Journal 11: If I had a quarter for everytime you said X...
By the end of class I was actually getting frustrated with the X because I was thinking WTF?! Quarters and Shakespeare?! Then I remembered Bleck mentioning 'preparatory exercises' before we begin reading Shakespeare's plays. I then had an Aha! moment...
When we read the sonnets it was all about speculation, interpretation, dimension, etc. And everyone of us had our own ideas. So why would it be any different when reading the plays? I have a feeling what we did in class is 'preparing' us to understand, interpret, perform, etc what we read, see, and hear in these plays. There are going to be many dimensions to the plays we read. The actual words, written in Elizabethan language; what these words mean or what they are trying to convey, is it literal, figurative, etc; the scene set up; the characters and so on. I am sure we are going to see things just as they are in the plays, like when we saw two quarters. What is X? Well, a quarter, 25 cents, etc. Also having to be a little bit more abstract and think about what is going on in the plays. I personally don't think Shakespeare will just lay it all out for us, we're going to have to put our minds to it. Like what does X do? Yes, it pays for a game of wacky gator. (Really, you all should play, it's quite fun and stress relieving.) It buys stuff. And all the other answers we had on the board. It is all in the approach.
When told to write five instances of 'What is X?' I automatically started thinking abstractly, almost sarcastically because we were given no guidelines or rules. When Bleck said that we could write down the obvious, it made me stop and think, and then I wrote down Quarter. Then I thought of 'price of a gumball'! Once we started to share our answers, it led me to think of other uses for a quarter. I found it interesting how some of our answers could be used for all three questions. I personally find being abstract easier because there is no said right or wrong, you can interpret what you will. It opens the way for creativity as well. Where as describing something for as it is, isn't as appealling and can be quite boring. Again, it is all in the approach.
Megan BB
i see the discussion as...
an approach to looking at the world itself at large and everything that anything can mean. you could say its much like a case of fractal iteration when you look at everything having meanings within meanings within meanings, till its become iterated so much that you cant even see what it started off as
"Oh great Sandwich Maker from Bob! Life, will be a very great deal less weird without you" Old Thrashbarg
deno
Dimension
It was really interesting to see how many dimensions a simple object could have, much like the many dimensions of the sonnets. Simple words strung together, but so many meanings. The quarter had the dimensions of abstract, physical, etc. I especially thought it was interesting that some people looked at the setting of the quarters with answers like "magnified." We have to look at the settings of the plays, too.
Erin Kay Schulz
"All in the approach"
I like how you phrase that idea. It reminds me of that "you get what you put in" saying and I can see that playing a major role in reading these plays. I agree it is easier to think abstractly and I especially enjoyed the gumball suggestion, because it was all about what you've experienced and where your mind took you at the very moment. I look forward to discussing plays in class for that very same reason of finding where people's mind may take them during the discussion. Veronica Sparks
Words.
You get what you put in...very true. If we just read the words and not put any more thought to it - that is what we're going to get, just words. And more than likely, words and phrases I won't understand after reading once. I've read a few of Shakespeare's plays, I've even been in one and then used a few for classical duo and now that I think back...I'm not so sure I ever really looked past the words. I think I was more focused on remembering my lines and delivery. I didn't take time to 'approach' the plays in any other way.
Megan Baeth-Brison