…we remember all the times we had together <3
Waking up to get to class at 9:15 AM used to seem like it would be an immense struggle for me, being the late waker that I am. Every Monday morning my mom wakes me up (yes, she still wakes me up) and I drag myself to class with absolute assurance that I would fall asleep due to the lack of rest I had the night before. Monday–the most hated day of the week. Yet, Honors 125 with all of you, has changed that for me.
For some reason, every time I walk into class, I am energized, even if I’m going to be there for a full three hours. Most people would say that we’re all nuts for taking a three hour class, but I’m sure many of you can agree with me that those three hours seem to fly by. It is in this class that I have made many close friends, not only because of what we do inside of class, but also because of what we do outside of class.
Macaulay Honors College has given us experiences that we will never forget. For me, this has been a class of many “firsts.” Although it hasn’t been my first play, it has been my first community-based theater experience. I have also never been to the Brooklyn Museum. I have never been to the Metropolitan Opera House. I have never been to the Brooklyn Academy of Music for anything other than ballet. I have never seen a dance piece, without dancing or music involved. I have never read so many plays by writers other than Shakespeare and what I would call, the other “oldies.”
My perspective on art, especially in New York City, has changed drastically, and I am pretty sure that was the exact motivation and hope of the Macaulay board and Professor Healey. We have taken away with us experiences that we will remember forever, with people who I also hope to remember forever.
Although all of the plays, shows, and exhibits we have seen this semester have each influenced my way of thinking, I never thought I would say this, but Ralph Lemmon’s “dance” has influenced my view on art the most. I was hoping I would never have to blog again on Ralph Lemmon since we have all done it so many times, but we gotta give it up to the man: he made us question everything.
Sometimes going to see a play, musical, dance, etc, just because it is entertaining will leave us feeling happy for a few days, but Ralph Lemmon stayed in our mind for weeks. Many of us were just trying to figure out what the hell we had seen, and once we figured that out, we wanted to know how that tied into any of the themes he talked about at the question and answer session a couple of weeks after the performance. The ability to even meet with the artist who created the show was really awesome, even if I hated his piece.
What made this piece stay in my mind, even until this day, is the complete and total mind game that Ralph Lemmon played on the audience. It was like nothing I had ever seen before, it stirred up emotions that I did not even know I could feel about any work of art, and it left me feeling uneasy.
Although this has, no doubt, been the least entertaining work of art that I have experienced thus far in class, it has definitely been the biggest eye opener. We learned different ways and a wide variety of methods that we could use to analyze a work of art that is very unfamiliar to many of us. Unlike the opera which we spoke about one time after we saw it, Ralph Lemmon’s name seems to pop up in every lecture that we have.
We’ve learned to not always look for the entertainment aspect in art, but to really dig deeper and try to analyze, understand, and take away something from the piece. After watching Ralph Lemmon’s hour and a half of “dancing,” I know that not all forms of dancing can be done at a party or on Dancing with the Stars. He didn’t want for us to sit there and be jolly little entertained elves. He wanted us to hear about his life, to experience something we had never experienced before, to do something out of the box that we have confined ourselves in.
If there is one thing that I have learned this semester it is that we should always try to go outside of our comfort zone; art isn’t meant to always be understood, and we should appreciate art whether it leaves us happy, sad, or pissed off.
Twyla Tharp, an outstanding choreographer, said “art is the only way to run away without leaving home.” We have the ability to run away, get ourselves immersed in art, and enter a completely different world. This semester we have all entered a completely different world, and I cannot wait to experience even more of it.
that was my graduation songg!