World’s Realities

World’s realities…I’ve been thinking about what to put in my blog lately. I first thought of posting my research proposals and class submitted papers so that I won’t think much about these stuff.

Again we have our own realities. I mean, I’m the kind of person who had been told “Nothing poetic about it…”, “bad prose”, “Scrap the whole poem,retain the title”… It’s painful to get those remarks from our Poetry class but hey! My revising reality slaps me in the face. Honestly, I haven’t done any except for the principle of sticking with the requirement date. Friends, I tell you doing what I DO IS SUCH A MISERABLE THING. If you really want top impress your teacher, please do otherwise or suffer his/her/the professor’s slips of the tongue(lucky, if they’re just slips…ahahaha painful ones worst embarassing ones). Well, lucky me I don’t take them as destructive criticisms(I’m a hopeless roma…um optimist). If ever you get them.welcome them.they’re inspiration coming right out of the teacher’s blues. Anyway, if there’s a class I’d like to get them(criticisms), it’ll be poetry. I just love my classmates there(maybe except___) because in poetry each of us knows when to meditate or bluff(LOL) when we can’t find the right words. Actually I was suppossed to talk about the movie Slumdog Millionaire and now I end up sentimentalizing.

Let’s go to what sir Timothy told us about: that “The Philippines is actually the only country who/which/that has a literary man as a national hero” these aren’t actually the exact words.

I always think of it now, and I ask myself How?(uy, rhyming)/ Why? What if it was Andres Bonifacio who made it as a national hero? I don’t know really. But there was always something about a statue in most parks that made me ask who is he?” when I was young. Just this morning I reported about Amado V. Hernandes and his poem “Aklasan.” I was bothered byu what E. San Juan Jr quoted that the artist had said something about “Bakit sukdulang napababayaan ang mga manunulat sa wikang bernakular?”

Whew…my brain neurons popped(eww, what a morbid image so final-destination-thingy).It made me think about my being a BA English student(why not medicine?nursing?). I don’t know if I could even make something such as a real work of art or rather what they call “masterpiece.” (forgive my lapses, again this is an unrevised post).

Well, if ever your mind boggles over many things remember this: Chill. It’s worth wasting time when you’re about to have a nervous breakdown right?

I’m always the smiling type when I love what I’m up to… So hang on April. It’s a tough ride but I know you’ll get through(with so amny wonderful people surrounding you)

World’s realities….uhuh…tsk..tsk…slips of the tongue.

Musings: An Essay About Performance Art

With the performance art challenge, I first had two pieces in mind. The first one entitled “Musings” was supposedly about the bounds of being a woman in a society. The other one is about the self-expression. The former was rejected because it was too common while he former was further developed into the final performance art piece. There is one thing that I noticed on most of the performance art examples shown to us in our CW 120 class: the pieces had themes about the Self. This for me is a good thing to start at. It is because one should be familiar with one’s piece and everything about it. The most important thing to consider is the concept because this is where the performance would be based. At the first instance, I only had an idea in mind later I realized that a more technical term could be related to my concept about the self. The social psychology theories were the bases for my piece. I wanted something to do with a soccer ball since, I was to do self-expressing. I wanted a piece that I know of, I wanted something that partly reveals my self. Soccer for me is an important sport. This game helped me realize the value of myself, of the team and of enthusiasts. I play when I feel depressed, play when I am happy and play when I want to get away from everything else. Every time I see the soccer field, I long to be as carefree as a rolling ball. I won’t care if I’d sweat or smell after playing, all I care about is the game I had in mind. That is why my concept is about it. I want a performance that I’d not dread doing. I want a something I’d love to do. I wanted my performance to be about myself.

I used materials such as soccer ball, candle, three cones, cloth and play money. These served as representations of the words I wouldn’t utter. The ball even signifies my self- black is for the pessimist mode while white is for optimism. The cones arranged in the triangular formation represent society. In soccer, this formation is essential in play. It enables three players to have an advantageous position and passing in the field. This also represents the three things I mentioned earlier – realize the value of one’s self, of the team and of enthusiasts- these three are also evident in any performance art piece. These in a performance art piece would be the concept, performer and the audience/spectator. The limits of space are set by the cones like how one is within the society. There are boundaries such as regulation and law. Each cone covered with white, green and black cloth symbolizes innocence, life experiences and death respectively. The candle detail wasn’t present in the libretto but in the final presentation, I had a lit candle to represent the time duration of innocence and life experience. It was placed inside the black cloth-covered cone because in the end upon blowing the candle the presentation would end, and this suggests death. The play money revealed my judgment of a person- their value based on my impression of them. The act should appear as light-hearted and playful as how it is in a soccer game. In the end, exhaustion wearies out the person thus, the ball is kicked hard and the candle is blown off.

Dio Chrysostom, a Hellenistic critic on a lecture said “On Knowing God, painters and sculptors invest the God with the human body, the vessel of wisdom and reason, seeking to manifest the imageless and unseen in the visible, which can be portrayed”[Preface to Plato, Bosanquet's trans.]. In the performance art piece the message of the concept should be conveyed to the audience/spectator. As in Joycean statement that literature emanates meanings, discovery through concrete objects, those materials were essential for my piece so that the audience/spectator would trigger interpretation.

I retained the title “Musings” because I like how light the word sounds to the ears. The impression it gives me is like that of how fun it is to think of things that one likes. The title seems self-revealing. One muses of many things most of the time. The libretto was in turn, the script to be followed for the performance. There was a step by step process on how the performance would progress.

When the final presentation came, the changes tied the whole concept together. I considered the site to be an area where most people pass by. I just wanted them (passers by) to stop for a while. I intended this for the performance without straining somebody to find the venue. The audience/spectators were cooperative enough. The performance art piece was interactive. The materials in the piece should allow the audience/spectators to understand it within the limits and range of his/her own perspective and life experiences (qtd. from Fineberg). There were revisions on the libretto for improvement.

I added some details because the first script was incomplete.