Soundwalk Reaction

I did the Passing Stranger soundwalk on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. The tour is documentary style, detailing the history of East Village poets while grounding their work into the physical places they lived, collaborated, and performed.

The added street sounds and music seemingly transported me back into the East Village during the time of the poets. The East Village today is drastically different, and still changing; the shift of demographics and gentrification of the area was also mentioned in the soundtour. You would think that it is pointless to physically walk to the mentioned stops because it now looks completely different; however, it was interesting to learn the historical context of places I’ve been to before. My familiar hang out spots and past commute byways were transformed, as if I had traveled back in time.

The variety in narration voices kept me engaged. There was consistentancy to the narration: the same voice for directions, the same voice for narration. The different expressive voices for the poetry readings kept the audio fresh.

The Ecstacy of Influence

This reading legitimized fields to me that I’ve already been interested in: the idea that collage is the art form of the century and the importance of deepening an understanding of how methods and motifs are interpreted by people and manipulating that. Growing up “swamped by parodies that stood for originals yet mysterious to me”, the situation of learning about a passage by John Donne through a movie adaptation of another novel was relatable, especially as someone that did not go through extensive humanities education or have family members interested in literature. I learned of Philip Larkin and his poem “This Be The Verse” from the following Supreme sweatshirt:

Embrace the Remix

This TED talk was in 2004 but today in 2017, I feel like it’s not that novel to understand everything as a remix. The average person looks at memes on twitter or instagram and recognizes that images from other media are being reinterpreted by other people on social media. Also, much of mainstream music production includes samples, many of which are supposed to be recognizable to the listener. We are also used to constant remakes and adaptations of older franchises in movies and tv, often adjusted to appeal to current day themes.