Week 6 Journal

Personally, I believe that place and scene have a lot to do with writing in general, whether it is everyday writing, or writing that is done on occasion. The place and scene where you decide to do your writing ultimately depends on whose attention you are trying to get. Graffiti is a strong example of this concept. If you happen to be walking around major cities such as Detroit or New York City, it is inevitable that you will come across a few tags, signs, artistic works, or a combination of all three during your stroll, and they will appear in numerous places; places where you'd actually start to question yourself on exactly how they appeared at such a specific location in the first place. Although graffiti remains to be looked down upon today, it is considered a form of discourse. Graffiti tends to grab the attention of both the outsiders who gawk at the works and members of a close knitted community which use graffiti as a means of multiple forms of communication.

In terms of the actual place and scene itself, it is all around us; walls, tables, constructs, vehicles, chairs, and desks. all of these things are readily available to anyone who would wish to send a message by means of graffiti. As outsiders, we come to see graffiti almost everyday, and depending on where we live, we may see quite a lot of it in just a single day. People choose to write in such places because it is the most public kind of place to send any form of message (which begs the question: how do they manage to get away with creating graffiti in the first place?). In Edbauer's article about graffiti, she mentions a moment where she comes across a wall made specifically for venting thoughts and feelings about the recent attacks of September 11th, 2001, and plastered all across the wall in big letters was "ZEPPELIN ROCKS!!!". Due to its sudden spike in popularity, this wall turned out to be an easy target for any vandal (or artist. It really depends on how you view them), and a certain person chose to tag the wall when others were not around most likely to either make the atmosphere more uplifting, state a personal opinion, or just be ignorant. Walls such as the one mentioned in Edbauer's article and many others all around the places we inhabit are easy targets for writers to send a message due to its blaring publicity. the same goes for any other public constructs or objects that are regularly seen on a daily basis.