The visual and the written arts share certain characteristics, though they differ largely in how they are viewed and interpreted by an audience. In the visual, the audience is given a representation of a scene or object and the audience then imagines what it means. In the written, the audience is given a description of a scene or object and is then asked to imagine what the scene looks like. Imagination is sparked within the audience in both cases, but the way in which it is used differs for each medium. The different ways in which imagination is brought about in an audience are exemplified within The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie.

The Complete Persepolis is a memoir by Satrapi that acts as a remembrance of her life growing up in Iran until she emigrates to France, with the entire story drawn in the style of a graphic novel. There is occasional narration over the illustrations, but much of the written information is given through dialogue between characters. One of the strengths of this visual format is the ease with which direct comparisons can be made. Comparison does not need long stretches of explanation to accompany the image, as the images are drawn in such a way that they can stand for themselves, leaving the audience to imagine on their own the purpose and result of such a comparison. On page 102, there are only two frames depicted. The top frame shows a minefield with poor, child soldiers exploding while grasping a key that they were told “promised a better life”. The bottom frame shows a young Satrapi at the first party she had ever been to wearing “a sweater full of holes and… a necklace with chains and nails.” Based on the proximity of these two images, the comparison between them is implied, comparing the youthful fun of children that did not need to go to war to support their families to the demise of the poorer children that did have to, and comparing the costumes of ripped clothing at the party to the implied poorer condition of the clothes that the poorer children would have worn before dying. Despite only having six sentences on the page, the illustrations work with them and create a scene that gives the audience ample space to imagine what it is implying about past and future frames of illustration in the memoir.

In a written work of art, like Haroun and the Sea of Stories, comparison can only be found in language. This story follows a boy named Haroun on a fantastical quest to restore his father’s ability to create incredible stories. In his quest he ends up going to a hidden second moon where a war between the storytelling Guppees and the silent Chupwalas is about to break out. While direct comparison is often easily implied within the visual, the written also does so very well. Fictional writing is focused on describing the events occuring and asking an audience to imagine what they may look like, so using this description to compare between two imagined things is also very effective. On pages 184, the Guppee and Chupwala warriors are being considered by Rashid, Haroun’s father, and he compares them. He looks both sides over and says:

The black-nosed Chupwala Army, whose menacing silence hung over it like a fog, looked too frightening to lose. Meanwhile the Guppees were still busily arguing over every little detail. Every order sent down from the command hill had to be debated fully, with all its pro’s and con’s, even if it came from General Kitab himself. ‘How is it possible to fight a battle with all of this chatter and natter?’ Rashid wondered, perplexed.

Through this, a brief insight into each sides demeanor is given, contrasting the character trait of ominously quiet in the Chupwalas to the trait of unreasonably talkative in the Guppees. The scene is given mass in the audience’s imagination by mentioning details such as a fog around the enemies and a hill from which orders could be given, giving each army an area on which they could stand. There is also a brief bit of commentary that pushes the audience towards one interpretation of the scene set before them, along with what would seem to be a likely conclusion. And though this is the written text, this section only has four sentences. It sets the scene to give the audience an image on which they could focus, and then implies what will happen next to give the scene motion as it moves forward. Though there is no illustration, and therefore no additional insights to be gained, a palpable comparison is given along with a description of a battlefield that makes the scene come alive.

Graphic novels and graphic memoirs, because they have illustrations, are often likened to picture books or comic books rather than what are typically considered respectable pieces of art. This leaves The Complete Persepolis with an additional challenge when attempting to capture an audience’s imagination. If the audience already views the medium to which The Complete Persepolis belongs as inferior, it must work that much harder to have the audience imagine it as important and worth reading. In this way, The Complete Persepolis must inspire imagination within the audience because of its place as a marginalized mode of expression.

Novels such as Haroun and the Sea of Stories, on the other hand, do not suffer such a bias. Fiction is seen as something for adults and children to enjoy, so a novel written by Salman Rushdie for his son, Zafar, whose name is hidden within the first letter of each line of the poem before the novel begins, is still entirely suitable for adults to read. It is rather ironic that such a fantastical tale like this is fit for all ages, while a graphic memoir about living through violence and regime changes in Iran in the 1980’s and onward is seen as fit only for children.

The Complete Persepolis, to be fair, is not as stigmatized as other graphic novels. I do not know about its path to respect, therefore my comments on the bias that must have been against it were speculation based on how I have seen graphic novels typically viewed. The Complete Persepolis, and other graphic novels such as Maus, I believe, stand out as outliers and not the rule, and were likely subject to scrutiny as they were published. The Complete Persepolis as a strictly visual art in my comparison between visual art and written art is not necessarily fair, either, as it spans the gap between the two. Because of the presence of illustration, and its sparing use of language compared to a typical novel, I do believe that it still stands as a productive example of visual art. We considered earlier in our semester how visual art is affected by comments in the margins of the works and by titles, and we saw how wide a range of interpretations for visual art exist when language is taken from them. By adding the language of titles and captions back to the art, the scope was focused, leading to similar interpretations. If The Complete Persepolis had been entirely illustration, it still would have gotten some of its point across. By including narration and dialogue, however, it was able to narrow the interpretations possible to tell the story that Satrapi wanted to tell rather than a story with a wide variety of meanings. The illustration is the main aspect of the art, in my opinion, and the text affects the illustration to tell a clearer story, which is why I believe that it still stands as a useful example of visual art to compare against written art.

Visual art and written art both inspire audiences and both cause the use of imagination by those audiences. Both allow for a wide range of interpretations, which allows the audience the freedom with which they can enjoy and relate to the art. Though this is achieved through different means, such as giving an audience a scene to interpret versus describing a scene for an audience to imagine, the use of imagination and creativity are accomplished in either case. Marjane Satrapi’s The Complete Persepolis and Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories both represent different facets of art, and both serve to bring about the use of imagination in their audiences.

 

Works Cited

Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persepolis. Pantheon, 2007.

Rushdie, Salman. Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Penguin, 1990.

Spiegelman, Art. The Complete Maus. Pantheon, 1996.

Themes

1. Physical Freedom versus Freedom of Thought – The idea of whether someone could be free in how they think whether or not they are incarcerated. We discussed this mainly when considering Assata Shakur’s life story, and considered how while incarcerated one could still think freely, and this could stand as a silent form of resistance.
2. Unions and Gatherings – The power of unions and gatherings of people were seen throughout the semester. Seen clearest in Arab Spring, where the power of workers unions was able to sustain a structured government after rebellion in Tunisia. A more recent example from the Humanities was in Haroun and the Sea of Stories on pages 184-185 when the well communicated army of the Gupees performed much better than the silent, individualistic warriors of the Chupwalas.
3. Unreasonable Use of Authority by Those in Power – Seen in many of our readings for the semester, the unreasonable use and often the abuse of authority is the cause of many of the marginalizations we witnessed throughout the semester. In Lazarillo de Tormes we saw how Lazarillo was forced to be married to a woman that was sleeping with a priest so that the priest and the woman could continue their affair with less suspicion. In The Dew Breaker we saw how the violence perpetrated by the Tonton Macoute forced those around them to suffer. Family members would be killed for less than a glance, and the effects that this has on the Haitian community are seen throughout The Dew Breaker. We were given historical context for these Boogeymen in Dr. Henton’s lecture, when she told us about François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, and their violent regime that took advantage of their democratically elected position which then caused the marginalization of so many Haitians. We also saw it in Persepolis, when the Shah used his power in Iran to oppress some freedoms of his people, such as forcing women to wear a veil. Even after he was removed from office, the fight for power in Iran continued to force religious ideas on the masses, restricting their freedoms. The abuse of power is common throughout each of these events, and makes it integral to the marginalization of so many.

Terms

1. Intersectionality – The idea that at any one given time, a person has many different social groups to which they belong, and that the social restrictions or freedoms that person has are created based on the intersection of these identities. We looked at this concept in the first reading of the semester, “Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” by Kimberlie Crenshaw, and it has since appeared in most lectures.
2. Negritude – Discussed mainly in The Dew Breaker, negritude is french for “blackness” and was used to unite black people against their past colonial repression.
3. Re-vision – The idea of seeing again for the purpose of greater understanding. Either from a new perspective or from an old one, re-seeing allows for greater understanding in most of the works we read this semester. In Lazarillo de Tormes, we saw a telling of a story that asked its audience to read between the lines as not everything that was said was entirely accurate. This placed the audience, both us reading and the judge in the text, in a state of re-vision. In The Dew Breaker we saw several stories that followed interlocking paths between characters and asked the audience to consider the occurrences from multiple points of view. Dany tells his story of how the Dew Breaker destroys Dany’s family, but the Dew Breaker tells how he has tried to repent for his crimes since then. Anne finds compassion for the Dew Breaker even after all of the terrible things he has done (such as killing her brother though she won’t admit it),but it is left ambiguous as to how Ka, their daughter, will eventually come to understand the information given to her. The book focuses on the re-seeing of every aspect of the characters’ lives. In Haroun and the Sea of Stories, we see Haroun entirely change what he knows to be real as he is whisked off to an impossible second moon in orbit around the Earth that holds the source of all stories. Haroun’s reality is challenged, and he is forced to revise his understanding of the world. Even in our own papers, we were asked to re-see our own writing by taking a day in between writing and rewriting so that we could come back with a new perspective. Re-vision and new perspectives are important for understanding other people’s lives and their stories, and this better prepares us as students to understand the situations of the marginalized groups we saw throughout the semester.

“This painting reminds me of “The Starry Night” by Van Gogh, I wonder if this is also a Van Gogh piece. There is something vaguely ominous about crows flying at night. Pure black flying creatures that further disappear into the darkness at night, with a call that sounds much more like a screech or a cough than most bird chirps. There is a murder of them flying, which is an incredibly intimidating sentence. The entire scene appears as though it’s in motion, each stroke causing the whole piece to appear to spin independently from itself. There seem to be two moons in the background, on much larger than the other, which perhaps means one is the rising moon and one is the setting sun. The path curves towards and then away from the frame as though seen through a fisheye lens, or is especially winding. Both interpretations disorient me, especially when it looks as though the bottom right section of the frame also has a path that doesn’t appear to connect to the rest of the path. At first glance I thought the crows were flying away, but the way they’re draw it looks as though they are flying towards the frame.”

These were my notes that I had taken when we first looked at Van Gogh’s “Wheatfield with Crows” directly before we were informed that it was his last painting before committing suicide. While I did not take notes on my immediate feelings after this information, I will do my best to recall what I had thought.

My immediate thoughts drifted again to the crows, as I tried more actively to decide whether they were flying towards the scene or away. Both make sense as an image of coming death. Flying towards the scene makes them seem like a harbinger of bad news or a dark omen, which seems fitting for what occurred next. If they were flying away from the scene, they could represent Van Gogh preparing to fly away, himself, or they could represent the dark cloud above him that will leave once he takes his life. I prefer the idea that they are coming towards the frame because I do not like how the latter interpretation romanticizes, at least to some degree, suicide. The rising moon and setting sun, if that is what they are, are also fitting for the end of Van Gogh’s life, as they signal the end of the day. The reverse also signals rebirth, the dawn of a new day, and a cycle of continuance, however, that will follow immediately after the night. I cannot say whether Van Gogh wanted to consider the cycles after his death, though, as only the transition to night appears to be shown. The winding paths also explain some of his mindset, as they could symbolize confusion and being lost in life. Especially surrounded by fields of wheat that obscure vision anywhere except on the path, what happens next is unknowable. Perhaps this confusion contributed to his actions.

My notes feel as though they are asking questions, suggesting possibilities but with no guarantee that they hold any merit. With the context, however, the same sorts of statements feel like answers to me. The context for the events following the creation of the piece also give context for a possible mindset when creating the piece, and they clarify for me more solidly what the piece could symbolize. There are, of course, an infinite number of interpretations, but this feels correct to me given the information that was kept to the margins until it was revealed.

 

Van Gogh, Vincent. Wheatfield with Crows. 1890, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

The idea of magics only being understandable, remembered, or otherwise witnessed by children seems a common trope in literature and cinema, and I intend to speculate about why this might be the case. Whether it be Mary Poppins’ magic only understandable by children, or as is more immediately applicable, Haroun’s conversation with the Genie in chapter 3 requiring that there be “no adults” present (Rushdie 53), the ability of children to understand magic seems rather common.

Perhaps this is because children are still learning, they have more of a capacity to believe everything and anything because they haven’t been given a reason not to believe it yet. Willingness to believe that which cannot be seen is another important quality, with many supernatural beliefs like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny only being believed because of their faith and willingness to believe. Adults have learned too much and know too much of the “real” world to ever believe in something magical. We learn the rules of physics and chemistry and biology precisely to dispel myths about the “real” world, but this leaves very little room for the “unreal” world to operate in the minds of adults.

Perhaps it’s because children often have less to worry about and have more time with which to ponder the wonderfully impossible. Haroun is left reeling after his mother leaves, being often distracted in the midst of his games and exams. While he has to take these exams, he is still afforded time with which to play games. His father still has to work and support his family while battling with the pain of having his wife leave him behind. No time for games as an adult. Magic is much harder to believe in when in the midst of finals, let me tell you.

And I think that the sad city where the Khalifas live is emblematic of the stresses that follow adult life. There is stress and work and frustration that surround the lives of the adults in the sad city, and because they are the ones that make sure the city is still running, more sadness is spread. Rashid does his best to spread happiness while he can, bringing the joy of stories to others when they have no time to appreciate them themselves. He gives them a piece of whimsy from stories that he promises are untrue, and yet people still appreciate them. As he is hurt by the leaving of his wife, his whimsy is taken, and he becomes one of the sad adults.

How dreary! But this also shows the importance of art and literature to people’s lives. Without taking part in something untrue, the “reality” of the world can bring people down. Physics and chemistry and biology are undoubtedly important, but they alone cannot remind people to take delight in the ridiculous or the impossible. Children need less literature to see the magic in things because they can already experience the magic of impossibility in their lives as they wish. With the stresses of adulthood, however, art is particularly useful in bringing us back to the whimsy of youth.

I apologize for this being rather unfocused. Sometimes I find that the words I write have more agency than I do, and this seems to be one of those times.

 

Rushdie, Salman. Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Penguin, 1990.

The stresses of growing up and of childhood are difficult on anyone. Learning how to think and comprehend and use one’s body all while every aspect of that body changes is a difficult time. But reading Marjane Satrapi’s memoir The Complete Persepolis I cannot fathom the stress and difficulty of growing up in such a tumultuous environment, nor can I imagine the impression this left on her developing mind. I greatly appreciate the start of her biography giving a glimpse of her mindset from her childhood as it is so often lost to time in such a situation. I think a child viewpoint is particularly useful to consider in these kinds of situations because of the reflection that happens in their thoughts. Children repeat what they hear because they have no other context with which to judge events around them, and this sheds light on exactly the kinds of messages floating around them, Satrapi mentions throughout her childhood recollection how she would repeat the things heard around her. She mentions on page 62 her retelling of falsified information on TV without the knowledge of it being false, and mentions on page 49 how she loved the king because he was chosen by God to rule, something she learned in her schooling.

As a result of the terrible things occurring around her, and the complete uprooting of ideology, I can only begin to imagine the difficulties she must have faced as a child. Incredible amounts of violence permeated her childhood, where my life as a privileged child in the United States was only met with death when it occurred as a result of old age or sickness. While these occurrences were of course sad and difficult to comprehend as a child, death caused by violence to those close to a child must be much more difficult to understand. This, compounded with understandings about martyrdom that I find to be strange, such as wishing those close to Satrapi were mutilated so that she could gloat falsely about them being in prison, thereby representing traits of heroism and bravery, must have colored her understanding of violence in a way that might hurt her moral judgments (54). Also with confused ideas about forgiveness and violence, such as being told by her mother to avoid violence but also hearing her mother call for the death of torturers, understanding any truths about the world seem incredibly difficult on the mind of a child (52).

I especially appreciate the way in which Satrapi uses illustrations to aid in her descriptions of her childhood experiences. So often when remembering childhood in memoirs, they are written looking backwards with the perspective of an adult altering the retelling slightly. In The Complete Persepolis, the illustrations carry the weight of the message, and I feel that they portray emotion more accurate to that age than the language of an adult could ever hope to capture. I do not mean that the illustrations are childish, I find them endearing and powerful, but the way in which they capture emotion carries the innocence, curiosity, and ignorance of childhood very accurately.

 

Work Cited

Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persepolis. Pantheon, 2007.

 

During the panel on April 11th, one student asked how people with family that are policemen and policewomen should understand the information presented by the panel and Assata. The answer presented by one of the panelists was that it was a binary issue: either you support those that institutionalized racism and prejudice affect harshest, or you support their oppressors. My mind is still grappling with both sides of the issue as I write this.

I recognize the case brought forth by Assata and the panel, and see its truth and value. Organizations that are seen by the United States as dangerous are systematically destroyed with little empathy for those involved or for their plight. Assata Shakur knew this well, as she was heavily surveilled at all times for her part in the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army. I also recognize the injustices faced in lower-income urban environments where everyone is scrutinized by a justice system just waiting to arrest them. These points were not lost on me, but the original question stands: how should I view family that are members of the police if it seems that they are supporting such a corrupt system?

My uncle is a sergeant in his town, my roommate’s father is a member of the police, and I have close friends who’s parents are members of law enforcement. While the police is not as central to my way of life and my outlook in the world as it is for others, it is still a part of my family that I respect deeply. So it is difficult to hear someone tell me that my uncle is a member of an oppressive force that threatens the lives of a large population of the United States, and that I should cast this family member away. Perhaps this was not what was intended by making the issue black-and-white, but this was the meaning I took away.

I recognize the oppression faced by large sections of the United States population at the hands of policemen and policewomen who are racist, sexist, and seek largely to further the oppressive cycle. I also recognize my uncle, the stereotypical cop with aviator glasses, a pot belly, an affinity for coffee, and a mustache only a cop could pull off. These two ideas weighed in my mind are difficult to comprehend at the same time, but I think my difficulty shows, at least in my eyes, that this is very different from a binary issue.

The panel and Assata both gave a face and a personality that is often missed or forgotten, humanizing the oppressed in a way that I found refreshing. But I also can’t help considering the criminals who perform heinous crimes with little remorse, who need police to arrest them. And the police were shown to be always against the people, which is true in Assata’s case, but she was a special circumstance. The faces of the individual policeman or the individual policewoman are forgotten by generalizing, which applies the evil characteristics of members of the police who do abuse the system to otherwise upstanding protectors of the law.

Generalizing on both sides of the coin is dangerous, and dehumanizes groups of people that can be forgotten, left behind, or ignored as a result. I believe that the panel shed light on an incredibly important topic, and I believe that reading Assata gives a very clear insight into the abuse of authority and power that law enforcement officials are allowed. I believe that generalizing things to be either oppressed or oppressor only heightens a cycle of violence and pain that hopefully will one day be minimized, but I do not believe this is the way.

And maybe I’m wrong, and the only way forward is through weaponized generalization. I certainly hope not, but at least I stood up for my uncle.

 

In Peter Kornbluh’s “The Declassified Pinochet File: Delivering The Verdict of History”, he describes the efforts by the CIA to hide the specifics of their involvement in attempting to prevent Salvador Allende from becoming president of Chile, and after they failed, their involvement in supporting General Augusto Pinochet in his coup of the Chilean government. After Pinochet’s crimes against the people of Chile became more apparent and received more global attention, calls for the release of CIA documents describing their involvement grew louder. The White House, under Bill Clinton’s presidency, ordered all documents related to the United States’ involvement in Chile to be released by all departments. Despite hard battle from the CIA arguing for their exemption from this process, they also were eventually forced to release documents.

The images of some of these released CIA documents were included as a part of the writing by Peter Kornbluh. In them, there are many redacted locations and names of individuals that took part in CIA operations. These large blocks of black covering sections of each page have an imposing presence on the text left uncensored. The redacted sections draw the most attention on each page, and steal the context in which many of these covert actions occur. By redacting some information, visually, all information on the page becomes a part of the margins.

The redacted sections themselves are marginalized because the information they could have otherwise shared is silenced and hidden away. The black blocks add a third dimension to the paper, pushing the information it covers down into the page, creating a hidden prison from which information could never be released. Perhaps this is an over-dramatization of things, but this is how I imagine the redacted information. It is covered and therefore eliminated.

The text left alone is also marginalized, pushed outward from the redacted blocks that take the attention on the page. Less metaphorically marginalized, this text is literally forced to the margins surrounding each redacted section, as though all other text is commenting on that which is hidden. The context hidden by censorship would normally describe the events that are shown, but once the context is censored, the left over text describes what once lived in the redacted sections. The roles of action and context are swapped, with action now describing the information forced into silence.

This is an interesting example of the power of silence to create different frameworks in which writing, art, people, and so many other things operate. By listening or looking for what is left unsaid, especially when such silence is so clearly defined by a large black box, the framework in which these CIA documents operate are altered, and the connotation of what is said is also altered. This is true in many aspects of life, especially in music. Rests, or silence in music, are constantly used and are just as important as notes played. If every musician was always playing their instruments during a song, music would quickly devolve into cacophony. Rests allow for different timbres based on which instruments play in conjunction with one another and for wider dynamic contrast. Music takes great advantage of silence in order to express emotion on a more sensitive level, and while likely unintentional, the redacted sections in the CIA documents cause a similar shift in how each document is perceived.

 

Work Cited

Kornbluh, Peter. “The Declassified Pinochet File: Delivering the Verdict of History.” Radical History Review, no. 124, Jan. 2016, pp. 203–216., doi:10.1215/01636545-3160071.

For the purposes of this entry, I based my analysis on this recording of Charlie Parker and Benny Harris’ “Ornithology”:

 

“Ornithology” by Charlie Parker and Benny Harris is a fast paced peace of music that flies like Bird himself. Ornithology as a title references Charlie Parker’s nickname of Bird, being the study of birds, and the song captures the feeling of flying quickly and darting between trees on a sunning day. The song itself is based on the chord structure of another song that came before it, Benny Goodman’s “How High The Moon” (Micucci). This adoption of another song’s chord structure was discussed in C&E this semester when looking at Dizzy Gillespie’s “Salt Peanuts”, which is based on the chord structure of George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” (Bierman 199).

The song starts with a 4 bar long drum solo that slides into the head of the song immediately after. The piano and bass comp chords behind the band and the drum keeps a steady groove going, as the trumpet, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, and a quiet electric guitar play a unison line during the head. The 12th bar of the head holds the motif that I feel is at the heart of the song. The band plays three unison eighth note triplets that move diatonically upward and then drop back to the same starting note as the triplet before. At the tempo of the song, these triplets are incredibly evocative of the subject matter of the song, dealing with birds and flight. Each time the triplet starts over, I visualize a birds wings flapping so that it can soar as the song continues.

A piano solo lasts for 4 bars after this first instance of the head, and then the head repeats. The head is largely unchanged this second time until the 12th bar of the head, once again seeming the most important to me. This time, the eighth note triplets are played in the same set of three that they been before, but only by the trumpet. As soon as the trumpet finishes their set of three, the alto saxophone plays their set of three. The tenor plays a set of three following this pattern, and the electric guitar does the same. The bird starts flapping its wings even more vigorously, trying to pick up a great deal of speed as it flies directly into the next section, with this next section being the solo section of the piece.

Each horn player takes a solo starting with Charlie Parker on the alto sax, who plays notes in beautiful succession with themselves, but at a speed that boggles the mind. The final note of his solo is the starting note of the muted trumpet’s solo, who follows the momentum started by Bird and carries it through his solo, speed and technique evident throughout. The final bar of this solo prefaces the next solo by playing notes in a downward fashion before stopping entirely to imply the deeper register of the instrument to follow. The tenor sax player’s deeper tone fulfills the implication, and carries on full steam ahead. The end of this solo leaves a small amount of time with only the rhythm section, as if to imply that the bird flying in the song needed a quick break before continuing.

The head returns, played exactly the same as the first time. The bird is building its steam up once more as it picks its speed up. Another 4 bar piano solo separates the first playing of the head from the second, before jumping into it once more. The 12th bar arrives, and the motif is first played by the trumpet, then the alto sax, then the tenor sax, then the electric guitar, and then the piano, who did not play the motif in this manner before. On the last note of the piano’s playing of the motif, a kick drum punctuates things, and the song abruptly ends.

To fit with the theme of ornithology, I like to imagine that the bird we see through out the song is being followed through the binoculars of a birdwatcher studying birds. The experience is thrilling to watch, hence the excitement of the song as this enthusiastic follows the bird’s flight as closely as they can. The abrupt ending feels to me as though the bird finally escaped the sight of the binoculars, flying out of frame, and ending the excitement of the moment.

Ornithology by Charlie Parker and Benny Harris is a thrilling example of why Charlie Parker is heralded as one of the best, if not the best, Alto Saxophonists to ever have lived. The speed and precision with which the song is played make it absolutely guaranteed to sweep an audience away in their own flight. The powerful emotion that this song continues to inspire is a perfect example of why Charlie Parker’s sound could never go out of style. After all…

 

BIRD LIVES!

 

Micucci, Matt. “A Short History of… ‘Ornithology’ (Charlie Parker and Benny Harris, 1946).” Jazziz, 23 May 2017, https://www.jazziz.com/short-history-ornithology-charlie-parker-benny-harris-1946/.

Bierman, Benjamin. Listening to Jazz. Oxford University Press, 2015.

“Charlie Parker – Ornithology (1946).” YouTube, uploaded by Overjazz Records, 12 Mar. 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUHwR-khV20.

The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara follows a story from the point of view of Sylvia, a young African-American girl forced to go on a trip to FAO Schwarz with her friends by a woman named Miss Moore. The point of this trip is to show Sylvia and her friends the difference in fairness and opportunity between blacks and whites in America. What stood out most to me was the portrayal of Sylvia’s character, as it reminded me of the stage in childhood where one believes they know all there is to know about the world. Sylvia speaks with sureness and confidence, believing she alone is correct, and that everyone else in the world is foolish for believing they could ever hope to match her intelligence. Sylvia says in the first line of The Lesson, “Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right” (Bambara 393), showing her firm belief that she is superior to everyone else. I certainly remember a time around 11 or 12 when I felt smarter than everyone else (a trait I find I still have to keep in check from time to time), but I also remember moving past it.

The way in which Sylvia feels when faced with things she doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand is key to her age and that section of childhood. How could she not understand something if she’s smarter than everyone else? She feels this discomfort after stepping on her friend’s foot as this friend is trying to to answer a question posed by Miss Moore, and Miss Moore shoots Sylvia a disapproving look. Sylvia describes the feeling, saying, “And somethin weird is goin on, I can feel it in my chest” (Cambara 399). Feeling a pit form in my stomach when experiencing guilt or discomfort, even for something I didn’t do, is incredibly common, and this line of description is ubiquitous to the human experience. It’s linked directly to learning and being humbled in the know-it-all stage of childhood, and shows rather than states Sylvia’s feelings. This manner of showing how the emotion feels rather than stating it outright forces a shared emotional reaction between the character and the reader, creating an investment in the character.

The use of Sylvia’s guilt serves more than just this emotional attachment. Beyond feeling bad about stepping on her friend’s foot, she feels guilty over the context in which she did so. This friend, Sugar, is telling Miss Moore how the high prices in the toy store show the privilege that white people have, especially when she, herself, has no possibility of buying anything within the store. By stepping on Sugar’s foot, Sylvia is trying to silence Sugar’s words, words that hold great truth and consequence in how she might see the world around her. Sugar has put the vast difference in socioeconomic status directly in front of Sylvia, and by silencing Sugar’s words with her foot, Sylvia feels shame at trying to stop such an important idea from being spoken aloud. The multiple layers of difficult emotion from this one description of weirdness in one’s chest are beautiful and painful, and do a wonderful job of outlining the difficulties that a child might have in response to such a massive difference in access and privilege in the world.

Only Daughter by Sandra Cisneros tells the story of how she moved to America from Mexico, and discusses her relationship to her father. Her father saw Sandra as nothing more than a girl that would eventually be married, and she never wanted that for herself. In discussing his children, her father would often say that he had 7 sons, a mistranslation of “children” into “sons”. This bothered Sandra, even though this mistranslation was likely not malicious, but she would often correct him, saying,”‘Not seven sons. Six! And one daughter'” (Cisneros 94). He supported her decision to go to college only because of the chance she might meet a husband. She wanted to feel approved of by her father, and found herself limited in his mind only as a potential bride.

This search for approval in her childhood and adult years resonated with me. The similarities aren’t obvious on the outside, since my father hasn’t waited all his life for me to get married, and I am not the lone son of 7 children (with my sister and I composing the whole of my parents’ progeny), but the desire to feel approval from my father has always existed. My father and I are very similar, which is mostly a good thing, but neither of us has ever been wonders of conversation or or gifted at expressing feelings to one another. He often does his best to express that’s he’s proud of what I’ve done, and I often attempt to express that I’m appreciative, but directly stated pride and approval are hard to come by. And while I have no statistics to back this up, I imagine that this kind of relationship is common through many father-child relationships. I find it impressive that a story about seeking the approval of a father by a Mexican-American woman resonated with me, an upper-middle class white guy, and I think that’s a testament to how well the piece expresses the complex emotions and relational dynamics at play within any nuclear family.

Both pieces look at difficult emotions in childhood, and express them in ways clear enough and relatable enough that  the desired emotional response was delivered within me. This relatability in both stories is incredibly important, as without it, I likely would have found difficulty in attempting to relate to these stories. Emotion is a key aspect of humanity, and can go a long way to sharing experiences that may otherwise be completely foreign to a reader. I am neither a young black girl growing up in Harlem, nor am I a Mexican-American woman seeking the approval of a father that much prefers his sons. But I was once a child that went through the same emotional periods of growth as the characters. Despite the gap between my upbringing and those presented in the stories, I was able to get a glimpse of what their experiences were like as a result. The use of common experiences and emotions in both The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara and Only Daughter by Sandra Cisneros are a thread of shared genius that make both pieces incredibly engaging and relatable.

 

Bambara, Toni Cade. The Lesson, Random House, 1972.

Cisneros, Sandra. “Only Daughter.” A House of My Own: Stories from My Life, Random House, 2015, pp. 91-95.

Myths.

Calling the diver’s first and possibly most important object a book of myths is a very interesting decision in my mind. Myths are much like the retelling of actual history into a colorful, flavorful experience of whimsy and allegory. This retelling of history to make it more interesting is not unlike the history textbooks we use today, coloring each historical victory between countries based on who won up and up and up until we find ourselves writing today’s history. This diver has with her knowledge about one telling of human’s history to help her navigate the wastes of history, until she comes face to face with the bloody reality of death and decay that fills our past lives: the drowned faces of those that came before her. She mentions this, saying “the thing I came for:/the wreck and not the story of the wreck”. The diver wants the truth of history without the recoloring of its dark pages.

I would argue that this understanding of myths could explain that we are always in the process of creating myths today. Metaphor and allegory in advertising and communication today create new meanings and frames through which humans see the world around us, still filling the diver’s book of myths and ever filling the ocean through which she is swimming. She swims to understand the past and the mistakes made in the past for what they actually are, but I believe any answer can never be so clear. Cloudy myths about what shampoo creates the most volume, and misty myths in politics over who is the true enemy are very real today and still recolor whatever the truth beneath may be.

Perhaps that is a dark outlook of the world around us, but I also believe that this recoloring is necessary to understanding the world around us. Humans are naturally storytellers, and each new metaphor or line of text or tagline for a product has a thousand million meanings all to itself. We naturally trend towards this metaphor and collectively decide what meanings have be applied, or what meanings should be applied, or what meanings cannot be applied. Certainly the darkness in human history is worth knowing wholly and truthfully, but the retelling in each generation provides just as much, if not more important information for things to come.

Myths are dangerous. Myths are important.

Myths.

 

Rich, Adrienne. “Diving into the Wreck.” Poems: Selected and New, 1950-1974, W.W. Norton, 1975.