Peer Analysis Final

Kevin Nguyen
Marshall/Marilyn
ICS 24
11.11.09
Analysis of Joe-Vincent
Joe-Vincent Estioko made two very fine spoken word pieces: “Sleep to Dream” and Thank You Mom and Dad”. But he chose “Sleep to Dream” as the main one to present with. It is about his feelings and thoughts of Heaven, like how it is to him: “a world of peace” or “where you don’t have to worry about being brutally attacked.” He tried to have emotion and vehemence in his work just as much as Alvin Lau did with his “Asian-American, Where Have You Gone?” In fact, it was this artist that motivated Joe to start his own spoken word in the first place.
The project for him wasn’t too difficult, if not, a discovery. The only problem was figuring out what to write about and memorizing it. Then, the creative piece came to him in an unusual way, “I had no idea what my topic was going to be but one night before I fell asleep, different thoughts were rushing in and out of my brain. Then it hit me; why not talk about a dream.”—and so he did. He basically got it all down within one day; his rhymes, his rhythm, his imagery, his tempo, and his tone were all in the spoken word. An example of his rhyme and rhythm tempo would be when (in his work) he said, “… if your friends have your back, you don’t have to worry about being brutally attacked…” and “…where theres no reason to hurt and no feeling of pain, where friendships are forever and love eternally remains…” Amazing flow isn’t there? But when I asked him what did he wanted to improve on if he had the time, he replied “I wanted to include some alliterations.” and also to “practice more on the movements on the lines.”
His project was pretty good when he first presented it to me and the whole class. His tone was soft, low, and calm—possibly due to his shyness—enough for all of us to hear. Indeed, the beat, rhyme, imagery, tempo, and tone were there, but there was something else, something inside his soul, within the calm tone, there was heart—his heart. Actually, everyone who made a spoken word piece (or any creative project for that matter) included their heart into it, trying to tell us something about something. For instance, Marshall’s spoken word piece about the Asian penis and how everyone kept shunning it away, even from pornography, and treating it differently, was basically a rant-- a rant from deep within Marshall’s soul and belief towards the white world.
I’ve learned quite a lot about social and personal experiences from doing my project and analyzing Joe’s creative project such as how people are not much different from you and that they struggle in the same way as you do. Others’ opinions may be relative for they are another view at the subjective matter at hand. Given the same task, usually there is something that is held in common when many are heading to obtain it. Although he did superb, I believe that Joe-Vincent Estioko’s project was very well made despite some minor mistakes or so he claims. Everyone’s experience may be different but in the end, we all went through something right?