Miss Dee's Corner

My job search experience in Addis Ababa was like navigating an infinitely large and pitch-dark room, searching for its exit.  In fact, you don’t even know if the room is large because you can hardly see anything. It is very difficult to estimate the size of the room. All you know is you’ve been walking for months, but you still can’t grasp the size or shape of the room. Sometimes you feel like it is a small room, and you are just going in circles. Other times you feel like it is an endless hallway. You can’t see, so you rely on what you feel with your hands. There are times where you “feel” something that is shaped like a door. You smile, “This is it!” Wrong! It’s a trick. You try to open the “door” but it does not open. Worse yet, some of those door-like shapes don’t have a handle. You can’t even try to open them. Oh, and the room also has PA devices through which people can speak to you. They can be relatives, acquaintances, or just random people who fancy themselves, career ...

In her song, Black , Hyori applies a subversive and unusual symbolic use of color where she contrasts color with black as opposed to contrasting color with white. For example, she connects dying her hair to denying herself. In doing so, she associates color with the lack of authenticity. In making this association, Hyori conforms to the philosophical view that color conceals what is real and pure. However, Hyori digresses from the usual perspective by associating black, and not white, with the 'realness' that is exposed when colors are removed. I find this a fresh perspective in the symbolic use of black because color is often contrasted with white as opposed to black.   Hyori also associates color with the lack of freedom. This is contrary to the usual association of color with freedom and independence. She sings "the red lipstick hid my pursed lips/the thing that shook behind/ the colored lens/ it was me who didn't want to be me". Hyori's lyrics associate ...