Its funny through stumbling in my words I find ways in which to manipulate people...
After I read this passage, I thought to myself the times in which we judge people based on their appearances. Though I recognize some of the racial disparities in the United States of America, within the next culture the language and cognitive motions tell a different narrative. It was weird having to flag them merely because of their appearance, I know I'm not the only one guilty of it but it has pushed me to think further about people's identity and the identities people impose onto others. I do recognize however that this situation does not reflect other circumstances that occur, it does provide an insight into examining cultural relations as well as a surface disparities.
"At a village dance I attended in the Pirin region in 1873, I noticed a man staring at me. Sad experience made me afraid that he was from the internal security service. He watched me dance and talk to some of the villagers for a while before finally motioning me to come over. He demanded gruffly, "Who are you?" I explained that I was an American student spending the year in Bulgaria researching traditional music. He thought about this minute before exclaiming, "You lie!" I thought to myself, "Oh brother, here comes the accusation of spying." Instead, to my surprise he said, "You speak Bulgarian and you dance Bulgarian dances. Therefore you are Bulgarian." Of Course I am not a Bulgarian ethnically, nor do I have any Slavic blood in my background. The music's aesthetic power and the joy of dancing to it attracted me. However, in the process of learning not just about Bulgarian culture but also how to perform aspects of it (speaking the language, dancing the dances, singing the sounds, playing the tunes), I had come to resemble a Bulgarian Culturally. This villager was acknowledging that it is possible to cross cultural boundaries, to enter into others' horizons of understanding, and to communicate directly with others not in the universal language but in a newly acquired particular tradition of speech, instrumental music, song, and dance. Apart from the knowledge acquired, this "becoming" through fieldwork is perhaps the most rewarding aspect of research in ethnomusicology (Rice 1997)."
~Timothy Rice
A quote that reverberates in my head is [that] "My heart always told me that people are inherently good, my experience has suggested otherwise."
"People are just people.. It is what they do that makes them good or bad. A moment of love, even a bad man, can give meaning to a life."
-dialog in Blood Diamond
... like getting people off my back (shoulders) arguably it may not get me anywhere with that person, but is there wasn't anything to get at or to, why bother.
"At a village dance I attended in the Pirin region in 1873, I noticed a man staring at me. Sad experience made me afraid that he was from the internal security service. He watched me dance and talk to some of the villagers for a while before finally motioning me to come over. He demanded gruffly, "Who are you?" I explained that I was an American student spending the year in Bulgaria researching traditional music. He thought about this minute before exclaiming, "You lie!" I thought to myself, "Oh brother, here comes the accusation of spying." Instead, to my surprise he said, "You speak Bulgarian and you dance Bulgarian dances. Therefore you are Bulgarian." Of Course I am not a Bulgarian ethnically, nor do I have any Slavic blood in my background. The music's aesthetic power and the joy of dancing to it attracted me. However, in the process of learning not just about Bulgarian culture but also how to perform aspects of it (speaking the language, dancing the dances, singing the sounds, playing the tunes), I had come to resemble a Bulgarian Culturally. This villager was acknowledging that it is possible to cross cultural boundaries, to enter into others' horizons of understanding, and to communicate directly with others not in the universal language but in a newly acquired particular tradition of speech, instrumental music, song, and dance. Apart from the knowledge acquired, this "becoming" through fieldwork is perhaps the most rewarding aspect of research in ethnomusicology (Rice 1997)."
~Timothy Rice
A quote that reverberates in my head is [that] "My heart always told me that people are inherently good, my experience has suggested otherwise."
"People are just people.. It is what they do that makes them good or bad. A moment of love, even a bad man, can give meaning to a life."
-dialog in Blood Diamond
... like getting people off my back (shoulders) arguably it may not get me anywhere with that person, but is there wasn't anything to get at or to, why bother.