Response #3 (Revised)

  • My thesis:
  • What does it mean for a performer to chase a dream in search of meaning beyond applause?
  • 500 Words:
  • My chosen text is a printed interview.
  • In the text, the author talked about the process of how he produces his own music with the band and his attitude towards arts.For those artists, creation and producing arts is like a process they try to understand, unwrap, and express their ideas.
  • For Eugene, the one who was interviewed, his ideology towards music was all about chasing his dreams. In the interview, Eugene mentioned creating works is like “an analog for cleaning this mirror”.The clearer the mirror gets, the more authentic/real the reflection is in the mirror.
  • What Eugene is chasing for, is an ultimate authenticity in arts. To be more specific, art is about expressing, no matter what the author is actually talking about.While the author was expressing, inevitably, they would have to reveal part of themselves, for any artworks is part of the reflection of the author. Eugene, as a creator, wants to be totally honest towards his audience.
  • But humans have flaws, this cannot be denied, that’s why we are always pursuing a perfect figure, like Gods. If you want applause, you have to be obedient towards the rules: social bias, expectations from the public and so on.
  • However, sometimes, the authenticity of arts is exactly against the rules. While he is trying to be honest with the audience, he also reveals his flaws and wounds, and even his own privacy to the environment.This gives the crowds reasons to attack him, hate him and loathe him.When he takes off his clothes on stage, people think that his crazy and claim that it is just a performance, whereas Eugene reckons that it is like exposure of how he truly is:“I realized that there was some sort of emotional value to it... because I’m not trying to hide from you at all.”But the audience refuse to accept the truth, they chose to close their hearts towards real ‘Eugene core’ for the environment.How Eugene deals with it, is about complete honesty and acceptance. He chose to chase his dream, the authenticity of arts, he chose not to hide himself and not to follow the expectations.
  • The environment always restricts our expression during arts creation, mostly comes from the main streams’ expectations.They want it to be graceful, they wanted to be polite, they want it to be gentle to almost everyone……This is where the applause comes from.But sometimes, art creation could be gravel, rude, reckless and most importantly, vivid—- at least it is what Eugene thinking about, he wants to be honest, it is his dream to be authentic while making musics and performance.
  • For Eugene, chasing a dream means liberty, it means breaking restrictions and try to be who he truly is.Breaking rules, breaking bias is not about craziness, it is not unforgivable, it is about freedom of speaking up, freedom of being true self, the rights of not catering others’ opinions,the vitality of expressing ideas even if it is rare, and the courage of being open to the ones we care about.
  • About Petit and Filou:
  • The shared theme for all of the three contexts are about performers chasing their own dreams.Therefore I chose this thesis to write about.
  • Petit:
  • Petit is also a stage performer. In his TEDTalk, he talked about how he started his own journey from card tricks to high-wire walking.
  • For Petit, his dream is about pursuing an internal standard of perfection and creativity. At the age of six, Petit wanted to understand the pure manipulation in magic, focusing on mastering the most difficult moves to perfection, even when his hands were too small for the cards.
  • What’s more, after his World Trade Center walk, Petit states that he was "not interested in collecting the gigantic, in breaking records" .This suggests that the inner goal of Petit doing such a performance wasn’t just about pleasing his audience, but breaking his own limits.
  • Filou:
  • Reinhard Horstkotte is a professional clown. In the video, he talked about how he treated his clown career and his ideology towards life and clown.
  • For Reinhard, freedom and authenticity was what he was chasing for as a clown. He claimed that the clown embodies a "whole human being" with humility, freedom, dignity, and playfulness. Clowning also provided a way to overcome the seriousness of his surroundings during a difficult time in his life, offering a space of freedom
  • Horstkotte believes the clown is a "master of failure" who embraces "fiasco". He emphasizes that making people laugh isn't about forcing it, but about waiting for "something happens". And for something to be applauded, failure is usually a necessity. But this is Reinhard’s attitude, he doesn’t need applause, he needs ‘failure’ to dealing with life with a positive and peaceful attitude.

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