Monday, November 21, 2011
They Watch Me As I Type
This weekend I got out of bed, drove halfway into town and then stood outside of Starbucks, watching men and woman carry on their Saturday afternoon. I am supposed to count the number of times one of these people says "Hi" to me, all the while I am supposed to decipher their schedules; learn where their they have visited, where they plan to go, and so on. I am supposed to eavesdrop on their conversations, completing my surveillance of the people who made the mistake of walking near me that fateful Saturday morning. I was then instructed to write about other people, realizing that I "live in a 'bubble'". Now, this experience did give me a sense of the bubble we live in. It also gave me the sense that I would be a really good member of some kind of Totalitarian Governments Secret Police, and there comes a film. I came home and instead of immediately writing poetry, I watched "The Lives of Others" a German film revolving around the life of a high up Stasi officer and the Playwright he gets assigned to do surveillance on. The film goes through the waning days of the Berlin Wall and explores the themes of isolation, corruption, and the power of observation on a human mind. The officer ends up growing a soft spot for the playwright as he observes his relations with his wife and circle of friends. Said emotion, however, gets juxtaposed with his very cold and pragmatic witness reports, that state only the facts with a required reporting of any anti-state activities. A massive crisis of faith occurs part of the way through the film, as one of the writer's friends gets blacklisted from working and takes drastic measures to try to reverse his blacklisting so he could work again. I experienced a conflict of motives while completing my task as well; a number of times I wanted to interject my opinion into a conversation, but had to stop myself as I could "not talk to anyone". The Hawthorne Effect states that one changes their behavior when they know they are being observed. Well, why could not one alter their behavior when observing others as well? This seems, to me, one of the many factors that physical action alters when thinking about and writing poetry, and now I see how important actually completing these actions really were for my poetry.
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I also found the importance in completing the actions that our prompts very sternly stated in order to successfully complete a well written poem. I mean, crawling around my house in the mindset of a dog definitely got my creative juices flowing. I believe that if I had not truly experienced my the life of a dog, at least for a few minutes, I would not have noticed half of the details that I did. Like the dirty kitchen floor that day...
ReplyDeleteThough I would not agree that sliding down a child's slide eating a hoho really changed my poetic outlook, let alone my life, it certainly got me thinking. The subject of my poem was starvation, but I find it interesting (and I think you both have seen the same) that it led me to consider other factors, like luxury and material items.
ReplyDeleteConnor I also became fascinated with the feelings the the prompts gave to me. In my blog I discussed how shocked I was that my thoughts could be directed so quickly and so specifically. Similarly to you, I thought about how governments and corporations can use this in an attempt to persuade citizens or consumers to act a certain way just as easily as these somatic exercises caused us to think about a topic or feel a specific emotion.
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