My name is Michael Akyuz. I was born an raised in Brooklyn, NY. I am a child of divorce. In my immediate family, I have my mother, sister, and grandmother. I’m a guy surrounded by women, and I can honestly say that it is not always easy. Uhy! I started playing sports when I was about 5, mainly basketball and tennis. There were times when I peaked at each sport, and then all of a sudden stopped playing when my father left. I went to P.S. 99 for elementary school, and Cunningham Junior high for middle school. From the ages of 7-14, i was an active Boy Scout. Once I began high school at Midwood, though, i left the Boy Scouts, which I feel like was a mistake. I miss all the community projects and the fun events I used to participate in with the the scouts. I excelled in high school, eventually participating in the science intel program, where I spent my time researching animal cognitive behavior at a Brooklyn College lab. I graduated Midwood as the Arista leader with academic honors, as well as recognition for my participation in Archon and peer mentoring. After graduating, I worked at the Shoprite in Monticello, which is about 10 miles from my summer house in upstate NY. I can honestly say that from the age of 14, almost all the girls I’ve been involved with were like bad apples in some way. Now that I’m almost 19, I think it’s time to change it up a bit and find some nicer girls to involve myself with.

Though I don’t outright dislike classical music, I’ve never been particularly fond of it either.  And while I hate to admit it, I did find the Tokyo String Quartet to be rather unexciting, and left my house with low expectations.  However, I found my expectations defied and enjoyed a fantastic evening.

Walking into Carnegie Hall I prepared myself for the lengthy walk to my seat, and I was reminded immediately of Don Giovanni.  Going up the steps I saw what appeared to be an attractive woman ahead of me, and gentleman that I am, thought of giving her the pleasure of my acquaintance.  But, as she rounded a corner I caught a glimpse of her face, and decided against it.  “Love may be blind,” I thought as I disappointedly continued the arduous climb, “but unfortunately, I am not.”  Finally reaching the top of the steps, I was reminded again of Don Giovanni, and laughed as I thought about how the eponymous character probably would have hit that anyway.

The orchestra was magnificent and I enjoyed it far more than I did the string quartet.  There may have been something intrinsic to the pieces themselves that made them seem better to me, but I think part of the reason for my preference was that the number of instruments involved in the orchestra made everything sound grander.  My favorite part was what I believe were the French horns.  Although I tried to take in as much of the performance in at once – the sounds of individual instruments and of combinations, the movements of the musicians and the conductor – I couldn’t help but pay more attention to the horns.  I tried to anticipate when they would play, and was oddly fascinated with whatever it was that their musicians were doing as they occasionally turned and shook their instruments.  The only negative comments that I can make are about the seating arrangements, and what I think was one foul note played at the end of the performance.  Still, I was thoroughly satisfied coming out of Carnegie Hall.

However, the evening was not yet over.  I’ve been to restaurants that use attractive service to entice customers, and I’ve been generally unimpressed, so my expectations were low when some friends and I went to the nearby Hooters after the show.  However, I was pleasantly surprised by my experience.  The fries were unexpectedly good, and the wings were delicious, even though the last of mine was actually a fried pickle that got mixed in with the order.  Our waitress overheard me recount the story of the woman on the steps from earlier in the evening and told me that I was full of myself.  To which I responded, “I suppose I am full of myself, and hey, if you play your cards right, maybe you could be full of me, too.”  She slapped me.  Hard.  But not being one to hold a grudge, I still left my phone number on the check before leaving.

Even before writing this response I noticed the parallels between the orchestra and Hooters.  My shattered expectations, my encounters with women, the last sour note and the pickle.  Uncanny, yes, but it does seem that, indeed, Hooters is the Beethoven of restaurants.  I’ve since changed my ringtone to the Fifth Symphony in remembrance of this night, and cannot help but be overwhelmed with nostalgia every time it is the waitress that calls me.

Settling into my seat in the Metropolitan Opera House, I attempted to work the screen in the seat in front of me so as to have subtitles available, however, it did not function.  There were two possibilities.  Either I did not know how to properly work the screen, or the screen was broken.  Considering my competency with almost all things, I am forced to assume the latter.  Of course, this made little difference to me, as I took it upon myself to date a dozen or so Italian girls during the first months of the semester in order to learn Italian prior to the performance.

My only prior knowledge of the Don Juan legend was Lord Byron’s epic poem.  It is truly ironic, that Byron’s interpretation of a Byronic character would make him so un-Byronic.  Keeping this in mind, along with our class discussion on Donna Anna, I considered different ways to interpret many of the characters in the opera.  Was Donna Anna raped/nearly raped by Don Giovanni? Or was she actually seduced by him?  Is Zerlina an ingénue being taken advantage of by Don Giovanni?  Or is she more of a coquette, who aims to leave behind Masetto for the Don’s charm and rank?  And Masetto, is he rash and needlessly jealous?  Or is he genuinely worried for Zerlina but feels inferior to Don Giovanni?

There were two parts of the performance that most impressed me.  The first, Leporello’s Catalogue Aria, was incredible not just as a musical piece, but also as an aid in the characterization of the Don.  Who knows, if Giovanni did not meet his demise at the end of the opera, he might have lived to reach numbers rivaling my own.  And that brings us to the end of the opera.  It was spectacular.  The flames were intense and entirely unexpected, but even without them, the commendatore’s part alone was enough to send chills down my spine.

Edwidge Danticat’s visit to our campus to discuss the first year common reading provided some wonderful insight into her memoir Brother, I’m Dying.  She opened the discussion by reciting five Haitian proverbs, explaining the meaning of each and how they related to the themes present in her book.  For example, the final proverb was “When you see an old bone on the road, remember it once had flesh on it”.  The saying’s message was a caution against looking down upon those in a worse condition than yourself, as they could have once been the same as you.  This, of course, relates to her two father figures, who were left in incredibly unfortunate situations toward the ends of their lives.  The event continued with a reading by Danticat, who chose two excerpts that dealt with life and death, prominent themes in Brother, I’m Dying.  The first was about when she began the “transition” stage of labor.  Danticat likened the separation of a child from it’s mother during birth to other times of significant separation in life and theorized on there being a similar stage when one exits life as opposed to entering it.  The second reading was a folk story she included in the memoir about a daughter mourning the loss of her father.  The daughter, terribly upset over her father’s passing, is unwilling to go to a wake celebrating his life.  A village elder, though, convinces her otherwise, imparting the lesson that it is “not our way to let our grief silence us”; a lesson that Danticat herself must have come to terms with before writing Brother, I’m Dying.

Before book signing began the discussion was ended with a question and answer section.  Danticat answered many different questions concerning both the book and herself.  Some of which revealed that she was able to begin writing soon after her father died, and that the process was cathartic, but did not provide full closure.  It was this section of the book discussion that most reminded me of the previous author reading we had attended: Jonathan Foer’s reading of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  Both of these events revealed a lot about the authors and their works, but I preferred that of Edwidge Danticat.  Though Foer was witty and intelligent throughout the interview and Q&A, there was something of a “pretentious artist” attitude present that rubbed me the wrong way.  Danticat, on the other hand, was very down to earth, humble, and even calming to listen to.

In classic novels and movies taking place before the casual days of movie theaters, the opera was the biggest and most exciting event one could attend. The characters would sit in their boxes all dolled up looking around at everyone in the other boxes. In mysteries, the detective is searching for a suspect or a clue; in romances, the characters flirt with their eyes. My experience at the opera was nothing like that.

Outside of the Metropolitan Opera, on my way in, I recalled those books that I enjoyed so much where the naïve girl looked forward to the opera as if it was the fulfillment of her existence. After climbing flight after flight of stairs I squeezing into my seat, I realized that those girls weren’t sitting in the family circle. They also probably had some knowledge of Italian and had a clue of what was going on. Unless they spent the whole night looking around at the audience, as I unsuccessfully tried to do once I came to the conclusion that I would never understand what was going on on stage. From my birds-eye view all I could see of the singers were flashes of color representing their clothes. That, combined with the fact that I couldn’t discern any of their voices and that the subtitles didn’t say who was saying what left me thoroughly confused, even though I knew the story.

The opera was a cultural eye-opener that should have impacted me more. However, because of my lack of appreciation for the fine art, it is an experience I am unlikely to repeat.

On Friday September 16th I went to the Grey Art Gallery in Manhattan and saw the Fluxus exhibit. This exhibit was one of the oddest ones I’ve ever visited. Entering the building seemed normal enough, a security guard sitting in the front and a woman taking my bag for security purposes. This is where the normality ended. I felt like I was in a different world. The idea of Fluxus is to go against the normal notions of art and create something that makes the viewer think and hopefully upsets some established artists and art critics at the same time. The man who started the entire Fluxus movement, George Maciunas, basically wanted to start an artistic revolution to combat the growing “commercialization” of art. What he and a group of other artists ended up creating was an incredibly bizarre collection of pieces that focused around some of the many aspects of life that the pieces were associated with, like love and happiness. Some of the art pieces were very creative and interesting, like Yoko Ono’s Painting to Be Stepped On  and Robert Watts’ 10 Hour Clock. Ono’s painting was hilarious in my opinion; at first I actually walked around it to avoid stepping on it because I hadn’t read the title, and I thought Ono did a great job in doing exactly what the Fluxus project centered around, which was being different and the foil to mainstream art. The clock piece was clever and wasn’t quite as unique as Ono’s idea, but whenever I see a clock that doesn’t have 12 hours, I can’t help but find it hilarious. I thought the exhibit was fairly controversial, from suicide kits to film of a naked woman’s body being played on repeat, but if the point of the entire project was to completely differ from what everyone expects art to be, then I think Maciunas and all of the artists who contributed did just that.