Today's epoetics course was computerless unless you count the computer that ran a video camera and lighting system.
Pei-yun Lee is a tiawanese student in my class. For her performance she projected what appeared to be chinese character onto her body and then wrote them on her clothes as we read a paper based poem aloud. The whole thing was video taped. Most of us looked up at her for a couple seconds at the beginning and then focused on our papers and began reading aloud.
We had assumed that because we couldn't comprehend the characters we could simply ignore them.
The irony of it all was that the characters were really in english just written to look like chinese characters. I will have to get a picture from her next week so you can see.
So the point is that while she was upfront performing, we became absorbed with ourselves and our reading and didn't pay attention when it was actually written in english but with a peculiar outward appearance. This really demonstrates how many foreigners must feel.
Afterward, she mentioned that this is the case and that as an example, when she is at the supermarket and asks for beef, the worker would often respond saying, "what" even though s/he knew what she said. Simply assumming a misunderstanding because she looked foreign.
I remember this cleary when I was in Germany. Although, I could speak quite fluently at the time, people would sometimes not understand because they noticed I was a foreigner and assumed they wouldn't understand me and therfore didn't pay attention.
Ok, I'm off to
(e:southernyankee) 's for her and
(e:tina)'s birthday.