Anytime my brick built home became a burden on my 7 year old mind, I left with chewed pen and wrinkled paper. I became a rocking chair and gargled myself a melodic hum as I sat on my cement steps. Hunched over, curls draped, nose to paper. From the time I craddled my drawing to the time I pulled back my curtain of curls, there was no one else in the world but me.

My self humming existed before I discovered that Kid Cudi could do that for me. Before I found out that music be my mediation, be my inspiration. When I hear music, I can visualize colors, whole scenaries, stories, memories, new worlds… I am inpsired by music’s ability to alter my emotions and how it removes me and allows me to escape reality. In this intangible space music takes me, there is so much possibility.

I think I am so comfortable making these connections in my mind because I’ve seen this process manifested in a lot of ways during childhood. My mother is a movie fiend. I grew up watching the most popular classic films to the most underground bootleg low budget ones with the same amount of attention and fascination. They all had soundtracks. The soundtrack complimented and even emphasized the emotions of each scene. I believe noticing this element at a very young age has allowed me to understand how music and visuals can go hand in hand. Also, my uncle is a musician and taught me how to listen. I picked up on the stories he would write and sing about.

My family is super Puerto Rican. I learned how to dance salsa before I could walk. I have associated music with movement all my life, which may help me sequence these small improvised video clips in my mind. Lastly, walking around my neighborhood is a soundtrack in itself. I heard certain music on certain streets and now, when I hear a song, it reminds me of certain people and certain things. Basically, what I’m trying to say is I create from what I already know and have experienced and music is the gateway for me to translate these experiences and memories in a new way.

When I think about the things I want to create, I think about my family, my culture, and my community. There are so many details I can use and play with. I always think about how to show myself through whatever I’m making. I think about how my creation can have its own style by experimenting with color, lines, placement, perspective, and form. I think about why I’m making this and how to make sure people will remember this piece. I think about so many things. Maybe too many things.

I think about the time I had a show in Brooklyn. When my friend helped me set up my art and stayed around to support, seven people that night came up to him and assumed that the art was his. When they found out that I made those pieces they became bug eyed and said they didn’t expect a girl like me “with such a sweet face” to draw like this. I guess they were expecting flowers and shit. That is when I realized that what I was doing was not in the mainstream. It did not fit who I was “supposed” to be and what people were accused to seeing. And I think that is special. My art, the stuff I enjoy, the things I produce and the stuff I know show people that it is possible for a girl “with such a sweet” face to have representation, be skilled, carry opinions, and exist. And I think that is pretty cool.

The point is not points, the point is the poetry! That was the slogan for Boston’s largest youth poetry slam festival called Louder Than a Bomb. They were all about giving the youth a platform to let their voices be heard, building community, supporting eachother, and creative freedom. Yet, scores would be given to every poet after their performance. This established some sort of competiviveness and ranking through out the festival. I understood from a young age that there are ways to tell a compelling story that are better than others.

My coaches would always remind us that these stories we wrote were ours and no one can deny our words, blah, blah, blah. My coaches would also give us the side eye and throw hella shade when another youth poet would say the most cliche thing or over perform their piece. I was raised to understand both sides of the bad writing perspective.

I often feel guilty when I hear a story and think the way it is written is cliche, boring, or unimpressive. I understand how vulnerable sharing our stories can be and it can be hard to give criticism to such stories, yet, I do agree with Michael Mohammed Ahmed, that there are bad writers and that the truth is often offensive and hurts.

I really enjoyed this reading because it clarified, explained, and organized all the things that I’ve thought on my own when I came into contact with what I considered bad writing. I think Mohammed Ahmad nailed identifying the excuses that bad writers use, such as subjectivity and replicating another person’s writing style. I really enjoyed the real life characters and experiences he included in this essay because it was very entertaining and somehow authenticized the points he was making.

I think the Professor asked us to read this piece to remind us to be open minded and not take things personally when criticism is given to our work. Although it is our own personal art, our peers are only giving us suggestions because they want us to improve and grow, not because they want to tear us down. We do not know everything and we should allow ourselves to learn new things. Also, I think the Professor wants us to really push ourselves to be individuals with our own stories, style, and presentation. Cliches are everywhere and replicating them does not add anything new to our society. We should try to take new approaches to ideas and topics in order to spark new conversation and actively progress. Our classes and time here at NYU are all about moving forward, building, growing, and adding something unique to the world.

The link below is our presentation on our celebrity and our strategies:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1U6JiR8siOnD3h0EFGiukF5qdV8wjR68D7Zl7kxkRpVo/edit?usp=sharing

My group and I have been doing a lot of discussing about the ideal path to pave in order to make our celebrity, Rossa, rise to fame. It is time to start taking action to our plan. This is what we have so far:

We have created an Instagram page that can be found @r.0.s.s.a (the “0” is a zero). A screenshot of the account can be found below.

We have gained followers for this page by sending it to friends and asking them to help us out. Although, some of the followers willingly followed us!

These are the posts up close:

I reached out to my friend Mandy who runs a media page that highlights local NYC artist called @lightexposure.co on Instagram. She has done a spotlights on me her content averages 130 likes and 15 comments. I thought this would be a great platform to utilize since our celebrity is in fact an artist. Today, I reached out to her about the idea and caught her up on the whole project. She was more than down to support us saying: “This is amazing, this is going to be the biggest finesse ever.” She told us to send her his art, some pictures of himself, and anything else we want her to mention. I told her she had creative freedom to exaggerate the story when we gave it to her.

My team plans to sit down sometime tonight or tomorrow to construct a story that will really move the audience and gain followers. Also, a story that foreshadows the upcoming media spike we plan to do over the weekend.

As far as faking a fight, we are still trying to confirm this plan. I have been in discussion with my friend @justend, a well known NYU rapper, to participate. Although, he is hesitant about participating in out original story plan. Therefore, my team also has to reconnect and possible alter the story so our participate feels comfortable.

Our future steps include: media cover, media spike, a possible art event, photoshopped gallery pictures, and more posts on Instagram.

I come from bricks. I come from a cement stoop with railing paint thats always chipped. I sit there everyday and greet neighbors, family and friends, that pass me by. A slight head nod, a dap, a two hour long conversation about what’s been happening are always possible outcomes. And we do this. And we does where I’m from. We acknowledge each other. We make each others presence present.

So when I’m sitting there one day and a spotless white beamer slowly rolls and steps up to my step, I stand up and step up too. My brow rises. My face contorts and I be confused. I have never seen something so shiny. The most shiny thing I’ve seen is a penny in a puddle or the suns glare reflecting on glass shards from a broken Henny bottle on the corner of a bodega. I’m looking around, to see if anybody sees this shit.

The door breaks open and Kanye’s voice overspills onto my block: “Closed on Sunday, you my Chic Fila.” A dainty food steps onto my pot hole covered street in Gucci heels and is decoracted with a diamond anklet. Legs spray tanned tinted and freshly shaved. Outfit on straight off the runway and topped with an oversized puffer jacket. Sunglasses on bug eyes even though there ain’t sun outside. “Who would wear such a thing” I thought. Then I realized “Oh shit, that’s Kim K!” and suddenly it was okay.

She strutted my way and smiled at my puzzled ass. She took her glasses off, looked around, then at me to ask “Hi! Is this the Vill?”

I hesitated to answer “The Vill? I mean, yea. This the Villa. I mean, the Villa Victoria. But I’m not sure if you’re looking for this Vill. Are you sure you looking the Vill Vill or some other Vill. But I don’t know of no other Vill, we the one and only Vill.”

“Then this must be it! I wanted to spend the day and learn more about Puerto Rican culture for my new project. My name is Kim by the way, do you mind showing me around?”

And when Kim K asks you to be shown around you do it. She was my responsibility now. She had no idea what she had stepped into. So, I brought her to my grandmothers house, my safe haven, a place where she would be greeted and acknowledged, except she didn’t recieve the warm welcome I thought she would .

I forgot my grandmother is an old school Puerto Rican, which is to say, she says whatever is on her mind no filter. Ever since Kim K started dating Kanye, her celebrity crush, my grandmother had it out for her. She talked enough shit about her to earn a certificated recipe on how roast Kim K and now, Kim K was sitting in her sala.

So of course my grandmother took advantage of this oppurtunity. She took 45 minutes to tell Kim K what she didn’t like about her. Kim K sat there and took it. After my grandmother calmed down, she said that she was glad Kim got her safe. She wished good healthy and blessed her. She became excited to have so called royalty sitting on her plastic covered sofa.

My grandmother ran to get her a 5 pound plate of food. I explained to Kim that my grandmother’s cooking was like no other. No 5 star chief could match the women’s skills. Licking your fingers after the meal was just something you had to do. Kim K took one bite of my grandmother’s rice and agreed. I told her she has been trying to sell $5 plates around the Vill to make some extra money on the side, but sales been looking slow.

Twenty minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Somebody is always coming to visit so I didn’t even question who it might be. I open the door to find the parameter of my block lined up with people holding a 5 dollar bill in their hand waiting to trade it for a plate of my grandmother’s magic. I look back at Kim still trying to make a dent in my grandmother’s food and she smiles and holds her phone up. I pull out my phone to new notification on Instagram. Kim posted a picture of the plate on her feed. It had gotten over 500,000 likes in just 20 minutes.

For the meme assignment, I focused on two genres: photoshop and stock characters with captions. I even tried to combine the two. I found this assignment to be rather hard. I did not know where to start. Given that I have seen a lot of great memes in my day, I felt real pressure to make some golden memes.

I decided to go safe and stick with cat memes. Cats are adorable and make people happy therefore touching upon the high arousal positive imagery content. I focused on on displaying visual incongruity, simplicity, and quirky humor.

The second and third meme show visual incongruity. The cat is taking on a human traits and posture. In the third one, the cat is rather giant in a domestic setting, which is not normal. All these memes are simple. They are mostly in a domestic setting expect the second one and still it is a simple photoshop edit. As far as quirky humor, I believe any cat meme is quirky humor. These memes are super corny and dry, but that’s want makes you want yo chuckle.

This is the podcast that I have been waiting to hear. I really enjoyed listening to the questions and the discussions that stemmed from them because they were similar to questions and conversations my friends and I would have.

On the first day of high school, I walked into a room where no one looked like me. No one in that room came from the same place as me. I transitioned from an all black and latinx school to a prodominately white school and this transition blew my mind. The cultural differences were an arms length away plus some! I recall the white students even say some pretty fucked up things about black and latino culture. Although, by the end of senior year, their whole energy changed. They were suddenly desperate to be friends with us and seemed to strictly play rap and trap music. This gradual shift over the years really interests me till this day.

I specifically remember noticing this shift with the music my friends and I grew up listening to. To see these white students from the nice part of Dorchester with lawns and nicely packed fresh lunches sing along to songs talking about things my friends and I dealt with on a daily gave me an easy feeling. I felt like they were making theatrics of it. Just for a few minutes they can take on a role of someone from where I’m from. They get a rush of adrenaline. They suddenly thought they understood a culture that was not theirs just because they memorized some lyrics, yet they failed at the attempt to step into shoes that were too deeply rooted

Let’s talk about shoes in a more literal way now. Another way these white students would make their shift to “liking” hip-hop and the things that come along with it, was with the way they dressed. The first time I saw a white girl wear Jordans in my school, I had to double take. That really took me out. It is interesting to see this on a bigger scale. Hip-hop, well music in general, and fashion have always gone hand and hand. Hip-hop does have a specific fit to it. Streetwear. I remember growing up and my friends and I would obsess over the newest realest and most recent gear. Jordan’s were about $100 when I grew up. This compares nothing to the thousands of dollars some sneakers are today. It is also interesting that most of the people that can afford and have access to such items are white. It is kind of like a way of excluding us from our own culture by making it exclusive and luxury.

I agree with Amanda Palmer that asking for help is a very vulnerable thing to do which is why so many people struggle with the idea. I feel like I often find myself looking at street performers, such as people who stand as statues or dance for money, with question because I do not understand why they would want to resorted to this job and kind of see it as the easy way out. After watching this video, I think these street performers are doing something so brave. They are putting their income in the hands of others and putting themselves on a platform to be judged by many. They hold their hat out in ask for money and are being super vulnerable to a very large passing crowd. Now that I reflect on this, these street performers are doing something that I could never think of doing.

I often find my pride to get in the way of a lot of things in my life. I do not want people to see me as weak or incapable of something. This has been unrevealed more to me through my college career. This is the first time that I am away from my family and living on my own with no meal plan security or transportation help. This transition to adulthood has not been easy at all. I am constantly trying to figure out the balance in it all. I feel so hesitant to ask my parents for help because I do not want them to think that I can’t take care of myself. This hesitation has put me in a lot of difficult times. Although, I know I do not really have to suffer through these times because I can just ask for help here in there. Instead, I choose to go through these times solely because I do not want people to see me as weak. The real weakness is not being able to accept that I need help sometimes.

You need strength to show yourself as vulnerable. I really think Amanda Palmer is dope for allowing herself to receive help from others. The exchange between kindness and love for help is a fair one because it is not one that genuinely makes an appearance in our everyday lives. It is very intentional. It fosters relationships and bonds that might not be made otherwise. It builds trust. A trust and understanding that seems to get lost nowadays.

Before even reading this article, I understood that virality is more than just luck, but I did not know that you could strategically stage it. It’s weird to think that you can stage a viral moment because I feel like to others witnessing it, they think it is this wondrous event or happening, but to the people staging it, they just stand back and see the madness happen. When I read that Ellen DeGeneres’ selfie was staged, I rolled my eyes! I remember watching this happen live and thinking that it was a historic moment. I thought Ellen was being in the moment and she knew that a photo with everyone in it at that moment would blow up on the internet. I had a feeling she knew the impact a selfie would have, but had no idea that she had planned it previously with brand of the phone she used to take the selfie. If she did not plan the selfie with the brand before hand then it might have never happened. Would she have done it if she did not make a deal? She can’t even live in the moment genuinely. She has to be backed up with a reward or some type of clout.

This makes me think how people that are famous really plan out every move. They are intentional with everything they do and somehow make everything they do beneficial to their celebrity status. You would not think that something as casual as a selfie would be apart of a big master plan, but it was! I feel like I am going to question every action famous people do now to see if I can see why they are doing it.

I also found that the fact that happiness is a top viral emotion was interesting. If an image or video sparks happiness then more people connect to it and have an emotional connection. I think that this is interesting because happiness is something that everyone strives for. I think there’s so many bad things happening in the world and so many distractions we face everyday that when we come in contact with happiness in an image, it hits home harder. It brings us to a place that we hope to stay in and return to therefore overstimulating us. Virality and its correlation to happiness makes me think of how humans deeply yearn for happiness and want to see signs of it any way that they can.

For this week’s assignment, my group was inspired by a video we saw in class last week.

This video started sneaker’s presence in pop culture. Today the sneaker industry is a multimillion dollar business. It almost seems like it is a requirement to keep up with sneaker culture if you are an aspiring Hip-Hop musician. Media outlets such as Complex, Hypebeast, SneakerNews, KickonFire, etc., keep up with the latest releases, write editorials on the history of sneaker culture, and share the story behind certain sneaker color ways.

For this project, my group wanted to contribute to the fandom of sneaker culture. We decided to hold a Sneaker Social on October 20th, 2019 where we would invite sneaker lovers to discuss the latest drops, create their own color ways, and meet other sneaker fans.

At this event we charged $1 for entry. We created an agenda as follows:

6:00pm Greet Attendees, let them get a head start on color way activity, get snacks, mingle, Hosts engage in conversation and focus it around sneakers

6:30pm Ice Breaker (Name, Year, Favorite Sneaker & Why? Share your Color way story)

6:45pm Vote whoever had the best color way. Transition to sneaker discussion that revolved around three questions:

1. Why do you think people become obsessed with sneaker culture?
2. What is the most popping sneaker brand? sneaker? color way? story?
3. What does the future of sneaker culture look like?

7:00-7:15pm wrap-up

For the color way activity, we printed out a bunch of sneaker outlines that our guests could color with their custom color way. The colors they chose would need to be intentional. They would be asked why they picked the colors they did and what the sneaker’s story was. All of the great sneakers have a greater story attached to it, it is what makes them collectable and meaningful.

These are some pictures from the actual event:

Marc made a color way inspired by Barney called “I LOVE YOU, YOU LOVE ME”. His concept encouraged people back to connect back their childhoods, support each other, and spread love. His color way won.

Overall, the event was successful because we received a dollar from a stranger. We made a total of seven dollars.

When I was younger, I remember playing with wrestler action figures in a toy rink. We smashed and clashed the toys. We role played whole conversations between them and made some of them have accents. We would watch the Friday night shows with our family in the living room fully invested in the drama. For me, this was strictly an activity when I was about 7 years old to about 10 years old. When I grew up, I saw how cheesy these outfits were and how staged everything looked. I did not to continue watching phony fights. I saw no point.

This reading allowed me to return to the world of wrestling. I learned so much about the culture and gained a new perspective on the fake-ness of wrestling. The reading mentioned that to solely focus on the fake-ness of professional wrestling, is to completely miss the point. A quote in the reading on page 171 reads “…The WWE had for years been distancing itself from the pretense of being a real sport, decreasing the physicality of its wrestling in favor of fantastic character development and storylines”. When I first read this, there was an immediate shift in how I viewed this activity. I no longer found it cheesy because these major wrestling companies like the WWE are not trying to sell that all of it was real. They are admitting it is staged and that allows me to appreciate the theatrics of it. I think that the stunts and characters are so well thought out and carefully branded. The outfits or costumes even are perfectly aligned with the character’s personality. Some have props, slogans, and special moves they do. All of it comes together to make a well constructed show.

Maybe I loved wrestling so much when I was younger because I unconsciously was more receptive to the theatrics of it all. I played with the action figures and tried to mimic the moves on TV. As I got older, I just focused on the reality. My imagination was not in tune with what the WWE was doing. I saw it as something corny and foolish. Yet, the reading made me understand again the beauty of it all even if the professional wrestlers are doing some intense and not so beauty stunts.