Although all of the TED
Presentations that I was in class for were really inspiring and amazing to
listen to, Ali’s was the one that really stuck out to me. Her speaker was the
one who created the water bottle that could filter water through a pump.
Why did this catch my attention?
First and foremost I appreciated
the demonstration. A lot of TED talks are hard for me to listen to because I
get tired of hearing the person talk about their idea but never showing it to
us. Second of all, while I was listening to both Ali and her speaker talk, I
was wondering why no one had come up with this before. The idea is so simple and
so practical, yet extremely effective and life changing.
This got me wondering about what
other ideas out there we have created over-complicated solutions to. Maybe,
instead of over thinking problems that affect large groups of people, finding
something that fixes the root of the problem for individuals or smaller groups
of people could be even more directly effective.
Before I began
working on my love-themed mash up, I had to think about what the word “love”
actually meant. Yes, there is love in fairytales, in movies, in books, and
there is love all around me. But I didn’t know what its core definition was, so
that is why I began with it.
Then I started
thinking about what kinds of different mind sets and views people have on love.
Where they see it, have it, feel it. Love shapes us in positive ways and can
even determine some of the paths we take in our lives. I found the YouTube that
exemplified this really well.
Then I moved deeper,
thinking about how love can be even more destructive, if you aren’t careful. I
put most of my personal reflections in this part of my mash up, because I found
that I tended to gravitate toward this viewpoint in my writing.
Overall I think
that it’s really cool how taking elements from literally anywhere can come together
to help you learn and understand more about just one theme. I think that using
this process of thought to write essays and do projects in the future, for any
class, really, would be actually really helpful. In college, professors expect students
to have a deeper level of understanding and thought, so this process would
definitely be a great starting point.
1. love \ˈləv\n 1 a(1):strong affection for
another arising out of kinship or personal ties<maternallovefor a child>(2):attraction based on
sexual desire:affection and
tenderness felt by lovers(3):affection based on
admiration,benevolence, or common interests
2. Loving does not at first mean merging,
surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two
people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a high
inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to
become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is
a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to
vast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves
("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), may young people use the
love that is given to them.
3. “And at the place where time stands still, one
sees lovers kissing in the shadows of buildings, in a frozen embrace that will
never let go. The loved one will never take his arms from where they are now,
will never give back the bracelet of memories, will never journey afar from his
lover, will never place himself in danger of self-sacrifice, will never fail to
show his love, will never become jealous, will never fall in love with someone
else, will never lose the passion of this instant of time.”(einstein’s dreams)
4.
5. He can remember that
all beauty in animals and plants is a silent, enduring form of love and
yearning, and he can see the animal, as he sees plants, patiently and willingly
uniting and multiplying and growing, not out of physical pleasure, not out of
physical pain, but bowing to necessities that are greater than pleasure and
pain, and more powerful than will and withstanding.
6. When
you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power
of obsessive love.
7. Love looks not with the eyes,
but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid paintedblind
8. But this is what young people are so often
and so disastrously wrong in doing: they (who by their very nature are
impatient) fling themselves at each other when love takes hold of them, they
scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness, disorder,
bewilderment. And what can happen then? What can life do with this heap of
half-broken things that they call their communion and that they would like to
call their happiness, if that were possible, and their future? And so each of
them loses himself for the sake of the other person, and loses the other, and
many others who still wanted to come.
9. Rilke talks about the importance of loving books
and the knowledge they give to you. “People love” has a great potential to
disappoint and hurt you if you open your mind to it, but when it comes to love
of knowledge, this isn’t the case. Learn to live by the books that you love.
10. Loving is a
series of discoveries: it starts, significantly, with a Realization: that
moment when you know that you’re in
love. If writing were as exciting as falling in love, I’d get a lot more
written, but most of my Realizations come as pinpoints of light while staring
at the dismal tundra of an empty page.
11. There
are people who are so focused on the external things in life, such as romantic
love, that they ignore the internal aspect of their lives that they should be
thinking about as well. There are also people who are very much the opposite, but
the first is more common, and probably worse in the end. As children, our
solitude contributes to a lot of out true personalities developing. Development
unaffected and unhindered by anyone or anything. The same goes for the romantic
love so many people seek—to find yourself first in solitude is essential to
have the external love so many people search for.
12. How could we
forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths
about dragons that at the last moment are transformed in princesses? Perhaps
all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act,
just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in
its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
13. Parents often say that the reasons for their
actions are because “it’s more convenient.” For practicality it makes sense,
but this “easy way out” that Rilke talks about is something more complex. Love,
for example. He said that young people are not good at it until they learn it,
as if it’s a skill. The “easy” route would be to not even attempt to learn
love. The difficult way would obviously be making love work for you. It requires
humans to do the exact opposite of what they want in the end: to be alone.
14. Seek out
some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which
doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again;
when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent
toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you
trust. Avoid providing material for the drama that is always stretched tight between
parents and children; it uses up much of the children's strength and wastes the
love of the elders, which acts and warms even if it doesn't comprehend. Don't
ask for any advice from them and don't expect any understanding; but believe in
a love that is being stored up for you like and inheritance, and have faith
that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can
travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
15. The
importance of being able to wait is a major life skill. Everyone has a purpose,
and if we are constantly wondering and trying to control our futures—whether it
is a career, a relationship, a location—we tend to lose sight of the importance
of patience.
16. Empedocles believed that there were two different
forces at work in nature. He called them love and strife. Love binds thing
together, and strife separates them.
17. If you trust in Nature, in
what is simple in Nature, in the small things that hardly anyone sees and that
can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is
humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of
what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and
somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays
behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.
18. If you
know for sure that you are meant to love and be loved, I think you have to
build up your life around this desire. Rilke said the same thing about the need
to write that some people have. I can’t relate with having the intense need to
write that he was describing, but I can fill in the blank—“I must __________”—with
other things, so that I can understand the passion he is describing.
19. “We'll
be washed and buried one day my girl
And the time we
were given will be left for the world
The flesh that
lived and loved will be eaten by plague
So let the memories
be good for those who stay”
Before
watching the Frank Gehry video in class, I had never thought of architecture as
an art form. In my mind, I assumed there was something to do with math or
physics and maybe some design based on the environment, but never had the word “art”
ever been correlated to building buildings in my mind.
Something that really struck me was
when Frank Gehry said that he wanted his architecture to make people feel a
certain emotion when they walked into his buildings. This is when I fully accepted
that there really was a huge art aspect to architecture.
Thinking about it, I connected it
to other forms of creating art. For me, I first thought of fashion design. It
really gave me a new way to think about it. For every dress I draw, I could
think about where the modern day woman is wearing it, the story behind the
outfit, and the way she feels when she’s wearing it. These are all things that
can alter the final product of what you design. And the fact that I figured
that out thanks to an architect? Pretty cool.
The first blog I commented on was Mark J's from Period 7. He talked about how he realized that modern and postmodern art is all around us now that we have learned about it in class.
"I totally can relate to what you have written in this blog post. Modernism and Postmodernism sound like concepts that are really difficult to understand...and I think that's pretty accurate in my case. Just like the automotive commercials helped you understand it a little better, the music and art examples helped me distinguish the different characteristics of the two."
The second blog I commented on was Sammy R's, also from period 7. He wrote about the song "Einstein on the Beach" and how it relates to Postmodernism.
"Can I be honest...
When I pressed play on the youtube link and started listening to it, I started laughing because first of all, I've never heard this song before and secondly, It's unlike anything I've ever heard, so I was pretty taken by surprise.
But as I was reading your blog post, I actually get what you're saying. I really like how you made it a metaphor to society. This song has so many different layers, that it really does show how actions layered upon one another create a complex system within each of us as a part of society."
One of the concepts of Postmodernism of the individual that we learned in class was that we cannot escape the "system" and that we have to find a way to expand in a limited space. I was kind of sad to hear this at first, because I would have liked to continue thinking that there are no limits to what someone can do. However, after thinking about it more, I can now understand how there are some limits. I realized this through a connection to the reality TV show Project Runway. Fashion designers are given challenges that often require the contestants to be innovative. Sometimes they are given unconventional materials, such as paper, materials in a grocery store, or anything in a flower shop. These challenges are all about how well an individual can "find a strategy within the system" to create, while still allowing themselves to think outside of the box in making something that stays true to their own unique style.
The weekend after reading Martin
Luther King Junior’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in class, I watched a movie
that happened to have a few connections to it. It was my first time watching
“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and I absolutely loved it. Ostensibly this
film is about a boy who is just starting high school with no friends, and
portrays his journey of getting through the year. But as the movie plays on,
you keep uncovering pieces of information that really give the story a
different meaning.
In “Letter from Birmingham Jail,”
Martin Luther King Jr. talks about breaking the status quo. One of the points
my group discussed in class was that breaking the status quo is unconditionally
seen as extreme from the point of view of those who tend to conform. He goes on
to say that although it MAY be extreme, there are many people in history who
have been extremists for good causes and for spreading strong beliefs. In the
film, the main character Charlie becomes friends with a group of “misfits.”
They break the status quo in the way they live—whether it is listening to old
music or obsessing over vampires, they don’t care what others—the ones who
follow the status quo—think. For the sake of Hollywood, each misfit was
definitely portrayed as a stereotype, which is an “extreme” version of reality.This
connection shows me that Martin Luther King Junior’s letter is not a one hit
wonder. Whether it is applied to racism or even the high school hierarchy of
today, it still applies.
