First off, I would like to explain what my project exactly consists of and why I choose to do things the way I did. For this project, I decided to post up a one week anti diary. Traditionally a diary is a personal record or account of events that happened during your day. Most also act as a personal friend where you can feel free to tell it anything, feelings, crushes, and etc. Part of what makes a diary; YOUR diary is that YOU write it. Word for word you decide what is going to go inside your personal book. Well for this project I though it would be interesting to post videos/writing/poems/ or pictures to best describe my day.
When I think of a diary my mind immediately races to the iconic image of hiding a little book underneath a pillow where every night you would right down secrets and emotions of your day. It could be because I am old school, or because I never personally had a diary that my views of them are narrow. I only know of diaries through what I saw in TV and movies. With that said my Anti Dairy is going to consists less on words and instead try to describe my day and my emotions through other outside media.
In class we talk a lot about what exactly is the everyday and what the significance is and how to read the everyday. We haven't covered a lot of contemporary materials in class yet, and I feel that can also be part of the everyday (Sorry Adam and Suzanne if I am wrong). But I think that what this class has taught us to do was to look for the deeper meaning behind anything you read or see or hear, and I know that idea doesn’t have boundaries. In fact it is important not to restrict it because, the whole idea relies on the idea that you will challenge the ordinary or the face value of everything. I want to challenge what we have learned in class so far and make a contemporary Anti diary of my personal everyday.
My diary is very simple, it contains material that is very relevant to what is currently popular or around me all the time, and that is part of MY everyday. There is something very powerful about the now. About trying to learn the significance of the contemporary and about what is occurring now. While my project seems to project a very normal, simple, almost insignificant timeline of events it is no different from Barthes Mythology talking about toys, or the “Tour de France as a Epic”. The everyday is about taking ordinary events or items and deriving a deeper connection. I think that my Anti diary definitely contains that very same element.
Even in what is dull and simple material there is a lot of deeper meaning in all the media presented, or at least there is a lot that can be derived from the media. For example the memes are a relatively new fascination that have hit the spotlight that are prevalent in todays society. There is a lot to wonder there, why are the characters stick figures? Why did it catch on so well? How is it possible that it became an art form where anyone can make a meme? I think Adam and Suzanne have done an amazing job showing us that there can always be a deeper meaning to anything and I think that this definitely qualifies. In my picture of Ninja Turtles, that is a reflection of two brothers, and if you know the show you will know that one of them is the really smart one and the other a bit of a trouble maker, that could or could not be a literal interpretation of how me and my brother are (it this case it is).
Sometimes, you don't need to create something new; sometimes all you need to describe your day has already been written (in some form), in a better way than you can ever explain. If a picture is worth a thousand words than that is a thousand less words I have to write about an occasion. Why write something that can be better explained in other forms. That is what the everyday is about; I am reusing what is already all around me in my everyday to create this Anti-Diary.
Aside from the small descriptions of what actually happened that day of the week, all my emotions and thoughts are represented through different media. There is a lot to derive from all the music, and images I posted. Some very abstractly show how I feel, other are more comic, but even in that sense they represent a lot about who I am and what is happening. Memes are relatively new in the spotlight and they have a deeper meaning that what is shown. Everything in the everyday has a deeper meaning that the face value being shown.
The songs are actually very important, I know they are not necessary your cup of tea, but songs are a powerful media. Some of the links for the songs I have poster are contemporary and some are classical. More than the lyrics themselves a song sometimes has an emotion or memory very personal to the individual associated to it and that makes it powerful. For example some say that certain songs encapsulate their high school experience or there eight grade year. I could see how it could be hard for the audience to see my personal connections or emotions connected with the song, but maybe you can make your own personal connections to the media.
My Anti Diary, like any other diary, is personal. The things inside the diary are real events and are very significant to myself. In a couple years I hope that projects like this will be looked back upon, much how like we look back on other individual’s regular life, and pick apart what are lives were. Maybe in next 50 years another student at Berkeley is going to be attempting to figure out how life was back in the day and laugh when they discover our cell phones were bigger than our hands. Or maybe they will laugh at my outdated haircut and how we actually had to study and read books instead of them being zapped into our brain.
Emily Dickinson's writes in some of her poems how some words that are used everyday fly past everyone's head, and they never grasp the true meaning. I believe the poem I remember the most is when she talks about spring. Everyone knows what spring is right, yet she shows us what spring really is. Spring is the blossoming of flower, the sun setting at a later time and rising up later. Spring is much more than just a word forgotten by everyone. I wanted to show in this project that the everyday events in our lives are significant as well. I wanted to show people that if you slow down and really think about your everyday actions, emotions, events, you will see how important they really are.
