Category Archives: Week 8

Discussion on Dawn

Posted on by
1

We have not discussed this poem in last week’s seminar, so I thought I might try to describe one to the best of my ability. Also, this poem matches the timing I am posting this at.

“Dawn” uses a gloomy tone to explain events and feelings of New Yorkers. People feel like there is no hope, paradise, or love in the mornings. They are very sleepy and feel like if they had an enormous struggle to wake up. The poem seems to ask the question: why would any one want to wake up?

It is very confusing and more gloomy than necessary. I have noticed that almost everyone in the subway was sleepy, but I believe that the city is pretty clean in the mornings. For example, the public bathrooms have been cleaned and no one has used them yet.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral- Christopher Chong, Justin Roach, Lucius Seo

Posted on by
2

St. Patrick's Cathedral 1

 

“There exists in this era, for thoughts written in stone, a privilege absolutely comparable to our current freedom of the press. It is the freedom of architecture.”

-Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris

Some people say that the cathedral is built large so that we can feel the great distance between God and us. Some people say that the cathedral is built so beautifully to show the political power of the Catholic church. Some people say many things in front of the cathedral, watching the edifice in fear, like the way the Romans would mutter their quibbles at profanum, lurking around the boundary between what they hope to be sacred and what they hope to be vulgar.

Cathedral tells a story. It is not built magnificent to drive away people who, as Socrates would put it, speak as they do in the marketplace. Back in the time when not everyone had the privilege to learn, cathedral was a great building which told stories to the illiterates. It is an experiment ground on which many things can happen; the very first of all civil rights movements and one of the greatest petitions for freedom.

The beauty of all cathedrals that broke the boundary between the vulgar and sacred, common and noble, rich and poor, is also seen in the story of St. Patrick. Although he was once captured and enslaved in Ireland, he chose to come back to the so-called barbarians. He did not force the people into belief through violence; he took the shamrock, which was a sacred plant to the people who lived there, and explained the concept of Trinity.

St. Patrick's Cathedral 2St. Patrick’s Cathedral, in that sense, is exemplary. It was a shelter for the Catholics in New York. Its foundation is the same as that of America: freedom, equality, coexistence, harmony, and all traits thought to be admirable and American. The true art of St. Patrick’s Cathedral is not from the aesthetics, but from the value and motive, which still lives today.

Taking a look at the Cathedral’s architecture, the building has a neo-Gothic style structure. The Cathedral started it’s construction in 1858, but didn’t finish building until 1878, which was in part due to the Civil War. Today, the church is open to public visits daily, except when mass is being held. It is located on 5th avenue, between 50th and 51st street at the heart of Midtown Manhattan.

We really believe that a visit to St. Patrick’s is worth anyone’s time. Currently it is under a massive 5-year renovation project, but it is still open. If you ever take a stroll through midtown and have the time, do go visit.

 

~Christopher Chong, Justin Roach, Lucius Seo

St. Luke the Magnificent, Plus Crazy Guy

Posted on by
Reply

Ahhh, where shall I start?

I was anticipating that this night would be a great night. It definitely was. Like Pun, this is my first time stepping into the Carnegie Hall. I couldn’t stop looking around at the architecture of the place. The architecture was simple, everything was very smooth and rounded, and surprisingly I didn’t see a fancy chandelier hanging down from the middle of the hall. This all adds up and concurs with the fact that Carnegie Hall has one of best acoustics of any halls. It was probably one of the nicest halls I’ve seen as well. Even with seats up in the balcony everything sounded very crystal clear 🙂

On to the pieces: I think all the performances were executed very well, though I personally preferred the first half of the performance prior to the intermission.

Henry Purcell’s Suite from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Appetizer! What a great way to start! The pieces were very hip and flow very nicely for me. It reminds me of the Bach Invention pieces. In those pieces, the right hand would usually play a part, and the left hand would play the same part after the right hand stopped while the right hand accompanied, and so on. It has a back and forth feel, and thats how I felt when I heard the Purcell piece. I especially like these two, i-I and ii-VII. Here is the full suite for the orchestra:

And here is ii-VII:

Tchaikovsky’s The Tempest, Op. 18: This piece was probably the main course! Tchaikovsky was extremely talented in creating this piece, and it was executed very well by our conductor Pablo Heras-Casado! I especially enjoyed the sudden soft and loudness of the piece, which makes me feel very calm one minute, while alert the next! I was especially attention to the violinist, who’s bow was flickering at the speed of light at one point in the piece. This piece reminded me another piece that I enjoy hearing as well, Robert W. Smith’s The Divine Comedy: I. Inferno. This piece is based on Dante’s Inferno, and creates a auditory stimuli through how Dante perceived hell was like. Here is a performance of the piece (this is played by a band, not an orchestra):

 

 

Luigi Dallapiccola’s Piccola Musica Notturna: I don’t really have much to say. The piece was executed fine, but I didn’t feel that this piece was as rich as the others, especially the first 2.

Felix Mendelssohn’s Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, Op. 60: I don’t know how I feel about this piece. The sing along part was definitely a plus, plus the ending was probably the best part about this piece. I guess this piece was the long and fulfilling dessert the finished the course of dinner!

Ahh, how can we forget, crazy man in front of the hall.

Just when we thought the night was over, a random man, presumably drunk, approached us and started talking to me. No fear, the guy just was trying to make new friends, gave me a fist pound, and talk about the cops of Connecticut, some cause and affect, and murmured some other stuff. Thanks for the reassurance guys LOL

And then, diner after diner, time for some diner food! 😀

 

~Christopher Chong

123rd Street Rap

Posted on by
Reply

This poem by Willie Perdomo is a very dark portrayal of a day on 123rd Street. Despite this very gloomy look at a normal day on this street, the poem uses end rhyme that gives it a sense of rhythm and makes it an entertaining read. I almost felt bad reading this poem, because I enjoyed it so much. In the poem, nothing goes right on this street, from violence to nature that does not grow.

Dawn

Posted on by
Reply

This is one of the darkest poems I have read, certainly the darkest I have read from this poetry book. This poem takes a very pessimistic view of New York and does not say one positive thing about New York. Why does Federico García Lorca feel so strongly against New York? The last two lines are especially dark, “Crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs as if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood”. I have not been in New York for too long, but I have never seen anything like the images described in this poem.

Six Characters in Search of an Author

Posted on by
Reply

My response to this play was very similar to Christopher Chong’s. I understood the overall plot, mainly thanks to the playbill’s summary, but I could not follow the smaller details of the play. This was mainly because it was difficult to keep up with the English subtitles, but even when I could read the subtitles, I was not able to watch the characters on stage. However, even though I could not understand the entire story, it was easy to see that this was an outstanding performance, as the actors and actresses were fantastic on the stage. This play likely would have been very enjoyable if you could read the subtitles and watch the play at the same time.

In regards to whether the ending was reality or fiction, I believe the ending and deaths of the two characters were fiction. This is because for the earlier parts of the play, the majority of the roles for the characters were in their scenes. However, even when they were not acting out a scene, they had the same personality throughout the entire play, which suggests they were not really acting, but rather were being themselves. Also, when the characters were going through a scene, they never had to do a second rehearsal because they always did it perfectly the first time.