Author: friedahaber

Wednesday December 5, 2018 is a night I will never forget. After almost getting frostbite while standing outside St. Anne’s Warehouse for the better part of an hour, I was finally allowed inside to experience the magic of The Jungle. Before I even had an opportunity to experience the play itself, the elaborate decoration in the theater really made me feel like I was in a refugee camp (although that was never something I thought I’d experience). When the second act began I was very confused. The short synopsis I received from one of my classmates wasn’t enough to bring me up to speed, however after watching for a little while I understood what the play was about.

The most striking scene for me was when Sam reads the notice to the refugees in the camp that the government is evicting them from a big part of their camp. There’s a lot of panic and yelling and Sam, a volunteer in the refugee camp, tries to calm them down. Sam very strongly urges his fellow volunteers and members of the camp that the best solution is to relocate the part of the camp that is being evicted. Some leaders of the groups of refugees think that a better course of action is to hold their ground. Sam yells and screams so that his voice is heard (which happens a lot in this play) and finally he even cries and pleads with everyone to relocate so that no lives are lost. Ultimately the decision is made that the evicted side of the camp will relocate but the restaurant will stay.

This scene was the most moving to me because the audience got a chance to see how insanely dedicated the volunteers of the refugee camp were. They treated the lives of the refugees as if it were their own. Every decision was made with the utmost concern for the refugees. It seems like the volunteers were the only ones of the refugees side. Sam’s character in particular really touched me because he was a doer. He is willing to move the camp on his own if that’s what it came to. As someone who has a passion for volunteering for many different divisions of my local charity, Sam stands as an inspiration to me. From him I learn what it means to empathize with the people that I help, and even more than that to truly put myself in their shoes. Despite the chaos he is able to think with a clear head, which is an essential quality in volunteer. His selflessness embodies what it means to be a true hearted volunteer.

A little lazy for my weekly Thursday morning run, I decided to walk my typical route. I hoped it would clear my head in more contemplative way than running. Maybe, just maybe, I would notice something about the city I live in that I hadn’t seen before.

As I stepped out of my house, a little more bundled up than I usually am, I made a last minute decision to opt out of bringing my headphones in order to make this run as pensive and therapeutic as I knew it could be. I walked streets that I walk all the time to get virtually anywhere I need to go. I noticed just how much the leaves fell of off the trees in the past week. There are old men, all on different streets, raking the leaves out of their yards and into huge piles in the middle of the street. I find it very funny that it seems like every street has its own peculiar old man, who I could just imagine lounging on their back deck in the summer time in wearing khaki shorts and a white tank top.

I get onto Ocean Parkway, the main street in my neighborhood, and I begin to walk. Not an industrial street, there wasn’t much to see but a bunch of nice houses. As I’m waiting by a light, staring at the sky, a car zooms by me and my heart stops for a second. I realize I’m too close to the street and back up. Suddenly I’m reminded of a tragic incident a couple years ago. A girl in my neighborhood, I forget if she was a sophomore or junior in high school, as she was crossing Ocean Parkway something of hers fell. She bent down to pick it up and was hit by a car. A truly heartbreaking and earth shattering occurrence. She was so young, with so much future and all of that was taken from her. I was in Disney World with my family upon hearing the news. Hearing about it in the “happiest place on earth” actually made the news worse. As I stepped off of the famous “It’s a Small World” and my grandma called my mom to break the news, my trip ended. Not physically, emotionally at least. For the rest of the trips our pictures with Mickey, Minnie, and the gang were plastered with tainted smiles and minds far away thinking about the life that could have been.

As I continued my walk down Ocean Parkway I found myself all the way at the Coney Island Boardwalk. Normally, I’d run up the boardwalk and run. The only difference would be the extra wind in my face. Today, with no agenda in mind I walk on the sand. Even through my sneakers I feel the cold sand. A very weird contrast from the scorching sand I’m used to running away from. Sitting in front of the ocean, it was very serene.

I sat there for 10 minutes or so until I decided to get up and explore the now abandoned Coney Island Boardwalk. It was pretty creepy. I was extra pensive today so I tried to picture myself walking through a typical summer day on the boardwalk. I imagined a mom buying her son cotton candy and an old couple daring to get on the ferris wheel. I walked some more until reality kicked in. I took way more time than planned and had to make it to school for a 3:00 class. I’m not sure if this is cheating, but I called an Uber to take me home. And with that, my walk came to an end.

Attempting to navigate the hall of NYU Langone Hospital on a Tuesday evening at 5:45, I was there for last reason I would expect: to attend an “off the page” reading. The reading I attended was one of the biyearly readings of the Bellevue Literary Review (BLR). The BLR is a literary magazine that focuses on viewing human existence through the lens of illness, diseases, health, and healing. It is not a publication I was ever familiar with, but nonetheless as I opened the doors of what appeared to be a lecture hall I was excited to hear writers and poets perform their work.

As it turns out, it wasn’t the authors of the short stories and poems that recited their work, but rather performers hired by the BLR who recited the works. I didn’t notice this until I decided to open the program halfway through the first performance, after understanding this my perspective as an audience member was altered.

The first performance was the only short story recited at the reading. It was a story about about a man going to war who fell in love with a girl. The performer was reading off the paper half of the time and periodically looking at the crowd. To me, it seemed like it was a combination of the way a preschool teacher would read a book to her students and the way a professional actor would act out a scene. He did a very good job portraying the characters emotions. I  particularly enjoyed the accents he did to act out the characters. It made the story be authentic. His tone moved throughout the reading the reading, keeping the audience engaged. When he first began reading I thought I felt his connection the story he wrote, upon realizing that that wasn’t the case because he didn’t write the story I concluded that he is just a great performer.

There were pros and cons to hearing a short story read it out loud. A  pro is that it was kind of like watching a show, I feel like I really heard the characters. A  cons is that , maybe it’s a personal thing, I had a hard time following the story probably because it was read aloud. Personally, I can’t fully follow and internalize a story being read aloud, I always need a copy to read along with. I found myself getting lost and tuning him out for seconds at a time which led to confusion, no matter how much the performer tried to keep the audience engaged.

My favorite part of the reading was the poetry. Although it wasn’t slam poetry, which I love watching, it came close. The performer, this time a girl with a South American accent, recited the poetry almost by heart. I was really touched by the first poem she read “Eating Disorder” not only because of the topic but also because of the emotion she put into her performance.

All in all, attending this reading was a great experience. However, I’m really bothered by the fact that the authors and poets themselves did not perform their own works. It somehow felt a little less personal with performers reciting the works. After attending this reading, the next spoken word event I’ll be attending will definitely include slam poetry.

Photographer Shirley Baker, who was born in 1932 and died in 2014, saw the poverty that the inner-city neighborhoods of Manchester and Salford were struck with in 1961 and decided she couldn’t sit idly by. It was then and there that she began her 20 year journey photographing these neighborhoods. From 1961 to 1981 she walked around the most destitute neighborhoods in these cities with her camera in hand, to record and empathize with everything and everyone that was there.

The photo above is one of her’s from this particular collection that intrigued and animated me. Although the photo holds no title, the studium is a little blond girl, probably around the age of three or four, wheeling a play carriage on the sidewalk by a brick wall. It’s a seemingly very ordinary and mundane photo. The punctum, for me at least, is the fact that this little innocent girl is wearing men’s shoes. Immediately upon seeing this photograph I was taken back to the days when I was younger and would walk around my house in my mom’s heels or my dad’s sneakers. There is probably even a picture of me wheeling a stroller whilst styling one of my parents’ shoes. Then, however, I remembered the time and place of Baker’s photo and I began to question: whose shoes are these?  Are they her father’s? Did she just find them on the street? Is she wearing them out of necessity or just to play? After my mind flooded with these questions I began to notice that certain parts of the photo didn’t exactly coincide with the circumstances of the picture. I became aware of just how well dressed this toddler is, and that intrigued me as well. I wouldn’t imagine a child living in a poverty filled neighborhood to wear clothes as well kept and perfect fitting as she was. Therein lies my second punctum, the way this enchanting child is dressed. This photo “gives me tiny jubilations,” in the words of Barthes, because of the similarity yet wide differences to my own childhood experiences as well as the ambiguity of the child’s situation because of the way she’s dressed. I believe this piece will captivate me forever, or at least until I get some answers on how this charming little girl seems to be living an ordinary life in the slums of England. Even then, her innocent look and the familiarity of her oversized shoes will keep me mesmerized.

My favorite piece of artwork from The Studio Fine Art Gallery in Brooklyn.

My first art gallery experience was very different than I had expected. Upon entering the Studio Fine Art Gallery near my house in Brooklyn I was immediately struck by how small and cluttered the space was. There were paintings from ceiling to floor organized in no specific order. At first, it was very overwhelming. I found myself having trouble focusing on specific paintings. However, after my initial confusion came a very comfy and homey feeling. I felt like all the art was hugging me in a sense. I started looking at individual paintings and noticing their beauty. While I couldn’t find names of paintings or identify the names of the artists, and the attendant was no help, I found a particular style of painting very striking  and I assume all the paintings in the gallery with this style were painted by the same artist. My favorite painting in the gallery was painted with this style that had a very creepy and eerie feeling. Most of the painting is comprised of little circle heads with blank lifelike eyes and a small mouth. The painting is almost split into two parts. The left side of the painting has a bunch of these small heads stacked on top of each other from the bottom of the canvas up, each head a varying shade of red. At almost the top of the canvas the heads stop and are covered by a white fedora hat. The hat has a faded red ribbon lining the part of the hat where one places their head and a faded red feather coming out of the ribbon. The right side of the painting is different. The bottom of the painting has about two rows of the creepy heads in green. Until about the middle of the painting there is just a green background. In the middle right of the painting is a box of varying shades of yellow creepy heads and on top of it is yellow top hat. Needless to say, this painting gives a spine-chilling feeling, which has to do in part of the gallery its placed in. The clutter I found it in and the smallness of the gallery contributed to the mysteriousness of the painting. All in all, it’s a painting I will never forget.

After my experience at the art gallery I headed to to the Coney Art Walls to enjoy their famous public art. The walls have a very hipster vibe to them and as a result I was expecting to see art that was cool and edgy. My expectations were verified as soon as I arrived. Unfortunately, the actual area where most of the public art is, was closed because of a labor day event that took place a couple of days before. Fortunately however, there were some pieces of public art outside the gated area that caught my eye.

The piece that struck me the most was a spooky interpretation of everyones favorite childhood characters: Dipsy the Teletubby, Ronald McDonald, Mickey Mouse, and Barney the Dinosaur. The four characters are arranged like an advertisement for a circus sideshow, each on their own but all together.  Instead of his normal face and body, Dipsy, the green teletubby, has an x-ray of his mouth instead of his normal face. The normal white square on his stomach is replaced with an x-ray of his heart. At the bottom bottom of this section there’s a thin banner that reads “Otto Topsy.” Connecting Dipsy and the sinister representation of Ronald McDonald is an orange badge-like circle that says “Alive” in bright red bubble letters. Ronald McDonald is portrayed as petite and chubby with a huge grinning mouth. Ronald has very large noticeable gums and equally big  teeth which are black and white in contrast to the bright yellow and red ensemble that we all know too well. Under McDonald is a banner that says “Grinnin’ Mac.” The next character is Mickey Mouse, who has his hands raised in the air in an exciting way. His face has some black graffiti lines on it which look like scars. Mickey’s mouth is opened to a huge smile which, like Ronald McDonald, has an overly sized gums with smaller teeth. Again, his gums and teeth are black and white as opposed to the classic red Mickey Mouse outfit. Under Mickey is a banner (although quite hidden in the picture because of the police line) that says “Grinnin’ Mouse.” Connecting Mickey with the last character, Barney, is a badge identical to the last one besides for the fact that it has a green background and purple words. Next is a side profile of Barney the dinosaur. His mouth, similar to the other characters, is wide open with  huge x-ray like black and white gums and teeth in contrast to the purple and green coloring of the dinosaur. The banner on the bottom reads, “B-rex.” This piece of public art is in the perfect place for its intended audience and intended perception. It’s in a cool and edgy area which causes viewers to look at it not as something disturbing, but rather as something thought provoking. The fact that this piece of public art is at the Coney Art Walls adds to the statement the artist is trying to make.

The painting “Lions in a Mountainous Landscape” was painted by artist Theodore Gericault in France sometime between 1818 and 1820. Its dimensions are 19 x 23 1/2 in. And its medium is oil on wood.

This painting depicts six very realistic lions interacting with each other. Three of the lions have very textured and life-like manes while the other three lions manes’ seem to be missing. They almost look like tigers without their stripes. The lion directly in the middle of the painting is growling in the fearful position most of us imagine lions to always be. The other three lions lying on the floor and it seems they are just minding their now business, while the last two lions in the back are brawling with each other. All of the lions’ fur is very textured. I can imagine myself running my fingers through their short yet soft hair. While not all of the lions teeth are showing the ones that have their mouths open show very sharp fang like teeth. The lions are sitting on a mountainous landscape (which is  implied from the name of the painting). The sky’s reddish blackish color implies that it’s probably dawn or dusk. As a viewer, the lions are scary. They come off as scary not only because of their sharp teeth and intense demeanor, but also because they seem unapproachable. They remind of the popular kids who dominate the cafeteria. In my opinion, the artist portrayed the lions in the way that most of society today views them, as the kings of the jungle.