iMedia: City and Colour

 

I have loved City and Colour since the first time I heard him. Dallas Green (Dallas=City, Green=Colour), the artist, plays the kind of music i love. The slow, acoustic, calm, sound with meaningful lyrics. It took me a very long time to choose what song i should put in this blog. I decided on "Against the Grain."

Lyrics:

You need not to climb mountaintops,
You need not to cross the sea,
You need not to find a cure for everything that makes you weak.
You need not to reach for the stars when life becomes so dark,
And when the wind does blow against the grain,
You must follow your heart,
You must follow your heart.

When all your friends have come and gone,
And the sun no longer shines,
And the happiness for which you long is washed away like an ocean's tide,
When all the hard times outweigh the good,
And all your words are misunderstood,
When the day seems lost from the start
You must follow your heart,
You must follow your heart.

If you feel you've paid the price,
And your wounds should cease to heal
And everything you love in life spins like a winding wheel.
If you should wake to find you're abandoned,
And the road you've traveled leads to a dead-end
When death creeps in to play it's part,
You must follow your heart,
You must follow your heart.

But like i touched on before, it is not just the lyrics that get to me. The way the music can make you feel a certain way amazes me. Its weird to think that the tempo and notes of sound waves can cause you to feel a certain emotion.

Clearly, this song is telling people to "follow [their] heart[s]" no matter what bad is going on in their lives. I think this video is great because you can see Dallas Green's emotion so clearly when he sings. Its nice how songtimes the camera focuses on his face, and other times, his guitar. It is nice to actually see the way he portrays his music.

Best of the Week: Born Into Brothels

The documentry Born Into Brothels has been consuming my mind all week. It's a very interesting story but it's so scary. What scares me the most is that this has been, will be, and is going on all over the world. Another scary topic is that students like us will watch something like that and then it is possible that we will never think about it again.

For example, our class is 8th period, and here we are, so focused on this movie, so sad, so symathetic...and the bell rings. We run to our cars, drive to our suburban homes and families, and focus on ourselves once again.

I've made it a point not to do that with this movie. After the first day, i went backstage and talked to my friends about this documentry and its been on my mind for a while now. No, I'm not perfect, i have thought about myself quite a lot but I really have been trying to htink about these poor children and families in these brothes.

I keep thinking about the little girl who was wondering what she would be like if she could just leave and get an education. I'm so upset with myself for not appreciating the education i have as much as i do. Why am i here? Why is she there?

And that little boy, whose father used to be big and stong and now all he does is smoke all day. Even through all of that the son still tries to love his father.

Or the girl who was being yelled at while getting water to clean the dishes. She said that life is about pain and suffering and people need to learn to accept and deal with that.

All these kids stories break my heart. I want to take them here and help them relize that there are better places out there. These children are so strong, so much stronger than i will ever be and its so sad to know that some of them, if not most of them will end up in the same position as their parents.

Metacognition: QE Essay (After)

In my previous blog about my QE essay i wrote about starting my essay. Now that i have fully finished, i can take the time to look back and see why i improved on or wish i had improved on.

I wrote about how i had trouble starting, and thankfully, i got through that. It was nice that we split the paper into different sections because then its not all given to us at once and due on the same day. Students are bound to procratinate when given an assignment like that. It also gave me time to write different drafts, which i said would help me in my previous blog.

I dont think i found many new surprises since i wrote about my thinking before. I tried to avoid some of the mistakes i knew i would make but once again, my mind would freak out whenever a section was due. This is still something i need to work on. As well as stating on the subject becuase i would find myself going off the "trail" and onto a totally different topic. Sometimes it gives me a chance to think of others things that connect to the topic but i have to make sure to clean everything up and relate it in a clear, and easy way so the reader can see how my mind traveled.

Things i still need to work on are avoiding procrastination, re-reading and re-writing, talking to people about thier veiws on what im writing, and asking for advice. These are all important and would all help me write a better paper in some way.

Overall, this was a good learning expirience. It was our first big paper of the year and its noice to know what i need to improve on.

Blogging Around

Jon talked about Susan Sontag's 911 essay and related it to current events and well as discussed his own opinoins on the matter.

My response to Jon S's "Connection:"
Dear Jon,
This was amazing! I remember talking to you a while ago about how you enjoy writing. I thought this was great and it inspires me to write more in my blogs.

In response to your blog, I agree with you 100%. As we've talked about in class, and youve re-capped in this blog, Susan Sontag was just exersizing her rights. I enjoyed the fact that you could apply this to things that are happening in current events (sorry, that kind of a teacher-like statement, but it's true).

When you talked about the point where freedom of speech and expression goes to far it reminded me of a discussion I had last year in US. We discussed if there is, or should be, a limit. I thought, and still think, there is. Clearly, not everyone agrees or follows this, but i belive when freedom of speech or expression reaches the point of derogatory terms and such, it has gone too far. From your blog it seems like you would agree with this. I'm sure there are other examples of it reaching it's limit but thats always the example that stands out to me.

Well, anyways, I REALLY enjoyed reading this. Thanks for sharing this in your blog.

Love,
Hana B




Abby V talked discussed the class where we learned about autism. This was interesting because she connected ideas from Temple to Elyse's brother.

My response to Abby V's "Best of Week:"
Hey Abby,
I really like this blog a lot.The class that you're talking about was probably one of my favorites. I also did not know a lot about disability, as well as many others in the class, it seems. I think it was important for us to have this discussion in class because we all learned a lot, not just about autism, but keeping an open mind.

I have friends and family members who have other disabilities so it's always been a topic thats been close to my heart. I often think about how the world may appear different to them and I would be interested to learn more about many different disabilities. In fact, I'm thinking about majoring in special education.

but anywaysssss, I really glad you enjoyed this topic. I think its interesting that you pointed how how people with autism seems to have a stong love for things. That was a very cool observation!

See you in class!
Hana B