Beauty in sadness

We see the beauty in happy things-- but there is beauty in sadness, too. A photo essay by Yves Marchand and Romaine Meffre captures the haunting beauty in Detroit's demise, as featured in this Time article.

This is Detroit Central Station. I've often stared at it as I passed by it in train rides and car trips, wanting to photograph it. There was something so inexplicably attractive about this building-- the essence of a grandeur that no longer exists, the ever-standing reminder of a lost era.

We see the beautiful in happiness, which is why we tend to ignore the beauty that exists in sadness, as well. An aching, haunting, mesmerizing kind of beauty that captures our hearts and makes them long-- for what, we don't know. But the more we seek the sunny side of things, the more we eschew the darker aspects of life. The more we shun sadness, the less we notice of it. We care not for crumbling buildings and broken windows-- we want high towering buildings of shiny stainless steel and bold reflective windows; we do not gaze upon rusting metals of old desk chairs and falling fluorescent lights-- we always cry out for more comfortable cushioned chairs, gleaming white boards stretching across walls; we would not attend a tour of a Spanish Gothic theater, caving in on itself, built at the height of the twenties-- we would rather watch football games from the newly built skyboxes of plastic and metal, placing ourselves well above the rest of the world.

We do not care for sadness. We do not care for eras lost. We do not care for the impoverished, the helpless, the struggling. We turn our heads from obviously crumbling, unsustainable infrastructures, children without proper education, cities without safety and stability. And as we do this-- as we try so hard to ignore all that is wrong with the world-- all that we see to be ugly, all that we think can never be beautiful-- we ignore those who desperately need attention and help. We do not care for them. Because we would prefer to view the beautiful things in life.

But here it is: there is beauty in sadness. So look deeply, think carefully, and act-- because if this is what Detroit is like in its "ugliness", then imagine how it once was and could be again, in all of its beautiful splendor.

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Taken from Arts, Ink

Oh, Tiger...

Just a thought: why does Tiger Woods have to apologize for his actions? Granted, he's not the most awesome, faithful man on the planet, but he's not alone. Why should he, a celebrity athlete, have to excuse himself for the mistakes and actions he commits in private? Because he's a public figure? Does being a public figure come with the automatic consent of that person to conform to certain societal standards and beliefs? That when Tiger makes a wrong move that society deems inappropriate, he would have to publicly ask for forgiveness when normal people who do much worse than him are not expected to abide by that same standard?

Of course, what Tiger did is totally not cool and he is not considered to be the nicest person on the planet. But... He's not the President, right? We didn't elect him to be in a certain position. He holds no explicit social contract with the world. So how come he has to endure his mistakes publicly and be forced to apologize to a world made up of a lot of people who could care less?

Maybe he is a role model for children. Maybe not. Even so, children have to learn sometime, don't they? That mythical, constructed heroes are just mere projections of great PR, and that even heroes often times fall. I guess that a formal apology would demonstrate the wrongness of Tiger's actions... But since what he did was so blatantly and loudly made public, doesn't that also show that it's not too bad to do these things-- to cheat, to lie-- since all you have to do in the end is apologize?

No one does anything for Valentine's, anyway, right?

Stupid holidays. Apart from the religious ones, what do they mean, anyway? Even religious holidays have lost their true significance. Jesus wasn't born on Christmas, guys-- we all know this. Christmas is, for the most part, just another commodified business industry. Thanksgiving? Let's all give thanks and eat a bunch of turkey to knock ourselves out. Passover? Totally passed over-- no one but the Jews celebrate it-- it's hardly recognized in our society. And Valentine's Day. What a joke. No one does anything anymore for it. Or maybe they do-- just buy a dozen roses, a box of chocolates and everyone is home free.

Or is that how it is? A guy in my Comm class today actually asked another girl about her Michael Kors watch, saying, "I want to get something like that for my girlfriend for Valentine's Day? Can I see yours?"

At that, all the girls kind of slacked their jaws. Seriously? He's getting his girlfriend a designer jewelry piece for Valentine's Day? Let me say this again-- some man is buying designer jewelry for his girlfriend as a Valentine's gift. WHO DOES THAT? WHO CELEBRATES VALENTINE'S DAY?!

Fine, all right. I'll admit it: I'm jealous. I'm not a person who likes to swoon, who likes to romanticize things, go all out and-- fine. I'll admit it, too: I do like those things. I do like the making a fancy dinner for two and setting up a candle-lit, table clothed covered meal. I like buying presents for each other on ridiculously commercialized holidays for couples. I like riding in gondolas on a moonlit river with the gondolier singing in the back (this would only be for a very brief period of time).

I'm just a little bit disappointed. I definitely don't want some uber romantic guy who tries to make me gag at every opportunity... Yet that's not to say I want someone who completely doesn't care, either. I guess when I talk about things like time management or priorities, I mean the seemingly little things like this that would, in actuality, mean a whole lot to me. Even if I don't say it. Especially if I don't say it. I'm not going to tell someone, "Oh, you should totally do something for Valentine's Day with me" because that's just rude and presumptuous and selfish. I'd like them to come up with these ideas on their own. Ideas like throwing a 21st birthday bash where people go crazy, where they send flowers randomly to let me know they're thinking of me (only very occasionally-- all the time would be icky), where they do take the time to think and realize how much I would enjoy even going for a stupid ten minute romantic walk.

I care. I may not say it, I may say that I don't, but I care. It's not the fact that someone can't or won't go, it's that they can't seem to recognize that it could mean even the smallest bit to me. What's up with that?

*sigh* How can I really be upset? I can't. Do I have the right? I cannot expect or assume that others will feel and think as I do. I cannot even state with certainty that these emotions that I experience are justified. It is highly possible that I'm being too selfish, self-obsessed, self-serving, self-promoting, self-righteous. If I want, I could just go find someone like that. Do I want to...? I just want the things, the people I do have to change. But how unfair is that? So unfair.

It's okay. It's really not a big deal. I mean... No one does anything for Valentine's, anyway, right?

The media is a double-edged sword

The media is a double-edged sword. On the one hand created by the people for the people, particularly in this nation's political revolution, it is also an outlet for the dissemination of tyrants and profit-seekers. Yet, isn't what the media gives us what it thinks we want? As much as it was conceived to be a public service, what is a public service but something the public wants for itself? Yet, by doing us this service of feeding us the latest news on Tiger and the whereabouts of Paris Hilton's lost chihuahua, is the media actually providing a disservice?

But maybe that's unfair. After all, we can't say that we all want to hear about celebrity news or the watered down versions of the war in Afghanistan. We can't say that none of us are interested in international affairs and that's the reason for which foreign news coverage has decreased by almost half in the past decade. I am certain there are many out there who desire to know about all of the things this world has to offer; equally certain that there are many who do not. Then, who is to blame? Is there any one specific person or entity?

Journalists have a hard job. That job is to report, "objectively", on every situation at hand. What does it mean to be "objective"? That we provide all different viewpoints? That we quote any relevant parties? Is there such a thing as objectivity? Some reporters believe that, no, there is no such thing: once a journalist decide to report on something and not on another thing, then in that moment, that journalist has stopped being objective. After all, what makes one story more worthy of being reported than another? Why is one quotation inserted while another is ignored? How come Person A gets to be interviewed yet not Person B?

And after considering this argument, I would have to say that they are right: there is no objectivity. In fact, the journalistic ideal of objectivity may even be harmful to journalism itself; journalists strive to maintain the appearance of being objective that they subsequently attempt to incorporate as many point as possible, people as necessary, quotations to be credible, etc, that the true story is lost underneath all of the weight of "objectivity". As readers, what are we really being told-- that Haiti needs the money or that the US doesn't believe Haiti deserves the money? What is with this portrayal of Haiti as an entirely corrupt, immature nation that needs outside guidance for providing stability to its people? Especially when the real problem has been rooted in centuries of neglect and sometimes even hindrance by the outside world? And is this story objective? The way it begins is not like a journalistic, "objective" report but rather a fictional, dramatic novel. What is this saying about journalism? What is this saying about objectivity? Is this written in a way that shows distance and removed reporting?

Journalism doesn't have to attain the ideal of objectivity-- in fact, what is an ideal but that which cannot be attained, only striven for? Maybe they should just be honest. Corporate, governmental, external influences/power notwithstanding, the sole responsibility of a journalist is not to be objective, but truthful-- in any and every way that may hurt. The responsibility, first and foremost, of a journalist, is to deliver accurate news and give power to the unheard and oft-ignored, not to serve the powermasters of profit. I must acknowledge that the "truth" to everyone may be biased-- however, we are already in a biased news environment-- pundits from the left and right, Fox News, CNN-- what are these but biased, partisan news figures and outlets? And the matter of truthful reporting is hard, particularly in situations where little information is available to anyone and reporters must dig somewhere for the facts, from which they then have to build a concrete idea or story to inform the people. Being a journalist is HARD. Yet that is the responsibility that comes with it-- full of freedoms and blessings, burdens and hardships. Being a journalist is like being a soldier or a doctor-- they take one for the people. When those who are to protect the meek become pawns of the strong, where are their priorities going and whom are the serving?

Not all journalists have to be like Mika Brzezinski and throw away their news scripts. And not all of us should discredit the importance of those who report on celebrity news-- they shape our culture and define the trends of our times. It must only be recognized that "proper" reporting is a hard one-- not only because telling the truth is hard, but also because knowing what the people want is sometimes even harder still, because that is what drives a lot of the content we see today.

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Taken from Arts, Ink

Iconic heroes, mythical figures

As far back as we have records, heroes have existed. It's not just all about Superman, but about Hercules, Aeschylus, Odysseus. It's about Joseph and Jesus and Abraham and Mohammed. About Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Neil Armstrong, Martin Luther King, Jr. In the 21st century, it's about Arnold Shwarzenegger, Barack Obama, soldiers in the Middle East, Tiger Woods. Etc etc etc. Heroes are everywhere. With them comes this great image about them that is cast far and wide, projecting a perspective of awe and admiration, fear and respect, intimacy and personality.

Back up... Tiger Woods? He who has had countless mistresses and who apparently has a sham of a marriage that was alleged to have been a mere media ploy? Hmm...

I'm not one who is interested in celebrity news. Like anyone else, I will admit that yeah, maybe it can be kind of interesting, but typically I don't even glance at Perez or read the People magazine cover in the grocery line. I'm just not that into it. But taking a class on journalism has made me become aware of something: the media is a powerful, powerful tool. And Tiger Woods is someone who knows just how to use it.

The thing with Tiger is that everyone is up in arms about him right now. But why? Because he was Tiger, the untouchable, the unbreakable, undefeatable. Oh la la, and lookie here, now he's the baddd mannn Mommy always warned us about. Mmm... maybe. People are always drawn to drama, especially celebrity drama, so the hubbub about the straying hubby isn't all that surprising. What is surprising, however, is how long this scandal has been kept wrapped up. According to my instructor, a journalist herself, the news of Tiger's busy hands has mostly likely been long known. He has so many journalists on his tail everyday, there were countless rumors about certain bars and rooms he frequented for questionable purposes. But no one ever reported it. Why? Because Tiger had essentially built up an empire controlling the sports media-- if anyone ever wanted to be in Tiger's circle, they would never write anything bad about him. Once an enemy, always on the blacklist for life. And because Tiger was such a big name and thus drew in tons of revenue, no high-aspiring sports journalist would ever report anything negative about the heroic Tiger Woods. He had developed a myth about him that created around him an untouchable aura. His PR team was gooood.

Achilles didn't have a PR Team, neither did Jesus. Jackie Robinson rose to fame on his own and Martin Luther King was a preacher. Yet, these people all became heroes and mythical figures (in the sense of their power, not that they never existed) and still retain some power in the media today. Achilles is in countless translations and editions of The Iliad, Jesus has the Bible, Babe and Jackie still lived in a time where media was used to broadcast sports and thus spread their names to the national listeners of baseball. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s sermons and speeches were reported in newspapers and televised. Perhaps they didn't all have a PR team that possessed the same kind of imperial hold over media, but the fact is that they live today because of and through the media. This is how powerful the concept of media, especially mass media, is. Isn't it crazy to think about the fact that people who work in and with the media have such a tremendous power over its audience? How every choice they make determines the scope of the knowledge received and understood by the public? It's a double-edged sword, the media...

(To be continued next week...)

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Taken from Arts, Ink

Wish upon a falling star

On November 17 at around 4AM, I witnessed a meteor shower for the first time. Every November, the Leonid Meteor Shower occurs, scattering hundreds of stars among the skies for eager, waiting eyes to see. At 3:30AM, my friends and I bundled ourselves up with layers of clothes to combat the cold and trekked over to the Arb to lie down on the grassy fields and stare up at the skies, waiting in anticipation for the streaks of fire that would burn across the ashen sky.

As the ten of us sprawled on the grass and listened to music streaming from a friend's iPod Touch, I lay in silence, looking up at the sky sprinkled with constellations that I typically can never see nor notice, and that, I am sure, most people can never see nor notice. It's funny that stars are constantly surrounding us and they are consistently present in our lives, without fail, due to the sciences of nature and the solar system, yet a lot of us hardly realize or recognize these brightly shining spots in our lives.

Art is not always considered to be things of beauty, especially with the realization that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but after seeing these blazing balls of flame tearing across the night sky, it made me wonder if the one thing that is always beautiful would be nature. People can vary on their views of physical beauty, of "artistic beauty", but I feel that it is cultural-wide, this notion of nature as beauty. Maybe the one thing that is always beautiful in our eyes is that which we can never escape. Nature always encompasses us, our small human selves, in this great expanse of the world, and whenever we are approached by the awesomeness of the natural, we encounter the sublime and we tremble and we are affected by something so intangible and inexpressible, but something we recognize to be beautiful.

Indeed, that early, dark morning, with the entire, never-ending skyline looming above us as we lay, each linked to the other in testament to our friendship and the closeness of our emotional ties with each other, as we 'oohed and ahhed' over the various constellations and the fast-moving snippets of meteors entering our atmosphere, I was yet again struck by the beauty of it all. The beauty of the stars, the sky, the trees, the grass, but perhaps most importantly, I was struck by the beauty of the mere moment. This precious hour when people who love each other and enjoy each other's companies gather together to partake in a moment that is once-in-a-lifetime and so breathtakingly beautiful. Maybe it will happen again next year, maybe not. But this year, it happened, and painted such an amazing picture in my memory, one that I am sure to never forget.

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Taken from Arts, Ink

Nothing more, nothing less.

We get so caught up in our own lives, in the events that pass us by, in the people who surround us. We become so focused on our work, the latest trends, the current affairs. We lose sight of so many important things, the ones unseen, the scenery that remains constant even as we move incessantly. We forget to appreciate the quiet. We forget to truly look and reflect-- about ourselves, about the world, about life, in general. We forget too easily that it's not all about the grades or the money or the reputation. It's always about something more than that, some unspeakable greatness that is found in the smallest of things.

This video is just another reminder of how greatness surrounds us every day. How can something so simple, like fish in an aquarium be so astounding? This is what they mean by the Sublime in History of Art-- a scene that reminds us of just how small we are. And indeed, as onlookers are deeply silhouetted by the blue green of the water tank, we are forced yet again to acknowledge how small we are. In comparison to the vastness of the sea, the millions and billions of fish and other species in the world, we are but a mere 6 billion humans.

Because we are human, oftentimes, I think we forget that we are just humans. We have the capacity to think, to feel, to plan, to act, to judge. So, we think we are so great, so immortal and invincible. We believe we are the most intelligent beings, we believe we are right, we believe no one else could possibly know better than us. We feel we have the right to control everything, to hold power over others. But when it finally hits us that we are nothing more than human, the word than connotes a meaning much less than "powerful". It strikes us that yes, we are humans...and nothing more, nothing less. Nothing more, nothing less.

Under the comment section on Youtube, there was one who criticized this video and those who considered it to be beautiful:

"Horrible. It's never that crowded in the open sea. Poor animals. And all that only because they want to hear us humans saying things like you are here on youtube.

This is not beautiful, it is brutal."

This comment does bring up a plethora of questions, one of which asks, "What is beauty?" and the other which asks, "Can something be morally deranged and artistic at the same time?" This commentator seems to imply that because the entrapment and display of natural beings is a brutal practice, this scene cannot be considered "beautiful". That its artistic value is lost because it is tainted by some idea of right or wrong. Alas, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is it not? Something that is brutal to one person has every capacity to be considered beautiful to another. Not to sound completely void of morality, but this seems to be fact. Photographs and paintings depicting the havoc wreaked by war are still considered to be art, to retain its sense of creative expression, even if they are portraying or were created in deplorable circumstances. Art, I don't believe, is necessarily bound by a humanistic sense of ethics; in fact, art is precisely that which cannot be defined or contained by human understanding-- artists will say that they do not create for the purpose of profit but that they create because they are driven by this innate drive to express something they cannot label or comprehend.

However, I'm really glad that this person showed us the other perspective of a scene many would call breathtaking and magnificent. There are so many sides to art, so many ways that it influences us daily and we do not even take notice of it. Art does a lot to move the public, yet we have become so interested in technology, the sciences of movement-- faster, stronger, better-- we have become blind to the art that surrounds us each day.

This video holds a lot of appeal for viewers because we become immersed in the scene. We become surrounded by the water that holds the sharks and the fish, we are enveloped by this sense of calm and tranquility, struck by awe and amazement at the beauty that faces us. We are just another human being in the aquarium, drinking in the magnificence that slows everything down. It's like we're in water-- we feel loose and at ease, we feel slowed down but not in a cumbersome way. And as we watch, mesmerized, it hits us that, wow... there's so much more out there than we fully appreciate or realize.

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Taken from Arts, Ink