The Art of Creation

I'm not going to be melodramatic: I have not always felt a desire to make music. I enjoyed playing Alto Saxophone in grade school and middle school, but it was always a side hobby, not something I was seriously interested in. In the early years of high school, I thought I was really interested in it, and signed up for a music theory class. The class didn't run, and I ended up not pursuing it any further.

Recently though, I've found the time and the creative energy to make music, and it has been an incredibly gratifying experience. The key to this has been my computer. Using music production software has freed me from my somewhat-lacking technical skill with the guitar and has allowed me to translate the music straight from my head. I've been using it for about a month now, and although I have only finished two songs since then, that has more to do with my own sort-of-perfectionist nature than a lack of creation. I have plenty more on the way, but if you'd like to hear what I have so far, check out my Soundcloud. 

What I've Been Listening To

In an attempt to keep up with my blogging, I've decided to do an easy, monthly blog simply detailing what I've been listening to in the past month. No criteria as far as how many acts I want to post about, just whatever has really captured me as of right now.

First up for the past month is, of course, my man billy woods. His album Dour Candy, produced by blockhead, dropped in July and it has become a daily listen for me ever since. Expect to see this guy on this list pretty consistently, especially with his collaboration with Elucid, Armand Hammer, dropping a mixtape  real soon and an album later on this year. 

Number 2 is another rap album GNK by YC the Cynic. Very moody and grimy, YC and Frank Drake deliver a really interesting bunch of sounds and rhymes here. I still haven't totally wrapped my head around what YC is saying just yet, but until then Frank's production and YC's flow and delivery are keeping me plenty interested. 

And finally, and perhaps most importantly, I have been OBSESSED with the single that Arcade Fire just dropped, Reflektor. It's dancey as hell, while still keeping the trademark, heart-aching melancholy sound and lyrics that makes Arcade Fire so damn great. I pre-ordered the album purely off this single and cannot wait to hear it. 

And that's basically it as far as music that has really ensnared me over the past month. If you have any recommendations, leave a comment or hit me up on Twitter (@jsonc_). I'm always looking for new stuff to listen to, so don't be shy. 

Gary Vaynerchuk is the MAN

Now, as a self-pronounced liberal, musician, artist, and general consumer of counter-culture, one would not expect me to be obsessed with a businessman. But Gary Vaynerchuk is no ordinary businessman. He is a businessman of the 21st century, one who is more comfortable on Twitter, responding to a customer or a fan than sitting at a board meeting, discussing the bottom line.
He believes in the passion as a business plan, and caring as a marketing strategy. And if he sounds like a pansy businessman to you, know that he built his dad's local wine shop from $5 million in revenue to $50 million. And he's only 37.
For my senior writing project, I read two of his books, Crush It!: Why Now is the Time to Cash in on your Passion and The Thank You Economy. I tore through both of them very quickly and found both of them to be very interesting and fulfilling books to read.
As can be guessed from the title, Crush It! focuses much more on personal achievement and betterment. It's all about how to take something you love doing and monetizing it. His advice basically boils down to creating conversation about it, then bringing in ad revenue. Whether you write book, keep up a blog, or star in videos, creating quality content is the key to success. What's interesting about this book is that from a more objective, analyzing-the-writing-style lens, it's not that amazing. It's perfectly functional, but the actual writing really fails to take my breath away. What fascinates me about this book is the raw passion that you can feel he put into this work. He believes in the work he's doing with all of his heart, and it really shows. In addition to the fantastic insights that he makes in this book, that passion is what kept me reading.
The Thank You Economy is a bit more polished, but it still is filled with fairly raw passion. Its point is much broader, focusing not on what one person should do to succeed but rather on what companies should do to succeed. There are many relating themes to Crush It!, especially considering that his main advice for these companies is to be personal. The companies that succeed, he argues, are the ones that create an emotional connection to their customers through excellent customer service. He crushes the ethos here, pounding example after example, including his own. Less empowering than Crush It!, but much more convincing, I found that I enjoyed this one much better out of the two.
If you need a self-empowering boost, or are interested in learning about a very alternate style of business, I would highly recommend checking Gary out. He has plenty of free talks on YouTube and if you want more, definitely check out his books.

The Music Industry

Yes, I know I'm writing about music AGAIN. Sorry if you're not that into it, but I am.
Don't worry though, I'm not going to talk about some artist that you'll probably never listen to again. This time I'm going to express my opinions about something that people might have more of an interest to people: business and the music industry. This article here was tweeted by Anthony Fantano, whom I've blogged about before and I think the question it raises is incredibly important, and it's one that I have a very strong opinion on.
The question it raises is whether you own digital MP3s in the same way that you own physical CDs. In other words, do you have the right to sell your digital MP3s like you would be able to sell a physical CD. My view, and it's shared by the people who made ReDigi, is absolutely yes, you should be able to. Especially in an era of technology where one can pull a file off of a CD with ease, it doesn't make any sense to treat the files as different from the CD.
In fact, I'm pretty sure the only organization that would unanimously disagree with this idea is the Recording Industry Association of America, the RIAA. Colloquially referred to as "the recording industry", this collection of labels and distributors has been fighting tooth and nail against its own impending death, and the legal battle that they'll bring to ReDigi and other businesses like it are only the final thrashes of a dying beast.
A little background. Until very recently (the past decade, or less) the RIAA was the place as far as music went. The way for a band to hit the top was to sign a label that was part of it, and pretty much every dollar related to music went through it. Because of the limited nature of CDs, they had very tight control on "intellectual property" and attacked copyright infringement with a vengeance. Recently though, their pedestal has been falling. Acts like Macklemore or Watsky have made it big without signing labels, and sites like Bandcamp allow artists to effortlessly sell their own music without going through the distribution of the RIAA. Radio and CD, the Association's two big mainstays are on the down fall and digital distribution and cheap, quality recording equipment have contributed to a massive democratization of the creation and distribution of music.
The trends of the last decade have pulled the power out of the hands of large organizations and corporations and into the hands of regular people and artists. One needs to look no further than Amanda Palmer to understand how extremely the shape of the music industry has changed. She has made a living by giving her music away for free. Confused? Watch her TED talk. Not only is it a brilliant example of how the RIAA is losing control, it's an inspiring speech with many different applications, even outside of art.

Album Review: "History Will Absolve Me" by Billy Woods

Now that I’ve listened through it multiple times, I want to write a review of “History Will Absolve Me” by Billy Woods. Rather than doing a regular, broad look at the whole album though, I’m going to look at each track individually. That’s not to say that the album doesn’t have a cohesive feel or that I feel that the album as a whole is not more than the sum of its parts, ideas that I will discuss in my last paragraph. I just found that I had so much that I want to say about each track that it would feel incomplete not to write it all out. So, without further ado, here we go.

A Mis Enemigos (High Tide)

What an opener. Although it’s definitely not my favorite track on the album, it is a spectacular first track in the sense that it is a solid taste of what this album is going to sound like. Featuring a mean, catchy beat by Marmaduke, some great demonstration of Billy’s unusual flow and a taste of his lyrical genius, it perfectly introduces all the traits of a Billy Woods track while leaving plenty of room for the album to swell. Pretty much my only complaint about this track is the extended sample at the end. It’s not terrible, and it definitely fits for a certain amount of time, but I find that it kind of drags on and I start to wonder when it’s going to end after the first couple of seconds.

Favorite Moment/Part: The beat

Crocodile Tears

If you thought the previous track was raw and angry, wait until you hear Crocodile Tears. The production by Willie Green (featured 8 times on the album) is absolutely awesome: incredibly aggressive, very catchy, and original. And Billy Woods is absolutely pissed on this album, dropping some of his harshest and most direct criticisms as well as a great in-your-face hook. Lines like “The problem with the army is they wanna be the boss/the problem with the secret police is they’re like a dirty gun you can’t toss” or “32 bars on how to rob and kill your neighbors/still have the nerve to ask god to save you” really stick out as some of his best, not just on the track but on the album.

Favorite Moment/Part: Tied between the beat and the hook

The Man Who Would Be King

Literary References: The Song. Referencing Edgar Allen Poe and Rudyard Kipling as well as the Bible many times, this song is probably the most intellectual on this album. It also has a really dark hook that I really enjoy as well: “Take up your burden, the savage wars of peace / Fill full the mouth of famine and bid the sickness cease / And when your goal is nearest, the end for others sought / Watch locked and heathen folly bring all your hopes to naught.” This line is actually almost a direct quote from White Man's Burden by Rudyard Kipling. The only difference is that Rudyard's poem starts with the phrase “White man's burden” instead of “Take up your burden”. While I’ll admit that most of his lyricism goes over my head, I can feel the anger and thought Billy throws behind the words he’s saying. I’m not a huge fan of the beat, but it holds its own and Billy really kills it.

Favorite Moment/Part: the lines: “With that holy trinity, who can argue my divinity under two red suns / Return like Kipling’s dead son, summoned by monkey paw / A thousand Philistines slain with a donkey’s jaw”

Ca$h 4 Gold

Perhaps his most direct criticism, Billy Woods takes on a very specific group: the kind of man who visits strip clubs. With a trippy, almost sleazy beat, the song paints the ugly truth of what goes on in strip clubs. He criticizes them on many levels, from how they pay (“tossing my child support on stage”) to the lies they manage to convince themselves of (“disbelief suspension, pretending I’m rich and she’s twenty years old”), ultimately painting these men as possibly the most disgusting humans on the planet. I’m a fan of the ending hook as well: “make it rain on a slow night / Roxxane turns out, you gotta put on that red light / stimulating simulation, the simulac(??) is faceless / put her on stage, she knows the basics / the apes is impatient / (something else)”. Nothing in particular stands out as fantastic, but it’s just another great example of how much energy and emotion Billy puts into his music.

Favorite Moment/Part: the hook at the end

Body of Work (feat. Roc Marciano and Masai Bey)

My second favorite track on the album, right after the closer, The Wake. Another Willie Green produced track, the beat on here is (of course) absolutely nasty. It’s probably my favorite on the whole album, as a matter of fact. It’s also the first track to feature guests, and the result is somewhat mixed. While the first guest, Masai Bey, pretty much kills it, the next guest, Roc Marciano doesn’t quite live up to the quality already established. Roc brings a style pretty similar to Billy’s: very asynchronous and asymmetrical. He so matches Billy’s style that for a while I actually thought it was Billy rapping, for better or for worse. His lyricism is also very much up to par with Billy’s. He actually drops what might be my favorite group of lines on the album: “positive warns me of the deceptions of negative/Negative is trying to convince me to believe positive is a sedative/I pondered this and learned that they both are relative to life on earth/and sometimes feels like a repetitive burn/ashes to ashes, held captive in the urn”. Masai’s style is much more straightforward and much less interesting. He has two thoughts, and they rhyme so he says them. While I think his voice is pretty cool, I don’t find his lyrics interesting or his delivery passionate. His mediocre performance is more than made up for by the beat though. Evoking the image of a mine, the beat is composed of a halting, powerful bass line with this really neat float-y flute over the top. Combined with the female vocals on the hook, it creates a very catchy and interesting background to rap against, and both Masai Bey and Billy Woods take full advantage of it.

Favorite Moment/Part: Tied between the line mentioned above and the beat

The Foreigner

This a middle ground track for me. It's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it simply doesn't measure up to some of the other highs of the album. The lyricism, as usual, is probably my favorite part of the track: “that’s that honor amongst thieves / my enemy’s enemies are always well-received, served, ordeoureved / tricks up sleeves”. The gist of the track seems to be attacking hypocrites, and he certainly does it eloquently and passionately. The beat has a pretty mean bassline and some neat, kind of muted drums over which some dissonant strings play. It's a very enjoyable track, but the fact that I don't have much to say about it is perhaps the best indicator of how this track didn't really hit me like some of the other ones.

Favorite Moment/Part: the line mentioned above

Billy Cosby

The almost snarkily named Bill Cosby is one of the more unusual tracks on the album, and that’s certainly saying something considering that this is far from what might be considered a “normal” album. Spoken from the perspective of a man who failed to use protection and regrets it, this is another pointedly critical track. By spending time in the mind of this man, he points out all the ways this man has failed. While not quite as vicious as Ca$h 4 Gold, in my opinion, this track certainly brings it. It's also a bit of an oddity in the album, the only song clocking under 2 minutes. But it's length is not in any way a detriment. Every song has its own length and I definitely think the 1:50 of this track fits. It's also got a really neat beat with a repeating flowing piano arpeggio and some aggressive drums, again brought to you by the amazing Willie Green. This is kind of a sleeper track for me. I always kind of forget about it when listing my favorite tracks, but whenever I listen to it, I always have a moment where I realize that this track is actually really good.

Favorite Moment/Part: The beat, definitely

Freedman's Bureau (feat. Elucid)

For the sake of being blunt, this is one of my least favorite tracks on the album. The beat is pretty good, but nothing to phone home about, and it's probably the best thing about this track. The first verse, which is the guest Elucid, is delivered with this really raspy voice that tries to be a lot grittier than it is. His insistence on this delivery also seems to force him into a very unnatural, halting flow, which I'm not a huge fan of. And while I haven't sat down and parsed all of his lyrics, nothing sticks out to me when I listen to it. Then the chorus hits, and the beat shifts to something much simpler and less catchy than the verse beat. The only vocals on this part sound like they've been put through several filters, and have been dropped several octaves, again in an attempt to sound really gritty and mean that I'm just not a huge fan of. Luckily, the chorus only hits twice and Billy's verse, which hits right after the first chorus is as good as expected at this point. That's a pretty general theme on this album, actually. The parts of the songs that I don't like are always points where Billy isn't rapping. Unfortunately, there's a lot of time on this track where Billy isn't rapping. I do like this track, I guess. It just pales in comparison to many of the other songs on the album.

Favorite Moment/Part: The beat

Blue Dream (feat. L'Wren)

As an example of a track that Freedman's pales in comparison to, here's Blue Dream. What's interesting about this track is that I'm actually not a huge fan of Billy's flow through all of it, and the beat is definitely not one of my favorites. But the whole concept of the song, as well as the beautiful chorus really make it one of my favorite tracks. The first verse paints this picture of a relationship that seems to be going well. Lines like “It was like time didn't move for the count of one (one) two (two) / Then we're flying” and “Truth is when she around it's ill how words spill / But we don't have to say a thing just let that blue sing” make it seem like this relationship he's in is positive. Sure, there's some conflict because he doesn't want to give up weed for her, but the relationship itself is mostly painted positive. Until you get to the sample. Featuring a women yelling at a man about how he's “selfish, arrogant and so stupid”, this sample hits pretty hard, although not as hard as the chorus which drops right after. Featuring some very pretty vocals by L'Wren and pretty heartbreaking lyrics, this chorus really makes the song. The rest of the song lyrically doesn't thrill me. While Billy certainly is capable of expressing himself originally, the problem he's describing doesn't really strike me. But that chorus, and the shift in the beat that accompanies it, are really fantastic.

Favorite Moment/Part: The chorus- “You know you had me from the very start / And in my heart I thought we'd never part / Hazy days mix red and green / Purple nights of those would dreams”

DMCA

Just in case you thought Billy was getting soft with Blue Dream, he's back angrier than ever on DMCA. Focused on the topic of music tastes and practices amongst the population, he takes aim at music ADD (“30 days? If you're lucky, flavor of the week”) and pirating (“torrents got your whole album, and the instrumentals”) in a very catchy song. This song is possibly the best example of Billy's flow and rhythm, and the beat behind him is excellent. The production on this track is perhaps the most musical out of the album, featuring a melody played by a crisp, clean, finger-picked electric guitar and a neat bassline that meshes very well with the melody. Discussing the melody and the bassline about this song though is really missing the point. Looking big picture, this song is really one of the most complete in my opinion. Every part of it really meshes musically, Billy is on the top of his game lyrically and in his delivery and the samples used perfectly add to the atmosphere of the song. One of my favorite tracks.

Favorite Moment/Part: Gonna cop out here and just say the whole thing.

Pompeii

This track reminds me of “The Man Who Would Be King”, not in terms of the beat or any sort of musical similarity, but because I like this song for its lyrical content and social criticism more than I like it for its musicality. He drives home this idea of people using “following orders” as an excuse and really brings it to the people who use this excuse, absolutely laying into them for hiding behind these “orders” instead of taking any sort of real responsibility. He also gets into commentary on racism and white supremacy, talking about how the oppressors have changed their military uniforms for business suits. The chorus is pretty powerful, although I'll admit the language about the postmen goes right over my head. Other than that, this track really doesn't do too much for me. The beat is interesting, but lacks any of the catchiness that some of the other tracks have. Billy's flow is even more halting, personally a bit too much halting. It is not my least favorite track though, simply because the amount of meaning and anger he packs into it.

Favorite Moment/Part: The lyrical content

Duck Hunt

Really an interesting beat. Starting out with what sounds like audio pulled from the actual Duck Hunt, the main part of the song features some 8-bit and videogame-like sounds. And although I'll admit that I have no idea what the subject of this song is lyrically, the beat really holds it together. I think that confusion about what Billy's talking about here is my least favorite part of this track, and I'll willingly admit that probably has more to do with my own lack of intelligence than a lack of meaning put into the song. What kind of interests me is one line in the chorus that I can't help but construe as anti-DRM: “Yeah, it comes with the game but ain't a damn thing free”. While I'm sure there are a dozen other meanings that could come out of that, for some reason I hear it as anti-DRM. If it sounds like I'm BS-ing, it's because I kind of am. I find it hard to talk about this track because it's so middle ground for me. I really dig the beat, but other than that nothing sticks out as particularly good. That being said, I really can't find any complaints either. It's just a solid track, but nothing too special.

Favorite Moment/Part: The beat

Nigerian Email

Especially with the amount that “Freedman's Bureau” has grown on me, this is probably my least favorite, or second least favorite song on the album. The beat sounds disconnected and it commits a fatal flaw on a Billy Woods album: a large part of the song is spent without Billy rapping. As I mentioned above, there is pretty much nothing on this album done by Billy that I dislike and this song is no exception. I like his lyrics and his flow in the song, it's just that the rest of it doesn't seem to do him justice. The beat has this weird flute that floats above the rest of the beat without connecting to it solidly, and the rest of the beat feels sporadic and lacking solidity. The samples were kind of fuzzed out and had a good amount of reverb put on them, so understanding them is impossible and while some of them were still able to transmit emotion, most of them just kind of fell flat. Considering that my biggest complaint about the album as a whole is that it is simply too long, I would have liked to see this get cut or put into a bonus album or something. It just doesn't have enough emotional weight to feel like it deserves to be on the album.

Favorite Moment/Part: Billy's rapping, I guess

Pump Up The Volume (feat. L'Wren)

Unfortunately, this is the other contender for my least favorite track, although this one is much less subjective. While I have many complaints about the song, my biggest is how the chorus was layered on. I don't know if L'Wren was not around to record this in the studio, but there's an incredibly obvious volume and audio quality difference between Billy's rapping and the beat and her chorus and it is simply jarring. Every time the chorus hits, I feel like I just got slapped in the face. It is simply an unpleasant experience that has prevented me from enjoying the chorus in any way. That could be forgiven though, if the verses were absolutely killer. Unfortunately, they're really not. The beat feels awkward with some out-of-place background singing and a very static bassline. Regardless of what Billy might be saying, which I'm sure if passionate and relevant, I simply can't find myself forming any sort of attachment to this track because of these issues.

Favorite Moment/Part: I'm honestly not even sure.

Famous Last Words (feat. junclassic and MarQ Spekt)

Phew. We made it through the rough section of the album. It's all smooth sailing from here on out. This track might be the most normal on the album, taking much more of a bravado and bragging tone than many of the other tracks. The production is back up to standards with a really catchy beat that is built off of some head-nodding drumming and a heavy bassline and complemented on top by these sort of metallic synths. While it doesn't break quite the barriers that some of Willie Green's other tracks on the album do, it does the job of setting the appropriate tone. Only one of the guests actually drop a verse (MarQ Spekt) and it's perfectly functional. It's a bit more aggressive and shallow than much of Billy's stuff, but I dig his flow and style. The other guest, junclassic, drops the chorus in his deep, dark voice and it absolutely works. It sounds badass and it sounds heavy, both of which fit into the song perfectly. And of course, Billy kills it as well. His flow here is actually very normal. He fits into the beat more than he usually does, and while it perhaps makes the song less interesting, it certainly fits the tone, adding to the power and anger. His lyricism is, of course, brilliant and

Favorite Moment/Part: Tied between the chorus and the line “Shoot coward, you're only gonna kill a man”

Sour Grapes (feat. Elucid)

Pretty solid track. It's got a nice beat from A.M. Breakups, and it features Elucid again. The beat focuses on the drums, which lay down a catchy beat that some synths lay some interesting chords and hits behind. Elucid, the guest, has pretty good lyricism but his voice, like I mentioned above, is very scratchy and gruff, and it sounds to me like he's really forcing it. It works for the chorus, but I'm not a huge fan of his verse. Billy kills it as usual, but unfortunately he only has one verse on this track, which for almost 4 minutes features a surprisingly small amount of actual rapping. This track for me kind of like The Foriegner in that it feels like filler track. Again, a filler track by Billy Woods track is an amazing song overall, but it doesn't hit the same level of emotional power as a lot of the other tracks do.

Favorite Moment/Part: The chorus, “A day late and a dollar short / thanks for your support, yo let's pop this cork”

Human Resources

I'm a bit split on this track. There are a lot of parts that I really like, but on the other hand there are quite a few parts that I'm not a huge fan of. I really like the intro part, but I feel like it transitions into the full song really awkwardly. The intro part tends a lot more towards sad, while the regular song is a lot darker and more disturbing. And while I like most of the beat, the little pieces of female vocals that got stuck in there kind of rub me the wrong way. Some of the lyrics are absolutely amazing though, even more than usual. “the only problem with being your own god is you still gotta die” might be the best, although the whole song is sprinkled with very profound or even just really cool sounding lines. Not my favorite track, but it's pretty damn good.

Favorite Moment/Part: The line mentioned above, as well as the lyrics in general

The Wake

Goddamn. Where to even begin with this one? It's far and away my favorite track on the album, and probably one of my favorite tracks ever. The first time I heard it, on YouTube, I looped it for a straight 45 minutes. It's just so beautifully melancholy. The beat, again from Willie Green, features a simple, repeated piano line with some very hip-hop drums and a simple bass line underneath it. He also puts what sounds like either sneakers squeaking on a gym floor or some sort of whistle in the background that for some reason just screams sadness to me. Billy is at his least rant-y but most emotional, both lyrically and in terms of delivery. He seems to wander through his whole life in his mind, casting back to times that were mostly bad, and delivers some absolutely gorgeous lines. “10 years ago she was just some ho / 5 years after that, I'm in love / if you ask me today I could give a fuck” is quite possibly my favorite, although you could literally close your eyes and point to a line and I would love it. I actually named the blog I write after another amazing line in this song, “a dollar short and 24 hours late”. Ultimately though, there is really nothing that I can put into words that expresses how much this song hits me emotionally. There is no way to experience it other than to just sit and listen to it 3, 4, 5 times in a row and just letting the emotion soak its way into your ears.

Favorite Moment/Part: All of it

And there we have it. All 18 tracks. I certainly have my complaints, but this is one of my favorite albums of all time. What I think is really interesting about it is that it doesn't really have any sort of central theme other than Billy Woods. He manages to make these collection of tracks sound completely unified by injecting his passion and emotions into every track. That being said, I do feel that the album could have been a lot leaner. At 18 full tracks, it really drags on at times especially in the middle. Personally, I would have cut Freedman's Bureau, Nigerian Email, and Pump Up the Volume in an attempt to make this album a bit more punchy. While it's still a bit lengthy even without those tracks, I think the raw power of Billy Woods would be enough to tie it all together.  

My First Concert Experience

This Monday, I went to see George Watsky in concert at the Paradise Rock Club and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

For those of you who don't know him, George Watsky (known just as Watsky) is a rapper and spoken word poet from San Francisco, California. He just released an album, Cardboard Castles and is currently touring all across the country in support of it. The album, while not the greatest rap album I've ever heard (History Will Absolve Me has a pretty strong hold on that claim), is a very high quality album. It's catchy, with pretty solid production and a lot of incredible singles. What's most interesting about this album, and Watsky in general, is his ability to flip from deadly serious and deeply emotional to silly and borderline immature. But I digress. 

I went with a friend of mine from school, as well as a kid I met through theater who's in college and one of his friends. As we walked into the Paradise Rock Club, the first opener had already started. We walked over to the merchandise booth, bought what we wanted and started paying attention to the music. 

The concert opened with a DJ whose name I can't recall playing a set. It was okay, too brostep-y for my tastes but not terrible. After that, a neat hip-hop/ska band called I believe was name B-Kat played after, and got the crowd going a little bit more. They were a tad generic, but I'm an absolute sucker for horns and enjoyed their brief set. After that, Danny McClain sang a couple of covers in his heavenly voice with Pat Demetri (Watsky's guitarist) and Watsky's pianist whose name I didn't catch. After that, Dumbfoundead, who has been opening for Watsky on the whole tour, came on. The same DJ from before was producing for him, and I dug some of the stuff they were playing. He didn't entirely enthrall me, but tracks like Ghengis Khan were pretty mosh-ready. Nothing too profound seemed to come from him, but some of his tracks were pretty dope. Then Watsky came on.
While I can't remember for the life of me his entire hour and a half set, several moments really stuck out to me. The first was somewhere from halfway to three quarters of the way through the concert, when he went from Glowing Screens pt. 1, a catchy, hopeful tune into Tiny Glowing Screens pt. 2, a desperate, emotional spoken word poem and then right into Wounded Healer (Deer Tick Sample), an emotional song anchored by a really nice guitar part. These three songs right in a row was just such an emotional punch in the gut, in all of the best ways. What I love about relatively underground artists like Watsky is that you can feel and see the passion and emotion he empties into every word of these songs. He writes all his own song, and you can tell that he poured his heart out into these tracks. It was enthralling. 

The next moment that stuck out to me was his last song of the night, right before the encore. Watsky announced that because of the ordinance laws in Boston, they had to close down for the night and walked off stage. After a second of silence, he stormed back on, declared "But I forgot, f*ck the popo and give no f*cks" and launched right into the song IDGAF. Now, that might sound juvenile, and it totally is, but to a mostly young and countercultural audience (myself included), it was really powerful. What helped is that the song itself was one of the most pumped of the night, ending with Watsky crowd-surfing across the floor to the balcony, climbing up to the balcony and finishing the song then literally walking across the crowd back to the stage. It was absolutely nuts, and it was about to get a lot better.
The final part that struck me was the almost 10-minute long encore. After finishing IDGAF, Watsky kind of pulled the same trick he did before again, but was much less extreme about it. They started into the encore, which was just song after song after song. He has a lot of shorter tunes that he threw in here, as well as samples from longer ones. The whole band and Watsky barely paused for a breath as they barreled through all of the tracks, constantly building the whole time. Watsky started inviting people up on stage with him and the whole crowd was just totally bonkers. While I used to hate large crowds because I always felt my individuality was lost in them, here I allowed myself to completely meld into the screaming, jumping, dancing crowd. I was completely lost in the moment and it felt amazing.

I also got an incredibly dope t-shirt, so I'd call it ultimately an amazing night. 

Visual Literacy Blog

When Mr. Tallman told us that we had to do a visual literacy blog for homework, I knew immediately what I was going to do, and it's kind of cheating.
The show I'm currently working on is entitled "Red" by John Logan and it's about Mark Rothko. More specifically, it's about Rothko and his assistant Ken, but I digress. Mark Rothko is a rather controversial painter from the mid to late 20th century. While usually described as an abstract expressionist, he resisted any sort of classification of his work with vehemence. The painting you see below is one that exemplifies the style he came to be known for: large rectangular blocks of color. What's important to note is that these blocks are not solid, singular colors. The red shifts hue, with the black sometimes creating a darker shade than the area around it. Rothko's methodology involved painting massive amounts of layers, constantly creating slight adjustments in the shade until he thought it was right.

I chose this painting because of a theme in Rothko's words in the play. He finds life, emotion, and hurt (he was a bit masochistic) in the color red and the exact opposite in the color black. His big concern in the play, literally and metaphorically, was that the red would swallow the black. In this painting, you can pretty clearly see this happening. Not only does the black surround the red, as I mentioned above the black is also working its way into the red. It is stealing its vibrancy and its life and sucking it out.
The key to feeling the emotion in these paintings is to stare. To sit and to look at it for hours on end, with no other distractions, watching the red and the black combat each other. These colors are, in a strange way, not static. They move, they morph, and they fight each other.
Ultimately, the black wins though as Rothko killed himself in 1970 by slitting his wrists. In a final act of defiance, he tried to fight the black with his own blood, but it was too late.

An Interesting Trend

I've always been an avid reader. From when I learned to read all the way through to today, reading has always been a leisure activity that I put plenty of time into. Recently though, I have noticed something peculiar about my reading trends.
Through most of my childhood, I was a strong advocate of fiction. The ability to lose myself in another world fascinated me, and I consumed stories as fast as I could. The only significant non-fiction book I remember reading as a kid was a book about Shackleton, and that is such a fantastic story as to practically be fiction. On top of that, I always had a bit of a competitive attitude in that I would try to read the longest book I could. Not that I would go out of my way to complete a story I didn't like for the sake of bragging rights, but it always felt extra special if the book I had just finished was particularly long.
Neither of those statements hold true anymore. Recently, I haven't read a fiction book in years, and most of the reading I do day-to-day is very brief. For the most part, I've been reading blogs and journalism. My main source for this is actually my Twitter feed, where I follow organizations like Forbes Magazine, and people like Erik Kain or John Walker. Most of what I read on these sites involves happenings in the world, whether that's a political event, a new piece of tech, or a new video game and people's personal reactions to these happenings. I am fascinated now less by immersing myself in another world than I am by understanding this world and how people react to it. My interest in Psychology has replaced my interest in fantasy.
In fact, I recently picked up a fiction book I just bought from More Than Words bookstore in Boston during a sale they had where every book was a dollar, and I found that I simply could not read it. The book is "The Blind Assassin" by Margaret Atwood. Within several pages, there was intrigue, personal conflict, and mystery and I thought to myself "I don't need this". As a 17 year old trying to figure out how my own world and my own personal relationships work, the idea of immersing myself in someone else's problems is just not at all appealing.

Perhaps That Was A Controversial Claim

In a previous post, about Senioritis, I mentioned that I would rather be listening to music than doing homework. Not a particularly outspoken claim. What I think is perhaps a bit outspoken is what I said next: that I find listening to music to be an intellectual activity.
I'd like to come from three angles at prove this claim. First is a basic straightforward argument that music makes you smarter. The second argument is a very Stephen Johnson-esque argument, about how it helps me from a cognitive standpoint. The third focuses much more on the idea of emotional intelligence.
This first argument might be the hardest to sell. To help it go down easier, I'd like to emphasize the idea that different types of intelligence result from different types of music. For this argument, I'd like to focus specifically on the genre of rap. And not Kanye West or even Eminem style rap, but mostly underground, indie rap. Rap like Billy Words' "History Will Absolve Me" or Aesop Rock's "Skelethon",  both albums I've been very into recently. The intellectualism of both of these albums fall mostly in the interpretation of their lyrics, which are very often littered with literary references. Take for example, "The Man Who Would Be King" by Billy Woods. The chorus of the song is the third stanza from White Man's Burden by Rudyard Kipling, the title is a reference to a short story by Rudyard Kipling, and the whole song is filled to the brim with references to the Bible, Edgar Allen Poe, and Rudyard's life and other works. As someone who is very interests in that album,  I find it worthwhile to look into these references, which included reading White Man's Burden. Undoubtedly, this exploration of his references has made me a smarter person, both sociologically and in terms of my knowledge of literature. Another great example of this is "Zero Dark Thirty" by Aesop Rock. While not quite as full of literary references, the Rap Genius of the song reads like a research paper. One lyrics generated an explanation that took up more than the screen. He also makes lots of references to culture around the world. Not only do I find myself becoming more aware of the world around me, I am forced to try to understand and interpret the meaning they're trying to put in the lyrics.
Which brings me to my second argument. While we tend to think of listening to music as a time for relaxation, our minds are never really relaxing. As I think Stephen Johnson proved pretty well,  our minds are working hard even when we have no conscious idea that it is. While listening to music, you are not only analyzing and attempting to understand lyrics, you are identifying and predicting patterns,  as well as noticing breaks to patterns that had been previously established. While these mental workouts manifest themselves as an experience of pleasure, they are nonetheless mental workouts, and they're even more pronounced for someone like me who listens to music avidly and is always trying to expose myself to new genres, artists, and songs.
Finally, we get to what is perhaps the most obvious intellectual benefit of music: the strengthening of emotional intelligence. Music, at least for me, has a power emotionally that very few mediums have. While I've watched my fair share of emotional movies or shows and played my share of emotional video games, there really isn't anything that can touch me like a song can. And when music does touch me significantly, it's not an effect that lasts only as long as the song or album. The music forces me to be more reflective of myself, and often helps me to become more aware of myself emotionally. This self-awareness is an intelligence that I think our culture heavily de-emphasizes. The idea that emotions are weak and that the biggest demons in one's life are always going to be real-life obstacles. I have never subscribed to either of those ideas, and music has helped me explore the strengths of my emotions as well as overcome the obstacles my own mind puts up.

Anthony Fantano, Everyone

I mentioned him briefly in my last blog, but I'd like to introduce everyone (especially Matt Luongo and Keving Counterman, fellow music aficionados) to one of my favorite people on the Internet, Anthony Fantano (alternatively, go here). He is my personal top authority on music, not to mention he's just incredibly adorable. Now, that's not to say I view his word as Gospel and change my opinion to fit his, but I generally find his opinions to be incredibly well-informed and his explanations of those opinions to be very eloquent.
I linked this one before, but I just want to embed my personal favorite video of his right here:

Hopefully after watching this, you'll understand why I enjoy this man's opinions so much. He's eloquent, incredibly intelligent, and amazingly open-minded. If you scroll through his reviews, he reviews and enjoys every genre of music from death metal to rap to soft rock. He's also adorable and incredibly funny. You don't see it here, but in many of his other videos his alter-ego Cal Chuchesta makes an appearance in what is always a good time.
If you're at all interested in music, I would highly recommend looking into him in greater depth. Some of my favorite albums of all time from "History Will Absolve Me" by Billy Woods, a hard-core, underground rapper to "BBNG2" by BADBADNOTGOOD, an intense jazz-rock band. I'm currently making my way through his top 50 albums of 2012, and I have yet to find one I don't enjoy.

Working On Something Different

Hello, followers (if you still exist), I have a request. As hopefully most of you know by now, I've been writing poetry for my senior project. However, most of it has been short, very in-the-moment stuff that I'm not really willing to edit because I feel like editing it would destroy any attempt to capture the frame of mind I was in when i wrote it. However, recently I wrote a much longer piece that's much more spoken word than anything else I've written, and I'd like you to take a look at it. Let me know what you think!

it's as if

my mind as an emotional and psychological entity is a giant puzzle sitting on a table in the middle of a room

and when I'm ecstatic, I throw pieces in the puzzle without much regard for whether they're correct, just knowing that it feels good to put pieces down

and when i'm upset, one of two things happens

rarely, someone has already come along and knocked some of the pieces off

more often I stop putting pieces on

and I stop and I look at the pieces I've placed and a little bit of doubt wiggles its way into my mind

perhaps that last piece I placed was not quite right, I think, and before I know what i'm doing, I have pulled that piece out

but the doubt doesn't stop there and I start pulling out pieces left and right, starting from the peripherals and moving my way inwards in a vicious cycle that ends with me flipping the table, retreating to the corner and pretending to be dead

pretending not to feel

pretending that I didn't need that goddamn puzzle to survive, to exist

the longer I sit, the more I realize the absurdity of that idea

as I resign myself to the necessity of finishing the puzzle, I pick myself up and walk over to the table

as I pick it back up I notice something

although I tore through the outside edges of my puzzle, the center never got touched

the center has a picture of me, surrounded by my family, surrounded by my friends

in the background is my beautiful house situated right next to my wonderful school

and while there might be a hole where my heart is, underneath that is a picture of me, standing on the shoulders of my closest friends reaching for something that I know I will find eventually

and while there might be a hole where my future is, in this case the emptiness doesn't indicate the lack of something, instead it indicates the lack of nothing

as I feel the power of that center filling me, I begin placing pieces of the puzzle

not with the frenetic randomness of before but with a calm, cool confidence

not confidence that I will never pull pieces off again; that would be naive

I put pieces down with a confidence that the next time this cycle repeats itself, there will be more pieces at the end than there are now

If you're interested in what I'm working on, I've been throwing my favorites up on this blog.

I'm Running Into Some Trouble

I've been having issues with my senior project recently. As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been writing poetry for my senior project.
The issue is, I can't seem to find the inspiration to keep writing. Part of it is just falling out of the habit, especially after a period of sickness that lasted WAY too long very recently. But part of it is a lot deeper, and it's concerning me. Just like my recent dearth of blogs, I'm finding that I'm very rarely putting stuff down for poetry, especially compared to the rate that I've put them down in the past.
Ultimately, it's coming down to a problem that I think a lot of us seniors face: the so-called disease of Senioritis.
What I think is interesting about how Senioritis has manifested itself in me is that I haven't stopped doing my work. Actually, my latest report card was pretty damn great. It's less about doing the work than the attitude in which it is done for me. Rather than attacking work with the curiosity and intellectual passion that I usually do, I'm finding myself unwilling and unmotivated to complete the work. I do it, eventually but I find that I'd much rather be watching Anthony Fantano, listening to new music or talking to friends. The big problem is that I can't convince myself anymore that those activities are a waste of time. Music is something I really enjoy, and it's going to be a big part of my life for the rest of my life. On top of that, I genuinely consider listening to music to be an intellectual activity. I'm a big believer in the Triangle of Health, so I can't convince myself that bonding with them and creating memories and experiences is a waste of time.
What I am having an easier and easier time convincing myself of is that my classes are a waste of time. Now, don't think that this is just a kid complaining about doing work. I have, for most of my life, been very much aware of the incredible value of education. I've always been curious, and I've always enjoyed class and felt that it was well worth my time. I'm serious, I promise. But recently I feel like most of my classes are just not worth it. Certain classes, like Lang and Java, still interest me and are definitely teaching skills and ways of thinking that I will use for years, but others classes don't feel like they're teaching me anything worthwhile, directly or indirectly. Usually, I'm able to justify a class that I know I'm not going to use later in life with the idea of collateral learning, but recently I don't really seem to be picking up any skills that would be useful from many of my classes.
I'm pretty much just really ready for college, I guess.

Thinking About Swearing

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about swears and how they are used effectively. What got me thinking about the topic was this song by local band Vundabar.  At one point in the song, lead singer Brandon Hagen drops the F-bomb, and I think he does it very effectively. Not only have I never heard him swear on any of his songs before, I don't even think I've ever heard him swear before.

That's the first lesson here: scarcity is the key to swears maintaining their power. It sounds obvious, but I think it's a lesson worth repeating. Too often, I think, you hear a song (as much as I hate to single out certain genres, this really happens more with rap) or hear someone on the street trying to sound tough and they use more swears in their sentence than they do regular words. That doesn't make you sound tough or edgy, it just makes you hard to understand (as is probably rather obvious, this sort of behavior sort of aggravates me). On top of that, it sounds really immature, like you've just discovered the word and are overusing it out of novelty.

The other important part of making your swearing effective is for it to sound authentic. A bit less scientific than just counting how often you swear, this is more about context. The swear should fall at the height of your speech/song/writing, not at the bottom. If you keep the number of swears down, the amount that each swear sticks out increases. It marks the section that it falls in as important or somehow different from every other section, and if the section isn't somehow different or important, the swear would sound way out of place. Another way to indicate this is a change in the surroundings of the swear. This is demonstrated really well in the song I linked above, where the swear is accompanied by a snare hit and a moment of silence from the guitar. This helps the swear stick out and land that much harder.

Really, using a swear is just the same as using anything else of any power: moderation is best, and pay attention to the context.  

"Graduation" Rhetorical Essay

Hey followers (if there are any left...), I just finished up my Rhetorical Analysis essay for "Graduation" by Maya Angelou, but I'm really not feeling what I've written. Any suggestions for improvement would be greatly appreciated.

There is no doubt that Maya Angelou is a fantastic writer. But even by her standards, “Graduation” is a fantastic piece of writing. Part of what makes it great is her command of rhetorical strategies. From her beautiful imagery to the building in the final paragraphs, this essay’s appeals and language really get you caught up in it.

                The essay starts off very informative and impersonal. Introducing you to the broad situation without revealing her part in it, Maya builds one’s interest and emotional involvement in the whole situation by introducing very accessible emotions. Anticipation, excitement, excessive pride are all emotions she references. On top of that, the situation (graduation) is one that almost every single person is familiar with, even further building the connection of the reader. The shift in paragraph six is significant as it introduces her specific role, as well as her specific emotions. As a primary source, her ethos goes through the roof. She also focuses much more on her internal feelings than the events going on around her. By referencing the future often, (“I was going to be lovely”), she builds the anticipation for the even that is coming, drawing the reader in even more. She draws out this section of preparation in order to build that anticipation even more.

                Ultimately though, her best use of rhetoric comes in the last several pages, from the beginning of Mr. Edward Donleavy’s speech through to the end. Her word choice during Mr. Donleavy’s speech becomes especially vitriolic: “I willed the offender to immediate death” or “The man’s dead words fell like bricks around the auditorium and too many settled in my belly.” In this section, she absolutely rips this man apart, describing with vivid detail how all of the energy, anticipation and excitement that had been building up throughout the beginning just got sucked out of the auditorium. After that is the build that is Henry Reed’s valedictorian speech. Relying on a song packed with pathos, the “Negro national anthem”, Reed manages to push all of the lost energy back into the ceremony, effectively rescuing the graduation. What is particularly effective is the extreme dichotomy between Maya’s language before and after his speech. Before his speech, she borders on the nihilistic. “It was all for nothing”, she says. After though, her language swings all the way back around the pendulum to extreme positivity: “We were on top again.”

                By leading you by the hand through her emotional journey during her graduation, Maya ultimately manages to get across the point that she has tried her best to convince the reader of: no matter what is done to try and keep them down, the people of Stamps will not be held down by a condescending, pretentious white man. They are made of stronger stuff, and the emotion poured out by Maya in this essay drive that point home. 

A Reaction to Senior Project

Part of my senior project involves writing this very in-the moment, peek-into-my-mind "poetry". The reason I put quotation marks around the word poetry is that I'm not writing poems with rhyming patterns, or alliteration or any other sort of classical poetic form you might expect. What I'm writing is very free-form and very modern. For example, one that I wrote at the very beginning of this process goes like this:

the problem 

isn’t that people don’t want to do what is right

it’s that they can’t understand

when someone disagrees with them about

what is right

I think you get the idea.

Anyways, what I want to write about here is my experience with writing these short little bursts of lucidity.

When I started this, the idea I had in my head was that I was going to write a single one every day. Unfortunately, it hasn't quite worked out that well. Often, what will happen is that I won't write one for several days, then I'll find some time and write 3 or 4 in a row. While not quite what I had intended, I sort of like this arrangement. What I think it shows is that I tend to reflect on longer periods of time than just a day. I would like to try at some point to do it every day at a set time, just to see if I'm able to force myself to reflect that consistently.

As you can probably tell, reflection does seem to be the big thing here. Ultimately, that's what this experiment is forcing me to do. What's good about that is that reflection is something that's come somewhat naturally to me. As far as I'm concerned, it's really the best way to learn, not just about yourself, but about how to interact with the world around you. What has been harder about this is taking that internal reflection and creating an external manifestation of it. I've never considered myself the most creative person, so creating something that could be loosely considered art is very new to me. 

That struggle has definitely been beneficial though. I've sort of gotten back into the creative writing process and am taking another stab at writing lyrics, something I tried (with generally pretty bad results) about two years ago. What's awesome about that is that the band I'm in is really interested in writing original songs, and one thing we've always struggled with is writing lyrics. If I'm able to write something that I'm proud enough of to put out in a song, that would be amazing. 

Ultimately, I am really glad I made this choice for my senior project. It's an incredibly enjoyable activity and I cannot wait to write about it further. 

And Another Hero Falls

For anyone who enjoys Macklemore, I have some bad news for you. If you take a gander at this link here, you'll see a rather bemusing story. The song "Wings", one of Macklemore's bigger songs, being used in an NBA All-Star ad. Now, on the surface this might not seem so bad, but when you dig a little you find some disturbing stuff.

First of all, the song "Wings" in its entirety has a very distinct anti-consumerist bent. It focuses on his personal story with basketball shoes, but the overarching point of the song is that getting sold on this idea of consumer culture and what you own having any impact on your worth as a human being is bad. And while the NBA All-Star weekend might not seem to be directly in conflict with this message, it is certainly indirectly in conflict with it. A huge part of the NBA's success has been licencing and some of the biggest companies they licence to are shoe companies. Companies like Nike, which gets directly bashed in the song.

Beginning to see the problem?

What makes it even worse is that the song was deliberately censored to remove any anti-consumerist references. Lyrics that are more in line with the NBA's wallet get put in places where more critical lyrics were. Some lines, like "Nike Air Flight, but bad was so dope / And then my friend Carlos’ brother got murdered for his fours, whoa" or "My movement told me be a consumer and I consumed it / They told me to just do it, I listened to what that swoosh said" just get completely cut. For that matter, practically the entire second verse gets cut, the verse that for me is the most emotional in the whole song. The ad blatantly destroys the entire point and the entire message of the song, just to sell some more shoes.

Now Macklemore has addressed this controversy. If you follow this link, you'll see his response. It's good that he responded, but I'm not sold. He has two main counterarguments: "I didn't know they were going to censor it" and "It will get more people to listen to the full song". Both of these are weak arguments, and at one point he even provides the counterargument to the first one in that article. "In any licensing deal they are going to edit your music.  A 4 minute song does not fit into a 30 second movie trailer. Lyrics have to get cut in order for the trailer/ad to make sense with what the company is promoting.  And a song about consumerism doesn’t fit into an NBA All Star Game intro without some tailoring," he says at one point, which completely invalidates his first argument. If it's so obvious they were going to rip the soul out of this song, he can't claim ignorance that it was going to happen. That really doesn't work. As for his second argument, I have several issues. For starters, it's based on an assumption. The assumption that the ad will get significantly more people to listen to the full song. Now, this is probably true, but there's a very good chance that it's not. The song is already pretty huge, to the point where the kind of people that haven't heard it are usually the kind of people who don't like that type of music and thus are not going to go listen to the full song. On top of that, someone's first experience with the song affects the rest of their listens. When someone's first experience with the song is the NBA cut, it spoils the preceding listens, always bringing the person back to that ad rather than to the message he's trying to get across. My big issue with that argument though is that Macklemore at this point is big enough in sales and influence to find a much better way to boost his listens. I understand that Macklemore loves the NBA, but there has to be a better way to express that love than destroying your creation like this.

I still respect him, mostly for the song Same Love, but I find listening to this song in particular to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

I've Figured It Out!

I finally know exactly why I find musicals to be un-immersive and emotionally unimpressive. And no, it's not the singing, it's not the dancing, it's not even (in a way) the narrative or the plot.
It has to do with the presentation of emotion, and it's a trap that pretty much every art form is vulnerable to: the simplification of emotions. The best example I can think of to explain what I mean is a generic modern pop song about love. Generally, rather than painting the more truthful picture of complicated, mixed feelings and difficult social structures, they paint a somewhat simple picture: the person singing is perfectly in love with the person they're singing about. If they already have the object of their desire, then their life couldn't get any better. If they don't have the person they want, then they will never be complete until they do.
I have found that musicals tend to play this trick with their characters, simplifying the emotions portrayed down to a single, base emotion that is incredibly pure. Now, this isn't necessarily bad. It makes the character much more accessible and relate-able to a larger percentage of people. But it rubs me the wrong way.

I don't think I've ever had a moment where I've felt a single, pure emotion. It has always been for me a mix of emotions: Anger with some jealousy, anger with sadness, happiness that leans towards ecstasy  or happiness that leans toward contentedness. The idea of experiencing a single, pure emotion is completely foreign to me, and so I find art/entertainment that portrays that to be entirely unfulfilling and unrealistic. I don't believe the person putting forth that emotion because I don't believe it's possible to experience emotion in that way; the human psyche and social relationships are simply too complicated.

And this issue is in no way limited to musicals. It pops up everywhere: music (as I mentioned above), bad video game narratives, bad novels, even bad plays. I just find it to be more prevalent in musicals.

Holy S**t

As someone who pretty avidly listens to music, I find that I am generally able to express my opinion very quickly. As a general rule of thumb, after several listens to a song, I am able to not only decide whether I like  what I'm listening to, but I am able to express why in what I would like to think is a relatively articulate and eloquent manner. Not so this time.
The Wake by Billy Woods is the track that has completely stopped me in my tracks mentally. I listened to it last night (2/14) for the first time, and ended up looping it for almost 45 minutes straight. It reminded me of one of my favorite English quotes of all time: "Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood", said by T.S. Eliot. When I first heard this song, the absolute melancholy nature of it hit me right over the head, but I won't say that I completely understood what he meant. And for a lot of the song, I still don't. While great lines like "Ten years ago she was just some ho / Five years after that, I'm in love / And if you ask me today, I couldn't give a f*ck / Go figure" have relatively obvious meaning, other parts like "Put stove to fire like you're preaching to the choir / spitting through the wire / Like don't even wet that / It ain't about no get-back / We doing digits on Route 90 / Late to your wedding / Sitting in that morning sun with that good Otis Redding" are less obvious. What this does for me is increase the replay-ability of the track. Usually, the arc when I listen to a song goes like this: At first, the communication hits me (for good or bad), but after several listens, I am usually able to grasp the understanding part for at least most of the song. From there on out, my enjoyment of the song generally declines as I begin to become overly familiar with the song. What this song has done, and very few artistic experiences have ever reached this, is create an experience that simply gets better every time I listen to it. Every time, I understand a little bit more of Billy Wood's meaning, state of mind and the message he was trying to get across. Each time, I enjoy it a little bit more.
The best part is, the rest of the album also has that trait. Every track necessitates multiple listens to really get the full impact and enjoyment. It's hit a place that very little music manages to reach. Indeed, with the exception of Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", this might be the only album I've listened to that gets to this pantheon. If you consider yourself a fan of rap, you absolutely must check it out. 

The Man, the Myth, the Legend

I have mentioned him specifically to some of you, and you all heard at least a couple seconds of one of his videos when Mr. Tallman accidentally played it out loud during proposal day, but I'd like to introduce all of you formally to Steve Roggenbuck. He is probably one of my favorite people in the planet, and the subject of my Senior Project. He is, according to himself, a poet, blogger and inspirational speaker. He is completely straight edge (I promise) and a vegan. He recently dropped out of college, citing a lack of fulfillment from what he is doing as the reason. His goal in life is to make people feel happy and to make people feel good, a goal I think is simplistically noble.
So here he is, in my favorite video of his. Be warned, this video IS explicit (and very immature), so be careful who you listen to it around. Keep an open mind.

UPDATE
I've received a request from several people who have watched the video to explain exactly what I value in his message. So I will.

For starters, I find his brand of humor to be incredibly funny. I'm a fan of absurdist humor, and he is certainly absurd. Check out this video is you'd like a great example of his humor. More than that though, I find his message of simplistic positivity (yes, I made that word up) to be incredibly appealing. As much it might sound cliche, his take on the idea of being happy simply because you are alive has really resonated with me. I also find his willingness to break from social norms incredibly inspiring. Like I mentioned above, he dropped out of college for the seemingly unsubstantial reason of not being fulfilled by the experience. He sold all of his electronics except a basic cellphone and his laptop and took off around the country. He has found his purpose in life in a way that I think many people don't, and as someone who's struggling to find his purpose in life, I find that really impressive.  

Red & Purple

For some reason on the train ride home today, my mind got onto the subject of colors. Or more specifically, what those colors mean to me. I got really stuck on purple and red. Not because I couldn't figure out what they mean, but because I found so much meaning inside of them. In a way, they're incredibly similar. They're both very deep, powerful colors that tend to be associated with power. But on another level, they're incredibly different. Purple to me represents calm, confident power. Royalty, even. Whereas red has this very internally violent, imploding kind of power. I'm really not sure where I get these associations from, they just kind of come to me. What makes it even weirder is that the next show I'm working on is called "Red" and really supports my view of the color.

What I think I like about this interpretation though is the metaphorical tension the two have when mashed together. A calm, confident power and a violent, angry power come from very different places and result in very different attitudes. And when you mash them together, you get, well you get me, in a way. While that might sound a bit weird, let me explain. At this point in my life, I still haven't quite got it all figured out. I think I've got most of it, but there's still always some nagging doubt...
The result of that doubt is that most of the time, I am able to hold myself with the calm confidence of purple. I know what I'm doing, and I'm mostly doing things right. But every once in a while, when I give myself a bit too much room to think, that little voice comes on and asks "Do you really know what you're doing? Are you really doing everything right?" and as much as I KNOW the answer to both of those is at least mostly yes, something in my mind prevents me from believing it at that moment.

So yeah, that's what's been on my mind. Sometimes I think that I think too much.

Django Unchained: What Did I Think?

SPOILER WARNING

That title is not a cheesy way to declare this my opinion on the movie. It is actually the question I will be pondering in this post. After watching it, I feel incredibly conflicted over how I feel about it. There were many parts that I really enjoyed, but there were also many parts that I did not like or found to be incredibly distasteful.
For full disclosure, this is my first Tarantino film. So if I sound like I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to him, it's because I don't. My biggest question for someone who perhaps knows him a bit better would be this: should I be taking this movie seriously? Or is the whole thing supposed to be a joke? Either way, I had issues with it, but it would help me figure out my final thoughts on it if I knew which one it was.

If it is all a joke (which I'm leaning towards), then my biggest issue was that some of the comedy was simply not funny. There was more than one time when I felt like the writers were trying to make the N-word funny (combining it with Hercules? Really?) and in general I found their use of the word to be generally distasteful. Now, I understand that people used to word back then so it's "historically accurate", but that doesn't cut it for me. If you're going to be gritty and realistic with a word as virulent as that, then you have to take what you're saying seriously. And this movie did not take that word seriously at all. Another issue I had with the film as a comedy was that it seemed to have this undertone, this hinting that this story would in some way become grand and epic, with deep meaning and an ending that had deep symbolizing, or at least deep SOMETHING. But it never did. It just kind of meandered around, with an extremely unnecessarily violent and bloody shootout, some gullible Australians and a very unsatisfying ending.
Now before it sounds like I'm hating too hard on it, there were many parts that I found extremely entertaining, and even some character arcs that I enjoyed, whether they were accidental or not. The bag scene perfectly toed the line between hysterical and offensive, and was probably one of the funniest scenes I had seen in a while. Also, the opposing character arcs of Dr. Schultz and Django was pretty interesting. Without spoiling too much, it was interesting to watch Dr. Schultz drop his facade and gain some humanity, while seeing Django put up a facade and lose his. Personally, I felt that this theme could have been explored much more, but I liked it nonetheless.

Ultimately, what I can say is that this movie has made me stop and think more than any movie I've seen since Fight Club, so in that sense I guess it's good, although I'm unwilling to admit that Tarantino meant for that to happen. Which I think sums up my feelings about the movie: any sort of depth or interesting symbols or themes seemed accidental and so I feel like I can't really praise it for accidentally being kind of good at parts.

Ew

It's amazing what some TV shows will do for viewers, especially in their fading years. I'm referring this time to American Idol, the show that once seemed to be a juggernaut of viewers but has recently seen a serious decline in viewership. Now, I'm not talking about their issues with judges, although that's been pretty ridiculous (and, I must admit, I really have a hard time taking Nicki Minaj seriously...). Instead, I'm talking about a segment they did as a parody of "Les Miserables", "The Miserables".
This segment featured reactions from people who didn't make it. There were many profanities, and the bird got flipped many times (both were censored by the American Idol symbol). I found this to be incredibly distasteful. These were people people who were genuinely crying, who very clearly desired some privacy to get over the denial of what was clearly one of their biggest dreams and this show was essentially mocking them. A large percentage of the people either explicitly said that they wished for this not to be aired, or made some sort of physical gesture that indicated that they wished not to be filmed, and yet the camera crew persisted in following them. It really makes me wonder what kind of people could possibly be the cameramen. As someone who enjoys his solitude when I'm upset, I know I would not feel at all comfortable filming people at what is possibly their lowest moment. The amount of empathy I would have those people would make it impossible for me to stand watching.

The worst part of this whole thing is that these people are most likely often the show's biggest fans, the ones that have followed the show from the beginning and have grown up with this dream of being on the show. And yet this show treats them like trash simply because they didn't live up to the show's standards. If I was someone who actually watched that show, I would have quit right then and there.

My Soul...

WARNING. This blog is not for the faint of heart. The comic posted here is heavy and pretty damn depressing. That being said, it's also brilliant, so don't be scared away.

http://www.whatisdeepfried.com/COMIX/Family/PAGE1.html
http://zyguy.imgur.com/clarissa_comics#12

The two links above tell the story of Clarissa. Now before I continue, I'm going to pause here so that people who want to actually read them don't have it ruined.

Now, if you're like me, after the first one you were probably thinking "Wait. Did her dad... you know... do stuff to her?" Yes, the answer is. He did rape her (I warned you that this was dark). And if you keep reading, it only gets heavier. What I find brilliant about these strips, and specifically the first one, is how cleverly the author has hidden the truth in plain sight, just waiting for you to realize it. And as soon as you do, it's like a punch in the gut. And each successive strip is just as gut-wrenching. Honestly, the best comparison I can make is to the end of 1984. While that was a much more elaborate and drawn-out (and thus more powerful) punch to the gut, that same feeling of helplessness and horror hit me when I read that first comic strip. The second reason I find these strips brilliant is how well it manages to portray the feeling of being this poor little girl. The art clearly displays the hopelessness she feels in the way she's drawn and each little story shows a different side to her reaction to this tragedy, from letting it out in drawing, to her killed imagination in Stuffed Friend to the ending of Bath Time Fun. Every time you realize that this poor little girl has been forced to kill off her own childhood, or view herself as the problem or every exaggerated and fake smile on the faces of her family just kills a little bit of you.
Fortunately, as is the nature of tragedy, I find that a new little bit of me grows in that dead bit's space, and something like this ultimately leaves me feeling cleansed and that much more determined to right the wrong that happens in this world.

That Worked Rather Well

This is a bit of an unusual blog, but I thought this was worth sharing.


Last night, inspired by my World Religions class, I decided to meditate before going to sleep. I had been having trouble sleeping, and felt just in general that I could use some peaceful time to think. So, without really much idea of what it was I was trying to do, I put some Godspeed You! Black Emperor on my speakers quietly, and just sat and focused on my breathing.

It was actually really awesome. While it took much focus, I found that I was actually able to pull myself away from my physical body, in a way. The way I had been sitting was slightly crushing my left foot, but if I allowed myself to sink deep enough into the meditation, I found that the sensation of mild pain completely disappeared. Although I meditated for a full 15 minutes, I was only really able to hit this state of mind for all of 30 seconds, so I intend to continue to practice reaching this state.
On top of the very profound feeling of losing my physical state, it also worked another miracle: I fell asleep almost immediately after getting into bed to sleep. Through focusing on my breathing and trying to relax different muscles one at a time, I found that I was able to reach a state of relaxation that was totally unfamiliar to me in my daily life. When I went to go to sleep, I didn't spend half an hour, an hour struggling to relax my body and my mind, because I had already hit a deeper state of relaxation in 15 minutes than I had ever reached through music, or "just lying there" had ever gotten me in hours.
If you're open to it, I definitely recommend you give it a try. It was honestly one of the most profoundly satisfying things I have ever done.

Wow

I'd love to write some amazing blog post about how inspiring this kid is, or how eloquent and mature his speech is, but I'm honestly at a loss for words. So just take a listen, I promise you'll be moved.

AP Lang Has Made Me Petty

In a really intellectual way, AP Lang has made me rather petty.
Let me give you an example. I have installed on my phone a TED talk app. I usually have 10-15 talks downloaded to my phone at a time, on topics from architecture to psychology to video games. Every once in a while, on a long car ride or train ride, I'll pull it out and watch one. The problem is, I've been finding, ever since we did our section on rhetoric, that I'm simply incapable of sitting through a lot of them. It's not a lack of patience or anything like that; when I find one I like I always sit through the entire thing. The problem I'm finding that I have with some talks is rhetorical. Sometimes the person is just a bad speaker, sometimes the person has written a bad speech. Whatever the reason, there are some talks that, no matter the brilliance of the idea, I simply can't get myself to sit through. Learning about rhetoric through AP Lang has opened my eyes to what constitutes a bad speech even more than they were open before.
The problem I'm having is that there are a lot of speeches I get bored with that do more than likely contain brilliant and thoughtful content. Am I missing out on many ideas that could enlighten me and enrich my life? Unfortunately, I'd have to say that I probably am. I have yet to watch a TED talk that didn't contain incredibly interesting observations and ideas, and the ones that I skip over are probably no different.
Now, before it sounds like I'm hating on Lang AP, let me clarify something: I do think that losing those talks is worth it. Because of the work we've been doing in Lang, I feel that I am able to better understand and analyze the other talks that I do sit through, and that alone makes any lost content worth it to me.

Workshopping

Inspired by Mr. Tallman's noticing that we tend to avoid writing about writing, I have decided to write about my general experience with work shopping essays in class.
And it's not exactly positive. I generally find advice given by other students (and I'm sure this applies to the advice I ggive as well) to be not all that helpful in improving my writing beyond what I have put out.
Let me explain exactly what I mean by that. Generally, a student's advice will not go beyond basic word choice or syntax. Very rarely will you hear a student advise another student to completely rework his essay this way or that in order to effectively transmit his point. I think the reason for this is threefold.
One, most kids our age would probably be uncomfortable giving that kind of heavy-handed criticism to another student. As we view each other generally as equals, telling a fellow student that his essay basically sucks sounds really arrogant and just feels like you're being a dick.
The second reason is that students are generally not confident enough in their own writing ability to be able to offer up serious criticism. Especially when editing writing by the likes of Matt Luongo, I feel as though any criticism I could possibly offer is going to be less sophisticated than the actual writing he has already put down.
Finally, conversations about the writing tend to get sidetracked. In the workshop between Brendan, John and I in our most recent class, we ended up arguing about the subject of my writing (straight plays versus musical theater) for half an hour instead of working on our writing.
All of this being said, it is a pretty good way to get someone to scan your writing for any basic mistakes so I suppose it is worth it in that way.

Narrative Essay

Hey guys, I was looking through my narrative essay and just felt like it was not quite where I want it to be. If anybody has any relevant criticism, that would be awesome.

Jason Clark

Mr. Tallman

English Language and Composition AP

11/2/12

Track 1

                This is what it means to be alive, he thought as he dropped over the fence. As he oriented himself with the digital map he had on his wrist, he felt his heart beat jump. He had a mission, he had a challenge and now he felt right at home. The man known as Mr. Tong was the largest drug dealer on this half of the globe, and it was his job to take Tong out. There was a catch though. It had to look like an accident. He had been airlifted just outside of Mr. Tong’s compound with a silenced pistol, a vial of poison that would mimic a heart attack, several high-tech gadgets and his own wits. The compound was one of the most heavily guarded structures in the world.

                He found himself on the map: he was 200 yards south of the compound. A quick jog through the jungle, and he came upon his target. The compound was an imposing structure: all metal, large and teeming with guards. Now, it was time to observe. After many years on the job, he had learned that every guarded structure had one thing in common: patterns. Every guard, every camera had a pattern that it followed, and patterns lead to predictability. So, he waited and watched. And he found his opportunity. Every hour, on the hour, there was flaw in the system. There was no guard in the southern corner. And so, just before the next hour, he left his cover in the trees and made his way to the wall. Once there, he unhooked a section of rope from his belt as well as a small hook. He threw the hook up top and climbed up with ease, reaching the top quietly and quickly. As he prepared to move to the shadow created by the adjacent building, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. A guard. They had changed their pattern, just now. The guard had not seen him yet, he was about to turn the corner and was scanning the landscape. The agent had seconds, if that, to not be discovered. His only option was to stand in the shadows and hope against hope that he would blend in enough with the shadow that the guard would not notice. As the guard turned the corner, time seemed to slow for the agent. He felt cold sweat drip down his spine and felt an emotion he hadn’t felt in years: fear. He could feel the pressure around him: if he was discovered he would be killed. The guard passed by almost in slow motion, seeming to take forever to traverse the several meters that would put the agent out of the guard’s field of view. The agent pressed himself against the wall, willing himself to blend into the wall.s He held his breath, praying to a god he had never believed in that the guard would not notice him.

                The guard passed without noticing. The agent stayed pressed against the wall, waiting for his heartbeat to return to normal. He took several shaky steps away from the wall and began to return to reality. He breathed deeply, urging his mind to take control of his body again. As he slowly returned to normal, the precariousness of his situation took hold of him. Surely, the guard would be back. He needed to move. He had been arrogant and it would not happen again. He felt his confidence returning, tempered this time by the reminder of his own mortality and imperfection. His target was in the middle of the compound, and there were still guards and cameras in the way. He made his way across the compound, effectively and conservatively using cover to move across to the center. Now, it was just a matter of putting the poison in Mr. Tong’s favorite wine and then getting back out. He went in through an air vent to the kitchen. He inserted the poison through the cork, smooth and clean, and exited the way he came in. His path back out would be the same as his path in. He knew the camera placements and how many guards were along the way. His exit was smoother than his entrance, and he was picked up by a helicopter several miles from the compound.