Vinyl & Verses

 Recently, I have been fascinated with the social nuances of communication described in Steven Pinker's piece, "Words Don't Mean What They Mean". So much so that it reminded me of a certain Drake song that makes extensive use of social euphemisms throughout its lyrics: Drake's "Diplomatic Immunity"(featured in his 2018 album, Scary Hours) illustrates a sophisticated way to communicate indirectly. This indirectness allows him to accomplish a sort of authority ranking: a social frame that allows individuals to demonstrate their relative authority within a particular social group while still demonstrating appropriate decorum. As Pinker points out, the primary function of indirectness is to allow us to manage relationships and avoid coming off in an undesirable manner.  Drake accomplishes this goal of managing his face by describing his lifestyle through a series of euphemisms that convey his status without simply stating that he's richer or has more pow...

 Firoozeh Dumas' essay "The F Word", focuses on the friction that comes from having a name that most Americans have no clue how to pronounce or use. Just as Jacques Bermon Webster II changed his name to "Travis Scott" in order to move through the music world with greater ease and recognition, so too has Dumas rebranded herself with the social survival mechanism of adopting "Julie" in place of Firoozeh.  Webster's adoption of Travis Scott is a tribute to two of his idols. He chose "Travis" after a favorite uncle of his who was admired for his personality and style, and chose "Scott" in honor of his musical idol Kid Cudi (whose legal name is Scott Mescudi). Webster's fabricated name is a marketable brand, allowing him to separate his personal self from the loud performer that goes by Travis. However, I think this change goes deeper than just musical persona; after all, even the people closest to him refer to him as Travis. Muc...

Anthropologists are often struck by the auditory practices of the tribe known as Srevol Cisum. Day in and day out, the members of this cult-like tribe shove sacred cords into their ears. Some even maintain this sacred level of holiness without cords; they use devices that resemble white stones that seamlessly blend into their appearance. These are known as Sdop Ria. These devices, when paired with a black magic slab, allow the user to perform a brain-pleasing ritual in which they become consumed by the invisible vibrations of sound that are emitted into their ears.  The audiophiles of the Srevol Cisum tribe have come to believe that the human spirit has a natural tendency toward "the silence", a frightening nothingness that may only be kept at bay through the continuous creation of rhythmic sounds. To avoid the emptiness, many members of the tribe go through the ritual of utilizing their holy Sdop Ria. Through their production of an unending series of incantations, each membe...

  In the recent weeks of AP Lang, we spent a great deal of time discussing a  rather controversial  yet intriguing topic: gender roles. One piece that especially sparked my interest was I Want a Wife by Judy B rady.  In this piece, Judy discusses the overwhelming burden that a wife must carry  through the  satirical  perspective of a husband’s demands:  a wife that can cook, clean, take care of the kids, give up education, stay loyal, etc.  By adopting the perspective of a demanding husband, she highlights how selfish and one-sided traditional marriage roles are. She  isn't   looking  for a wife; she is exposing how  much  wives are exploited.   After reading this piece,  I was left in sheer awe with the burden of  a wife . It left me in a state of  true appreciation  for women like my mother who do so much around the house . However, I hold  just   as much  appreciation f...

"I first began to know the  unwieldy  inheritance that I'd come into--the ability to alter public space in ugly ways." - Brent Staples   The quote above is a statement made by Brent Staples in his piece "Just Walk on By" in which he encounters the deep realization that his race has an overwhelming effect on public space--a realization that shouldn't be true, but is an unfortunate reality of the society we live in. In this piece he explores the idea of him being a victim in a world where men like him are painted as a threat, creating a dynamic irony that intrigued me to write about him in my blog.   One thing  that I found especially  intriguing  was the fact that Staples felt the need to sing "sunny selections from Vivaldi's four seasons" in which he labeled this action as a precaution to seem less threatening. Music usually serves as an escape, but it was a shield for Brent Staples.  Perhaps in  the realm of literature, nothing rivals the ha...

Music often tells stories in fragmentation: artists use samples from old songs, beat switches, looping, etc. Any producer will tell you that you have to set yourself apart from other recording artists, and this is no different when it comes to physical art. Recently, I've been fascinated with the thematic complexity that Danh Vo is able to achieve through the idea of fragmentation within his various pieces. I mean, he was able to turn America's largest symbol of nationality, the Statue of Liberty, into something that represented the incomplete identity of immigrants nationwide. By disassembling the statue into copper fragments, he showed how freedom is never really achieved for such immigrants and how trauma never lets them truly feel where they belong, all through some scrap pieces of metal.  Danh Vo doesn't simply reconstruct old art, he recontextualizes art in a way that tells the story of his immigration from Viet Nam as well as  of refugees and immigrants nationwide. L...