This video is inspired by the poem ” When You Are Old” from poet Yeats. When I first time approached to Yeats’ love story, I felt sad about this great poet. He proposed for several times to Maud throughout his life. The last time he proposed was at age 52. When I worked on this video and talked of the story between Yeats and his beloved Maud, my friends felt astonished by the story. At the same time, they talked about what the genuine love is? How could it be possible for a person who was rejected for several times and still had the courage to propose when he/she was old? What about if there is one who is willing to wait for you for few decades? Thinking about the fact today, the poet’s story really provokes some thoughts of what the true love is like. The girl who acted as Maud said, Maud could be the happiness woman in the world, but she did not become a happy woman because of wrong choices. If the actress were in the position, she definitely would accept at least last proposal from the poet. By the end, the poem and the video want to suggest people to distinguish who is really good to you and who only love your beauty and something external. This video, titled “Lonely Planet”, intends to create a sense of loneliness and sadness. Because the story applies to all people, therefore, both actors in the film did not show their face and most of scene I made it vague. Also for the song Gymnopédies, I really enjoy the melody. It is deliberate, but mild, against the harmony, creating a tranquil, sad effect that matches the theme of my film.
Author Archives: Steven Lee
Digital paper project
I chose the poem” When You Are Old”. The reason is because I really enjoy the atmosphere that created in this poem. It is not only a confession made by the poem to his lover, but also it tells something that is really important in today’s life. People can really learn something from this poem about the relationship. And also, the beauty of sentence is another part that the readers can appreciate. I believe it is challenging task. I have some ideas.
1: Visual impact.
In order succeed in this digital project, visual impact will be the key because the poet creates a very vivid picture by his words. A old woman sit on the chair, read the book wrote by the poem, the fire is on, not that strong. The whole situation will be set in a countryside house. A women recalls her story, especially the part with a young man, who has crushed on her in her youth.
2: True love & times
The perspective would probably start from the youth of two people. The man falls in love with the woman and crazy about. Therefore, he proposes, and being rejected. He continues, and being rejected again. frustration, despair are all over. However, nothing could stop his love toward the woman. The last scene probably turns to “When She is Old” with no body around and find only he(the poet) is still in love with her.
3: Regret
Imagination starts. The old women start to regret about the things happened in her youth.
To put the poem’s experience in this project, I think
Those are Broken!
Although “Objects” of Gertrude shows a little better in language, I prefer to go with the most destructive poem” If I told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso”. I listen few more times of sound recording on YouTube. All I can say is that echoing is everywhere and echoing, echoing, echoing, there is echoing on my ears, on my ears. Even though she continues she continues, I barely can remember barely can remember anything but “shutter shuts” but “shutter shuts” because “ shut” resonates” Shut Up”, shut it up.
This piece of reading is really repetitive, illogical, sparse, bizarre, repetitive, and really repetitive. I like poem, I really do do like poem, I understand I do understand that poem sometimes needs some unique imagination some unique imagination and goes beyond what our eyes can see and what our mind can “see”, it is not like this and it should not like this.
After brief introduction about her work in the class, I understand that she intents to do this. The question in my mind is why repetitive? How repetitive matters? What repetitive can bring to us? When I wrote some words repetitive as above, I feel fine and it is just fine. Even I kinda like that.
Cubism is the avenue for us to open the mystery. In cubism’s portrays, I know that objects are broken up, re-construct, analyzed in an abstracted form instead of showing them in a direct way. To use the limited space to explore the unlimited world, and also, the surface looks from seemly random angles, but actually not, and shows the perception depth so that the background and the targeted objects can interpenetrate one another to create a distinctive vague and ambiguous space.
Also, I get a sense of cubism, I still at a loss of Gertrude’s writing. But I feel better; especially I re-watch the body movement video. It is an expression of strength that grows stronger and stronger as I observe from the body movement. Their stretches are “square” or automatic which lack of humanized factors.
My thought pauses, but there is still echoing which comes from Gertrude. Still echoing, echoing. A broken language full of grammar mistakes, like a child, it is really like a child who speaks without boundary with limited vocabulary, but always tells what they really mean and who they really are.
She is she is she is as is she is driving me crazy, crazy to admire what she did to me, and what she did to me.
Between silences
Once I have the freedom not to choose overload
My ambition tells no way
Since nothing is so common as a wish
to be remarkable
Life become painful but joyful
But I will be silenced.
The submerging dig-in and the absorption on the trains
ever overwhelm all my leisure time
How can I think about Kabuki and Phontom of the Opera?
Contact Lenses
Curiosity to see the world clearer
urge my eyes to change
I wasn’t so sure
at that time
Once I grew up a bit
and my eyes developed little sick
making it an excuse to live behind
thick walls of glass as a steady fellow
Seeing clearer and farther, as I make it, brings
unexpectedly with lies, betray, violence, corruption,
and even despairs,
huge amount of the dirty and the ugly.
Now my eyes have became
hurts and desired to
going back.
Change did happen,
but I am sure as a steady fellow
I need some blur to move on.
Excessive Happiness = Suicide
As an old saying goes, “Joy surfeited turns to sorrow.” This semester, we are dealing with happiness in english class. When I was in China, I did write something about happiness. Nothing is in psychological term. Daniel Gilbert is definitely a great author, and he turns psychological discovery into a prose and into a beautiful article. Many of his idea resonate with me, especially after I take psychological class. It is generally accepted idea that people tend to think that they cannot handle the horrible situation. Once people is in the worse state or have gone through it, they know actually the thing is not as worse as they thought.
I thought honor psychology mid-term is extremely hard when I prepared for the mid-term last week. I do not feel happy at all because I am under great pressure and always question myself in the class and after the class. I never have two hours writing midterm in my life. I feel like that I wrote more than 10 pages in two hour mid-term. I thought two-hour writing would be terrible for me. However, I feel great release after test. Far more than that, I really enjoy the two-hours writing during the test which I didn’t know when i was in and before the test.
Under economic principle, people face trade-off everyday and need to trade to improve the life of whole soceity.My question is:” Can we trade happiness?” or ” Can we make other people happy?” 3 weeks ago in psychology class, Professor Locke played a carton in the class. It is a story about two carton charaters X and Y . Character X feel sad these days. Character Y, as X’s friend, want to do something to make him happy. Therefore, Y invents a device, which could make people smile and laugh when he feel down or happy. X tried on the device, and then start to smile and laugh most of times. After few hours, X feel tired of laughing and smiling. So he request Y to stop the device.Hoewver, Y think that the device is the only way to make X happy. In Y’s perspective, laughing and smiling is happiness. Few days later, X shows some negative symptoms, such as eyes bleeding, fatigue. He beg Y to stop the device. He was rejected. After few months, the device goes wrong. Then X will go back to his original life without being control to laugh and smile. I could still remember the last scene: X beg Y to fix the device so that he can laugh and smile all the times because he think laughing and smiling have already been a part of his life. It is weird and funny.
I didn’t dig in too much in psychology area. Instead, I kinda feel like that X will die soon because happiness is controlled by external device, but you inner heart.
We are Boung to be Happy
After going through all material so far, I learned a philosophy that we are bound to be happy. In Aristotle’s Ethics, he mentioned that happiness is an ultimate end that people pursue. This establishes a premise that we all are on a road to pursue happiness since we were born. This concept coincides with Freud’s pleasure principles to some extent because they both assert the pursuit of some sort of goods. Aristotle might hold a different opinion because he does not believe that pleasure is an ultimate end.
Are we really bound to be happy? Different people tend to have their own opinions on this question. Some people may wonder if this is the case, how come there are so many setbacks and hardships throughout life. In Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, it explains the reasons why people experience pain. The book states, “any given process originates in an unpleasant state of tension and thereupon determines for itself such a path that its ultimate issue coincides with a relaxation of this tension, i.e. with avoidance of ‘pain’ or with production of pleasure.” In addition to this, Freud introduces another psychological concept of the reality-principle, which further explains how the reality-principle demands and enforces the postponement of satisfaction and the temporary endurance of ‘pain’ on the long and circuitous road to pleasure.
In response to my question mentioned above, my answer is positive. Yes, we are bound to be happy. By accurately interpreting what we did and what we do, people will get an answer easily. Few simple answers will really help to understand and resolve. Why do people want to eat more foods than they need? Why do people want to go to college? Why do people want to get married?
We all have most basic and primitive urges. The pleasure principles strive to fulfill those needs. When one day we get it, we feel happy and pleased.
Always Looking Up—-Reponse paper to Republic Book Seven
The allegory of the Cave in Plato’s Republic reminds me of a book; its name is Always Looking Up, written by Michael J. Fox. The book itself does not necessarily connect to what we will be discussing in this chapter, but the title explains somewhat of the allegory of the Cave. In the text, it states “there is a faculty residing in the soul of each person, enabling each of us to learn.” In short, it is human nature for people to learn. We are born with our heads looking up to what we can accomplish. On the road to intelligence, people will experience confusion and frustration. When this happens, we must not laugh at it because that is a process that we all will go through.
In regard to whether or not to educate, the text addresses the duty and responsibility in response to the objection raised by Glaucon. Most philosophers believe that they are not obligated to educate those younger because most philosophers are self-taught. However, for the good of the city, the author believes philosophers are forced to educate those with the best natures to the highest level possible, so that the city will be governed better.
In addition, the text explains how the city spots and nurtures its ruler. To select those young men of twenty who receive higher honors is the first step. In order to be kept in the list, they have to do good “not only in study, but also in war and the other branches of discipline.” After that, they are tested to let go of their eyes and senses, so that they can approach themselves and truth. A good ruler is the one who masters dialectics. This is a cycle of life. From the very beginning we hose prisoners, chained in the cave, are unable to know the truth. One day, one of them gets a chance to be released. He sees the sunshine and learns the knowledge and truth. The greatest good is that the guardians of their State or the city will be like the enlightened prisoner re-descending into the darkness to educate and explain the truth, and then, the society develops and prospers.
By Steven