Yesterday we started off class with going around the room and talking about the foods that we chose to use for the assignment. It was cool hearing all the things that people had never eaten before, some of them I knew, others I did not. There were mixed reactions for each type of food as well, some were good, others were not. Mine was definitely a bad experience, I ate a cactus pear. Cactus are plants that just really don't want to be eaten, so they develop many ways to discourage animals from eating them. Cactus pears taste bad, are blood red on the inside, have a tough outer exterior and chalky interior, and they have very tiny quill patches on the surface. I made sure to describe the experience well to the class, it turns out that Beth has eaten cactus pears before and I think might grow them every now and then. I mentioned on how I managed to still get pricked by some of the quills despite wearing really thick gloves, Beth said that the quills are sharp enough to go straight through plastic gloves.
A few of the students made audio files for how their food sounded. I thought it was pretty cool on how they took the title of the assignment quite literally and made music or sounds to describe the food. One of the students had a star fruit and made a song with I think two different types of guitar for it. I remembered the first time I had tried star fruit and I thought the song fit that first feeling quite well.
After having our discussions, we started an exercise in which Beth gave us all a sheet of white printer paper. We then received instructions to do whatever we wanted to do with the paper to summarize their experience with the food in one word, but without using anything other than our bodies. For instance, we could use our hands, mouths, or even feet, but could not use anything such as writing utensils or tools. One person nearby me immediately started shredding it into tiny crumpled paper balls, I thought to myself "Dang, must have been a bad experience. I saw that another person nearby tore the paper into a question mark type of symbol, it confused me probably as much as the mark is supposed to give the impression of, and was probably the way he viewed the experience (unsure). I ripped tiny holes into the paper in shapes that spelled the word "Ouch". The reason for that is because the entire experience of the cactus pear was just painful to me, and sounded like a train wreck or trucks crashing into each other.
After doing this for a little while, we were given another blank sheet of paper and were to use the word we were thinking of while doing whatever to the first page and to draw a character that would use the word with their name, or something like that. I drew a cartoonish pear and named him "Ouch, the cactus pear that doesn't like you" I made him look very angry, be pointing at the person looking at the paper, and yelling stuff like "I'll prick you in places you never knew you had!" The main point of the character is to make him seem like he wants to hurt you if you try to eat him (since he's a pear) but to taunt you with the fact that he's a fruit. I think the character would do good with a Boston accent.
Near the end of class, Beth told us that she was adding a new S to the now 5 S's. The word is "Start". I think this is a great S for the creative process for the following reason: In order for something to be created, it must have a start, and for a person to create something, they have to start creating. It's a stupid reason, but it makes stupid sense to me.
It was a pretty fun class and I'm glad that a new S has been discovered.
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