Exercise (pg. 314) Corporate States of Mind

Wabi-Sabi is the cultural mood of Japan. The purpose of following Barthe's analogy to this civilization is to propose that the wide image functions for an individual the same way wabi-sabi functions for a whole culture. A person's wide image is their overall view or perspective of their thoughts on their life. This can easily be learned from creating a mystory, because it allows you to discover new things your life reveals about yourself. Wabi-sabi is broken up into sections; 1. Things, 2. Material Attributes, 3. Atmosphere, 4. Feeling, 5. Worldview, and 6. Morality. In this exercise, you are asked to use this template to identify the state of mind of a corporation's advertisement.

This BMW advertisement gives off a very serious feel, as most BMW ads do. But this does so in a different way. As most commercials or ads are very serious and classy in selling their premium cars, this takes that same seriousness to make a very bold statement about drinking and driving. The ad here is very simple and straight forward. It has simple, black font, the message it is portraying, and the well-known logo. This creates a very strong message next to the synthetic leg. From the wabi-sabi template, "things" is definitely first on the list. The synthetic leg describes the kind of society we live in, where drinking and driving has gotten completely out of hand. Especially with the high quality cars in today's age, there are very dangerous things happening when adults who have been drinking get behind the wheel of a vehicle, especially one as powerful as a BMW. Number two on the template, "atmosphere" is  being evoked by these attributes as simple, powerful, and upsetting. The third section, feeling, is pretty evident. There is a sad story behind this advertisement. This could be anyone, and it creates a depressing and gloomy feeling over your whole body. Wabi-sabi explains that even though something is so devastating, there is deeper pleasure knowing that you have not gone through something this tragic, and a grateful emotion overwhelms you.
This ad is powerful and actually turned into a perfect example of the wabi-sabi affect.

Exercise (pg. 84) Frederick Douglass

In order to locate correspondences across different stories, Ulmer suggests comparing two excerpts. The first, an autobiography of Frederick Douglass, is about his life as a slave and his journey into the woods to get a load of wood for his master. His master, Mr. Covey, was in charge of domesticating slaves who were known to be difficult for any reason. On his trip, the oxen got out of control twice, and Douglass had never worked with oxen before. In the second excerpt, the summary of a Zen teaching story told in pictures, said that ox were the most common and most useful animals in China. This relation is similar in both excerpts, because the ox were being used for transfer wood from the forest back home, and in the Zen summary, was used to show a very spiritual version of a slave's struggles using the ox as his guidance. The series of photos is showing the stages of ox herding, which represents the Zen life.
In the first photo, the young boy is looking for his lost ox. This relates to the biography because it represents the first struggle of not knowing how to drive a group of oxen. Once the boy finds the ox in the story, this is similar to Douglass getting to the end of the woods with little difficulty even though it was his first time. In the fourth picture, the boy has great difficulty trying to tame the ox due to outside forces. The ox does not want to be tamed by the boy, similarly how Douglass does not want to be tamed my Mr. Covey. Another connection would be the ox becoming frightened in the woods, and dragging the cart until Douglass tames them. The boy in the summary finally gets ahold of the ox in the sixth picture, just like Douglass does. I think the eighth box, where the man vanishes from the picture, his mind is completely clear and he finally feels peace. Douglass, being a slave, yearns for peace and freedom everyday. When he returns from his duty, he has to report to Mr. Covey what has happened, which certainly does not make him look "fixed" as Mr. Covey is supposed to do. In the tenth picture he is a free man, and roams the world doing whatever he wants because there is nothing to gain. I feel like in the biography Douglass does't seem very distraught of his situation, but I also just got a excerpt from the biography. Being a free man is the number one goal of any slave so the two stories tie together extensively.

Assignment (pg. 246) The Wide Emblem

In this assignment, Ulmer does not give much to go off of. However, the look and feel of my mystory as I approach the end, is surrounding my family and my parents especially. The "object of search" is important to Ulmer here as he emphasizes how to begin something when you don't know how to do it. Because he poses this assignment in the beginning of the Emblem chapter, it forces you to pay attention to the future assignments, and discover how they relate and can be used here. Because all of these topics essentially relate back to one another, they also cause conflict. My family posts are all about my childhood and the emotions that are tied into those moments. When I relate those feelings to my current life, many of those feelings are shared. However, this could be looked at in multiple ways. Those feelings that I discovered when I was a young girl could have set me up to be anxious and nervous more than necessary today. Connecting the love and support my family gives me to the anxious and homesick feelings I tend to feel could be portrayed as a negative aspect. Reliving these memories has allowed me to look at my life in a broader perspective, rather than just day by day.
My fetishes between objects and people is essentially the same feeling. It is a feeling of obsession and yearn to be by/with these certain things, however, society feels these very same things. Political activists feels the need to be in power and run a city, town, or even country, which is something that I would never want to do. That is their obsession that they have probably felt since they were younger. The obsession of drugs for addicts is something that has been rooted into their blood from some previous situation or tragedy. They NEED to feel the way drugs make them feel, just to go on each day. These objects (needles, bowls) are directly correlated to the feeling of being calm or relaxed. Everyone relates certain things to certain feelings, whether or not we are aware of it.
My mystory is a relation between love, comfort, future, and present. My past directly reflects my present, and my present directly reflects my future. All aspects of the mystory are needed to show someone as a whole.

This quote is the anthem of my mystory. It explains almost every aspect of my emotion except when I am relaxed.




This picture feels like my mystory if it were a picture. The love I felt when I was a baby, to the love I feel today, and the love I know I'll feel in the future form my parents is endless. Two parents embracing their child like in this photo is the ultimate feeling, and it makes a person who they are when they grow up.

Exercise (pg. 182) The Quest Schema

The “Initial Quest” from the film, Silence of the Lambs, was Hannibal Lecter’s relationship as donor for the apprentice FBI agent Clarice Starling. The initial quest that Ulmer is referring to here is the wide image of the film. From the film, Ulmer classifies every character or event as something that essentially makes up the overall image. From my entertainment quadrant, I chose to analyze my Pidgin Sign exercise. When I was discussing Mischa Barton, I felt that she became a hero in my life. For her own life, she lives in an ordinary life, or as close to one as an actress can. She still has to go grocery shopping and wash her clothes and make her bed, just like anyone else. Mischa’s inner problem could be anything she is facing in her personal life with the responsibilities of being in the public eye. Her threshold guardian could be her parents or her manager, someone who makes her schedule and handles her appearances. Mischa may consider the special world as ordinary life that people live that are not celebrities. As much as she may want to be a part of normal everyday life, she will never be able to because of who she is. Her ordeal could be anything that has bothered her or affected her life as a child. A situation with her parents pushing her into acting, or a drug problem to deal with her fame. Any of these situations can be considered an ordeal for a celebrity.

I feel like anyone could be placed into these categories and analyzed. Once you pull apart the pieces of entertainment or being well-known, there are problems and categories of life that everyone feels.

Exercise (pg. 212) Policy Research

In this exercise, Ulmer begins with things associated with a bar; music, flirting, dancing, and gambling. Relating a bar to a watering hold make sense as a place of people gathering for one specific purpose, to socialize. However, Ulmer states, the importance of the setting of the bar is not the drinking, but the student's belief of a rite of passage. Without your parents around, you are free to drink and get drunk and come home later without them ever knowing. Some students that are not exposed to this in high school find themselves letting loose and going a little crazy once they reach college.

The current drinking laws are outdated in my opinion. Society has made drinking into a problem much bigger than it ever was. When my parents were my age, drinking was not a big deal like it is today. The legal drinking age should be made back to 18 instead of 21, and you should be able to drink in public for certain events or holidays. Of course college environments are all about the drinking, because some people aren't allowed to drink at home under their parents roof. Most students are 18 while they are in high school, so this would allow for them to start drinking moderately, because they know they have to come home to their parents later that night. Changing the drinking age back to 18 would really benefit the students whose parents are strict, and create a stronger foundation for when they actually do get to college and are able to drink without supervision. Because the age is 21, almost all students have to use fake ID's just to go to the bars to socialize, even if they do not drink there. In SC, the cops are so strict with fake ID's and more then ten people I know have either gotten arrested or an MIP for drinking underage or using a fake ID because they dress us as students and try to catch kids in the bar. If no one is causing a problem I think it is completely uncalled for for police to be this sneaky, even if someone is just using a fake ID to get into the bar and not drink.

Exercise (pg. 223) Lyric Evaluation

The song "I'm Gon Ride" by J. Cole has always struck my mind as soon as it comes on. When I first started listening to it, it was solely for the lyrics. They were closest thing to a romantic love song you were going to get from a rapper. The lyrics that stuck out to me the most were at the end.

"I'm gon ride, and they gon hate,
but we gon go, no we won't wait,
we wont stop cause we came now,
up from the bottom, aim is the top,
and we won't fail.
I swear I never let you go,
I can't lose cause I never never let you go,
and we gon win."

Clearly the lyrics that I typed out are the slang versions of words, but this is how the song is presented. This is the only video of the song off of YouTube because it is from J. Cole's mixtape, and it is a still image so I could not capture any images that portray feelings from this video. His position in the photo can represent some things though. He is sitting with his head back staring at the camera, which could represent his mood or feelings about a girl he is talking about in the song.

These lyrics seemed so powerful to me and I can never skip the song any time it comes on. I suddenly get reminded of the day I got my new car, because this was on the CD that I made for it. Over the summer I was in such a good place in my life, working and having my life in some sort of order, plus getting a brand new car that I was (and still am) in love with. This song reminds me of my boyfriend as well, due to the passionate lyrics and feelings it provokes. Music has always played a huge role in my mood and emotions because I feel like I can connect to almost anything in some way, but there are some songs that really create a certain feeling. In the bigger picture, love is something that is so hard to come by, no matter who you are. To find someone you will "ride" with and do anything for is so beautiful and for a hardcore rapper to express these feelings makes the message seem deeper than every other pop love song.

Extension of Memory Glimpse 2

In my previous Memory Glimpse post, I stated how I was shy and loved being alone, when I was a child along with my current age. There is much of me however that loves being crazy and among huge groups of people. One of the recent excitements in my life was the Drake concert at PNC in New Jersey. My dad works for NBC and gets free tickets for almost anything; Giants, Knicks, Mets, Yankees, any event at Madison Square Garden, and countless concert venues. So when my dad offered me two tickets to the concert the day before, I was more than excited. The next day came quickly and it was pouring ran, of course. I grabbed some Captain Morgan and me and my boyfriend were on our way. As it down-poured the ENTIRE drive down the parkway, I got more and more excited to see Drake. We got there, parked, and met up with some of our friends. We were all drinking and having a blast until it was time to go into the concert. We had great seats, and I did not sit in them once. I was up screaming, rapping all the words, and on cloud nine. I love the feeling of being apart of a huge group. In this case, an entire audience. Something about creating a connection with people over one person or one song is so powerful and I am grateful that I have gotten to experience this feeling on multiple occasions. When you share a certain feeling with someone, especially if it's a good feeling, you are in a daze where everything in your life is perfect. Of course you have stress and problems on a daily basis, but at that very moment, you are in your own head, connecting to thousands of other people.
I think these feelings are so powerful, being alone in your own head, but also being connected to people through excitement and similarities. I feel completed and so strongly about making sure both feelings have consecutive roles in my lifestyle. From Ulmer's mood point of view, one emotional automatically links feeling to another. That alone feeling that is captured in private triggers sentimental feelings of my past and present. Usually the future is only in my mind when I am stressing about something. But when I am in the past or present in my alone "place" it creates a connection to all my passions in life, whether it be to people or memories and simply a feeling of being blessed. The same connections are triggered when I am in my alternative "place", a place of crazy, hectic human connections. The concert, for instance, was generally a euphoric state of mind, but my mind was 100% in the present. You don't really think when you're in an intense present like that, but as Ulmer continues, he states that there is always a connection between two emotions. 


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