Sol Lewitt’s Focus is one piece that particularly caught my attention. The piece, which is entirely black and white, is alarmingly massive. In fact, I walked past the exhibit while trying to find it, an act seemingly impossibly in retrospect.
Focus barely shared any qualities as the other MOMA exhibits. There was less color variety, shape variety, or “artistic skill” than in any other of the MOMA exhibits. The exhibit did give out a strong vibe like the rest of the pieces. It was different, though, in that most of the other pieces made me feel like there was a certain vibe I was supposed to be getting. When I went into the Focus: Sol LeWitt, as they call it, I felt like there was more room for open interpretation than in most of the other options we had to write about.
The piece was printed (or painted) onto two or three of the very high and very wide walls of the museum were pitch black, with white squiggles, lines, and curves. To the right of the exhibit, painted in white on the black wall, there was a zoomed out image of the paintings on the wall. It is hard to decide whether I prefer the massive version or the small one.
Above the zoomed out image was the “map key” of the exhibit. It showed that there were only 20 shapes used to create Focus. The final products were basically grids in which the shapes were inserted, sometimes two in one spot. On a larger scale, my first thought was that either it was a poor attempt at a maze or a jumble of random shapes. The latter may be close to correct, but when printed in a small enough size to see without stepping back, it was more aesthetically pleasing.
Sol Lewitt’s Focus was in some ways soothing, but at the same time almost empty. I think it was the dull, “brushed” as I like to say, black with thin white lines that created the soothing feeling. The walls were surprisingly easy on the eyes for something with such a large contrast in colors. The differing feeling of the large version compared to the small was unexpected. The lines, when put on a small scale, seemed tangled or congested. The small piece had a much more hectic mood.
On the wall with the “map key,” the design of the white lines was in a diagonal gesture. Most of the designs were moving vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. There were also a ton of dotted lines.
One of the other walls was filled with curves. For the most part, the lines were horizontal or vertical curves. A handful of times, the curves would reseal, making either an ellipses or a half-ellipses.

gleaners & i review

well, although this was a very interesting film, i wouldn't exactly recommend it. The movie was a documentary about gleaning, filmed theoretically by one frail old woman and her camera. There was a lot of talk about gleaning, picking, and gypsies all across europe. As always for me, subtitles make movies harder to watch, and less interesting. The focus of the movie was on gleaning, but the interesting parts were her interviews of the gleaners and their lifestyles. I think my favorite line in the documentary was when one of the gleaners she was interviewing said with a completely straight face, "Here's an apple with nothing going for it, like an ugly and stupid woman."priceless. My other memorable moment was when she was driving down the road and capturing trucks in her hand. She would hold the camera up close to her and "capture" the trucks as they drove by. It was so simple, but looked awesome in the screen. It was something i could see myself doing on a long road trip years from now.

I am from Gotham, from freedom of my parents,
from living by sam garr and teddy ebersol, from
easy and hard.

I am from boognish's heavy grasp, Thom Yorke's light
voice and the flight's inspiring words. I am from
Puerto Rican life and from not letting me live it.

I am from arabic drumming and funky bass guitars.
I am from the forbidden pot leaf and all it's faults.
I am from a building of family. I am from loud thoughts
and closed mouths.
From american bombshells dropped on my old country.
i am from jewish, catholic, bahai, and nothing at all.
i am being pushed to insanity by my overcaring parents.
i am ill

I am from NYC, from an ocean breeze, from snowy banks
to soon to be boulder's sunshine.
I am from uncle E and A, from hours of backgammon and
car safety videotapes.

I am choosing to be alone from help. Wanting to make
my own decisions and hoping, without letting anyone
know, i am wrong now and right when it matters.
I am wrong now and right when it matters.

I am making my life my own, traveling far in
short steps. I am from my grey walls and my orange
shag rug. From garbage collections.
I am from my new family and i leave the other behind me

In the play was the first time i had seen a rape acted out live while i was old enough to remember, and it was surprisingly hard to watch. I usually don't mind any sort of gore or otherwise considered "disturbing" images, and this was not the most violent, or for that matter graphic rape scene i have seen including movies. Rape is an impossible subject in my family, but you would never know it. One of my close cousins was raped well before i was born, but since she did not press charges or tell anyone for years, it is technically not set in stone. She does not know that i know, and for that matter nobody but my mother knows that i know. Even though i have never spoken with anyone about it and it has never become a crisis in my life, it is still something that i take more seriously than most people i know. Also, again something that only a few people know, a member of my very immediate family was sexually assaulted, and i use that term broadly, by another immediate family member. The offender does not know that i am aware of the situation, and although the victim has forgiven the offender, i cannot. The victim doesn't want me to confront the offender, and it has made it impossible for me to have a normal relationship with the offender. I don't think that telling the offender would help our relationship, but my disgust in the person has, over the years, become more and more obvious as my anger brews inside me, and the offender doesn't know why. Just like in Notes from the Underground, i somehow feel bad for the underground man after he rapes Liza and somehow feel bad for the offender that i don't let the offender know why i can't stand to be in his/her presence. The offender is much closer to my father, and the offender has expressed my relationship issues with the offender to my father. This makes my dad force me to be around the offender at every chance he gets, which he does not realize makes me inable to think straight. I get more nautious around the offender than i did on the bus, and i have been somehow able to manage not to fall apart in anyone presence to this day. I only asked the victim once if i could confront the offender or for that matter, my father, so that in the very least he knows where my disrespect for the offender comes from. The victim and i ended up talking on the phone for hours, both of us procrastinating our hours of work. The conversation let me relax for a little while, but watching Notes from the Underground and reading it both restirred the hatred and disgust that i felt before my soothing conversation. It is impossible for me to articulate my feelings towards the offender, and even worse in my opinion is the fact that the offender has been forgiven by what feels like everyone but myself, and i often have been told that the issue is not my issue and that i should let go of it and, essentially, forget it ever happened. The person who told me has said that they wished they never told me, but unlike those who say ignorance is bliss, after i found out i hated myself for not knowing sooner. I was told years after the event had concluded between the victim and the offender, including after the victim forgave the offender. It is entirely my situation when my family member commits what i consider to be the most vile, disgusting, i can't even begin to explain how angry i get. It has become the unforgivable sin, which i must pretend to live without every day. I can remember the moment i found out, and not a day has gone by in which i havent thought about the issue, tried to forget the issue, tried to destroy the issue in my mind. I wish i could take the victim's forgiveness and give it onto myself every day. I can't breathe when i think of the offender. I, out of respect for my family and their wishes, refrain from killing the offender. If it weren't for the victim's wishes, i would take the offender to court. I would reveal to the world the sick and unforgivable actions the offender has made and let him/her rot in solitude for the rest of their worthless life. The day that i found out what happened, i lost a family member. That day, any feelings of that person were vanished from my memory. He/She became completely worthless to me, dead to me. Their life is the only life i value less than another in the entire world. That day, i understood the death penalty. I understood how hatred can completely overwhelm someone. Maybe it is because i have never loved, but on that day i was overcome with hatred unlike any other feeling i have ever had. I never thought anyone could be all bad until I knew this. I never believed that there could be an unforgivable sin until I knew about this. And the fact that I had lived under a roof that the offender had been under, the fact that I have known him/her for my entire life, that I have eaten his/her food, laughed with him/her, made eye contact with him/her makes me want to kill myself. And the fact that as I was writing this, I thought that feeling such an immense and pure hatred could make my feeling of joy more outstanding makes me hate myself and the offender. No matter what I do, no matter what happens to the offender and the victim, the offender has ruined my life. He/She has taken away from me time that I can never get back. Any joy that the offender had brought to me was sickening to me. The joy that I felt because of the offender became guilt, became disgust, became revulsion and made me feel loathsome towards myself for allowing any of the offender’s life to bring me anything but sickness.

Notes from underground play review

I saw Dostoevsky's Notes From the Underground at the Yale Rep Theatre. The entire play was acted and the music performed by just three people, and one person in a lighing booth to man the cameras. I wasn't sure about how i felt about it until later that night, when i was speaking about it with my roommate Zack Stein. It threw my feelings of the underground man and his life around, pulling out of me hatred, compassion, and everything in between in a matter of minutes. How the underground man can rape a girl and make me feel sorry for HIM and her makes me feel physically sick. He was disgusting and funny and scary all at the same time. The play also had great visual effects, with the use of a wireless web camera or two to give you an up close and personal feeling with the actors that at times was almost overwhelming. It drew attention to the faces of the actors in a way that no other play i have seen (and i have seen quite a few) has been able to do. Although the cameras gave the play a very personal touch, they also at times drew away from it, as the small stage was sometimes full of a projection. In one scene, the underground man is screaming with his arms open up to a massive projection of his friend, which made a great statement about the underground man's ego and self-opinions, but also was "too much," if i may use such a broad description. The cameras combined with the hipster/funk soundtrack gave me the feeling that the underground man was the last person on the earth, keeping records of his life in a post-apocalyptic world. After the first half of the play, though, when most of the character development of the underground man was finished, the camera was used much less and was, in my opinion, easier to watch. The girl, Liza, had a great voice. Both she and the underground man were great actors. She also sang in some of the background music, which sounded nice, but was sometimes distracting. He seemed to have taken alot of his mannerisms from the joker in "The Dark Knight" (overpronouncing his "T"s and "S"s, leaving his mouth open and his tongue hanging out) and Johnny Depp's character in "Pirates of the Carribbean (his flambouyant arm movements." The Joker imitation was great, but made him seem more insane than i had imagined in the book. The Depp was hilarious at times, but it also was, in my opinion, a little bit too insane for the book and sometimes it even felt forced and fake. When Liza came to his house, his arms raised above his head was funny at first, but overdone and eventually distracting to the audience. In the book, the underground man was smarter, weaker, and less insane. When Liza is in his apartment, the underground man is more of a wreck than she, but in the play it is the other way around. "She was now the heroine, while i was just a crushed and humiliated creature" (p. 345).The play felt like it could have been alot shorter. There was alot of rambling done by the underground man that could have been cut out, but in the book the underground man rambled as well, so i understood it. Maybe an intermission sometime in the two hour play would have done the trick. Overall, it was a great play, but the seats were terribly uncomfortable on the bus and in the theatre.

“Get out of my room,” I said. “I’m busy.”
“Grow a sac, Farsh!” Nick was pissed, and surprisingly pleased. “I’m hungry. What do you have?”
“I don’t care if you’re hungry, I’m doing work and you need to leave.” Every night Nick comes into my room and bothers me while I’m busy.
Nick persisted, “C’mon dude. Hook a brother up. You know I’d do the same for you.” I in fact did not know he would do the same for me. On many occasions he didn’t do the same for me when I did.
“Nick, next time I come into your room while you’re busy and ask you for food, pencils, or any other insignificant shit item and you turn me down, I’ll be sure to beg and whine before you kick me out. In the mean time, get the fuck out so I can do my work.” I wanted Nick out of my room and I wanted him to know it.
“What are you doing, huh?” Nick asked. “What is so important that…”
I interrupted “If it were any of your business what I was doing I would have told you. Get out.”
“This may be your room,” Nick protested, “But you have been my friend for four years now, and I’m not asking for much more than a fucking orange or some gum.”
He wasn’t getting the point, and I was beginning to be at a loss of words in anger. “You aren’t asking for shit. If you were, I’d have given you some, but no. You came into my room looking for my food, and now you’re standing here demanding food and refusing to get out without it. Who the fuck made you my boss and what made you think I would be okay with it.”
“Fine, “ he muttered, “Can I have some food?”
It went on like this for ages. Nick never got a clue, and slowly I was going insane. My temper was put to the test, and i knew it was not going to be long until Nick would drop the last drop.
During my first block sleep in on a tuesday morning, i woke up to the sound of wood smashing against the floor. My feet, which were leaning against the wooden floor, were vibrating with every thud, and i could hear Nick singing from the hallway.
"Row, row, row your boat!" I got out of bed an hour before my alarm went off and stepped into the hallway.
"Shut the fuck up," I shouted down the hallway before I slammed the door and waited a minute facing the closed door. There was silence, and then i heard footsteps creep towards my door. My room was dark and the hallway lights were on, so i saw feet infront of my door through the crack. There was a quiet string of knocks, sounding like an incessant tapping. I swung the door open as fast as i could. Nick was standing infront of me, naked, with a large branch he was using as a kickdrum extended infront of him like a sword.
"Lets end this once and for all," he playfully challenged.
"Alright!" I entertained the both of us as i walked back to my desk and grabbed my five inch jackknife. I walked into my doorway and flipped the blade open, holding it dangerously close to his neck.
"Fuck with me again while i'm sleeping and i'll fucking stab you."
Nick nervously stared at my eyes for the longest second i can remember. I saw his bottom lip quivering, and he looked, for the first time i could remember in a long time, to have a genuine expression on his face. He tried to speak, but he was at a loss of words and could only move his lips. I shut the door faster than i had opened it and threw myself onto my bed. My heart was racing, but i felt good about it. I could feel adrenaline flowing in me.
"Shit dude," Nick muttered, "Chill out. I was just fucking around." I heard fear and sincerity through the otherwise apparent shock.
"Let me sleep, Nick," I barked, "and get away from my room."
"Sorry." Anyone could tell that Nick was, in fact, sorry. Unfortunately, he was also stupid. As he walked down the hall, i heard a quiet, muffled humming of the tune of "Row, Row, Row your boat." I leaped up from my bed and charged into the hallway, wielding my knife in one hand and the wooden doorstop in the other. Nick saw me and dropped his branch, sprinting faster than i had ever seen towards his room. I let go of my arsenal and picked up the stick, holding it like a spear and firing it at him. I missed by a few feet, but Nick was locked in his room well before he would have had the chance to see that. I marched to the branch, and like Nick had done earlier, paced around the hallway.
Using the stick as a kickdrum on Nick's door, I stood screaming "Row, Row, Row your boat!"