natschall's blog

For this essay, Pia and I are thinking about using the lens of sexuality to analyze Felix and Natalie's characters, and how their sexual intimacy with others helps them find themselves. We had started going into this, but didn't go as deep as we could have. There is much more comparison to do with how alike their sexual experiences make them in how they identify themselves.

Natalie's section will focus more on her listings and why she chose to post them, while Felix's will look at how he is attached to Annie and what this does to his relationship with Grace.

“The man was naked, the woman dressed. It didn’t look right, but the woman had somewhere to go. He lay clowning in bed, holding her wrist. She tried to put a shoe on. Under their window they heard truck doors opening, boxes of produce heaved onto tarmac. Felix sat up and looked to the car park below… Grace tapped the window with a long fake nail: “Babe – they can see you.” Felix stretched. He made no effort to cover himself. “Some people shameless,” noted Grace and squeezed round the bed to straighten the figurines on the windowsill” (113).

Reading NW, I found myself wanting to know more about the more minor characters. I was curious about the background of the Felix/Annie relationship, and why exactly Annie could still have such a strong pull on Felix to the point that even though he was completely in love with his girlfriend, he would have sex with Annie on the roof. Even more, I wanted to know how Annie got to living in the state that she was, drinking and smoking and doing drugs constantly.

Anyway, most of that can't really be answered in class, or by anyone other than Zadie Smith herself. So I suppose what I would like to look at and figure out is what we do see of Felix and Annie's relationship. How they treat each other, etc.

The most recent, and perhaps most helpful, piece of advice that I got for writing essays was to write around things I don’t know how to say. I was told to just keep talking, describing what it is that I’m thinking of, and eventually I’ll either come up with the correct phrase or realize that my roundabout explanation is better than what I had been visualizing before. Thinking back, this is very similar to what I’ve been doing in my city visits. I wander around, never quite sure where exactly I’m going, or how to get where I want to get, but always reaching my destination in the end. Sometimes I’ve even come across things that I didn’t know existed but are now my favorite things in the city, like the Masonic Temple and the Board Game Art Park.

Being able to wander freely around Philadelphia is my favorite part of this course. Before, in cities, I’ve always been on a mission to see something, or had to follow a tour guide. I now know that that’s not a good way to see a city-- I mean, sure, you’ll see all the famous landmarks, but you won’t experience the real sights and sounds. You won’t get the insight into what it’s actually like to live in that city. I can see myself living in Philadelphia, something I’ve never really felt before, in any city I’ve been to. I feel alive and part of the world, which I’m sure is because I’ve gotten to wander around and see and do whatever strikes my interest.

I went to the city twice over the weekend. Friday night, I went on a ghost tour, and on Sunday, I wandered the city after dropping a friend off at Amtrak at 30th St. Station. This was my first experience going on the subway system (specifically, the Market-Frankford Line/El) for the first time. While in the city, I focused on how I was using the things around me as a method for playing, to see if I could figure out what ‘technology’ is from Flanagan’s viewpoint.

Our mode of transportation is both technology in the obvious way and technology that helps us play. Transportation, especially new kinds, can be very playful when you are first discovering its quirks and the way it works. I feel that an important aspect of play is discovering new things and having adventures. When I went on the subway for the first time, by myself, it was very new and stressful as I tried to make sure that I was on the right line and going to the correct stop. So this kind of technology is a game in and of itself, not just a method used to play another game or get to a location to play with something else.

When I was reading the Inquirer, I came across one article that grabbed my attention: "Too Bean Or Not Too Bean", about a man who has several coffee shops and about all of the coffee shops on the Main Line. Following this train of thought...

Flanagan defines play, at one point, as separated from reality. This makes me wonder- did we ever truly play in the city? I know for sure that I never felt separated from reality while in Philadelphia (or indeed any other city). If anything, being in the city felt more realistic, more consequential than anything else I do in my life. This makes me unsure of whether or not to agree with what Flanagan writes about.

However, Flanagan also offers up a definition for “critical play”. She defines it as “creat[ing] or occupy[ing] play environments and activities that represent one or more questions about aspects of human life… Criticality in play can be fostered in order to question an aspect of a game’s ‘content,’ or an aspect of a play scenario’s function that might otherwise be considered a given or necessary… Critical play is characterized by a careful examination of social, cultural, political, or even personal themes that function as alternates to popular play spaces.” Perhaps this definition is a bit closer to the experiences I’ve had in the city. Another issue I was trying to work through while reading Flanagan was her section about “technology”. I don’t believe that my play in the city required any technology. I found that simply walking around was enough to feel that I was playing. This leads me to believe that my main method of playing in the city is by using subversion.

When I was skimming through Flanagan for the first time, the words "Gutai Movement" jumped out at me. I decided to research what this was, and came up with something a bit more specific-- an exhibit (already past) about the Gutai movement at the Guggenheim Museum in New York called "Gutai: Splendid Playground".

The article about this exhibit gave me these facts:

1. Gutai is a Japanese postwar art movement
2. It's a combination of painting and sculpture
3. The exhibit involves participatory play
4. There is a canvas with the sign "Please Draw Freely": each visitor can draw on the initially blank canvas so that it becomes a collaborative work of art
5. Gutai was meant to "rebuild democracy by both demonstrating and encouraging symbolic acts of independence"
6. Gutai underscores and cultivates connections among the new art of Europe, America, and Japan
7. Some of the art is painted with feet, some with robots, and some with fire (yes really!)

Here's the link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/arts/design/gutai-splendid-playground-at-the-guggenheim.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

and to the exhibit: http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/past/exhibit/4495

My time in the Magic Gardens seemed like a blur, a mesh of everything mixed together. I didn't remember many specific things, just a mass of beauty. So I put all these pictures together, upside down, sideways, every way possible, which was as close as I could get to a visual representation of my thoughts while there. I felt like I was part of the art of the Gardens while I was in them, so it seemed fitting to place a picture of myself reflected back in some of the mirrors front and center.