BONUS – Writing from the perspective of a model

Lights…Camera…Action.
The public eye awaits. Pictures. Portraits to posters.
It never ends; the fun under pressure.
Lights of different shades surround me, flickering upon each expected change in my facial expressions to form poses.
The unpredictable world. Changing styles and changing expectations, foreign to consistency. Every second and every minute and every hour, the lights do not dim, capturing all but what is under my skin, under the make-up and the dress-up, a different person of no interest to the lights, hidden and protected beneath the surface. The rest must adjust to attract and please the public eye.  

[picture will be uploaded soon]

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia, the sound of that word had me interested before I even learned that it literally represents sounds through words. Onomatopoeia can be used to describe many kinds of things according to their sounds, for example, a clock’s tic toc and a pig’s oink oink. Writing takes on a whole new personality with the use of these sounds. It basically allows one to hear what they read. Words can be used to create the sound of the things being described. People of different languages may modify certain “word sounds” of onomatopoeia to make them compatible with their own language. The purpose is to make the sound of the object being described, whether or not it differs from another language. Onomatopoeia can be used to create names for animals, for example, the Tamil word for a crow is “kaakaa”. As well, it can create words describing the sounds of machines, such as, “beep beep” for the horn of a car. It’s also commonly used in advertising to popularize things by putting catchy sounds to them that consumers would remember, for example, Rice Krispies’ “snap, crackle, pop”. Onomatopoeia offers a very interesting experience with its many different sounds.  

Here is a great link that contains many different words of onomatipoeia, A to Z:
http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1026715

Dan Yashinsky

Dan Yashinsky is the father of a very close friend of mine from the past. A friend who gifted me with a beautiful book, a collection of Canadian stories collected by Dan Yashinsky, “Next Teller”. At the time, I was young and even unaware of the importance of this possession. But, as I’ve learned to explore art, I’ve realized how special it is to have a great book, signed by a great author, a Toronto-based storyteller, a CBC radio host, and a community organizer. “To Sabah, good luck on your life’s journey!”.

Dan Yashinsky has an M.A. in Sociology in Education from the University of Toronto, and a B.A. in Literature. His published books include: The Storyteller at Fault, Tales for an Unknown City, Next Teller – A Book of Canadian Storytelling, Ghostwise – A Book of Midnight Stories (Ragweed), and At The Edge – A Book of Risky Stories. His love for literature developed over campfire gatherings of story-telling. He has performed at story-telling festivals across Canada and around the world, including Israel, Wales, England, Germany, Brazil, Austria, France, the U.S., Singapore, and Ireland. He’s also a volunteer involved in story-telling at The Hospital for Sick Children and at many different schools in Ontario.  

One of Dan Yashinsky’s sayings:
“Stories show you that other people have traveled before you. They show you that no matter what is happening in your life, someone else has gone there before you. Someone else has been there, come back, and at least has a good story to show for it.”

Field trip

Can you see a relationship between the content of the text and the shape?
I believe that there was a relationship between the content of the text and the shape. Some of the art pieces had stronger relationships to the text and some did not. However, most of the ones that I came across appeared to contain text with some sort of relevance to the shape.

Record the name of a band from Craig Leonard’s DNA project
“The Toy Killers” is one of the names of a band from Craig Leonard’s DNA project.

How is the framing of these pieces in a gallery inviting you to see them differently?
I saw many interesting pieces at the art gallery that were simply taken from the streets. Some of them were incredibly funny, such as, the dog’s missing head wanted. Most of us would ignore these simple posts if they were just attached to a pole on the sidewalk. This art gallery offers these pieces of art a home. It frames these simple things in such a way as to allow viewers to have a different view of them. The gallery acts to support such simple art that’d normally be ignored out on the streets. Viewers get a better look at it and it provides an interesting basis for investigations.     

Record an idea or art movement or artist or writer or writing idea you would like to investigate.
I think it’d be interesting to investigate, more thoroughly, the relationships between the text and the shapes that they were put in. Perhaps there is much more significance to such style.

Here are some interesting picture I took at the Art Gallery:

Between Our Legs

5 emotional responses:

1) At the end of the beginning of the story (Before section 1): I felt extremely confused. “How did it happen? …How did what happen?”

2) Section 1: I felt a little amazed at the creativity (“commas and punctuations”). “We had our hair tied back. Thick shiny twists that hing like commas”. I would’ve never thought of the brilliant idea of comparing the shape of tied hair to commas. Just amazing!

3) Section 1 (2nd paragraph): I felt very angry because I was once again confused. The reading frustrated me. “Logic is for the birds. We never did like birds”. Now, THAT is a little random for me. I tried to understand it. But, no.

4) End of section 2: I started feeling interested, mainly because of the great use of words and how they were put together. I loved how “shrugging” was described as the yawning of the bones. “Our bones yawned under our skin. This is what they call a shrug”. Interesting!

5) Once again I’m enjoying the use of words in this reading. I really like the adjectives and the movements described in such interesting detail. “We wrapped our arms around the cages of our ribs and cupped our breasts with our hands”.

Extra: By the end of “Between Our Legs”, I went back and skimmed through the story once again to understand it more thoroughly. I finally understand the story and I think it’s amazing how the perspective of “wanting” what’s already possessed is expressed in this reading. What I understand from it is that there is obviously something negative going on and the girls have learned to pretend quite effectively that everything is in order and the way they want it to be. Overall, I enjoyed the experience of reading and discussing this story. Moreover, analyzing it after being confused in the beginning helped me learn that there’s more to a story then what appears to be at first sight.

Response to Chilly Girl

The “girl” in this story was always cold. This was quite unusual especially considering her “chilliness” in the summertime. However, as I read on, I felt a connection between the girl’s coldness and the sense of her being isolated as described right at the beginning of the story, “No one liked to hold her hand”. Finally, I started to recall some experiences of feeling nervous and feeling cold as a result. Well, I decided to investigate the relationship between feeling cold and experiencing “negative” types of feelings such as isolation and nervousness.
I found an article called “Social Isolation Makes People Cold, Literally”. This health article had the answer I was looking for. It talked about an experiment conducted to confirm the relationship between feeling cold and feeling isolated. Basically, some people were told to recall situations where they felt socially isolated and other people were told to recall more positive situations. Then, those people were asked to estimate the temperature in the room they were in. People recalling isolation guessed a colder temperature versus the people who recalled the positive experiences.
“The researchers speculate that this link between temperature and social inclusion might arise when people are babies. For an infant, being closer to a caretaker brings warmth. When you’re a kid, being held by your mother means warmth, and being distant means coldness.” I found this piece of information to be very interesting and reasonable. It definitely connects to “Chilly Girl” because this girl appeared to be isolated and was always cold. When she was with the man whom she met at the “cold” summer party, the story starts to describe feelings of warmth and even mentions a drop of sweat.
Try recalling an experience where you felt nervous or isolated and started getting cold shivers. Sometimes, my hands feel really cold even when I’m indoors. Now that I look back at such times, I realize that there were some feelings of nervousness and isolation.

AGRIPPA – The Book of the Dead

Arippa is an art book published in 1992 by kevin Begos Publishing, New York. The images in this book are extremely temporary. With the use of fading ink, artist Dennis Ashbaugh and author William Gibson have made it possible for the book’s content to disappear after a single view; an exposure to air/light.
I once considered art to completely revolve around permanence. Art, to me, was like the brain’s memory, implanted permanently in pages or such frames. However, after discovering this book, it’s so very interesting to realize that all art doesn’t HAVE to be permanent. Can you believe that this book was initially priced between $1500 and $2000? There were limited compies of Agrippa. Expensive but apparently very interesting, unique, and beautiful regardless the fact that the content disappears after one viewing. There is also a diskette at the end of the book. The content on the diskette is programmed to erase itself once viewed on the computer. Basically, as you scroll down to read, there’s no scrolling back. Amazing? Also, one of the ideas for programming this disk to erase itself was to implant a virus in it so that the virus would “kill” the content after viewing. However, it was obviously a danger for a viewer’s whole computer to catch a virus from the contaminated disk and therefore that idea wasn’t very succesful. I believe that the commited creators of this book/diskette have done a great job and offered a very unique style of disappearing art to the world.

Street Art

Street Art:
If you’ve ever been around the downtown Eaton Centre area, you’ve probably experienced the beaty of street art, specifically the art drawn on the ground by some great talented artists. The first Street art artist was Gérfrom Zlotykamien from France.
I think the most interesting of such art are the 3D images. As shown in some of the pictures above, the pictures look completely realistic and It feels like you can almost touch it above the ground! Ofcourse, you’d have to look from a certain angle to get that 3D feeling. Street Art is a very efficient way to reach the greater public more directly. Some artists use it to advertise stuff or even promote some great ideas. From creating awareness about issues such as global warming to simply promoting pepsi, street art has been a very influencial type of art because it’s simply out there on the street. Anyone randomly passing by can jus view and admire it and perhaps learn something from it. Most people usually think of art framed up in art galleries. However, street art is quite a different, interesting form of art. Many of us just forget it exists. So take this as just a reminder of one those types of arts that are so directly available to public.

Shhheasssells =) [Bits about Pearls]

Did you know?
An oyster, a living creature, produces pearls in its shell simply by acting out of defence against foreign substances! Pearls, the expensive beauty of this world, were born simply in a shell. When an irritant enters the oysters shell, the material lining inside of the shell called nacre, covers this irritant. Eventually, this covered irritant turns into what we now call a pearl.
To make it more simple, think about a pimple. The “pimple” is the “irritant” that enters the shell. As our skin recovers from the pimple, new skin covers and replaces the pimple. In the oyster’s case, the Nacre covers the irritant and thereby turns it into a pearl overtime.

Here’s a link for more information.
http://animals.howstuffworks.com/marine-life/question630.htm

This stuff about seashells was inspired by my very own long forgotten collection of seashells. I actually just bought them from dollarama because they were just so PRETTY! However, just recently, my dad pointed them out on my dusty old shelf and started telling me about pearl mussels. It was just so interesting to hear that the little jewels we wear were once in a shell! To be honest, I never even thought about seashells being live creatures at one point. Silly of me, yes, I know. Now, my paranoid self even blames the “souls” of these seashells in my room for haunting me while I sleep. Nightmares. Sigh! Anyhow, that’s the little story behind this investigation on seashells.