the life story Frida Kahlo a famous artist from the surrealist era of art. Frida can be considered today as one of the most famous surrealist woman of that time. Her art is inspired by a bus accident she was in when she was younger and her marriage to Diego Rivera. When she was 18 she was in an accident that left her paralyzed. The film really presented the accident very well showing it in slow motion so the viewers can see what is going on. The fact that we were able to see the accident clearly added more drama to that scene. We were also able to see very clearly how the accident affected Frida emotionally and physically. Physically she was paralyzed but emotionally it made her stronger. You can tell that she was eager to get moving again. Frida was a very strong woman which made her a perfect feminist. The humanistic tradition book states that it was her "determined effort to present the female image as something other then the object of male desire". This is also the reason why her appearance was different from most woman (with her uni brow). Her paintings are mostly portraits of herself and according to the film they are what got her started. Frida went to Diego Rivera (who was a very famous Mexican painter) to get opinions on her work. After seeing how good she was he took her under his wing and the two started working together. The two also ended up getting married. To me their relationship in the film was very interesting they did seem to love each other even though Diego cheated on her and they argued allot. Many might disagree but I thought Diego's character was very interesting. His dedication for what he believes in is a similar trait that Frida has which is why they were a good match. I see why the humanistic tradition book says that she refers her marriage as one of the great accidents. Allot of her paintings also show her heart ache after Diego broke her heart a number of times. After watching this film we can all say that Frida has been through allot of overwhelming problems. We were able to see how nothing was able to stop her. She was a very strong woman, definitely a new image for feminists everywhere.

A few weeks ago we talked about Freud and the human psyche. Freud had a huge impact on art because he changed the way people thought. Many poets and artists of all types based their work on his ideas. They also used free association and dream analyses for their work. Freud came up with idea that the human psyche is made up of 3 parts. The Id which is what tells you that you want something, the ego which manages the Id it "attempts to adapt needs of the id to the real world" and the super ego which is your conscious. Some times this conscious can never develop that is what makes mass murderers and other people who you could tell have no morals. This is why the conscious is important to your mind because it tells you what is right and what is wrong. It can also develop that feeling of guilt after doing something wrong. Why is that some peoples conscious never develops? and if it doesn't develop can they be accountable for what they did. Of course they can, but if it was a justified excuse more people would use it everyday. The humanities tradition workbook states that "the super ego monitors human behavior according to principles, inculcated by parents,teachers and authority figures. Basically the conscious learns form childhood experiences which is true because it usually develops around 7 or 8 years of age. Based on this information I can guess that most murderers probably do have a bad childhood. In most movies and TV shows its also the same way. Today I read an article (Austria Incest Case )about a man who locked his daughter up for 21 years and raped her. Besides being disgusting one thing in the article made me think about that idea of childhood and the conscious. "At one point, his voice breaking, Fritzl briefly recalled his childhood and said life with his mother was "very difficult." Asked if he had friends, he said simply: "No."". This section came from the article, even though there is no proof of this it does make sense and goes with the idea that childhood really does affect the conscious. I'm sure everyone agrees that to do what he did really shows that he had no morals. This doesn't mean he is really innocent because he definitely isn't but it shows that we should be very careful with children growing up. One bad experience could probably scar them for the rest of their life and turn them into something horrible.

Metamorphosis Reaction

The metamorphosis written by Kafka is the story of a young man that was turned into a bug over night. I'm not sure what type of bug he became but the charwoman called him a dung beetle (http://www.kotaku.com.au/2007/10/03/dung.jpg) which is what I generally pictured him as. I have to admit the idea of the story is crazy but that's how Kafka likes it. I enjoyed the story more towards the end because I really wanted to know what happens to Gregor. During the first 2 readings I actually found myself dozing off a bit. This is probably the first time I have done that during a homework assignment. The reason this happened was because there was allot of information that was unimportant to the story or was uninteresting. I was really surprised because overall this short story was very interesting. In tonight's reading I was very upset to see how it ended with Gregor dieing. I feel that the ending was a surprise because any other writer would probably have made Gregor turn back into a human and make him leave his family for good. But this is Kafka's work and because he writes in a nightmarish way it does make sense. This is also why the story was so interesting because it was like one big bad dream. Talking about Gregor's family I should mention how surprised I was to their reaction of Gregor's death. They basically felt that God had taken away a heavy burden that was actually their son. The person who upset me the most might have been Gregor's sister. Gregor had so much respect and love for her, he even thought she felt the same way. He believed that after his transformation his sister still felt that there was some human left in him. In reality she felt he was a "thing" like any other creature that creep people out. She was even the one that proposed the idea of getting rid of him. That's partially why it probably ended like it did. If he did become human he would end up being the small insect he used to be in the real world. Realising how his family felt about him made him very depressed which could show how he does have some emotion. Gregor's death to me is unclear even though he was hurt why would he die in what I guess we could say was in his sleep. I was under the impression maybe his sister had killed him because they said she was pale and had not slept. Then i remembered that as readers we witness his last breathe. Another good thing about this story is that even though we know that Gregor died we don't actually know what happens to his body. The charwoman said that she had taken care of it but she never explains. I thought that the butcher's boy could have done the job but that would be kind of last on the list of things that could have happened. Overall I did enjoy the story, I felt that it was good because towards the end it made me want to find out what happens next. It also raised a few questions that will probably not get answered. So its up to us to think about what could have happened. I recommend this story in the novel to anyone who has the free time to read it on their own.

Poetry

In my last Blog I talked about Art and how it can be many things. One form of art that isnt so popular today is the art of poetry. The definition of poetry from dictionary.com is "the art of rhythmical composition, written or spoken, for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative, or elevated thoughts". A poem is a composition of poetic devises like alliteration and Imagery. Many poets like to use imagery so that the reader can "see" what is happening in their poem. Allot of poetry is made up of the emotions and feelings of the poet but before this poems were very different. Poems before the Renaissance were very religious based with references to god and other holy things. During the renaissance the way people thought changed along with poetry. It became very humanistic with the idea that your interest and values are most important. The Transcendental era was also an impact on literary work. Writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau wrote about things like nature and individuality. Before Thoreau no one dared to challenge the government but in his work "On Duty Of Civil Disobedience" he spoke about the government and how he resented it. These writers changed what people wrote about in General which also had an impact on poetry. Poets during the early twentieth century were called "The imagists", according to "The Humanistic Tradition" textbook these poets got their name from their use of free verse. Free verse "became notorious for its abrupt and discontinuous juxtaposition (http://dictionary.com com/browse/juxtaposition) of lean images".Some of the most famous imagists were Ezra pound and Amy Lowell. I used to feel like poetry was boring and a waste of time. Partially because I never took the time to actually read any. After learning somewhat about Modernists like Robert Frost and their poems I became a little more interested in poetry. Since Poetry is a form of art its almost necessary to pay attention to it. If everyone feels like poetry shouldn't be read then it would ruin the balance of art. Not only that but it could set a chain reaction causing people to stop being creative and expressing themselves. OK so that is impossible but it is kind of our responsibility to keep what the modernists, imagists, romantics and everyone else who contributed to making poetry what it is today alive.