Play in the City 2013

Thoughout Susan's claim,I generaly agree with her. The exact interpretation of art may not only lead to misunderstanding of the ture meaning of the Art, but also, more ridiculous, add more ideas on the artworks, which may be never came up with the artists when they did them. In my opinion, every work of art represents a unique mood of its artist who made it, which means that,except the artist himself/ herself, nobody can exactly feel or interprete its meaning. 

However, I still think that Susan's claim is a little bit exceeding. The interpretation is not completely useless or harmful. Some logical speculation can help us to learn the artwork better. I think the goal of the artists to create artworks is not only express their thinkings, but also to deliver informations to the viewer. As viewers, we should try to guess or image something from the artwork and try to understand it.

In her essay, Sontag talks about interpretation and how the act of interpreting something alters the original thing to the point that it becomes something else entirely. When reading this I find myself playing the believing game a lot, I really want to take in all of what she says and go with her arguments. I also found myself making personal connections to what she is saying, tying it back to everything from my trip to the Barnes Foundation to my high school english classes. These connections along with the use of the believing game make Sontag's claims so much more real, it seems obvious how interpreating a piece of artwork of literature can completely reshape it to fit whatever mold the interpreter chooses for it. 

The further along I got in the essay, the more I started to see this not only as a disscussion about interpreting paintings and the like, but also as being about books. Sontag believes that we should not interpret art, that it takes away from the real value of it. Ancient versions of this that built on top of the art are acceptable, but digging behind it is not. This reminded me of my high school lit classes. I feel as though the majority of the essays I wrote ended up being about some sort of symbolism or metaphor or interpretation of the book (and most of the time, I didn't believe). We spent very little time building on it: relating it to our life, history, politics, science, language...so often we got caught up in tiny details that were supposed to be the "true meaning behind the novel." But sometimes we don't need to hear that. Sometimes we need to understand that the surface story is just as important.

Throughout Susan Sontag’s essay I found myself losing the path that she was trying to build her points, and I found that often they would contradict themselves. I would say that from the tools we have learned in the class I had to use focused reading to try and interpret what she was trying to say, along with this I think that she has many of the same ideologies as Barnes, in that she thinks things should be enjoyed rather than over-analyzed. With this she is trying to have us play the believing game, because she makes many assertions within the text that make us ask ourselves if we agree or disagree with her ideas.

I have mixed feelings about Sontag's essay to the point where I don't know what to believe. Yes, I understand that when we spend more time trying to interpret and find meaning, we actually lose the purpose and reality of whatever it is we're interpreting, whether it be art or music. That at times we make up so much nonsense and say bullshit to something so simple that could have been expressed in a couple of words or less. And much of it is like Sontag mentions, "plucking a set of elements" bit by bit.

But interpretation can be a very helpful thing as well. Sontag says this out of spite but I find it quite inspiring; "Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art and the world." Where's the fun in just listening and watching without challenging the creator? If I wouldn't challenge the ideas or creations sorrounding me, then I would go nowhere. I wouldn't learn outside of my perceptions and that quite frankly is boring.

Thinking too much burns out the bulb, I get it, but without thoughts circulating throught, there wouldn't be light to light the bulb in the first place. 

Sontag's essay was annoyingly hard to follow. If I was a prof. grading on style (not content) it would be lucky to get above a 2.0. That being said, one of her assertions stuck with me. She says "The effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities." (I had to look up what effusion meant) So, wait what? Is she saying that we aren't supposed to be interpreting art or literarture? I would argue that's what makes literature and art art. That it can be seen from so many different angles. It doesn't poison us, it enlargens our minds. Sure it might taint the original work, but it doesn't lose its value because of it. 

I'm also seeing that I didn't post earlier about what my trip into the city was like (sorry Anne). I originally intended to take the one o-clock train into Philly but I lost track of time talking to my folks. So I ended up going an hour later and revelling in the political institution that is Macy's. I had a moment with the big 'Murican eagle in the center of the store. Then I had another moment with the big light show Christmas tree thingy. I think I'll always be blown away by how consumer-oriented the US is. It still blows my mind that you can shop for anything besides gas and coffee on a Sunday. 

    When I read Susan’s work, I started to think about the way we interpret the arts in Barnes- let all come to you. Not swamped into the content of the art, we welcome the ideas naturally aroused by the art. Without interpretation, it’s the first true impression directly come to us from the arts. I agree with Susan that to interpret is to “turn the world into this world.” “The world” is the true thing itself, “this world” is created by people’s interpretation. For me, the interpretation is a limit. People are chained in a small world that they try to see an art through what those experts and criticism interpreted. Many times, I am afraid to have any idea on an art because my thoughts seem to be innocent and shallow compared to those interpretation and analysis from experts. The deep interpretation makes one seem to be brilliant and insightful. It’s true that to some extent, the interpretation helps me to see what I can’t see and maybe can be inspiring. However, it deprives my own senses- I even can’t follow my own interests and beliefs.

    When we planned the trip to the city, we follow our curiosity and instinct in researching. By clicking the link our own senses lead us, we have the way to dig out what we really want to visit and explore. Also, there’s no need to limit oneself in interpretation when writing, we learned to write what we have come up with and follow our ideas naturally and freely. Unfortunately, the interpretation and the seemingly "latent content" behined have even outweighed the true art itself.

here is the toolbox we assembled in class today while you were by the fire @ home.
As you can see, we couldn't make everything fit.
What have we omitted?

Seeking, as always, the certification of the expert,
Percy-ily yours,
Anne and the City Players

Dialogue with Dead Men

The pages swim before my eyes
a jumble of letters
speaking for a man
long gone.

I demand for him to talk
to tell me what he thought
but his speech is slurred
and his mind is elsewhere.
He sits across the table
ephemeral
and already fleeing
back to his half-life
among the underlined words
and desecrated corpses

This post is a kind of mosaic within a mosaic within another mosaic (Hence the title).  Firstly it’s a mosaic because I wrote this poem a long time ago and I am now combining it with recent writing.  Secondly because I’m mixing poetry and prose and thirdly because a couple of the lines are things I remember my political theory teacher, which I then combined with my own writing.

Anyways, back to how this applies to Sontag’s essay.  This poem is a reflection and to a certain extent a complaint (like Sontag’s essay) about how we analyze and interpret authors without any idea as to what they truly intended to convey to us.  Yet, since we can no longer speak to them, we must try to interrogate them through the writing they left behind.  Sontag would say that there is no reason to try to derive meaning from their work, while I focused on how our interpretations are by no means guaranteed to be loyal to the original author.  Sontag talked about change in interpretation over time, as well, when she said that the meanings we derive from a piece of art change to conform to our times and our own individual ideals.