I missed the performance we were supposed to go to as a group on Thursday because I came 15 minutes late and they wouldn’t let me in, despite Professor Uchizono’s warning. However, I bought a ticket for Sunday and I had an absolutely marvelous time. I purchased a ticket for a floor seat and I made a new friend while there! We had a really good time together and simply enjoyed the dances – It felt like I was watching this dance the way dance is made to be seen, which is not with a class but with another person.

I thought this dance was extremely endearing and it felt like my heart grew from watching this performance. Sitting in the very front less than 5 feet from the actors, literally touching the floor with my body,  made me “feel” the dances a lot more. I could feel there stomps and jumps, their energy was intoxicating. I loved Bel’s choice of introduction and specifically the progression in the introduction. At first we just have to look at them for a minute each, something which built up comfort and broke barriers – definitely on the audiences part, perhaps the performers felt this as well. Next we are introduced to them by name, age and profession (all actors/actresses – not dancers, curiously) and finally we are introduced to their disability. By the time we get to the disability though, it doesn’t feel uncomfortable, it just is a statement of fact – we have already been “desensitized” to the actors and we, at least I, stopped seeing them as “disabled” by this point.

Unfortunately I didn’t get the playbill and I don’t remember the dancer’s names by heart so I can’t refer to them by name but I will try to be as specific as possible.

When the 31 year old giant man came on stage, his whole essence was deceptive. When he finally began to dance with his spinning chair, the serious tone of this performance left the theater. He was smiling and shaking and having a grand old time. Not only was he happy, his peers were also happy, cheering him on and taking part and reinforcing the jovial nature of the performance – as they did with all the performances. The dance wasn’t extremely complicated but he put in energy and spunk and it wasn’t haphazardly put together nor was it a hodgepodge of movements, it was simple and fluid and wonderful. Other dancers like Julia and her rendition of Michael Jackson’s “They Don’t Really Care About Us” were more complicated but they never lost the flair that made all of them standout. These were people performing, well – extremely well, and they all had extreme disabilities – though they don’t necessarily look at it that way.

They were all happy when they were dancing; Julia – who said “I have down’s syndrome and I’m sorry,” who looked shell-shocked when she first came out, was smiling once her performance started, and once it ended, and once she sprawled out comfortably over the large side of her cohort Remo (I think the 31 year old) and another cast member, who both smiled and gladly welcomed her into their laps – just like they did the 48 year old during her performance of “Dancing Queen.” This performer epitomized the important points of this performance, or a great number of them. She gave it her all physically, we could see her panting heavily when her performance was done; she didn’t care about perceptions as we saw when she shamelessly (and rightfully so) picked her wedgie loose; she was there to have a good time, and she did; she demystified herself through the dance, she was no longer a disabled performer, she was the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen.

Throughout the performance I was trying to understand how responsibility was involved. The only thoughts I had were that despite their difficulties these people were still putting out enormous effort to create enormous works. They weren’t dealt the best hand but they made it work, and it did work. There is no excuse for being dealt an average hand and not making it work, and there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever if you are dealt pocket queens (A very, very good hand in Texas Hold Em’).

Jerome Bel puts our vision into perspective, showing us that disability does not mean death. One by one, as the performers come up to share their disability, Bel Humanizes them in a very powerful way. We see them struggling to take the mic down and put it back up, each in their own way; we see them smile at each other when they come back from their mic session or performance. We see them being humans in the truest sense of the word, laughing together, performing together, helping each other – at some point one of the performer’s zipper got snagged in the middle of their sweater and another performer helped them to fix it. I don’t know why he chose to show the 3 dances he didn’t chose, but I really didn’t care, because I wasn’t there to enjoy Jerome Bel and his choices (Well, I was, but that’s not the point) I was there to enjoy the dancers and their presence, and the 3 that he didn’t chose were just as wonderful and heartwarming as the rest, albeit a little stranger and/or more plain.

I also found it odd that the translator really didn’t have a role other than translator, or rather that she assumed no greater role than just translator. Throughout the entire performance I thought she was going to somehow get involved. She was dressed in Nike kicks with ankle warmers and tight washed out jeans and a slightly more grey sweater top  – she looked cool and like a dancer, but she never did – she just smiled and looked on as the performers did their thing, and maybe that was the point: you don’t need to be a cool dancer to be a cool dancer; or rather, you don’t need to look like a cool dancer to be a cool dancer.

I really can’t stress this enough, this performance was mesmerizing and invigorating. I felt so happy watching these free spirits fly across the stage, genuinely not concerned about their disabilities. I don’t know if I understood the message or exactly what I understood, but I know I was having a great time watching them do their thing.

(This was posted at 12:11 AM but wordpress doesn’t seem to have adjusted for daylights savings time – Ilizar Yusupov)

In analyzing Rambert’s history of economics through dance I am left dazed and confused. The dance, if it can even be called a dance, begins with a very macabre performance about the death of a woman’s mother, which left a bitter taste in my mouth. Then she began to do this interesting cutting motion with her hands but never expanded on the movement and performed it multiple times, along with rest of the group of people who have assembled on the stage by this time; this happened approximately when the cutting motion began and the disgusting soliloquy about the mother.

The dancers seemed to be doing random movements such as opening cupboards, brushing their teeth, or stretching, and then the philosopher comes out onto the stage, out of nowhere. He begins to discuss economics with us and informs us that this won’t be a lecture. Personally I had a difficult time listening to him because of his accent coupled with the dancer’s continual motion, making it difficult to process what he was saying and what the dancers were doing.

Because it was difficult to understand what he was saying I was only able to understand two ideas enough to write about them. The first was his idea that economics was the exertion and portraying of power and control over someone else, and for that reason things like interest exist, as well as the loan in the first place, and further, that trading itself comes from this idea of a power struggle. I found this idea distasteful because economics is rationality and selfishness explained in technical jargon along with some graphs and charts. I believe in attaching this idea of economic transactions being exercises in posturing, Rambert’s focus or way of seeing is not one that I am interested knowing about, simply because I think it is looking at economics in a novel, but disagreeable lens. It is a point of view that is not worth exploring, at least not in the way Rambert does it.

The second idea was when the philosopher mentioned the expression love is blind, saying that it was in fact the opposite; that it is when we see something that nobody else does that we are in love. I don’t know how this fit into the economics lecture because I was grasping at straws for something interesting at this point in the performance when this gem came through. Which brings me to another point, I thought that there were many interesting parts, but I never knew how they fit together or what the point of anything was. I liked the moustaches on the sides of the ladies faces and them talking about investing in the south sea company and smoking on their candlestick cigars; I liked when all the dancers were roaming around the room doing their own things; I liked when we saw the dancers become a machine; I liked how there were different eras of time presented; I like how they explained why the crash of 2006 happened, albeit in a disagreeable way; I liked that the dancers all brought out their possessions and then shouted out what they were; I liked that most of the dancers read something witty at the end of the performance; and yet after liking all of these individual things, I can’t see how they fit together or what the point was.

Was it just a lecture on economics in the last 200-or-so years using “dancers” to play out some interesting scenes throughout this brief history? I think that was all that it was; the dancing didn’t enhance the words that the philosopher was saying, if anything they distracted us from them. The artwork did not speak for itself, we had to have everything explained to us, strangely, by the philosopher, which gave the feeling that we were sitting in a lecture hall where some students happened to be floating around the professor. You want to listen to the professor, but you can’t help but look at the students. And you can’t fully appreciate either the professor’s lecture or the student’s movements.

Not that I think the professors particular speech was appreciable. He seemed to say very little of interest, instead choosing to recite history for us, with very little spin on it by his part, but coming from a skewed and gloomy view of economics. I couldn’t tell if this performance was a dance or a lecture, but in attempting to straddle both realms, it failed to achieve greatness in either.  

Ilizar Yusupov

Blog A

Distortion, by Kertesz is a marvelous composition. The picture seemingly breaks the rule of thirds but putting its main “horizontal” – meaning horizon-al not horizontal – diagonally through the center of the picture. However, this breaks the picture up into two separate pictures themselves each following the rule of thirds, which helps to add extreme distance between two realistically close objects.

Furthermore, the added distance creates room between both pictures giving them space to move towards each other – ironic that they are seemingly being drawn towards each other whilst having the illusion of being so far apart.

I also liked how the woman was naked, not because of the nudity involved though. I didn’t even notice there was a naked women in the picture right away because I was so focused on the rest of the picture, trying to piece it all together and trying to feel the distortion. Another reason for me liking the nudity in this picture is because it seems like it fits. This is a picture about distortion, not about a naked women, the nudity and sexuality doesn’t seem to be there to draw you into the picture, rather it is there naturally.

The picture focuses on bending the imaginary rule-of-thirds lines, and giving the two opposite pictures, one real and one distortion, space to be their own pictures yet at the same time magnetically attracting them together by giving them space, visually, to move towards each other.

I don’t know how I plan to integrate this style into my own snapshot, as I think it is very complicated to do and would require a much greater knowledge of photography than I posses. Having said that I have always been interested in duality (ironically enough I am a gemini – an athiest gemini) and this photo has allowed me to see one possible way to set up two opposing images.

John Jasperse’s rehearsal was an enlightening experience. In it, I got to see how the dancers related to the choreographer, and the influence that both of those parties share on the dance itself; I got to see them change things slightly such as the positioning of a foot, or the tilt of a head; I got to experience the effect of the changing music accompaniment. These were all of extreme interest to me but I want instead to analyze and interpret what I saw, coming back to the others if there is room.

Jasperse went into the choreography session with an agenda, past his plans to tweak certain parts of the dancers physically, he had an overall goal of trying to mimic the concepts of emergence. His reasoning for doing so was that it was creative and synthesizing rather than combative and sparring. What is meant by this is that typically people’s art is representative of a certain way of seeing that is unique to the artist, who in turn considers his way of seeing, unique; this artist can bring the things that he sees into his own unique perspective. In establishing this new perspective the artist inherently creates his art combatively, proving why it should be considered right.

Jasperse considers an emergent dance to be more creative than a thesis-dance, where one is persuading someone to their side; and rightfully so, Jasperse is trying to evoke the spirit of something completely intangible and unknown to him. Essentially Jasperse is playing god by trying to create something out of nothing.

With this being his goal though, Jasperse fell short of attaining it. The concept of emergence can be explained as a new level in the general hierarchy with new properties that are obtained through the previous hierarchy. In using only two dancers, I don’t see how Jasperse has enough building blocks to make something new. Furthermore, Jasperse moves the two dancers around together, meaning that they are meant to be seen together, but there is no apparent purpose for their togetherness. Occasionally the two dancers perform the same moves and then continue the flow in similar moves, but neither dancer’s movements enhance or bolster the other dancer’s movements.

The two dancers seem like they should be interacting with one another in some way but the dance makes it seem like they are two individual units dancing two separate dances that happen to be the same choreography, somewhat.  I liked the idea of two individual units, lending itself already to the hierarchical structure of emergence, but Jasperse seems to be throwing the building blocks around hoping for chance to create something new.

In fact, that is what he admitted in doing so by mapping out certain movements to each letter of the alphabet and then finding random alphabetical strings of characters to come up with dance movements. In doing this, Jasperse hopes to subvert his own artistic influence, but that seems to me, to defeat the purpose. I think the purpose is not to create something literally out of nothing; it is to create something new and with new properties out of a certain set of building blocks. Jasperse claims that he wants to reach true creativity, which is by creating something new, but I think in removing himself from the equation he doesn’t allow for any forces other than entropy to play on these building blocks, and then this dance changes from a dance on emergence of properties based on previous properties, to a dance on random occurrences – and that’s been done before.

Perhaps Jasperse is randomly throwing the blocks around because he thinks that emergence should come from nothing, and that if the pieces line up right this property will emerge, if only for a split second – this is what I interpreted from him saying that the geisha pose was emergent from the dance. Jasperse is not just the vessel for this project, he needs to have an active hand in its construction, and that is the hard part about playing god: making all the pieces so that they can fit together and then finding out the right way to connect them.  Jasperse’s dancers seemed to be two disparate entities, waiting only for the right way to be connected.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/23/arts/dance/john-j-zullo-dance-raw-movement-delves-into-the-past.html?ref=dance

Wendy Oliver says that a review is based on four components, description, analysis, Interpretation, and evaluation, with description being the support for the other three. In Gia Kourlas’s review of John J Zullo’s production, “All what THIS do HAS you Happened see? Before,” Kourlas vividly describes important moments to us and then continues to analyze, interpret and evaluate, quite ruthlessly, Zullo’s production.

Kourlas describes the beginning of the performance and the set of the stage and gives us his feeling on that set up. He is very clearly annoyed and dislikes the performance from the beginning. He tries to find meaning in the work but considers it random at many points and in his analysis he can not find much meaning. Wendy Oliver says that sometimes we just don’t “get it” and that this might just be the fault of the director, as is the case here – and this case is supported by Kourlas.

Kourlas continues to describe the performance, interprets the movements correctly, but it is difficult not to interpret the movements correctly because, according to Kourlas, the performance was treacle. He notices that the dancers are soulfully peering through sheets of glass as if searching the dark recesses of their brain – but the movements were fragmented and too similar. This performance seemed to be full of pretension and surface, to put words into Kourlas’ mouth. He describes the next phase of the dance as having a too literal meaning with no real meaning to be uncovered – a bum-esque character acting as both victim and victimizer.

Kourlas finishes his review by summing up the point he has been making all along: Mr.Zullo manages to work sentimentality into every step he makes and that tendency makes the whole thing forgettable. Kourlas’ review was clearly a negative one but it was backed up and supported through description and his attempts to analyze and interpret. Unfortunately there was nothing to analyze as the point of the performance was written on its sleeve and there was nothing personal to interpret because of the lack of “emotional luminosity”, as Kourlas puts it.

According to Oliver’s rubric: Kourlas’ introduction was a 4, his identification of information was a 3, thesis statement was a 4, description was a 4, analysis and interpretation and evaluation was a 4, flow was a 4, and his conclusion was a 4. While it seemed to be at first that Kourlas didn’t vividly describe the movements of the actors in great detail, he did describe what they were supposed to be doing, such as soulfully peering through glass, and gathering beneath a spotlight with their irritatingly obscured bodies. I think he described the movements when they seemed to be meaningful, and that is what counts.

On my visit to the Museum of Modern Art, it was my goal to look and analyze Dada, a style of art created in 1916, apparently as a reaction to World War 1. I remember learning about Dadaism in art appreciation class but I had a hard time remembering what it was. I chose to go to the museum without looking into what specifically my topic was “supposed to” look like or what details where “characteristic” of it because I wanted to form my own opinions.

As a slight aside – Upon entering the museum I asked the front desk where to go for Dadaism, and they said fourth or fifth floor. I went to the fourth floor, and then the fifth floor, and then back down to the fourth, and then back up to the fifth. I asked 4 security guards and they said they hadn’t heard of It (Dadaism) and that I should go to the information desk. The information desk on the fourth floor said to go to five and ask the security guards, “They will direct you,” she said. The lady on the fifth floor told me to go to the fourth floor, “They can help you find it,” she said. After stumbling around I finally found a placard that said “Dada” and there was a small corner devoted to the works of Marcel Duchamp.

I only mention this long story because the entire time I was going from one floor to another I kept noticing certain pieces of art, and one that stood out to me was Duchamp’s “Bicycle Wheel”, so it seemed natural for me to pick that as my first piece to inspect.

I first let my initial reaction guide me. And my initial reaction was “Okay so what the hell is this, what is this supposed to mean?” and that’s when I remembered the reading I did and how in my first blog post I mention finally understanding the full profundity of Duchamps work – that art is not necessarily a painting or a pretty picture but something that makes you think, and in that sense anything is art. So I felt like I cheated, I felt like I already knew the answer. But it was naïve of me to say I understood the full profundity of Duchamp’s work, and of this Bicycle wheel. So I tried to understand where this idea that “art is anything that makes you think” came from.

Looking at the bicycle wheel I continued my thought, “so what the hell is this?” well it was a bicycle wheel that was attached to a chair in a crude, yet surprisingly sleek, manner. It was a strong sturdy chair, with a strong symmetrical presence, appearing very grounded and earthbound. It seemed that the strength and balance of the chair was artistic in and of itself, but it also appeared that the slender grace of the bicycle wheel fit with the strength of the chair. It seemed to me that these two pieces belonged together, that they helped to highlight the features of the other – the wheel highlighting the base’s strength, and the base highlighting the streamlined, infinite beauty of the wheel. And yet, these pieces individually would almost never have found their way together without the hand of Duchamp.

In viewing them, I did not find any immediate pleasure and was not immediately impressed by the art but through thinking why this piece of junk was at an art museum I learned what makes art. Rather, I learned to think about what makes art, not necessarily coming up an answer. The point however, was that I was thinking. I was thinking about the art; why it was put together in this way, what was the point, what art even is, what makes this piece of art special, why is this combination of two random objects somehow important. I feel that just by asking these questions, i was experiencing the art. These questions were part of the art piece, they were natural, they were instinctive. They are what make the art piece, a piece of art; and what makes that particular art piece worthy of being in MOMA.

I read on the placard that Dadaism was a way of rejecting the world and the First World War and I couldn’t understand what it meant. In retrospect I have come up with some semblance of an answer. Dadaism was not fighting war by putting a bunch of randomness together and saying “here, randomness and differentness and avant-gardeness, suck on that you war mongering bastards, we aren’t gonna be a part of your system.” No, it was something much more eloquent than that.

They were fighting the idea of taking things at face value, without questioning. The war started because it was without question that countries had to defend each other, and it was without question that more land was good. It was without question that we will fight this war because we are at war. This is just as Dadaism relates to war, because that is what the placard said, that Dadaism was a response to the war.

Duchamp however, and this is just speculation, had much more in mind than just war with his ready-mades. He was not saying to question just war, but to question everything, question everything that we take as obvious, things like what is art. Art is when a guy with strange hair and a frock has a palate in one hand and is drawing on an easel in the other, right? (Maybe I just think that because of watching Bob Ross as a child.) Just like we had to question our assumptions about art, Duchamp was making a statement about all of our assumptions – question them. Maybe art isn’t a guy with crazy hair and a painter’s palate in one hand, but a guy who dresses in drag and puts chairs together with bicycle wheels.

Though I think that doesn’t do justice to Duchamp because the point isn’t which one is art but rather what makes it art. And what makes it art, I think, is that you are allowed to see the world as the artist wants you to see it; that your way of seeing is temporarily distorted and altered. In the case of bicycle wheel, in order to see the art how Duchamp wanted you to see it, you have to question.

The other exhibit I chose to look at was “Rotary Demisphere” which featured an interesting apparatus, a circular, should-be rotating, half-sphere – aka a rotary demisphere. This was mounted on dark purple velvet and attached to a wooden dowel, which was inserted into a triangular, apparently wooden, base, which was circumscribed by metal. The intersection of the Dowel and the triangle was covered by an upside-down funnel shape to brace the dowel to the base. On the funnel brace there was an oblate silver light. The top of the machine was connected by two black wires to a white gear mechanism which I believe was supposed to turn the demisphere atop.

The demisphere, which was white, was marked by a black spiral, several actually, that met at the pole of the demisphere. Next to the demisphere on the ground was a cover for the top portion of the apparatus, it was a bronze disk, with a bulbous glass cover, that looked ethereal, as if the gravity inside the glass was both infinitely strong and yet non-existent. The brass was inscribed with a saying in French that sounded very hypnotic when I tried to recite it.

I could vividly imagine being transfixed by this rotating sphere, with the oblong light at the bottom flickering on and off, illuminating the entire apparatus one moment and then being in complete darkness the next. All the while the sphere is spinning and I am concentrating on the one focal point, and the hypnotic French words are being repeated over a microphone by the sound of a French woman with a cigarette in her mouth. I felt myself lost in this feeling for a few seconds, though those few seconds had the feeling of much more than a few seconds.

I don’t know exactly what Duchamp’s goal was but it seemed to be a message that art can transfix us, it can literally enthrall us, and yet it is nothing more than an illusion. The spiral on the dome gives the illusion of timelessness, of falling into and out of this frame, the glass gives the illusion of weightlessness, the earth tones highlight the whiteness of the dome, giving you a focal point, giving you that feel of intimacy with the piece – that around the piece is everything else, all the normal boring stuff of the rest of the world but you are not concerned with all that stuff, you are paying attention to the black and white spiral in the middle, and that is your world.

Art, according to Duchamp, is an illusion. Art will “trick” your mind and eye into seeing something in a certain way, that a certain combination of elements, in this case a chair and a wheel, could be art, and that art can literally draw us in and make us see. That art can trick and distort our view of reality, in the case of the Rotary Demisphere – quite literally. Duchamp’s art was not great because it was aesthetically beautiful, not completely, but because it made us look at the world in a very different way, it altered my way of seeing. And in that sense, it accomplished what a great piece of art should do.

Blog A
Ilizar Yusupov

The Berger and Barnet readings did not necessarily change how I look at art, but rather refocused my thoughts and reassured me of my beliefs. I have learned a lot from both readings, but the ideas were not new to me, rather, Barnet and Berger were able to put into words ideas that once seemed nebulous to me – almost like 2 pieces of art.

Of these two pieces of art however, I preferred the Barnet reading far more. It was the one that I was able to take coherent notes on. I believe Barnet followed her own advice in that she was able to present herself as a person who is fair, informed and worth listening to. She presented her points in a very clear, constructed way and backed them up with concrete examples. Following Berger’s writing, on the other hand, was like reading a philosophical text and more of a personal statement, I felt as if I was getting to know Berger more so than getting to know how to look at art.

Barnet begins by talking about the institutional theory of art, and then proceeds to mention “Fountain” by Duchamp – epitomizing the theory. It was the first time I fully understood the profundity of Duchamp’s work, and I have taken an art appreciation class. Art really is anything, although certain types of art aim for different goals.

Another thing I learned about art is that you can look at anything in a multitude of perspectives, a very many different ways of seeing. For example, I learned that different art has different goals, and different statements they are trying to make, while at the same time it is up to the viewer himself to come up with the “statement” the art piece is coming to make. I have learned that your natural reaction towards a painting has a lot of merit and within that reaction there are many things to be discovered, while on the other hand, the initial reaction to the art piece is not enough to fully appreciate it. I learned why I should write about art. “Until one tries to write about it, the work of art remains a sort of aesthetic blur … After seeing the work, write about it. You cannot be satisfied for very long in simply putting down what you felt. You have to go further.” Tangentially to this point, you should try to understand and think about the art using any “critical thinking” type approach, such as writing, but it could be drawing or just thinking about art, so long as the activity furthers your initial reactions and deepens your understanding in some way.

I learned that you have to be confident in your feelings, in the sense that your feelings are correct – or rather, they aren’t incorrect, they can’t be incorrect. You are having a particular response or thought to a particular painting precisely because it is what you think. You don’t even have to do any work, or any more work – you have already put in the work over the course of your life, it is the you that has been built over the entirety of your life, the subconscious you that provides you with that initial gut feeling.

To touch upon the ‘multitude of perspectives’ again, you have to have both the perspective of being confident in your emotions and unconfident in your emotions; you have to be willing to say that you didn’t understand everything at once because you most likely won’t, you most likely can’t. Picasso thought, “A painting is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it is finished it still goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it”. If the painting itself is changing, your opinions should change with it – a certain reciprocity exists, both causing and resulting in the other’s existence.

The “subconscious you” gives you the gut feeling. While it is true that the initial gut feeling is there, it is not enough to simply “feel” the feeling, not because the book says so but because the reasoning the book gives is very poignant, and I have already quoted it – “Until one tries to write (critically think) about it the work of art remains a sort of aesthetic blur …you have to go further.” And you have to go further because there is so much further to go. There is a wealth of discovery about yourself, your culture, your thoughts, the thoughts of those around you, about the way people interact with one another, about the way people interact with you, about anything and everything. And the most amazing part is it all comes back to one centralized point – usually – and usually that centralized point is you. You are the focal point of all art – and that is not said with any hubris or self-satisfaction, all people are the focal point of art, in their own way of seeing, and yet nobody is at the focal point of art – and now we are back to the idea that there is always a different perspective to have.

I learned that even though I am not a trained art historian that does not mean that I cannot appreciate the art and that I can’t come to conclusions of my own about the art piece that, at the very least, carry weight to myself.

I also learned about a bunch of other stuff, stuff that probably carries equal importance, and when seen in the right way, might carry more importance than what I have chosen to write about. Stuff such as how the oil paintings of the 15-19th century were really a way for the rich to possess the world around them; stuff such as the large gap between the masters and novices in oil painting – signifying that oil painting requires a very high level of mastery; stuff like reproduction and the advent of cameras – changing the landscape and perspective of the art world forever. But this stuff was not memorable enough to write about. I suppose that is my way of seeing, looking at things as they relate to me.