My Fused Violin, My Musical Body

Music has always been my way of expression, whether it be through an instrument, a song I sing, or even a dance. Music became a part of my body. Music has always been there for me when I needed to be creative, when I needed to think. As I’m writing this I’m listening to music. Since elementary school I have been enveloped in the love of music. I started to learn how to play violin. My teacher was such a passionate person when it came to teaching music. I think that’s why I began to fall in love more with my music. She always motivated us to keep supporting music and to never let it fade from our hearts. My mom loved hearing me play, she was also in love with music. Her hearing me practice made her joyful that her daughter was carrying on the musical tradition. She was in chorus when she lived in her village and she always came back with awards and trophies because of how beautiful her voice is. My mom’s voice is amazing, she always brings me comfort when she sings to me, I think that also fueled my passion for music. Throughout elementary school, to middle school where I became first chair in my orchestra class, to high-school, the violin was my best friend, my safe space.

When I played my violin, it blurred out all the noise, the voices, the creaking sounds of that music room. I felt my hands connect with my bow, my chinrest melt into the violin. The bow grazing against the string and my fingers pressed on the fingerboard of the violin, creating such beautiful music. I never really told anyone about how connected I am about my violin until this class. I wouldn’t let anyone touch it unless it was the Lashof violin manager repairing my bridge and my strings. When I was sad, I could play my heart out with such balance and heavy energy. When I was happy I would be so quick with my bowing hand and my finger placement. I had the ability to hear a song and mimic it on my violin after two minutes of hearing the song. I would catch every vibrato, every rest, every pitch change. Music was in me, music became me.

When we spoke about music embodiment, the first thing I could think of was my connection to my instruments that I have learned to play over the years. Violin, guitar, bass, cello, and etc. I feel like my parents gave me that musical gene. My dad played trumpet and trombone when he was younger, my mom was so good with her vocal skills, and because of them I became the connection to them for music to live on. I miss playing sometimes since I have not much time to play or take a course in music. But I still play my violin when I am home on break. I still play for myself, my parents here and there. I played for my grandma who also played when she was younger, and she passed, but that’s how I connect to her.

Music is so freeing. I can’t explain how much music saved my life. It saved my body. Music has the power to do so much to a person. Music can move people, it can cause so many different emotions. It can bring different people together. It can help you think. It can help you breathe. It can help you remember your loved ones who aren’t there anymore. It can even create so many memories. Even those who are unable to hear, are able to find music vibrations so powerful. I love music, with all my heart I do. I don’t know where I would be without it in my life. I probably wouldn’t have been able to write this blog post right now without it. As a musician, music is something so powerful, for those who play instruments as well I know you would understand how indescribable music can be. I feel like those who even listen to music understand it too. Music, whether it is being played, being created, being heard, it will always have some sort of embodiment to that person. I would never regret my choice in trying to play the violin, because it wouldn’t have brought me here, where I am able to share my story of how music embodies me.

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

‘same’ as performance art

As with many people, i have come to adopt the word ‘same’ into my vernacular.

Speaking Up for the Selfie

The Day I Taught My Mom How To Take A Selfie (2006)

I am proudly, unabashedly, fond of selfies. Even before the advent of the camera phone and the digital camera, I was taking pictures of myself on film — the anticipation of what would come back from the lab always excited me. It’s amazing to me that we can so easily create images of ourselves, and the fact that our ability to do this is, historically speaking, Kind Of A Big Deal, is never far from my mind.

Body Language

Body language is something we haven’t really talk about during class,

To be or not to be….

I’m a Theatre Studies major. I want to focus on Acting.

The Great Wall of Penis

Last year Kelly Martin Broderick wrote a blog post about The Great Wall of Vagina. As an artist myself I was able to appreciate the wall as art. I cannot imagine the time and effort the artist put into every cast. The fact that so many women took time to participate is amazing!

I decided to do a bit of research and came across PENIS. Big ones, short ones, fat ones, long one and the list goes on. Joseph Tailor’s project entitled ‘Art Work “100” ‘ is a casting project of many penis. This made me extremely uncomfortable. I didn’t understand why. I don’t mind looking at my boyfriend’s penis. His is pretty cool. I also didn’t mind looking at the wall of vaginas.

(Yes that is a Golden Penis. Not to be confused with the Golden Snitch)

Thinking hard -no pun intended- about my feelings I came to the conclusion that it was because of the form of the penis. Let me explain:

The vaginas on the great wall are all carefully placed and appear to be that of relief sculptures. They are delicate and unique. This is truly how a vagina looks.

While each penis is also unique I felt almost as if they were looking at me. I realize it was easiest to capture the mold of a penis while it was hard but this is not realistic. A man’s penis can only achieve maximum size when it is erect. Does that mean you’re “less of a man” when it’s not?

How I gained body acceptance (with a lil’ help from Bitchy Bitch)

As you can tell from my username, I love vintage stuff.  I’ve been this way my whole life.  I was that dorky little kid who listened to the Beatles and Buddy Holly, and when you came to my house to play Barbies with me, the story had to take place during World War II on the home front.  By far, my favorite aspect of vintage culture was always Archie comics.  Does anyone remember Archie, the redhead teen from Riverdale? When I was maybe seven or eight, my mom bestowed upon me her huge collection of Archie comics from her 1970s childhood, and about a year later, my aunt sent me an anthology of Archies from the 1940s entitled Archie Americana Series: Best of the Forties.  I was obsessed.  I was particularly taken with Veronica, Archie’s spoiled, snarky, and bee-you-tiful girlfriend.

Fan Fiction and the Tourist Approach

Because a bunch of people have asked, here is a link to my final paper on mpreg, or male pregnancy fan fiction. Please be gentle- it’s not a prefect paper, and only scratches the surface on this subject, theoretically and otherwise. In the end, fan fiction represents a fascinating place for intersectional theories to do their thing- I wish I had more time to dig deeper on it.

“Boobs Don’t Work That Way”…No really, they don’t!!!

Images such as these pervade comic book character art. Women are normally in sexy, revealing outfits; and, their bodies are often doing some pretty impossible things. A blog called Boobs Don’t Work That Way brings awareness to how ridiculously women are portrayed in comic books. The picture of Wonder Woman displayed here is not unique. Attempting to make her sexier, she is drawn into this impossible pose where her breasts and behind are shown at the same time. Also, her breasts are extremely large, and there is no way that her costume could logically support them. The commentary on the blog regarding this picture is as follows:

“It always freaks me out when boobs are drawn as almost a separate entity. This one looks like it’s about to pop off and and start a solo career.”

Other interesting points the blogger makes include the way fabric unrealistically stretches over breasts in some costumes, suctioning itself to each breast individually, the fact that nipples rarely have areolas in comics, and that breasts are not always perky and perfectly spherical.

I find it interesting that beauty for women in comic books is literally impossible for us as humans. The beauty standard is completely unrealistic. Do comic book artists feel that women will not be sexy without their impossible breasts? Or do they enjoy creating a fantasy woman? I’m not personally sure which reason correctly demonstrate how artists feel, or if there are other reasons. The blog is not being updated, but the pictures and commentary are excellent. Check it out!

The Adipositivity Project

I’ve been aware of The Adipositivity Project for a number of years.  Most people who float around Fat Acceptance circles online are aware of it, but when I’ve shown it to friends who aren’t aware of FA, it’s always surprised them.  I thought, given the reading for our next class, this was at least visually on topic.  I’m also always a fan of activism through art and you can’t say Substantia Jones’ photographs aren’t beautiful or radical.   Many of the photographs are nudes, so beware if you decide to click through.  I’ve pulled some of the more modest ones to show the intent of the images.

Adipose: Of or relating to fat.

Positivity: Characterized by or displaying acceptance or affirmation.

MISSION: The Adipositivity Project aims to promote size acceptance, not by listing the merits of big people, or detailing examples of excellence (these things are easily seen all around us), but rather, through a visual display of fat physicality. The sort that’s normally unseen.

The hope is to widen definitions of physical beauty. Literally.

The photographs here are close details of the fat female form, without the inclusion of faces. One reason for this is to coax observers into imagining they’re looking at the fat women in their own lives, ideally then accepting them as having aesthetic appeal which, for better or worse, often translates into more complete forms of acceptance.

The women you see in these images are educators, executives, mothers, musicians, professionals, performers, artists, activists, clerks, and writers. They are perhaps even the women you’ve clucked at on the subway, rolled your eyes at in the market, or joked about with your friends.

This is what they look like with their clothes off.

Some are showing you their bodies proudly. Others timidly. And some quite reluctantly. But they all share a determination in altering commonly accepted notions of a narrow and specific beauty ideal.

I love this project, especially considering the attempts by the media to include “real” bodies through the use of marketing like the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty and “plus size” (really a size 6-12) models, and how different these fat people look from those culturally approved fat bodies.  These aren’t the media portrayed idea of what is “real” (and how problematic is that word in regards to any person?).  These (mostly) women, according to the BMI (another problematic method of judgment!), are obese, or more likely morbidly obese (sometimes called Death Fat in the FA community).  Most of them probably weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 or 300 or even 400 pounds – yet I don’t think they look like the stereotypical bed-ridden mordibly obese person most non-fats think of when they hear those numbers. Or maybe they do look like those ZOMG FAT people to you.

However you see them, these people are fat, but they have accepted the bodies they have and are living their lives in them.