Author Archives: darryl.bethay

Digital Essay: A New Reality Is Better Than a New Movie!

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A New Reality Is Better Than A New Movie!

For the digital essay to the poem “A New Reality Is Better Than A New Movie,” I chose to make an interpretive mirror image of the poem itself.  The idea behind the “movie” is simply a metaphor for media distraction, and the new “reality” can be best defined as the realization of equality through complete separation from an oppressive government.  With the digital essay, I took more of a minimalist approach in order to emphasize the actual actions and subtle undertones of the conflicted feelings that my character (an imaginative person living “within” Amiri Baraka’s poem) has toward the world he lives in.  As stated before, at the beginning, he was excited by the trailer of a movie on a laptop screen, but overtime it is seen that the events that occur within his life eventually break him free of this form of distraction.

The events in particular reflect on the poems lines that insinuate that the wealth create an illusion of equality, when in fact black Americans are used as a part of a “machine” that leads to their own economic self-exploitation.  This conflict can be seen in the main character’s reluctance to get out of bed from the alarm, his expression of uneasiness while shaking the hands of the white character, his expression of disgust after he was only given $1 out of a stack of $20, and with the unleashing of a pent-up anger by the end.

I chose the John Trudell quotes to hint toward a vague idea of “identity.”  Finally, I chose to use the Martin Luther King Jr. quote at the end to relate the images shown in the movie to a macro or national-level.

I didn’t like it when you told me

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Reading the Gertrude Stein piece “If I Told Him. A Completed Portrait of Picasso” was a very strange experience.  I came into the reading with some reservations, which were mainly the result of hearing the professor say that her previous classes often became frustrated by the readings.  It only took one line to understand what Professor Kaufman meant.  From the first line, “If I told him would he like it.” I noticed that the punctuation was off.  Why did the author put a period where there should be a question mark?  That’s one of the very first rules of learning how to write in English, yet it was completely violated. I raised an eyebrow and shrugged it off, I ultimately continued through it. Mentally and automatically, I put question marks in place where I felt there needed to be question marks.

The second sentence seemed to be a play on words, simply forming a statement by switching words to say something similar.  However, by the second line, I completely lost the vibe that the author intended to play around with a single sentence, and actually began to question what her intention was.  Not only was the third statement poorly constructed, but it wasn’t even a sentence.  I read it once, and was confused. I felt my tongue tripping on itself. I tried it again, it had the same effect.  Then there was the fact that the name “Napoleon” came out of left field.  At this point, I decided to look up information about the author and I found out that she worked alongside William James, one of the first American psychologists.  Then I read about “automatic writing” and “stream of consciousness.”  At this point, I probably got even more confused.  Why would she be thinking about Napoleon of all people or things?

I had no idea, and still have no idea what she meant by her repeated statements involving “now” which were pretty contradictory. Honestly, at that point, I had given up hope in trying to find a deeper meaning.  I didn’t want to bother trying to crawl inside of the head of a mad-woman. No rhyme, no reason, and I can’t even see an association of thoughts save for a possible link between “Napoleon,” “kings,” and later a mention of “queens.”  But shutters? Couldn’t understand that in the slightest. The repetitions of these unrelated terms made me even more bewildered.  At that point I was stumbling and stuttering my way through it.  I was hacking my way through the poem–butchering it, as Stein hacked through my conventional knowledge of the English language. Unfortunately for me, there were more repetitions of seemingly unrelated terms (exactly, resemblance, he, and, as, is, presently, proportions, land).  No more understanding, no more trying to find a meaning, I just read it (as disjointedly as the poem) until the end.

Lightly

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Throwing rocks

across a pond

leaves ripples along the surface.

 

Distance is irrelevant

when the universe

allows for infinite time

whether one year

or one million years

to earn acknowledgment.

 

From the towers and antennas

and appliances

are radiowaves and microwaves

and rays of infrared

which beam and cluster

and condense and cloud

polluting the air and space

forever left in the universe.

 

I wonder what others will say

when

no distance can separate

and no time can protect them.

 

 

Legato

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Upon hearing that we were going to be reading “Chopin,” I immediately thought of Frederic Chopin–the pianist.  Obviously, it wasn’t the case that we were reading something from the pianist, but the shared surname between the pianist and the author had a direct association with the term “legato.”  Legato is  a style of articulation (which was championed by Chopin) in which the individual notes almost overlap over each other.   The notes play after each other in a very smooth and connected fashion, hence “legato’s” literal definition of “tied together.”  This style contrasts with “staccato” which is a more articulate form of articulation, but is also more disjointed.   The first video is an example of legato, while the second video is an example of staccato playing (particularly from 7:06 until the finish).

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/EXS5c6TXhKo" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Fk2kfD5ZKls" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

 

Let’s return to the idea of “tied together,” though.  The idea of “tied together,” while using music as a diving board into a broader pool, makes me think of something fluid.  Water attracting water, as an example; you could see this when you look out of a train window and watch the raindrops streak across into the other droplets of water, and when combined, the unified droplet continues streaking across the window and out of sight. Here, we see that water attracts its likeness.  It’s a weird and roundabout way of get to this conclusion, but ultimately, we can say something similar in regard to humans and how we choose our support network (particularly our friends and acquaintances). But why?

It’s evident that it’s not too often, if at all, that we willingly choose to hang out with people that we don’t enjoy or have anything in common with.  However, unlike water, humans have minds of their own, and are inherently different from each other.  What’s the difference between the droplet of water that stays in place and the droplet that streaks across the window? Not much, really.  The obvious difference between humans and water is that humans are living things with individualistic thoughts and fundamental differences.  Human interaction can’t be explained like chemistry’s explanation of water molecules bonding.  Humans align themselves with things of their likeness, but due to inherent differences internally (with regard to mind and personality), it seems that there’s also a more “selfish” side to co-mingling with other humans.   It may simply be an instinctual matter of confirming or reaffirming one’s existence by aligning themselves with tangible objects (including people) that resemble them or represent their values.  Maybe it’s through confirming one’s existence as an individual as a result of comparing themselves with other individuals (whether similar or different), people realize their own uniqueness.  With a sense of individuality, the thought of living for yourself is a realization of freedom.  I believe that this was essence the freedom, happiness, and wholeness that Louise Mallard experienced in “The Story of an Hour.”

Darryl Bethay

Freudian Slip

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When I think of Sigmund Freud, the first thing that I think of, aside from the dreaded “Oedipus Complex,”  is the phenomenon known as the “Freudian Slip.”  Honestly, I don’t know too much about them (as far as the technical aspects of the theory are concerned) save for the fact that the blundering nature of the slips make for hilarious Youtube videos such as these:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/oiPzM98h7NA" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/QaHgbOtmgmQ" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/ClqfJp4WBBQ" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

 

Even without having too much of a working knowledge of Freud’s theories or general psychology, the average person could conclude that the result of a “Freudian Slip” is basically someone saying something that they didn’t actually mean to say at all. In layman’s terms, it could be described as “an error of speech as a result of the unconscious mind.”  What exactly is the unconscious mind? Aside from the fact that it could probably be best described as the part of the mind that you don’t realize exists, it actually is a mystery.  It’s the part of the thought that you can’t control; it’s the part of the brain that sneaks information into your mind, or locks information up like the gold in Fort Knox.

Relating the idea of the unconscious mind to happiness, I think of those quotes distributed on Tuesday.  Quite a few of them dealt with the idea of happiness with relation to thought, retrospection, or deep introspection.  For example we can see the relation between happiness and thought with Joseph Joubert’s quote: “Misery is almost always the result of thinking.”  Likewise with J.M. Reinoso’s “Happiness is a distraction from the human tragedy” or Colette’s “What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”

Perhaps happiness is only truly an illusion put forth by some deep part of the mind.  Maybe it can only really be known when you reflect on it.  If these things are the case, why is it that we waste time to seek happiness? I guess the easiest, though incredibly confounding, answer is that happiness is enjoyable, even if someone were to liken it to an opiate or an escape from reality.

-By Darryl Bethay

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The “Allegory of the Cave” from Book VII of Plato’s Republic, is a metaphor that explains the importance of education.  Within the story, the men are bound by chains within a cave that has a fire lit behind them that projects shadows, for which the men mistake for real entities.  The cave itself is a representation of a cage, wherein the darkness and the chains that bind men inside of the cave are figurative for an all-encompassing ignorance that prevents mankind from following the path of true philosophy, which in itself is described as a “revolution of the soul” and can also be described as a path to achieve self-actualization.  With the dichotomy of light and dark, where light is knowledge and wisdom, and darkness is ignorance and folly, it could be seen that education is an essential aspect towards reaching one’s full potential as both an effective leader and as a successful human being.  It is not until one frees themselves from the binds of ignorance; that is, having the desire to learn, that they could understand the shadows for what they really are, and furthermore be able to understand both the real and the mysterious.

However, it must be noted that this enlightenment is not an instantaneous process to achieve success.  The knowledge gained from being able to see the fire compared to seeing only the shadows produced by them would surely contradict the knowledge that one believed that he had of the world around him. Knowledge isn’t a matter of suddenly giving the blind the sense sight.  It is the responsibility of knowledge to point a person in the right direction, as much as it is the responsibility for the person to reflect on contradictions of knowledge and use reason to divine the unknown.  With this said, it is also not enough for one to simply reflect, but it is necessary to apply and spread knowledge for the good of society in order to be considered a successful person.   If one possesses wisdom, but chooses not to act on their knowledge, the wisdom is useless.  Additionally, it is also the manner in which knowledge is used that determines a person’s success.  For example, a knowledgeable person who uses his or her knowledge for selfish purposes such as greed is sure to bring calamity to the state that they govern, whereas the people who use their knowledge for just purposes will build a well-governed society.

By Darryl Bethay