Friday, January 26, 2007

   Art And Japanese

Well, I’ve decided this week that I absolutely love my Japanese class. I wish all my classes were that amusing and informative. That has to be one of the coolest things about having a professor who’s a linguist; you learn all kinds of useless yet entertaining facts about English, and any other random language that can prove a point. Like when we were going over categorizing verbs, our professor made a passing comment about how the class of English verbs that end in –ed in the past tense were formed originally by adding –did to the end to make them past tense. So the verb “looked” used to be pronounced and spelled “lookdid”. Fun stuff. Also, there was an amusing moment in class on Wednesday when he was teaching us how to ask “What is [blank] in Japanese?” He was pointing out that if you accidentally drop one small part, it would change your question to “Is [blank] a Japanese word?” He was using a face mask someone had brought as an example, and he basically said, “If you drop “de nan” from the sentence, you will be asking if ‘face mask’ is a Japanese word, and people will probably look at you funny” followed by something in Japanese which involved the word “baka”. He then turned to Tameyori-sensei (our TA who is Japanese), and asked, “‘Face mask’ wa nihongo de nan desu ka?” (What is ‘face mask’ in Japanese?) since he didn’t know and she said “‘Fesumasuke’ desu” which is just ‘face mask’ pronounced with Japanese syllables. We all got a kick out of that one; because of course our professor would accidentally pick an example where the English word really WAS a Japanese word also. Hehehe. On a fun note, I decided to buy the collected poems of W.H. Auden the other day, because I think he was really cool. I have this sort of personal philosophy that everyone has a least two special authors, one that feels like listening to yourself, and another that feels like listening to your friends. For me those two are Emerson and Auden. I’m sure that theory will mutate over time, but for now I believe it. In other news, my art classes are all trying to kill me, but that’s nothing new. I get to read two chapters in Art History this weekend, read two chapters in photography, finish a self portrait, do ten sketchbook pages (back to front) of drawings of bottles, and make a 20-22 inch wire sculpture of a human figure in motion that represents an Existentialist philosophy or thought (I picked Nihilism ^_^). Although I could probably do all that (excluding the reading) on Friday, so I’m basically just whining because I’m tired ^_^ Alas, that is my cue to depart, so I shall leave. Later. -Quotations of the Day- “‘Chair’ wa nihongo de nan desu ka? ‘Isu’ desu. So now we know ‘chair’ is ‘isu’. But be careful, don’t say ‘risu’, because ‘risu’ means ‘squirrel’, and if you ask me to pass you a squirrel, I will laugh at you.” -my Japanese professor- “In the eyes of every author, I fancy, his own past work falls into four classes. First, the pure rubbish which he regrets ever having conceived; second - for him the most painful – the good ideas which his incompetence or impatience prevented from coming to much (The Orators seems to me such a case of the fair notion fatally injured); third, the pieces he has nothing against except their lack of importance; these must inevitably form the bulk of any collection since, were he to limit it to the fourth class alone, to those poems for which he is honestly grateful, his volume would be too depressingly slim.” -W.H. Auden, 1944- “My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself, and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.” -“Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson- “Again, it makes me wince when I see how ready I was to treat -or and -aw as homophones. It is true that in the Oxonian dialect I speak they are, but that isn’t really an adequate excuse. I also find that my ear will no longer tolerate rhyming a voiced S with an unvoiced. I have had to leave a few such rhymes because I cannot at the moment see a way to get rid of them, but I promise not to do it again.” -W.H. Auden, 1965-

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