Mariya Morgaylo’s Reflective Essay

§ December 19th, 2008 § Filed under Assignments, Portfolio: Cultural Passport

On the first day of Interdisciplinary Studies class, I was asked to write about my Bali Hai. I wrote about a song, Lateralus, that encourages drawing way outside the lines, embracing the random, trying something new; and ultimately exploring unclaimed territory. In retrospect, it feels like an epigraph to a semester of exploration and discovery, both as a writer of the arts and an artist. In addition to the broad spectrum of shows I saw with the class, I used the cultural passport project as an opportunity to try new forms of art, in particular modern art at the Metropolitan Museum and foreign film.
I selected my trip to the Jeff Koons exhibit on the roof of the Met as a starting point for this reflection because it captures the beginning of my development in relation to the arts. I set off to the Met, initially hoping to look at the impressionist art exhibit. The blurred details, beautiful colors, outlines of nature are so easy to relate to when I remove my eyeglasses. Monet did not just capture the world around us; he painted to world I see on a daily basis. But before I had a chance to reach that section of the museum, I saw a sign inviting me to see a giant glass balloon animal on the roof.
What began as purely experimental became an unexpectedly moving experience. It was the end of September, and still warm enough to get away with leaving the jacket at home. Surrounded by the foreign language of tourists, I looked at my reflection in the Koons’s “Coloring Book” and saw some of my dearest personal philosophies captured on painted stainless steel.  There was no definite form, no harmony or balance – overlapping layers of pastels that reflected the New York City skyline, and me. The myriad of perspectives with which the same reality is perceived was embodied in this statue and I, for the first time since pre-school, could appreciate drawing way outside the lines. For the first time, I could appreciate asymmetry and the abstract.
At that point, I thought to change the focus of my trip to the Met. I sought out the Modern Art exhibit, looking for innovativeness, perhaps merely to be avant garde.  I saw some pieces that showed great originality, but none had moved me as I had hoped. The seed was sewn, as they say, and I developed the urge to re-experience the feeling of connecting with something I could have never hoped to understand.
One might imagine that an independent foreign film might not be too great a step from a Hollywood flick, minus the special effects and recognizable plastic faces. Even on a basic level, however, the cinematic experience was completely different. The reason why I had never sat through a foreign film before was because I’d always reasoned that I don’t watch a film to read subtitles. Half of the details are bound to be lost in translation. Once again, quite unexpectedly, “I Served the King of England” turned out to be a pleasant surprise. On a thematic scale, the screenplay employed satire beautifully. It got you to laugh at prostitution, Nazism, and greed, and recognize how ridiculous it all is.
Similarly to Koons’s exhibit, this film left me with a new perspective, this time about greed. It mocked the fact that greed touches everyone, from a lowly waiter to rich investors to classy ladies, to a point that they bend down on all fours at the sound of coins hitting the pavement. Furthermore, wealth didn’t seem to change the protagonist, although it is a common saying that money changes people. This absurdist insight on human nature: that it’s laughable rather than terrible was most memorable at all because it’s so applicable to real life.  A lyric from Lateralus suggests that over-thinking and overanalyzing withers our intuition and is overall detrimental to our beings. To think that you could just laugh off the adversities you face, to think that wealth and poverty are miserable in their own rights.
There is an old piece of advice that goes, “Write what you know,” and generally I’ve tried to follow its wisdom. This semester I was pushed into a variety of media I had never encountered before (partially by the Honors Program, partially on my own initiative). I realized that just because you don’t know something, doesn’t mean that you can’t write about it, it’s all the more reason to explore it. Embracing the random, the undiscovered, I just may go where no one’s been.

Mariya Morgaylo