Author: ramishsaqib

Robert, I hope you’re happy that I had to read through that whole thing. Your whole description of the Kings vs Rangers game was really detailed and made me feel as though I saw the game live. It’s tough to lose someone, but you shouldn’t let it bring you down all the time. I had a similar experience in sports with the Cavaliers vs. Warriors Finals series of the 2015-2016 NBA season. I’m sure you remember this. As a cavs fan, seeing them go down 3-1 made me feel horrible. However, I did keep hope and didn’t jump on to the Golden State bandwagon. Sure enough, the cavs came back after THE BLOCK by Lebron and THE SHOT from uncle drew himself. It was one of the best things that I had ever witnessed and I loved seeing my friends the next time I saw them and their faces when they had to pay up. I’m not much of a hockey person but I understand what it means for your team to lose, especially the championship. I can relate to how you felt though, and I hope you find your real someday.

“Sports are for meat-heads”

I have changed my belief or attitudes a couple of times since I was a kid. As a kid I used to think the world was a wonderful place (yes, I was quite dumb as a child), this was quickly disproven around the time I went to 5th grade. Other beliefs that I had changed were that I used to not like rap but started loving it in middle school because it really helped in dark times and also I used to think that sports were for big dumb meat-heads but that was probably just because I was extremely skinny and small as a kid (I love basketball now). I have been inside categories before as well. For example, I am half white and half middle eastern and I’m not sure which one I really am even though I usually am seen by everyone else as white. In high school I wasn’t really sure which clique I belonged to because I hung out with the dropouts and the more smart kids but I didn’t fully identify with either group. I’m still searching for “The Real” but I know I’m gonna figure it out eventually.

In the original version of “Sounds and Vision” by Bowie, there were all these different instruments that you could detect separately, but it was a bit more difficult when listening to the spinoff version by Beck. There were similar instruments and sounds used in Beck’s version, but without visuals I may not have been able to identify them. The original version of the song is a pretty standard song, nothing too special or overboard. However, the reimagined version by Beck has a sort of illusion of grandeur in it. It’s for the most part the same exact song, but adding all these other elements, parts, and the orchestra makes it appear as if it is something much more grand and what you would typically find at some sort of fancy, high class show.

The Latin Jazz performance consisted of different people playing different instruments that seemed to not have anything to do with each other. Everyone appeared to simply be solo and doing whatever they wanted to do. Yet eventually, each part came together with the others and produced something that was connected and organized, even though it originally felt like they had no relation whatsoever. Beck’s rendition of the song was very similar to this, with different parts coming in at different times, but they would all end up falling in to place and creating one unanimous sound.

The article Pain in Art by Sarah Boxer brought up an interesting point that I had never really thought of. The first thing that Boxer brings up in the article is the point that “The only way people can really describe pain is to objectify it.” This is interesting because we discussed something similar in philosophy where you can’t really describe an experience 100% accurately unless the other person has experienced the same thing. The best you can do is make analogies to other things. When people talk about pain they do, almost always, compare it to something physical. For example, when someone has a very painful headache they may say something like “It feels like a hammer is pounding the inside of my head.” People do this because it is the best way to convey how the pain feels to others. Boxer builds upon this point in saying that “When people forge tools or build things, they are often trying to alleviate discomfort. But first they must define the discomfort.” This is also true because tools are literally things people use to make tasks easier. When an artist builds a sculpture they are usually trying to send a message or make people feel some sort of emotion. I don’t have any problem with this way of explaining art because I believe it’s true. Works of art are made because of some sort of discomfort in order to relieve that discomfort. Even if the sculpture or artwork is not something that portrays pain but rather a happy situation, the artist did have the discomfort in the fact that no one else felt this way or has seen this piece, so it is shown to alleviate that discomfort that they have.

Part 1: In the judge’s monologue he is speaking about all the crime in the world and how people are committing these crimes simply to make ends meet and to have better lives. Man on Wire is also about crime but Phillipe is trying to do something grand and more art like. The kind of crime that the judge is describing is more about people just being morally bad whereas the tightrope walker is doing something artistic that also happens to be a crime.

Part 2: The judge getting both the tightrope guy and Jazzlyn and Tillie on the same day is important because the judge is Claire’s husband and this ties in another central character with other central characters. Additionally, the judge sort of feels sympathy for Jazzlyn and Tillie and the tightrope guy. For Jazzlyn and Tillie he thinks the relationship between them is a bit messed up, but he can sense the love. For the tightrope guy he doesn’t really want to put him in jail but has to for the law and to make their law system look good.

Part 3: In the prologue it is a description of what was going on as Phillipe was getting ready to walk across the tightrope and you wonder how this has anything to do with the story that follows, but then it is bridged later on during the same day that Jazzlyn and Tillie get arrested, Claire has those guests over, Solomon judges both cases, and Jazzlyn and Corrigan’s deaths as well. It was very surprising to see how these two seemingly unrelated stories would be so closely connected.

The bridge that unsettled me the most at first was Lara and Blaine being the ones that crashed into Corrigan and Jazzlyn while they were driving. It made me uncomfortable at first because it was weird to see this happen and then Lara ending up with Ciaran. That’s a pretty weird circumstance to meet a lover.

The bridge I liked the most was the one with Jaslyn being with Claire as she is dying. I saw this as being very touching because she wasn’t able to be there for Jazzlyn when she died but now she is with Claire who could resemble Jazzlyn or even Tillie.