So, this week we had to choose a son that we felt depicted love as true, wise, or inspiring. I chose Dancing by Elise. Below I listed a link to a video of the song- just as a note, the video is from So You Think You Can Dance but I felt like the dance matched the song and how I felt it represented love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3Hc9uk_zO0

Love is ambivalent. Love is painful and it knows it. When that one special person walks into the room, you suddenly can't breath, you can't feel you fingers, your heart is trying to escape you chest. Love means you have to compromise or risk sacrificing everything. Love is selfish and no matter how hard you try to meet someone halfway, the playing field is never going to be even. Ever. Love seems painless but after a while, you're just left fighting to keep it. People push you away, try to keep you around, but you know that you can't stand to live without them. Because no matter what, that one special person is going to leave a hole in you heart, even after you've moved on. You're still going to see them on the street and wish you were with them.

And love makes everything seem worthwhile. You are willing to compromise, meet someone halfway, put up with the arguments, put up with the dirty dishes, put up with the wayward glances, put up with the yelling. Love isn't going to pay the bills or put food on the table or make everything go away. Love isn't going to keep that family from hating you, love isn't going to get you a raise. But for a little while, love will make things feel better. At least you'll have someone who will love you for everything you have, or you hope. That person will have to put up with your annoying habits, those stupid movies you like, with your crying jags, and your pleas to never go. You'll put up with their bad moods, their need to be alone, their own little annoying habits. They'll tell you little lies to make you feel better and you'll lie back. You'll curl around each other at night, pray that the morning will come so that you could at least see their face one last time in the daylight. Love will, for a moment, make you believe that everything is ok. So you hold on, you hold on tight, and you hope to never let go.

Love is ambivalent, but love is like a bandaid, it will hang around, get gunky and funky, but it won't go away until you decide to rip it away.

Not To Be Reproduced

For this week's homework, I decided to pick and focus on Rene Magritte's "Not to Be Reproduced." The painting depicts a man staring into a mirror, only instead of seeing his reflection, he sees the back of his own head. I love the surrealists; I have always loved them, so it was exciting to see Magritte's painting as one of the selections in Berger's photo essay. I think what I'm really drawn to is the fact that while at face value the painting seems absurd (after all you can't see the back of your head in a mirror,) after looking at it, really looking at it, it makes a lot of sense. When you look in a mirror, you always see versions of yourself, monsters, beauties, the person who stares back wondering what on earth are you doing. Staring at the back of your own head is almost contemplative. You are watching yourself being watched, sort of like Berger said in Chapter 3. You are watching yourself to see how are you being watched, what are people really seeing when they see you. And of course, I think the title is relevant in the sense that you can never reproduce the same look, the same body motion, the same idea. It's always going to get changed just a little bit each time, because we are constantly picking up on different cues, reacting to different things, learning little things that can change something on a bigger scale. Our perceptions are never the same twice.

You Only See What You Want To See

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Dear Mr. Berger,

Women are the muses of men, to just be looked upon, right? We're naked in front of you, slabs of meat, right? We're to be seen but not heard, right? At least for argument's sake.

How about this....

We only reveal what you want you to see... You see only what you want to see. We hide behind veils, cold masks, without emotion. Dear spectator, we have eyes of the dead, nothing behind the surface actually being revealed. We impose our own veil, to hide what really lies beneath...

We are Powerful.

We are Peaceful.

We are very Comfortable in Our Own Skin, if you will let us be.

We are Terrifying.

We are Free.

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Take another Look. What do you see?

Photo Credits: Shahzia Sikander, Pino, Vanity Fair, History Channel, personal photos, public domain.

Joelle Wallach

Joelle Wallach has spunk; she was lively and interesting. I think what I liked most was that what she was saying was relevant. We are, theoretically, women artist, so it's interesting to see how women have progressed and have started taking a vital role in the art world. I think it's interesting to see how far we have come and how other women have made it in the art world.

Women are still restricted or at least still haven't been entirely taken seriously, but to see women composers finally taking a role in the music world is inspiring and just another reminder that women can be taken seriously and can make a difference in an otherwise male-dominated world.