Take Us There

"A cross-country journey that explores the relationship between meaningful
spaces, and the people and memories connected to them."

I haven't been to many art shows. I've perused through the Getty a couple of times, and ventured through the tar pits to get to MOCA (The Museum of Contemporary Art). I even worked as a slave in the backroom of MOLAA (The Museum of Latin American Art) licking envelopes till my tongue bled. But an art show was way different from any of these museums that I had been to. First off, none of the artists featured were dead white guys with names that even the most skilled linguist couldn't pronounce. They were physically present walking and talking vessels of creativity. They sought anyone willing to listen to them explain their work.

Upon entering the venue itself and it looks like the inside of a Hookah bar. Echo Curio isn’t far from that. It’s a swanky hipster place. People don thick rimmed black glasses, pulling their vests tighter over their over sized white v-necks as a cold wind rushes down La Cienega Blvd forcing them off the sidewalk and further into the doorway of the exhibit. A rainbow of religious candles flicker on the cement as the sudden rush of bodies stirs the air around them. Ribbons attached to shiny black fencing on the windows flutter at the sudden rush of movement. They’re covered in words like “hope”, “peace”, “Obama”. One has to maneuver through the endless crowd of skinny jeans and high-waisted skirts chatting about their various off the wall professions and majors as they write their own messages on the ribbons.

“I have a radio show. I only play underground stuff, maybe you’ve heard of it?”

She pushes her glasses higher up on her nose.

“I’m an art and media studies major, minoring in film. I want to do mostly documentaries.”

He unbuttons his pin-striped vest to adjust his scarf still holding a permanent marker.

A young woman holds a furry ball against her shoulder, its face covered by her short brown hair that falls just above her shoulders. The creature nestles its way through her hair, parting it to peek out.

It’s a possum.

She flips her hair back, bringing the possum to her other shoulder as she answers questions from the small crowd gathered around her.

“What do you feed it?”

“Carnivore food. You can buy it from a feed store.”

“They have those in L.A.?”

“Yeah,” she says as she turns away.

“Do you have other possums?”

She turns around slowly, surprised the same guy is asking her another question.

“Just one other…” she pauses, “It’s her sister. She isn’t as used to being held around people as this one is. I found them outside and didn’t see any sign of the mother so I decided to take care of them myself. One’s an inside possum, and one’s an outside. This one’s the outside. One time, her sister got out and I went outside and I was calling for it every night. You know the Moms, they make a hissing sound that sounds like ‘Cheeee Cheee’, almost like a hissing.”

A woman petting the possum stops to grit her teeth in an attempt to imitate her.

“Chish Chish”

“It’s more of a ‘Che che’ sound you know?” and she turns away seemingly taking my friend Andy's curiosity as him making fun of her.

We pulled away from their little circle to discuss what we just saw amongst ourselves. The woman lifts her arm to bring the scrambling possum to her other shoulder, giving us a glimpse of her armpit hair. It was smooth and a lighter brown color than that of her hair, about a couple inches or so long. It looked like she had a troll doll under her arm.

She sees us staring at the possum and mistakes it for staring at her, and she quickly returns her arm to its original position.

The crowd inside is just as interesting as the crowd outside, only difference is these people are discussing the various art pieces that hang on walls, dangle from ceilings, and even grow from the concrete floor below them. Inside the walls are painted over in glossy primary colors. DJ and exhibit to your left, over priced gift shop on the right, middle room with photos and booze straight on till morning.

The walls are covered with photographs: photographs with people they met, some of empty highways, bridges, and fast food restaurant logos. Some are printed on canvas, others are Polaroids all capturing the essence of different spaces. Various art pieces are nestled in between them, composed of what most would deem to be road trash: soda cans, glass bottles, old tires, and cigarette butts.

The concept of the exhibit itself was really quite simple. A space can mean a variety of things for different people. Places people go often have a series of memories attached to them. Certain spaces are built with specific intended functions. This brings up the questions, how does one truly define a space? I personally believe that a space is defined not by its intended function upon its construction, but by the way in which is it is occupied. The park by my house, for example, was erected so that children of the Boeing families who moved into our neighborhood way back in the 1940's could have a safe public place to play. While that was its intended purpose, it is now the site for various drug exchanges and gang encounters and that is what now defines this space.

What the artists here was go on a cross country road trip with the sole purpose of capturing these places in various forms of media. They wanted to represent these places as more than just push pins on a map.



The concept of capturing places through sound recordings was another concept used by the artists. In the middle room, there were a series of black boxes with holes cut out on one side, dangling from the ceiling.

"Put your head inside one of them. It's cool you can hear stuff," says one of the observers as he sips his wine out of a plastic cup.

Andy puts his head inside.

"WOAH you have to try this. It's like you're somewhere completely different and you can't hear anybody talking here or anything!"

"Those are sound recordings we took on the road. Kind of a way to put people here where we were," says the man still sipping the wine.

Recordings weren't the only form of sounds present at this exhibit. Andy is quite the music buff. His friends all play in the Long Beach band Mulatto. I had seen them so many times in high school but never took the time to appreciate the seniors who were making it impossible to do my math homework during lunch. A white guy on a trumpet would interrupt the buzz of high school kids as a kid in dreads on bass would follow up shaking his hair as he played along. A lot of the people at the exhibit were old Poly almuni ranging from the 90's to the decade we are in now. Many of them music buffs as well, remembering Andy from jazz band. We were introduced to a young woman who told us she was a composer and would be performing a piece as part of the exhibit. She gave Andy a copy of her sheet music, which he cradled in his hands the entire night. She bid us goodbye and headed to the center of the front room.

Andy read the sheet music, and I peeked over his shoulder. I can't read music to save my life, but I know there was something different about this sheet of music. There were notes sprinkled sparingly throughout the page. She had scribbled "happy birthday" and "high school fight song" softly in pencil underneath the horizontal lines where the notes were supposed to be. Andy and I stared at it confused until she began to explain the piece.

"What we are going to perform is a participation piece. So that means we need everybody's help in here!"

She begins the count the music for everyone, and the guy next to her with curly dreads begins to sing "Happy Birthday". Andy taps his foot keeping time with her as she turns her hand over with each passing note. She pauses and begins singing a song that nobody knows. Confused, we look down at the music and see "song that reminds you of someone you once loved" scribbled. People around us are peering over our shoulders to see what comes next. She's singing Whitney Houston. A woman next to us starts singing a Beatles song.

She begins to chant, "RABBITS IN THE FRONT LET ME HEAR YOU GRUNT UHH! RABBITS IN THE BACK SHOW ME WHERE IT'S AT RIGHT HERE! RABBITS IN THE STANDS GET UP AND CLAP YOUR HANDS LIKE THIS!" clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap. The next measure reads "high school fight song". She begins the chant again while voices within the crowd well up with excitement as they sing along with her. You can feel the nostalgia. More than half of the crowd is singing this song. Poly grads from all different eras are singing the song that defined their high school years. The song that played during every sporting event. Her singing slows, finally coming to a stop with a couple more taps from Andy's foot. She and her companions take a bow, and step outside, and the buzz of the crowd starts again as they start meandering to look at the art pieces the performers had blocked during their performance.

Many of the people they met along the road were interviewed, and asked to show them their favorite spaces and talk about what it meant to them. There was a picture of a young girl named Ella Jane standing on a rock in the middle of trees. The caption read "Ella Jane created a clearing in the backyard. Her space was known as the fort. It was a space where she could observe nature, and have some quiet time away from the Wii."


Herman Melville once said, "It's not down in any map, true places never are." This certainly can be said of Ella's space, as well as the many other special spaces the artists captured.



-Kristen Viray December 28th, 2009

The Buena Vista Social Club

So the other day in a fit of pure frustration produced my boredom, I sifted through the tiny collection of DVD’s we have at our apartment. Sex and the City, Wings of Desire, and The Buena Vista Social Club.The last one stood out because it had been discussed in my Spanish class, and because it was not mine and I am the closest thing to anything Latin American in our apartment.

I have to admit it bored me a bit but only because I am not one to sit down and watch a documentary. With my Trader Joe's White Corn Tortilla Chips and Pico de Gallo Salsa by my side, I settled myself into our nice white couch and began watching.

The documentary is about the once thriving center of Cuban Folk music called the Buena Vista Social Club, once located in the city of Havanna. Here all the great musicians would come to play and just jam together. It lives on only in the stories told by the people who witnessed its magic in person during the 1940's. The documentary traces the lives of these great musicians now forgotten. Their stories are brought back to life in this documentary which represents the power music has in uniting a culture. It also captures the process of recording the album as well as their live performances.

Here is the part where I rant because of my love for ethnomusicology. It's amazing how much I love it when I cannot carry a tune and the closest instrument I came to playing was the recorder in 5th grade. I am in no way musically inclined. But like all great music, Cuban Folk music is highly influenced by African music with instruments such as the marimba as well as interlocking note patterns. Interlocking note patterns mean that one person plays one repeated pattern over and over while another plays another different repeating pattern over and over, and it is these notes that combine to form a melody. This results in the flowery and intricate tunes we associate with much of the music of Latin America today. These tunes often cannot be reproduced if they were to be played by one person, and if a single person can play it, it is absolutely mind boggling to musicians and ethnomusicologists alike. Cuban Folk music has an allure all its own that only the patient ear can appreciate.

One thing that struck me was something that one of the producers of the documentary said. Not only was he struck by the beautiful composition and performance, but he was struck by the musicians themselves, and how selfless they were. He commented on how although musicians are paid to play, they are more than willing to showcase their talents for pure enjoyment in any circumstance. Their talent was the greatest gifts they had to offer and they were more than willing to share it with the world. That is the mark of a truly good person.

Another thing that struck me was the beauty of the city of Havanna and the people themselves. Everyone was caught up in the slow pace of life, taking each moment as it came, singing a tune to themselves, greeting everyone they passed on the street. The camera pans along the beaten unpaved roads and diliapidated buildings with their faded pastel paints, all different colors still managing to fit together perfectly to complete the quaint city scene. This is how you always see cities in Latin American countries. You see the ruins, constant reminders of what once was, and what people may never see again. No one bothered to appreciate them for what they were in their hayday until they were gone, much like the Buena Vista Social Club. A piece of Cuban culture was missing for quite some time, and now the musicians of Cuba are attempting to remind the world of the rich musical culture that once thrived in the streets of Havanna.

"To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable."

-Aaron Copland

Reader Position

Despite how much I hated waking up to take notes for a 9AM class I wasn't even enrolled in, I truly miss it. Last quarter I was a reader for Professor Robert Garfias who is a Professor in the Social Sciences and lectures for classes about Ethnomusicology. Wiki defines ethnomusicology as "the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in local and global contexts." African and Afro-American Music was the first class i took with him in Spring 2008. I wrote my Humanities Core Course Research paper on the dundun drum which got me a nomination for the UROP at UCI. Drums truly are the pulse of a nation.

This also made me realize how what a wonderful resource a UC library can be. You can find anything you want, and sifting through the sands of history by turning the pages of a book is exhilirating. Looking through the library's special collections is like a free hands-on museum. Quite franky it's as close as I'm ever going to get to becoming a fedora donning adventurer in Egypt, searching for pieces to be featured in exhibits. A girl can dream.

Anyways, I was a reader for his Music of Indonesia and the Philippines class and enrolled in his Music as an Expressive Culture class. Lucky me. I got to see him MWF at 9AM and 11Am. As a reader I was required to attend class MWF to take notes so that I could grade their midterms and finals. No one in the class knew I was a reader, so I was undercover, his little minion I guess. He asked me to tutor this girl who I will call "Jane." Small, meek, asian girl. Spectacles instead of glasses, laptop and extremely asian pencil case in hand at all times. It was hard for me to pretend to care about the material when I had just been mindlessly transcribing notes.

We went to Science Library to study and the first thing she says is, "What do you think will be on the final?" I labelled her immediately because I like to thing I am pretty good at reading people. Science major. "I think he's going to talk about the evolution of an instrument again." Probably a Bio Sci major, they always have to use dialtecal reasoning.

She stared up at me waiting for an answer, her glasses slowly sliding down her nose until she pushed them up with her hand.

"Well I'd say that's a pretty good guess." I was fucking clueless. "Is there anything you don't understand or would want clarified?"

She ignores my question. "What do you think will be on the Final?"

I quickly scan my notes which seem to be written in Arabic. As if my handwriting weren't bad enough, at 9AM it's abhorrent.

"Maybe somehting about how a musical style that is characteristic of a particular region becomes a mark of national identity?"

She quickly fumbles through her notebook and pushes her packet of highlighters aside to write that down. And the rest of the 1 1/2 pretty much goes like this.

This made me realize that most students aren't like me at all. Here to learn, ready to dive into material. She treated it as if it were something to conquer. It also made me realize that as much as I hated the position, I loved travelling the world vicariously through the slides and music he played in class. I was getting paid to learn, which is exactly what I want to do. I'm terrified of teaching, but I think that worst comes to worst that is probably what I will end up doing. That or research.

I later found out she was a former Bio Sci major who switched to Anthro last summer. I can see that she has potential, because she had a better grasp of some of the material than I did so it showed that she understood parts of it. She seems to be in that Scientific mind to Humanistic mind transition.

I cannot see how anyone can go through college and not want to learn about the world around them. It perplexes me.

My curiosity will probably be the death of me.

Tumblr

Hello. Haven't written here for a while. I truly have been meaning to but I am currently infatuated with Tumblr.
http://krs10vray.tumblr.com/
Just a collection of things that are a result of my procrastination. I have decided to transform my Blogspot into something more productive in terms of writing for future reference for LJ jobs that I hope to have in the future. Although I still doubt that anything I write is of any literary substance. Whenever I need a confidence booster I just read a bit of New Moon by Stephanie Meyer. Yes the author of Twilght. It is riddled with so many grammatical errors and confusing syntax I'm surprised the 12 year olds obsessed with the series can actually comprehend what is going on. Then again all they care about is that corny sap Edward Cullen. The boy who will never exist in real life, and quite frankly all that corniness would drive the average person absolutely insane. That's why I am on Team Jacob. He is not a dead life-less object incapable of showing emotions. He is passionate about something more than a girl who isn't worth anybody's time. My battery is about to die. So until next time.

Vajayjay Monologues

I went to the Vagina Monologues last weekend. I've been wanting to blog about it for a while. It'll be a week since I've been and I cannot stop thinking about how much I want to blog about it. It's kinda hard to get the image of a flaming red head with an Irish accent throwing a bitch fit about tampons while she sits propped in a chair, legs raised spread eagle towards the entire audience. That's a brave woman right there. I feel uncomfortable sitting Indian style. (Native American style to be politically correct?)

Emmy and I had been chatting before the show about the people involved. She saw one of her friend's evil roommates was on the production team. Apparently she had stepped on quite a few toes and trampled a few people to get up there. Emmy also saw one of her old Sociology TA's. Small world.

It was a powerful thing. The purpose of the event was to raise money for abused women around the world, as well as promote awareness. They had various knick knacks for sale. Emmy got a pin that said "Vagina Warrior", while mine said "The Vagina Monologues" and had different words for the vag in the background: cootchie snortcher, vajayjay, taco you name it they pretty much had it on there. They even had chocolate vagina lollipops.

The monologue that struck me the most was the one about a young girl repeatedly abused in Bosnia by soldiers. They'd shove guns and whatever else they could find in her "down there" to the point where she held part of the lip in one of her hands at one time. Several women in the audience shuddered and covered their mouths, some even compelled to place their hands over their downstairs much like a guy would do if his family jewels were being threatened.

During intermission they raffled off some vagina friendly toys. Lube, vibrators, shot glasses they thought of everything. I found it hilarious that a middle age woman jumped with excitement as her number was called. She then proceeded to slide the vibrator she had won into her purse with a serious expression across her face. Fun fact: Apparently vibrators are banned in some of the Southern States.

"Oh no honey we are not goin dhere!" laughed a 40 year old woman with the thickest Puerto Rican accent I had heard in person. She and her friends laughed behind us as Emmy and I tried our hardest not to turn around.

Kristin, one of the editors of the magazine I write for called Inc!te, was in a few skits. She was in the dance number and I couldn't imagine having my parents watch me be straddled by another girl. But there were her parents, cool and snapping away with their digital cameras as their daughter wrapped her leg around another girl in the dance number.

They showed a slideshow as well with videos of people being asked "What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word vagina?" To my surprise, I saw Patrick Rembert's confused face up on the screen, speecheless for the first time. I was sitting anxiously in my seat waiting for him to say something ridiculous. He's so quiet here compared to what he is back in Long Beach.

The concluding act was a monologue about well a girl who liked to please girls. All the girls got into a line as she gave descriptions of the different moans women make during sex. Each cast member reproduced the respective moan. Some of them I can't even remember the names of but their sounds will remain forever in my mind.

At the end the tone got more serious, and they asked us to all participate in an exercise. They asked all who have been sexually abused to stand up. Men and women peppered in the crowd stood up. They then asked who knows someone who has been a victim. More bodies steadily rose. Emmy and I remained sitting turning around in all directions to take it all in. The last one asked for those who were going to put a stop to it to stand. Emmy and I stood up.

Her Sociology TA and the evil roommate had both stood up on the first one. We couldn't believe it.

The Glasses Fit

Today in my Literary Journalism class we had presentations. One girl was excitedly telling us how much she was fascinated by "the gamer." She went on and on to describe how her friend had completely replaced all forms of social interactions with his online gaming activities. His gaming activities have since been reduced thanks to his increased exposure to the college atmosphere.

I casually asked if he had been to Lan parties because it would be interesting to see how him and other gamers interact in the real world while playing games in the virtual world. I could hear the sqeauking of chairs in the other classroom, and feel the blank stares from my fellow classmates as the silence filled the room. I sighed and went head first into a rant about how lan parties were where gamers get together in one area with all their computers and game. My nerd status was thus confirmed in front of my entire journalism class. As if it wasn't bad enough I told them if I had to be a superhero I would be the Silk Spectre II from the graphic novel Watchmen. Yeah I know she's pretty much the slut of the novel but she's the only girl.

Back to LJ, little did she realize this cultural observation of hers was one that I experience pretty much everyday around my friends. Now my friends do not isolate themselves from the rest of the world just to play video games. They play basketball and do the occasional essay or homework assignment, while gaming, but they get their work done. Terms like RPG and 3rd person shooter game sound like basic gamer knowledge to them.

As a class we are required to give feedback and ask questions as to how she would go about doing research and writing for her article. People brought up things about Second Life, WoW, Left for Dead, and Halo. All of the things we discussed I recognized as normal parts of daily conversation between my boyfriend and our friends.

Gaming relationships have truly come a long way. With the advent of more interactive online games that require the cooperation among a group of strangers in third person shooter games such as Gears of War, the "gamer" is slowly being forced to socially interact with his counterparts. Most people are completely unaware of this new phenomenon. Games are slowly becoming a more acceptable form of social interaction. No longer is the gamer restricted to communicating with his teammates via text, but they are allowed to trash talk other players through a headset. Typing a series of profanities does not have quite the same effect. Thus the more realistic the interactions, the stronger the bonds formed between these gamers.

I have a friend who used to be ranked #1 in the world in Splinter Cell. He has friends in other MA that he keeps in touch with on a regular basis, and he has even visited them on occasion. He entered a Splinter Cell tournament with them through Best Buy and ended up winning the whole thing getting a car and about $3000. He has a girlfriend so he is clearly capable of establishing relationships with people, despite the gamer label that has been placed upon him. Had he not played Splinter Cell he probably would have never made friends with these people in MA.

You meet a variety of people on Xbox Live that you would not meet otherwise. You can go to the local movie theaters every Saturday night but you are bound to see the same high school kids flirting incessantly and talking loudly. Through Xbox, my friends have had frequent encounters with a number of colorful people like frustrated British kids, trailer trash, and even an overprotective husband who yelled at my friend for supposedly attempted to hit on his wife through a head set. Clearly the husband would not have been so protective if these relationships with other people weren't capable of being formed through gaming.

Revenge of the Nerds? They're capable of maintaining their grades as well as their friendships. Sucks to be popular.

Being a nerd is way more fun anyways.

KRS10

FML is taking over my Life. FML

My most recent online addiction has transferred over from Youtube to www.fmylife.com. I am ashamed to admit that reading some of these makes me feel better when shit happens. It makes life's little squabbles fucking hilarious because I am in no way, shape or form involved in these shenanigans.

Here are a few of my recent favorites. I have a feeling this will not be the last time you see these snippets.

"Today, my girlfriend dumped me proclaiming she wanted someone more like her "Edward". I asked her who Edward was. She held up a copy her "Twilight" book. She was talking about a fictional vampire. FML"

- I don't know who to feel worse for in this situation: the probably decent guy who was dumped by an ignorant girl, or the dumbass who actually believes such a thing as Cullen exists. *cough*Vampires are real*cough*

"Today, my 5 year old nephew showed me green martians he'd made with his new Play Doh set. I smiled and said, "Wow! Now, how about some blue martians!" He looked at me and replied, "How about some blue shut the fuck up!". FML"

-The first thing that comes to mind is of course going to be Dave Chapelle.
Dave Chapelle during his skit "Black Bush"
*says into 4 separate microphones
"Shut-the-fuck-up!"
5 year old ownage. Who doesn't love it?

"Today, at physical therapy the girl next to me had a blue armband. I said "Hey sweet ipod". She said, "Actually i have diabetes." FML"

"Today, my friends and I decided that we were going to make fun of our teacher by laughing as hard as we could at the first thing he said because he was always cracking horrible jokes. He walked in and told us his father had just passed. I was the only one to laugh. FML"

"Today, I got really depressed and decided to call Kids Help Phone. An operator answered, and as I started to talk about my problem, I stuttered a couple times because I was nervous and upset. The operator hung up on me. FML"

-Sick and twisted. Have a heart and at least try to stifle your laughter.

"Today, I submitted my picture to a rating website. It was rejected because I didn't clarify which person I was. The picture was of my dog and me. FML"

"Today, I took my friend to buy a pregame test. She took it and it came out negative. I decided to re-pee on it to be funny...it turned to positive. FML"

"Today, I started a fight at a lesbian bar and lost. I'm a man. FML"

"Today, I was expelled from school. By my own mother. FML"

-I've always been a fan of brevity.

"Today, I realized that I know more about the Transformers history than I do about talking to women. FML"

-Sadly, I know more about Transformers than I do on how to dress myself, so I can relate. I'm lucky to have a boyfriend who understands why I have posters of giant alien robots in my room.



You saw it coming.

Enough FML. I can literally spend hours on there.

Until next time.

KRS10

Testing 1, 2, 3...

"If she were in the Vagina Monologues, she'd be the angry vagina."
-Emmy

She would be the angry vagina. She is the angry vagina that made me want to start blogging.
So thanks angry vagina.