Perspective. What an interesting word. It really is
everything. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Or in my case, one man’s
trash is the rest of our mess. This place was not my home. This place, littered
with garbage. Mostly empty beer bottles, take out containers, and cigarettes. I
walk to my area of the room, sectioned off by empty egg crates with moth eaten
blankets draped over them. Across the
room I can hear the other boys playing games. I never liked games much. I
preferred to listen.
A dog barking. A ball bouncing. The wind chimes of the next
door neighbors. A fire engine adds its piece to the symphony. Everywhere you
go, there’s music waiting to be heard. You take the conversations of strangers,
the chirping of birds, and the hard tap-tap-tap of a woman’s heel down the
sidewalk, you have a beautiful combination of what once was noise and to me, is
music.
Not knowing your parents is a challenge not many have to go
through. Even those who have lost their parents at a young age don’t know the struggle
of not knowing who you are. I turn to music for my identity. The figures in my
head come easily, like dialing an old friends phone number. I didn’t know what
they were called, but I knew they made more sense to me than anything these
kids ever said.
A girl once caught me sleeping under her piano at a church.
I told her I loved music more than food. It is a part of me, I said. She taught
me what she called “notes”. “Every Good
Boy Does Fine”. E-G-B-D-F. She also taught me what music looked like on a piece
of paper. I haven’t stopped writing my own music ever since.
Music is an escape. It can turn complete strangers into
lifelong friends. People of different cultures, languages, colors, can unite in
the simple melodies that pass through their ears and into their hearts. There
are all types of music. I’ve learned how to put what’s in my heart onto paper,
so that others can hear what I feel. Hear what I’ve seen. Hear what I perceive.
*You know what music is? God's little reminder that there's something else besides us in this universe, a harmonic connection between all living beings, every where, even the stars.*
Toast and Eggs Blog
Toast and Eggs Blog
I had an idea of what the post was about just by reading the title, “Started from the Bottom”, which is also the title of a very popular Drake song. The artist raps about how he and his friends started from humble beginnings but eventually became successful.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the way the post was built around one word, perspective, then continued that theme throughout the rest of the post. I enjoyed the different ways the word was defined. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” By the end of the post the idea of what is seen (perspective) shifts to what can be heard (music). The scene begins with the description of what the orphanage looks like and then switches to the everyday sounds (dog barking, birds chirping, etc.) that can be considered music.
The post included three pictures and a video. The first picture of orphans eating together emphasized the narration about the mess that was described. The second picture is of a young boy playing the guitar with an older gentleman. The post began with a child surrounded by clutter who was able to channel all the noise into music. It connects the lonely orphan that becomes the child escaping their surroundings through music. The narrator lists one musical instrument within the entire post which was a piano. “A girl once caught me sleeping under her piano at a church. I told her I loved music more than food. It is a part of me, I said. She taught me what she called “notes”. “Every Good Boy Does Fine”. E-G-B-D-F.” The last picture was of an orchestra playing but it didn’t have as much effect on me as the other two and could have been omitted. Another choice could have been to use a picture of someone playing or learning to play the piano. The video used was of a musical composition, August’s Rhapsody from the movie August Rush. Evan Taylor (also known as August Rush) grows up in an orphanage and discovers his identity through music. I think rather than using this video it might have been better to use an actual scene from the movie, for instance, the scene where August rushes to the stage to perform his music. This scene shows his connection with two strangers who turn out to be his parents. Looking back at one of the pictures I realized that the young boy playing the guitar was August. The picture and the video could’ve been placed closer to connect the two.
In general, the blog flowed very well together. There were a few minor adjustments that could have been made regarding the visuals but other than that the chosen images were appropriate. Every image related to the written portion so that there wasn’t much left to the imagination.