The table 5th post for Idiot Savant

The table. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I feel that the table represents something about the second woman on stage. However, I also feel that the table has its own meaning as well. The table in this play is used to represent the strength of language. It is there to show that words must have meaning, they cannot simply be thrown about and scattered amongst a conversation. It is necessary that you know the meaning of the word and that you use it in the right context. Words cannot just be used without having meaning behind it, this is what the Idiot Savant is trying to show us when he does take the table out of the wall. I remember him taking the table and hoisting it over his head. All of this is to make an example of the table, to bring it to our attention, not just in the sense that it means something, but to convey that it represents so much more. Also the fact that it was a strong wooden table made the point come across so much clearer to me. All in all it is showing that language needs a base and must be founded on something strong. Make your words stick by using the right ones, not just anyones. As for the woman, having her come out from behind the table represents how much stronger she really is. To describe the situation, the Wilem Defoe's character took the table out of the wall, and inside of that same wall was that woman crouched inside. By having her come out from there and entering on stage in an odd sort of way shows to us that she is going to be much different than the first woman to appear on stage. It shows us that first of all she is much stronger, and second of all, she is going to be a different from the other people on stage (which in this play is not hard by any means). Having her come out after the table is taken out shows that she is going to follow in the same footsteps of the table. She is going to be strong. The second woman always did seem so much stronger in her tone of voice and her questioning. She was not compassionate at all, she did not get along with the first woman, and she always seemed to be somewhat scary. The whole point of this representation was to show how she was strong. It represents how she was different, she was his other alter ego. She was the bad half of his conscious in a way. the first woman entered stage conventionally and was more sympathetic to the Idiot Savant. The second woman on the other hand was his bad half, showing this through her dark and almost hidden entrance from behind the table. Showing how she is not necessarily wanted but she is making her appearance whether the Idiot Savant knows it or not. The Idiot Savant did seem somewhat angry at the first woman when he took the table out of the wall. All of this representing that he was so fed up with her and he was angry. Because of this he brought out he evil side, when he took the table out. This is how the woman were his "angel and devil". He evoked them, he brought them out of himself because when he was calm in the beginning, he was level headed and trying to think nice and clearly. When the second woman came on stage, he brought her out because he was angry and began to lose focus. This is why he took the table out also. The Idiot Savant was so fed up with meaningless talk that he needed to show the first woman to be strong and have meaning in her words. This is why she was getting now where, because her words were not strong at all.

Let's start from the beginning 4th post for Idiot Savant

Where do I begin? Let's just start out by saying that this play was weird and eccentric. Ever since the opening scene when we saw Wilem Defoe's character walking across stage, I was just in shock of how odd the play had opened up and everything from that point on still continued to amaze me. The play opened with the Idiot Savant walking with a fake bird in a cage and what seemed to be a stick in his mouth. The play continued on and we saw the first lady appear on stage and begin to ask the Idiot Savant questions. I do not remember what these questions were, but I do remember what her motions were when she asked them. She also kept attempting to move from number to number around the room. I was completely in shock for the first few minutes until it all started to finally click for me. What helped me greatly was the fact that Wilem Defoe's microphone broke on stage. This gave me a minute to collect my thoughts and to see if they actually made sense.

My ideas about this play all keep the idea in mind that this entire play is about language. That is the main point that they all connect back to. Also, since we had done previous assignments in class about being specific when using language, those exercises, I felt, helped me out greatly. It allowed me to understand what is important in what is being said and to be able to filter out all the language that was unnecessary. So here it is, my take on the play Idiot Savant.

First of as a side note which I will get to later on, the two women on stage were his alter egos. The first lady was nice and the second lady was more stern and mean. Almost as though they were playing the role of the angel and devil on his shoulders, telling him what to do and constantly toying with him, leaving him unable to make a decision. As the play opened up, I believe the first lady was either on stage when the play began or she entered onto the stage not too long after the play had begun. Either way, from the very beginning she seemed to be trying to draw stuff out of him, asking questions and trying to get information from him. She was the clear thinking level headed side of his conscious, while the other lady was more demanding and was always in a bad mood. The point here is that when the first lady was on stage she seemed to be asking a lot of questions and through these questions she was hoping that he would open up to her and allow her to get some answers. The stick that was in his mouth in the opening of the play, which prevented him from talking, represented the answer that she was indeed looking for. This is because we witnessed her quite a few times, trying to make a grab at it and to get it away from him. The fact that it was tied to a string around his neck conveyed to us that it was important to him (his thoughts) and that he was not going to let it get away from him easily. This is why the lady had to work so hard and ask so many questions in order to try and get it away from him. The number on the walls to the both sides of the stage represented her progress in getting the answers and knowledge out of him. The higher the numbers were that she was at, the closer it she was to getting the knowledge that she desired. I realized all of this when she began to move around in sequential order. she began at number one and only reached number two. This was to show how her being soft with him was going to get her nowhere. She was asking the wrong questions, just like in the clip from the Pink Panther, when the inspector asked if the man's dog bit. The man replied no and when the dog bit the inspector the man simply told him that it was not his dog. I will post the link to the video clip at the end of this blog post so it will be more clear. From all of this I am hinting at the fact that the numbers represented how close she was getting to him. The first lady never did get very far and seemed to always gravitate more to the right side of the stage and towards the lower numbers. The second lady on the other hand, appeared from behind the table and next to the number four. This, as Jordan pointed out after the show, represented that she was going to get no farther than number four. While I agree with this, I also think that it was meant to show how much stronger she was than the first lady who appeared on stage. Both because of the table, which I will explain in my next blog post, and because she was more demanding of the Idiot Savant. Because of her being so much stronger, she was able to get closer to him and farther in her questioning. This was all in the same hopes that Wilem Defoe's character would open up to her and reveal the answer. When I write about the Idiot Savant opening up to the women, I do not mean discussing it with them, I mean that he will be able to come to reason over a decision because these women are not real, they are merely his alter egos being portrayed on the stage. Also, he will not be revealing thins to them, by this I mean that he will discover the answer that he is searching for. The Idiot Savant is merely arguing with himself and searching within himself to find what he is indeed looking for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXn2QVipK2o

Forgetfulness 3rd post for Idiot Savant

"It has floated down a dark mythological river, whose name begins with an L as far as you can remember."

These are two lines from Billy Collins' poem entitled "Forgetfulness".

After reading this poem it first seemed to me that this poem was about just thought and random little things that we learn throughout our lives, but after thinking about it for a few minutes I realized how much more there actually is to this. The entire poem is not simply talking about facts, but about our thoughts and language in general. The poem is talking about the constant fluidity and changing of thought and our language. Langauge is constantly in motion it is ever changing and evolving, new authors appear everyday and they all contain new works waiting to be read by others, but what happens to our previous thoughts, everything that we thought we once knew? Just as in one of his lines Collins writes that "even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away", he is referring to the quite recent change of pluto no longer being considered a planet. The idea of pluto being the last planet in our solar system has been around for quite sometime, ever since I was a little child and way before that Pluto was always considered to be a planet. Now there has been a sudden change, not that pluto is no longer there, but the fact that we do not consider it a planet anymore. This is what Billy Collins is referring to, the idea of all of our previous knowledge being obsolete to what is happening at this very moment. All of our thoughts are in constant jeopardy and what do we do when they are no longer serve their purpose? We throw them away and they float right on down that "mythological river, whose name begins with an L as far as you can remember." This is what those two lines from his poem are referring to, not that we have actually lost our thoughts, but we have disregarded them as being useful and worthwhile so we no longer need to remember them. They are still there, they are merely in "a little fishing village where there are no phones", out there somewhere, unable to contact us, therefore being out of commission in our minds. This shows the constant changing our language as a whole and more specifically our very society. It shows how we are forever changing and are always in motion, trying to keep up with ourselves and to be ready for the next thought to come along and destroy everything which once stood in it's way.

This is all able to connect back to the play "Idiot Savant". In this play we heard many times throughout the show a narrator's voice over the sound system that would tell us to "rejoice" when something was supposedly made obvious to us and also that we had been fooled by the characters. This shows the constant changing of ideas throughout the play. The voice is telling us what is made clear and how we have been tricked all of the time. I personally did not see what exactly this voice was making clear to us, but I did have some ideas about it and every time it would tell us that we had been tricked, I would lose those ideas and think that they were useless. It shows to us how ideas are never solid. There is always room to grow with ideas and even pieces of art. Think of the text that we read about Lehtem in the beginning of the semester and how his whole argument was based around the idea that ideas are continually thought upon and redeveloped into an often completely new form. Because of all of this we are forced to lose our old ideas in order to stay current and to not lose track of what is indeed happening in society. All of these changing ideas only contribute to and exemplify the fast paced and every changing world which we now live in.

Also, one last note, the link that we used in class and also the one that I referred to tonight to consult the Billy Collins poem again was a hypertext. It had links on it to connect you to other websites containing information which had to do with what was mentioned in the poem. Now think about that and isn't that a new thought than the one that you had before. Are you going to go back and look at Collin's poem differently now because of what I have just mentioned? There's your example for a new thought. Thanks Billy Collins.

"if I must, I must" 2nd post for Idiot Savant

In this one simple line from the movie “Mary Poppins”, Mary Poopins herself conveys both her frustration and self-realization of what she must do. Though she does convey frustration, there is not anger hidden inside of her. It is merely that the children that she is watching over and the other adults in the room are not listening to her at all. Since they are not paying attention to her she knows that she must join them, as they float above the room about to have tea. While she is not thrilled over the idea of giving in and going up into the air with everyone else, she realizes that is it what she “must “ do.

The point here of conveying two emotions through only three different words is to show the complexity of language in itself. While it may seem like just a simple example of Mary Poppins making a choice of what to do, it is really so much more than that. In this line Mary Poppins shows us how she has eliminated all other options of trying to the get everyone else to listen, and now knows what she must do. It is not what she particularly wanted to do, but she has no other option and going up there with everyone else “must” be done.

This all is able to connect back to the play which our class saw about two weeks ago in the village. “Idiot Savant” can be compared to the complexity that the one line from “Mary Poppins” shows to the audience. The entire play was based around the idea of language. It was to show us how important it was, how it should be used and the meanings that can be hidden behind it all. However, while both of these pieces of art convey complexity in language, “Idiot Savant is on a much greater level than that one line from “Mary Poppins can even try and compare too. Everything in and about “Idiot Savant” was complex, there was nothing straight forward in the play at all. In “Mary Poppins” her intentions, in the line that we are examining, were very clear yet there was still more behind it. In “Idiot Savant”, however, the intentions of everyone in that performance were unclear and the language that was used held an even deeper meaning. I feel that the movement in the play acted almost as a helping verb to the language being used. I do not mean that the movements helped me to understand the dialogue any better, as much as the movements added to the complexity of the language. Yet as much as I feel they made the play more confusing, I also think that they brought more things into the light for me. Think of it this way, if they had shown two people sitting down at a table and reading the script, how much more confused would we be? I think that the movements were there to both tone down and add more complexity to the performance. All of the movements can somewhat help us to understand what is going on, but at the same time most of these motions were so abstract that they could have added even more confusion to the audience. I think that the motions implied deep meaning along with the language being used itself. Honestly throughout most of the play, I forgot what the dialogue was during the different scenes, yet I remember the motions of the actors very vividly. They stood out to me more than the language because they were just so odd. It’s a visual experience which is hard to forget.

“Hubris at Zunzal”

This poem for the most part confused me greatly, as have most poems that I have read in my life. I do not know why but poetry has never really been the strongest part of any of my English/composition classes. Poems always seemed to annoy me a lot, like a child who thinks that he is better than everyone just because he is rich and fancy. That is exactly what poems are to me, rich and fancy kids who think that they are better than everyone else. Honestly that is why I enjoyed Billy Collin’s poem in which he mocked all love poems in one single shot. I loved it because it just called out everything which I have hated the most of poetry, symbolism. Symbolism to me was always the most annoying part to have to get passed and understand, but Billy Collins ripped love poems apart and for that I congratulate him. This poem entitled “Hubris at Zunzal” was not overall that bad for me once we started to analyze it in class together, yet I still do not like it. Even though there is not that much symbolism in this poem, to me it is still a snobbish rich kid. Why do they always think that they are better than everyone just because they are fancy? Poems and simple language can all have the same meaning in the end, so why don’t they just save everyone the trouble and stop being so complex. Take these two lines for example “And dumped it white into the waves, when it came upon me again me how sweet it had been”. Now in class I believe that we began to say how what the main character in the poem dumped into the ocean (his coconut milk and 150 proof rum) represented bought language and his thoughts and how he lost them by mixing them into the ocean. As a result of this he lost them (his thoughts) because as we all know that if you dump a drink into the ocean, well…good luck at getting it back because its mixed in their. Then he goes on to say about how it is so sweet when the drink washed back up onto him. How hard is it to say that you forgot a thought and it came back to you. I could have saved myself about 10 lines of writing and so much time trying to figure this out if the author had been straight forward with his thoughts in the first place.

Even though I do not appreciate the poem at all I can still understand how this is able to connect to the play “Idiot Savant”. The whole point of the play was to convey the idea of how important language is. The idea of this poem was the same thing I feel. It is to show how language is a gift and should not be wasted. The person in this poem wasted his thoughts and then luckily, they splashed back over him, but most of the time when you dump a drink into the ocean it is lost. There is no way to get it back, that is why you must hold on to it and keep all of your ideas together. I have about a page full of notes in my notebook and another ten or so ideas for blog posts about the play “Idiot Savant” saved onto my iPhone. This is because when I get a good idea or even a simple one I want to remember it, I do not want to have to rack my brain later on to try and remember what it was. The whole point that I am trying to make here is that you should not waste good thoughts. Keep them sacred because you never know what they might turn in to. Just as in one of the scenes from “Idiot Savant” we see Wilem Defoe’s character faced with the availability of taking a gift from one of the women on stage. He attempts to take the present but is unable to and after a while he loses his chance to get the box. After this we find out that the present inside of the box was a fancy watch. All of this is meant to convey to us that TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE. I find it quite ironic that after all of the time that he had wasted trying to get the box from the woman and deciding if he really wanted it, that the gift inside was a watch. He wasted all of the language used in that two minute scene trying to get a gift which just conveys to him that he is wasting time. Since time is of the essence, it is a gift, just like language and he should never waste it. He is frustrated and angry at the end of this dilemma because he has missed the opportunity. (This is a part of the play which is an example of what I wrote about before, when I mentioned how the movements in this play brought things into the light from me. The actions in this scene, the attempting to obtain the gift and the constant failure of that very action, all made my ideas more clear to me. If there was no action and only dialogue for this scene, would you honestly be able to understand it? I would not.) In essence Wilem Defoe’s character has just dumped his drink into the ocean. He has wasted his thoughts through wasting time and now is unable to get them back. The fact that the gift inside of the box was a watch show that time is a precious gift and do not let it get away from you that easily. Granted the poem did not seem to concern how long he took to finally dump his drink into the ocean but the fact is still that he did. The connection between the two here is that they both wasted their precious thoughts and were unable to keep control of language, one through carelessness and the other through wasting time.

1st post for Idiot Savant

This will be the first of my ten reflections on the play Idiot Savant.

It has been about 2 weeks now since I have seen this play down in the village and I still seem to think about it very often. The only reason that I could imagine I have for this constant recollection is that I have to develop a reaction to this play for my fourth paper grade. The thing is that I know this is not the reason and I still am at a loss to the simple question of why? Honestly I did not like the play at all mainly because I did not fully understand it. (Granted I did have some thoughts of my own about the performance, but those will be coming in my later blogs.) I did however find the play extremely interesting and I would love to know the actual meaning behind the entire performance. As for whether my take on it was right or not, that does not matter to me, I know how I viewed the play and I think that might have been partially right in all that I was saying but it would still interest me to know the true meaning behind it all. This is because the whole play seemed to be symbolism and deep meaning. What was the point of the giant duck, why did he have to play mini golf, why did the lady come out from behind the table, why did he wear the yellow jacket? There are countless more questions that I have for this play, most of which I have attempted to answer. The fact that this play was so abstract is what makes it so difficult to answer these questions. Also, why Wilem Defoe?

If you want to stick, you have to be different

I was in the city last night and as I was walking around I noticed all of the different sounds and attractions taking place on every sidewalk and street corner. Every single street vendor and stand in the city has there own way of calling you over to them. The salvation army guy had his little bell, while the guy at the hotdog and pretzel stand banged his tongs the cart to cause attraction to himself. They are all different, even the countless people who offer to draw a cartoon picture of yourself, the guys who sell the bootleg DVDs or the people in chinatown who sell you bags and watches all day. The point is that they all have to be different for you to notice them and to remember them for next time if you so chose to go back to them. They will either follow you and tell you what they are selling, yell out prices at you, or call you over saying what they have and how it is a great deal. It is the people on the side of the street who just sit there and do not cause attraction that have the most trouble when tying to sell things. Take the people in central park or in the subways who all play music, how many of them do you actually remember? Probably not a lot because for the most part they are all the same. Granted some are at least entertaining and that makes them memorable, but otherwise you forget about most of them very quickly and easily because they are all the same. If you don't stand out then you re just another person in the city, nothing special. The people who we probably all remember, if you have ever seen them before, are the ones who dress up and paint themselves to look like statues and move and act one you give them money. I remember over the summer there was one person in Times Square who would walk behind people and mock how they walk and act if you put money into a bucket he had in front of him. I only remembered him because he stood out and was different. Granted there are many of them in the city but they all do different things. Also, notice how I remembered he was in Times Square too? It's because Times Square is the prime example of this blog post. The city is known for Times Square because there are always people there and there are constantly new attractions and things going on. Also, there are countless broadway shows being performed on a daily basis. All of this stuff makes it stand out and also the ultimate tourist attraction. This is because they do not want to see the quiet empty side streets, they want to see the action and the bright lights. After all isn't that why they came to the city in the first place? NYC is a big city and if you don't standout then you're not going to make it.

Thanks Garmin

So I was in the city last night and as I was walking past Rockefeller Center I noticed that light show going on outside of Saks 5th Avenue. They had these giant light up snowflakes on the front of the building that would light up at different times to the tune of a christmas song. I do not know the name of it but the tune is very familiar. What I noticed the most as I was watching this light show was that I could not get the Garmin commercial out of my head.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9WxJ1aN42E&feature=rec-LGOUT-exp_fresh+div-HM

There are about 5 different versions of this commercial and this is just one of them. But the point is that Garmin has taken this widely known song and put there own twist on it so now whenever I hear this song I cannot stop thinking about the Garmin commercial. When I was in the city last night I could not get it out of my head. I doubt that I am not the only person who thinks this way about the song so Garmin has ruined this christmas song and taken it to a corporate level and, I feel, has taken the christmas out of the song. Thanks Garmin.

P.S. Here is another version of the song but I don't think that this has ruined the song as much because this is simply a parody which is not played very often. The Garmin commercial I see on T.V. all of the time and the fact that it is used to represent christmas in the commercial has taken away more from christmas because as in this next clip there are no reference to christmas at all. The fact that the Garmin commercial is about christmas and is just another advertisement takes away so much more from christmas and the original song itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBgHTJOsi6c&feature=related

One last note, THINK ABOUT HANSEL AND GRETEL. Don't you think that there is a connection between what I just said and with Hansel and Gretel? All Garmin did was take a widely known song and put there own twist on it to be memorable. Same thing with AT&T. They just took a widely known story and put their own twist onto it. There was no deep meaning behind it, they did the same thing that Garmin did. Use things which stand out to your own advantage! Hansel and Gretel is a classic story about getting lost and now AT&T can jump in and use their new AT&T phone with GPS to add a new twist to the story. Just as Garmin used a well known song to have the audience add a new meaning to it. This is so now every time a person hears that song they will think about Garmin and every time they see Hansel and Gretel they will think about AT&T. Simple as that, both companies have just ruined two well known pieces of art.