The professor gave us homework to find friends who were taking afternoon class and interview them. Doing interview is strange to me. I haven’t seen much, done much and I don’t know what to do. So, our group gathered and thought about what needed to do before the interview. I have experienced indirectly by watching many videos on YouTube about how to interview people. Through the video, we learned the sequence of interviewing and proceeded accordingly.

          The First thing to do is select interviewee and explain to them why they invited. We were in a group of five people and decided to interview two friends who are taking afternoon classes. Two of our group members taking a physics class which is after the English class and they asked their classmate to interview. The interviewee name is Matt, and I forgot the other name. As that time, I made it clear what the purpose of the interview is. In this process, we have to understand the purpose of the interview and completely transmit the information. Sometimes when during the interview, people forget about why they are here and what is the subject of the interview. Then, sometimes the point of conversation becomes blurred by losing the purpose of interviewing. That is why we need to advise or confirm why they invited or what role is needed. Two friends were asked directly in physics class. The second thing was to check the production method. Interviewing can also be done in wide variety places. It usually takes place in a variety of spaces such as studios, on-site, or private offices, depending on the purpose. So we should be clear information about this. For example, if you decided to interview in a café, you need to know what that exactly is and what the variables are. Our interviewee said Mondays and Wednesday at six and seven would be possible. But we have not been decided the place yet. We decided to meet in a place where the interviewee feels comfortable. The third is to make a questions list. So that we could avoid the embarrassing situation in which the atmosphere languishes during the interview. The interview is characterized by the fact that the content and direction and are determined by the conversation between interviewee and interviewer. If we ask questions properly, we can quickly and accurately get the knowledge we want from our interviewee. Sometimes we get more than we expected. Therefore, the interviewer must express the thoughts and values of the subject properly. Why the professor gave us this homework? What do we want to achieve in this process? Also, because interviewing time was around 2 minutes, I had to shorten the questions and the keywords. So it is important to think about the questions to ask the interviewee. And we spend some time before the interview to lead conversation smoothly in a natural atmosphere. For the interview questions, how do you know our group members Sara? Why are you take afternoon classes? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the afternoon classes? Are you going to take afternoon class in the next spring semester? What do you want to say to friends who take an afternoon class?

          I have not beet start interview yet but decided to meet again with my group at 6 pm and revise the interview question again. Editing, interviewing atmosphere and so on are all important. So I am expecting and learning something new through this process. As I prepared myself for an interview, I knew how many processes were needed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzPPPhb5s6Y

     For my first paragraph after watching the Do the right thing by Spike Lee and reading the Between the world and me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, I will come up with the common themes between each. Both shows the extreme danger that racial, civil, and generational misunderstandings and prejudices can bring, and it is a work that reveals that violence is the last choice that can be seen especially from the oppressed side. The unfairness, starting from discrimination to rioting and looting, a frustrating cycle that cannot resolve in reality, is not solved in the film and also book. And, it shows racial awareness in America and the current status of black people. For example, Mookie, the main character of this film, working at Harlem and Italian pizza parlors in New York, had to earn money for his girlfriend and baby. In the struggle of the Italian and black people that happened unexpectedly, the silent Mookie’s anger explodes, and the pizza shop becomes a mess and fires. The firemen shot the stream to the black people, not the burning store, and they did not investigate the facts of the incident, but the black people were beaten, and the police took them away. By the violence of the police, Radio Raheem is dying of love and hatred.

     For my second paragraph, I want to use a quote to support the writer and the director trying to say and how racism affects African American. For the first quote, I will use the quote from the movie Do the right thing. The director Spike Lee, who spoke persistently about the roots of racial conflict and genuine reconciliation use a quote of Dr, Martin Luther King.

“Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys a community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.” (Do the right thing) For the second quote, I will use some sentences from the between the world and me.

“But the race is the child of racism, not the father. And the process of naming “the people” has never been a matter of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy. Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible— this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white.” (Coates, Between the World and Me, p7)

      For my third paragraph, I will be writing my experience or thoughts on a common topic. And I want to write about some similar experiences as in the book or movie, and how to overcome prejudice in society.

     Rather than giving solutions, it concludes a film that is neither more nor less than the reality we are in. What I needed most in both movie and book is understanding, reconciliation, and love, not hatred. Unlike expectation, it shows bitter until the end, but it does not seem to be easily solved. Both book and movie show American contradictory liberal democracy.

All of Walt Whitman’s poems are included in a collection of books titled ‘Leaves of Grass.’ In that poem, I focused on the poem ‘Song of Myself.’ This poem is extremely long. So, I decided to focus on a powerful theme that Whitman emphasize several times throughout the poem. Whitman insists that human, soul, nature, democracy is connected and they have a role in an endless cycle. That is why he emphasizes equality in this poem. It does not matter if a person in poor or rich, man or woman, a master or slave. He emphasizes that humanity is free, equal and worthy. And, everything in this world has a clear purpose.

I believe that the reasons behind writing this were to tell connection of souls. He believes divine energy flows through all humans. So I would like to express this idea in my visual representation. I will connect a symbol of the divinity of human life and every-day parts of life. In order to visually express this idea, I will create a picture. The picture will be in color to describe vividly and will be a composite of the symbolic background with a human life.

Human life can be nature, education, and relationships. Whitman divines nature. The nature he considers is equality, including grass, trees, worms, and beasts as well as humans, who are neither superior nor inferior. He said in “Song of Myself’, the grass is the very essence of human beings that no one can understand.  Based on these things, it will be done with pictures and pictures of magazines.

For the symbol of divinity, I’d like to use black canvas and paint planets, moons, and stars. In ‘Song of myself,’ Whitman tells the voice of a powerful self. By saying that he is the universe, he sees the individual as a spiritual being, not a real being who dies temporarily. From that perspective, he sees the man as the spirit of the eternal universe and the unified mystical being. And when I read this poem, I live vividly as I see the wide plains unfolding, receiving the moonlight in the darkness. The scene of the night seems to symbolize nature where all things are fused together, and it seems like looking at the mysterious stage with eyes. It can be seen as a divine and universal being. I have attached pictures that contain aspects similar to what I am going for with this visual representation of the poem.

Visually representing the human and divine, I should be taking elements from both places and making them one, in a same place. For my Artist’s statement, I plan on writing about a lot of things such as purpose and meaning of Whitman’s poem. And I’ll discuss divinity of human life and emphasis on Whitman’s view of this poem.

‘Song of Myself,’ is one of Walt Whitman’s most famous poems in “Leaves of Grass.” It helped readers understand the self as an individual and another human being. After I read this poem, I thought of myself and realized that how great and important an individual was.