Katrina Allen

I ended up people watching in a pizza/bar place near campus. It’s funny; I never realized how often I spend time observing people in public. They are fascinating. Coming up with my own explanations for certain eye-catching characteristics of people has always been a somewhat enticing area of interest for me.

There could be a whole story behind that frown of a young woman with perfectly coifed hair. This exact woman walked by in a small, tight, rectangle-like black dress – the kind we’re used to seeing. Her sleeves were long and billowy, though, a sheer fabric which added an element of interest; a new and unexpected addition to the familiar.

She wore matching black wedges, carried a small clutch, also black, with her phone clenched on the outside, checking it every few seconds as she walked. I thought her hair was perfect – a modern beehive ‘do; the standard dress-up hairstyle for straight-haired gals with thick enough hair to make it look sleek yet effortless.

Her face bore full makeup, which was clear, but I also found myself wondering what she would look like without it. She had a sort of smoky beauty to her, which I believe the charcoal liner and heavy mascara accentuated. Her right nostril had a hoop through it. Maybe I’m biased, but I feel like there aren’t many people who don’t look cool, good, interesting, and/or sexy with some kind of nose ring.

At the bar, there was a young man who was clearly a bus boy. He had dark, curly hair, which was kind of long, but definitely not much more than past his ears. He wore thick, square
glasses, but violated expectations with the clear rims as opposed to the regular square, black thick-rimmed ones (which by the way, exactly five people in the whole restaurant had such glasses. It’s a trend, whatever that entails). I’m not sure if employees there are required to wear black or not, because the two people working the register seemed to wear whatever they wanted, but this young man in particular was clad in all black. He wore shorts that had clearly once been black jeans. Cut just above the knee, with two small rolls at the hem. He wore long black socks which he scrunched up, dark grey vans, a plain black t-shirt, and a dark brown belt.

He had that in-between beard-length – not quite a five-o’-clock shadow, but not yet a full bushy beard; a surprisingly perfect balance of scruff yet classy, in its own way.

The last person I’ll talk about is a young man from a group of about five that were at the restaurant watching the Blazers game. He wore a cotton-blend v-neck (probably from American Apparel, which is totally an assumption I’m making, but a good guess nonetheless), basic jeans, Vans, a backwards baseball cap. He had a closely-trimmed beard, and he had that fresh and sharp look that I’ve seen before but I don’t really know how such an aura is achieved.
There were a couple of general things about this activity that I found to be absolutely striking. First of all, I was very disappointed that I didn’t see any tattoos or interesting piercings. Second of all, I was somewhat surprised that this disappointed me. I found myself judging all of the people in the restaurant (and granted it was 8 pm, and there really weren’t that many people there – the majority of the people were probably at this point in the bar portion, down in the basement).

But judgment ensued, for sure. No one’s personal dress or style stood out to me or excited me. Except for that first girl who walked by, no one that I saw had any piercings. About a third of all the guys in the room were wearing baseball caps, most of them backwards. I counted at least five pairs of thick-rimmed, black-framed glasses, and at least ten cotton-blend v-necks.

Why did these styles bore me? Am I judgmental? Probably very much so, as it turns out. But variance is beautiful. As far as I am aware, variation is an integral aspect of evolution. Why then, are we so obsessed with fitting a certain trend? I am really not exaggerating, however rude it may seem, when I say that practically everyone in this place was dressed the same. What is that all about?

Deresiewicz, W. (2012, October). A Matter of Taste? The New York Times Sunday Review. Retrieved April 27, 2014 from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/how-food-replaced-art-as-high-culture.html.

“A Matter of Taste?” is an opinion piece by Portland author and essayist William Deresiewicz about food as an art form. Deresiewicz claims that since about 1994, food has replaced the culture of high art, rather than contribute to it. He says, “Foodism has taken on the sociological characteristics of what used to be known… as culture.”

About the ways in which food culture has replaced art culture Deresiewicz says that “just as aestheticism, the religion of art, inherited the position of Christianity among the progressive classes around the turn of the 20th century, so has foodism taken over from aestheticism around the turn of the 21st.”

Deresiewicz’s opinion that food is not art is supported here: “but food…is not art. Both begin by addressing the senses, but that is where food stops. It is not narrative or representational, does not organize and express emotion… Meals can evoke emotions, but only very roughly and generally, and only within a very limited range – comfort, delight, perhaps nostalgia, but not anger…or sorrow… Food is highly developed as a system of sensations, extremely crude as a system of symbols. Proust on the madeleine is art; the madeleine itself is not art.”

Elizabeth Telfer, though she concluded that food is a minor art (but indeed art), actually shares similar tastes in arguments with Deresiewicz. For example, she says, “…food does not represent anything else, as most literature and much visual art does. We can see the representational arts… as telling us something about the world and ourselves, and we can see the world and ourselves in the light of ways in which they have been depicted in the representational arts. But we cannot do either of these things with food.” (Telfer, 25)

Telfer does make room for food as a form of expression, which Deresiewicz does not. She says, “The inability of food to express emotion does not mean that cooks cannot express themselves in their work. For one thing, ‘expressing oneself’ need not mean expressing emotion… A cook can cook as an act of love, as we have seen, or out of the joy of living. But whereas in music the emotion is somehow expressed in the product itself – the music can be sad or joyful, angry or despairing – in food the emotion is only the motive behind the product.” (Telfer, 26)

While I appreciate and understand the analogies made between music and food, I think they tend to get a little misguided. For instance, Telfer loses integrity in her argument when she says “even with Schubert, we can spoil the experience by telling ourselves, ‘this is art’, instead of letting the song speak for itself.” (Telfer, 26) As a musician, this claim is absolutely ridiculous. Awareness of chord progressions, harmonic function, melodic contour, modulation, rhythmic complexity and variation, expansion of themes or motives, text painting, etc. (the list goes on at length) are all aspects of knowing or “telling ourselves this is art.”

Knowing why something is happening and how it is happening does not cheapen my experience of listening to Schubert; this knowledge of artistic creation heightens my experience, and it is what makes the experience more meaningful. Yes, we can all have certain reactions to various art mediums, and to some extent, art will evoke an emotion or aesthetic reaction from everyone. But to suggest that the only way to experience art is to “let it speak for itself,” cheapens the high quality skill and effort that has been drenched into these works of art.

Deresiewicz’s argument is enticing, because he doesn’t devalue the importance or cultural significance of food at all. He says, “yes, food centers life in France and Italy, too, but not to the disadvantage of art, which still occupies the supreme place in both cultures. Here in America, we are in danger of confusing our palates with our souls.”

But to include food as an art form shouldn’t devalue other forms of art. In fact, maybe it could heighten it. Perhaps the reason cultures such as those in Italy or France thrive in the area of arts and food is because they are integrated. Perhaps these cultures do consider food an art form! This is certainly worth further exploration. But essentially there is a science to food creation that is artistic in nature. It is a delicate, intricate skill that must be mastered to do and to some extent requires a level of mastery to appreciate.

The main question that has appeared in both of the author’s works, which remains unresolved, is this: should all mediums of art evoke a full spectrum of emotion? To bring the analogy back to music, music can evoke the deepest joy and the deepest pain, and everything in between. Music, for the purposes of this argument, is a single medium of art. If food is to be considered a single medium of art, shall it evoke a full spectrum of emotion?

Elizabeth Telfer’s speculations about food as art deal with some very intriguing and important issues pertaining to art in general. Whether we classify food as an art form or not may not be fully answered until we first make some important distinctions. The distinctions that Telfer herself emphasizes, argues, refutes or proves, include the issues of aesthetics and what constitutes aesthetics, art vs. craftsmanship, and creation vs. interpretation.

First of all, what is the purpose of making distinctions between different forms of art? Is there a purpose? I believe it is very important to have clear ideas about what makes one type of art different from another. If we want to fully integrate ourselves in our own artistic specialties, shouldn’t we also be able to draw connections from other disciplines to inform artistic choices? Bands of highly respectable music educators have decided this is an important skill; Music Education National Standard number eight states “Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts,” which specifically advocates the integration of other arts in the art of music. In order to draw information from one discipline of art to another, it seems reasonable that clear distinctions between different art forms must exist in order to blur the lines and create something innovative. This is purely speculation, but I think it is relevant to our discussion about food as an art form.

If food is to be considered an art form, then, as with many art forms, we must again attempt to answer the question: what constitutes art? The concept of disinterest may be quite applicable to the idea of food as art. Dissanayake says, “‘disinterest’ implied that viewers could appreciate any art, even the artwork of eras or cultures far removed from their own, whether or not they understood the meaning the works had for the people made and used them.” (Dissanayake, 18) Though the concept of disinterest is only one lens through which we may perceive art, if we look at food through this lens, it seems to fit in as an art form. Think of how wide a variance there is in different cultural foods. Can these differences be equated to variants of the art form, food? Perhaps, yes!

Lots of art forms, as Telfer points out, represent something else: they tell “us something about the world and ourselves, and we can see the world and ourselves in the light of ways in which they have been depicted in the representational arts.” (Telfer, 25) We have a couple of important choices to make: should art represent something else? Or, can food (in general) represent something deeper or multilayered?

I don’t have answers to these questions. Personally, I am used to understanding and analyzing art in a representational way, because frankly, it is not that fun to sing a song if you don’t have some kind of background story to compliment it. But just because I am used to interpreting art this way, does not necessarily mean it is the only way to do so. With that in mind, let me propose a broad definition of art: something that allows for self-expression as well as provides some kind of communication from at least one person to another.

If this is the definition I choose to use to define art, then yes, I think food is a form of art. The reason I am at this point convinced of the merit of food as an art form is, at its summation, quite simple: if our definition of art is too narrow, how can we possibly promote higher thought and come up with innovative, expressive art?

Palaeoanthropsychobiological is an adjective coined by Ellen Dissanayake which attempts to describe art for life’s sake. The breakdown of the word is as such: palaeo – older or ancient, esp. relating to the geological past, the “Paleolithic Period.”Anthro – from anthrop, meaning human or humanlike; psych(o) – of the mind or mental processes; biological – of or relating to biology or living organisms.

Dissanayake’s phrase, “making special,” is the value we give things; it is giving deeper meaning to something. According to Dissanayake, part of what sets humans apart from other mammals is their ability to make something special and to give it deeper meaning. “Something that is ‘special’ is different from the mundane, the everyday, the ordinary. It is extra-ordinary. Now all animals can tell the difference between the ordinary or routine and the extraordinary or unusual. They would not survive if they were oblivious to the snapping twig or sudden shadow that means a predator may be nearby. But when joined with the other abilities that evolving humans had – intelligence, resourcefulness, emotional and mental complexity, the ability to plan ahead – the ‘special’ could take on a significance that was more than simply alertness to possible danger.” (Dissanayake, 22) Significance is the root of art. Whether it is personally significant or significant to an entire group of people, art is art because it means something to at least one individual being.

In Dissanayake’s piece, “Art for Life’s Sake,” some commonly discussed and some less commonly discussed theories of art are explored. For the purposes of this writing sample, modernism, post-impressionism, and abstract expressionism will be outlined here in terms of periods of development and defining characteristics, such as the main philosophies or ideas commonly linked with these movements.

Modernism developed and was most prominent in the eighteenth century. This period of art is typically categorized as “having been a focal point in which a number of social and intellectual trends came together, intertwined and influenced one another, and eventually became in combination and intensity what is now called ‘modernity.’” (Dissanayake, 16) Important and defining philosophies of modernism include disinterest or disinterested attitude, aesthetics, and the idea of art for art’s sake, “or even life for art’s sake… suggesting that art had no purpose but to ‘be’ and to provide opportunities for enjoying an aesthetic experience that was its own reward…” (Dissanayake, 18)

By the early twentieth century, Post-Impressionism (or the “formalist” era), had (at least in England) taken its place in the world of art by a storm. This period incorporated cubism and followed philosophies which were not easily accessible or understandable. At this time, “art had become…an ideology whose principles were articulated by and for the few who had leisure and education enough to acquire them.”(Dissanayake, 18)

Abstract expressionism, which is considered to be a mid-twentieth century period of art, is purely in artistic terms, quite different than the previously discussed periods. However, because its “values were not easily apparent to the untutored observer, appreciating art became more than ever an elite activity.” (Dissanayake, 18) It has been acknowledged that the works of art in this period were truly strange, and yet were considered to be “conduits of transcendent meaning… truths from the unconscious.” (Dissanayake, 18)

Western American culture as we know it is filled with contradictions when it comes to subject of “the arts.” On a superficial level, there may be simply a spectrum of societal artistic value in our lives – from the bourgeois, high art to what we refer to as pop culture. I think that much of the debate about art can be diluted to two contrasting questions; first, what constitutes art? And second, why is art important?

As a musician and a music educator, this is a matter which is constantly evaluated, and yet, I still don’t have a good answer. I know from personal experience that music has helped me think critically, develop discipline, and act/react with sensitivity, but research-backed proof that music makes me smarter is something that just doesn’t exist. And so, if there is no way to PROVE that music improves the mind, how do we defend its place in society and school and our everyday lives?

Dissanayake’s fascinating approach, “art for life’s sake,” is both refreshing and absolutely thrilling. She says “there is valid and intrinsic association between what humans have always found to be important, and certain ways – called the arts – that they have found to manifest, reinforce, and grasp this importance.” (Dissanayake, 26) Essentially, she argues that art is a way for humans not only to express their humanity, but also a way to describe or help figure out who we are as people or as a part of a community.

History places art in the central role in ritual, ceremony, or unstable times. Art adds so much to situations such as these because “via art, experience is heightened, elevated, made more memorable and significant.” (Dissanayake, 25)

The fabulous part about her claims and theories is that though art helps to bring common ground between people, it does not necessitate low-quality or meaningless art. In fact, in order to affect people, art MUST be high quality. It must be high quality in order to appeal, which as we’ve observed, also has evolutionary indications as well.
According theorist Denis Dutton (with the help of Darwin, of course), “we find beauty in something done well.” And beauty is what brings us together. Beauty gives us something to contemplate, a reason to think critically and a reason to be human.

Do these observations and truths advocate for the arts? Yes, of course. Will they be enough to keep them in our nation’s schools? I hope so.

Family
Integrity
Personal Development
Friendship
Wisdom
—————————————-
Independence
Creativity
Community
Enjoyment
Health
Loyalty
Service
Expertness
Leadership
Personal Accomplishment
Prestige
Security
Location
Power
Wealth

My number one top value is family, and while at first glance it may not seem to be upheld on a regular basis, since I live two-and-a-half hours away from my parents in Portland, but they are in fact a big part of my life. I stay in contact with my mom and dad very often. Maybe I even talk to them too much for what is considered for a typical 22-year-old young woman, but I love hanging out with them. They are funky and cool and interesting, and they always are true to themselves; they don’t care at all what people think of them, and I love having those kinds of people for models. My brother actually also just moved to Portland and I hang out with him at least once a week if not more.

Integrity is probably the hardest one of my top five values to know whether or not I live up to on a regular basis. I practice every day, I work hard on my schoolwork, and I have yet to give up on my dream to become a music educator. If events come up that I disagree with – for example, last summer, a couple of my friends were throwing beer bottles off the balcony. I told them to stop it. We’re not very good friends anymore, but at least I didn’t stay quiet about something I thought was wrong.

As music educators in training, we are constantly encouraged to refine our value systems. If we are going to impart knowledge and share learning with future generations, it is imperative that we are firm in our beliefs but also open to the beliefs of others. So how do we form such things?

Values, as Lewis says, are a complicated subject area to define.  They are formed from what we know, perhaps to defend what we don’t. As someone who is still working on deciphering my own values, I appreciated the logical breakdown of the different ways through which we come to know something about the world. I would have to agree that we all use a variety of these systems with each decision.

The section of this chapter that I found to be particularly compatible with my own processes is the idea of separation: “human being cannot separate the way they arrive at values from the values themselves.” (Lewis, 13) And I wonder, should we try to separate these things? Or should we not?

I am a sensitive person, and often times let my emotions direct my actions. I have come to believe that human interaction, community, love, and higher level critical thinking are important things in a classroom setting, but could I very scientifically back up my reasoning for the necessity of these values? No, probably not. I made a decision somewhere down the line (probably while singing in choir at state competition, singing a piece we collectively but silently dedicated to a young man at our school who took his life) that community and community through singing is one of the rawest ways that people can communicate with one another, and so that notion has become an important component of my value system.

I think the great thing here, though, is that formulating values this way is not necessarily a negative thing. It’s part of human nature, at least that’s what we’re speculating.

In search of something interesting and meaningful to learn, I came upon Leo Babauta’s post on his blog Zen Habits, called The Cure for Your Distraction Syndrome.

At first read, sitting in my room with upwards of ten different tabs open on my laptop, I had to smile. Since I am a person who struggles with staying focused, my initial reaction to Babauta’s post was to laugh at the familiarity of it all.

I read a few of his other posts, most of which had glaringly similar traits. Then I put my computer away and went about my nightly routine. I had decided Babauta’s posts were too similar, which annoyed me, and so I planned not to use anything from his blog for this particular endeavor.

But as the week went on, something strange happened. I found myself wildly curious about these 7 steps he had laid out and described. There was a simplicity to them; their practice began to make sense to me as a way of becoming more focused. I decided to try it.

Before I go any further, an important disclaimer must be made. I am in the midst of a turning point in my life in terms of personality and mindset, and have been working on some incredibly in-depth self-reflection – much more than usual. And usually I am a naturally self-reflective person.
That said, the practice of Babauta’s “cure for distraction” has had (and is continuing to have) an enormous impact on me.

Here is a brief overview of his 7 steps, in case you already have too many tabs open and you don’t want to read the original post:

1. Become aware
2. See your main distractions
3. Find one thing to focus on
4. Clear everything
5. Set a timer for 20 minutes
6. Watch your mind try to run
7. Take a break
[8. Repeat]

Now if you’re like me, much of this process won’t seem shockingly new to you. A good way to solve most problems (whether small scale – individual – or large scale – global) is to generate awareness, notice your own personal contribution to the problem, narrow down your options for working on the problem, and then focus on that strategy.

However, the matter-of-fact language, the simple, reality-based instructions, and the acknowledgement that this is a hard mountain to climb, not just for you, but for lots of people, really struck me. Again, this could be due to a “right time, right place” phenomena, but nevertheless, the results are tingle-worthy.

The step that resounded with me most was step four, “close all programs you don’t need. Close your computer if you don’t need it. Otherwise, close your browser, or at least all browser tabs you don’t absolutely need for this task. Turn off your phone or put it on silent and hide it. Just have this task in front of you.” In fact, as I write this, I’m proud to say the only thing open on the computer is Microsoft Word.

The potential for transfer of this practice to my regular everyday life is electrifying. These past three years and two terms of college have marked the most anxiety I ever thought I could be capable of. Every assignment I’ve done has been fraught with panic. I have been filled with absolutely devastating fear that it wouldn’t be good enough; that any thoughts I might have for something as simple as a class discussion would be riddled with inaccuracies and ambiguity.

I have wasted three years of music school worrying that someone would find me out – that I am in fact a terrible, awful musician, with absolutely no ability to practice, count, or subdivide; with no real knowledge of genre, theory, or nuance; with a failure of a brain in terms of dictation and listening and error detection. The list of irrational fears goes on. If I had been able to calm myself, practice one small thing at a time, perhaps I could have enjoyed my first experience with collegiate education a little more.

But this past week, with Babauta’s steps in stow, I’ve created a new mantra for myself: “one thing at a time, Katrina. One thing at a time.” And already, I’ve stopped to breathe. I wrote a discussion question for my Psychology of Music class with nothing but my absolute thoughts and truths to inhabit it, and people chose that question to discuss over others.

On a larger scale, I thought of the many people I know who also struggle with focus and confidence in getting lots of things done. Maybe we are not beings filled with hosts of mental disabilities and setbacks; maybe we just have distraction syndrome, and maybe reading this post and practicing these habits will help us discover our own paths to mental clarity and focus. So turn off your phone, log off Facebook, and dive in.