Sometimes I think about the people in my life, and whether or not they have any sort of creative release. Most of them do, whether it is in music, painting, or reading, most of them are being exposed to or are engaging in something that originates solely from human creation. Some of them however tend to focus more on things that involve building physical strength and awareness. I'm not intending to down talk sports, I played multiple team sports all through grade school and can see the importance of team building experience gained during, but I don't think it qualifies as a release. When painting or writing or doing anything creative, you are making physical a portion of the universe hidden in your conscious. We are able to forget all the limitations we live in and are free to go, see, and hear whatever we so choose.
Sports don't force you to use your imagination. Yes you are using your imagination by trying to predict what the other teams may do, but it all must fit with in a set of rules. Nothing unexpected will ever happen. In basketball the only unpredictable thing that could happen would be if players got in a fight or the backboard shattered, and those have nothing to do with the game of basketball.
I wonder if people who have an output are happier, or at least more able to adjust because they are used to the unexpected?
The only parts I every really enjoyed about sports were the times when I would have a chance to do something great. However skinny 13 year old boys can't dunk from half court, make a baseball explode in mid-air, or summon UFOs into right field.
Imagine if I had kept my head in the game.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Out there
In class we were reminded as to why we write in the first place. We write for the audience. We write to convey a message or encapsulate part of the human experience, in a manner that is understood clearly by an audience.
The Audience was something I had trouble keeping in mind when writing music with my friends. Music to me has always been something I am able to pour myself into. Allowing my consciousness to sort of free flow in to sound waves has and always will be something very important to me. I enjoy writing music in a sort of therapeutic sense. When I sit down and write I don’t think about whether or not a specific group of people will like it. I just do what feels right, and it becomes this entity that will always have an attachment to my life.
When I try to think about writing for the audience my mind turns to dull and repetitive ideas. Whenever I listen to the radio everything sounds the same. Obviously there are many different stations that play many different genres of music, but these stations are often playing the same list of songs a few other stations are. There are the stations that have nothing but dance beats and wubs, stations with country songs full of the same four chords and the same song structures on repeat, and the stations that have the pop singers and rock bands which combine the previously described stations to form audible vomit.
The class seems a little shocked to hear the statistics about the average reading level being between 5th and 7th grade. We were told that this statistic must be kept in mind when writing. This doesn’t mean that you should write like the audience is stupid, I think it has more to do with attention span. We are used to everything being so quick, quick, quick, with instant gratification, so our audience needs to have this same pace present in order to enjoy and comprehend the story.
This doesn’t mean that every thing has to be short. Artistic commitment shown through detail and complexity will always be extremely adored and appreciated, but Prof. Jenkins did have an interesting point to make. It was less a point, more so an ambiguous yet clear observation about old tales. Most of the fairy tales and memorable stories we hear throughout life have short and direct morals. For some reason or another the only thing I can think of now is “Don’t cry wolf”. It is only three words but the message that comes with them is powerful and relevant.
It makes me think of “don’t cry wolf” as being
The Audience was something I had trouble keeping in mind when writing music with my friends. Music to me has always been something I am able to pour myself into. Allowing my consciousness to sort of free flow in to sound waves has and always will be something very important to me. I enjoy writing music in a sort of therapeutic sense. When I sit down and write I don’t think about whether or not a specific group of people will like it. I just do what feels right, and it becomes this entity that will always have an attachment to my life.
When I try to think about writing for the audience my mind turns to dull and repetitive ideas. Whenever I listen to the radio everything sounds the same. Obviously there are many different stations that play many different genres of music, but these stations are often playing the same list of songs a few other stations are. There are the stations that have nothing but dance beats and wubs, stations with country songs full of the same four chords and the same song structures on repeat, and the stations that have the pop singers and rock bands which combine the previously described stations to form audible vomit.
The class seems a little shocked to hear the statistics about the average reading level being between 5th and 7th grade. We were told that this statistic must be kept in mind when writing. This doesn’t mean that you should write like the audience is stupid, I think it has more to do with attention span. We are used to everything being so quick, quick, quick, with instant gratification, so our audience needs to have this same pace present in order to enjoy and comprehend the story.
This doesn’t mean that every thing has to be short. Artistic commitment shown through detail and complexity will always be extremely adored and appreciated, but Prof. Jenkins did have an interesting point to make. It was less a point, more so an ambiguous yet clear observation about old tales. Most of the fairy tales and memorable stories we hear throughout life have short and direct morals. For some reason or another the only thing I can think of now is “Don’t cry wolf”. It is only three words but the message that comes with them is powerful and relevant.
It makes me think of “don’t cry wolf” as being
Hierarchy
The hierarchy of needs came up in one of my mass media classes last semester. It is interesting to think about how people will react in situations. Whenever I get cold, I stop and ask myself why I am cold. I usually answer myself with something involving temperature and nerve endings but then immediately follow with a question asking myself how it is affecting me. The fact that I am still able to think about these kinds of things while being cold, makes me believe my ability to think, to examine and react, are unaffected.. I can look down and see my legs moving and feel my body moving, so my mobility isn’t affected either. What appears to be happening is a communication between my nerves and my brain, telling it the temperature is lower than what it finds comfortable. I don’t believe I have ever been in a situation where I was unable to think about what my best reaction could be. There are times at work when a customer will have some sort of issue and get upset. They aren’t ever physically aggressive, but it isn’t unusual for people to raise their voices a bit. Whenever someone does raise their voice, I am able to hear what they say and understand their situation, but whenever I go to speak I am at a hold. The things I want and need to say are lined up and ready but my body doesn’t respond. My tongue feels like a slug and my voice shrinks. The words that make it out are either mumbled or chopped up by a nervous jaw. I don’t know why this happens, and it can be very frustrating. It’s not like I am afraid of these people, and the problems are usually easily solved and done with in a matter of minutes. The google machine shows me a version of Maslow’s Hierarchy that was shown in an interpersonal comm. class I took in a previous semester. It shows the fear of safety and employment as the second block from the bottom. Could these people really be pushing me down the pyramid that much? Or does that mean I am constantly living in the middle of this chart? The step above the fear of safety consists of the fear of a loss of love and belonging.
recipe
We spoke in class about the recipe of stories. Prof. Jenkins used the word "manufactured" to emphasize this skeletal structure to narratives. He challenged us to come up with more than 10 different plot lines, telling us before hand that there are only ten. It was difficult to believe. How could it be that in all of the stories written and spoken around the world, throughout the course of human history could, lays one of ten event lines that the protagonist could take?
When I hear “manufactured” I think of an assembly line. When I think about stories being manufactured, it makes me think of people lazily repainting the covers of old stories and calling them new. It has a sort of negative feel to it, but I don’t think it was intended. Manufactured, also makes me think of human ingenuity and our ability to tinker. I once heard someone drunkenly murmur “creation is just distorted memory”, and applying “manufactured” to this saying gives me a much more positive feeling.
It gives these plots, these timeless structures, a reincarnate property that I’m sure have some psychological ties to our psyche.
When I hear “manufactured” I think of an assembly line. When I think about stories being manufactured, it makes me think of people lazily repainting the covers of old stories and calling them new. It has a sort of negative feel to it, but I don’t think it was intended. Manufactured, also makes me think of human ingenuity and our ability to tinker. I once heard someone drunkenly murmur “creation is just distorted memory”, and applying “manufactured” to this saying gives me a much more positive feeling.
It gives these plots, these timeless structures, a reincarnate property that I’m sure have some psychological ties to our psyche.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Character
I found our discussion about characters and characterization very interesting. It makes sense that to build a character you must constantly being putting them into new situations, I believe Mr. Jenkins put in terms of "piling stress, to force the character to reveal how they will behave in all situations. It became almost a game as I was walking home, trying to recall all of the characterizations I had seen recently. I kept trying to think of characters who always act the same no matter how the situation changes. The first thing that came to my mind were all of the muscle men films, with characters who seem to always get out of a situation by lifting something over their head. I also began to think about sit-coms, and I couldn't help but wonder if these are truly characters. While yes these characters are put into different situations each week, but none of them seem to have any sort of increased pressure, you have no sense that anything can go wrong. It may simply be that because they are sit-coms that are shown every week, the audience loses the ability to feel any sort of slight risk. Family Guy has often poked fun at the non-linear, non-existent for the most part, timelines of sitcoms and maybe it is this "no loss" guarantee that makes sitcoms so effective. When people come home from a nine to five job, they don't want to sit and think about how miserably they are living their lives. They don't want to be asked and presented with questions about their mortality and consciousness, they want be told when to laugh. They want to watch fake beings live out fake lives, and the sit-com gives them a chance to go inside the conscious of these fake beings for the ultimate voyeur experience. It allows them to gain a false sense of happiness. They laugh on queue as if the studio applause light was mounted above their mantle, and continue to live in agony only to find comfort in being able to participate in the life of someone who has everything, someone who knows not death or sorrow.
I will admit that I enjoy television. The film major inside of me wants to smack myself for some of the shows that I watch. To be honest the cinematography and camera work in television is very disheartening. The constant cuts and boring composition may be some of the factors controlling our attention span and turning us to zombies.
I will admit that I enjoy television. The film major inside of me wants to smack myself for some of the shows that I watch. To be honest the cinematography and camera work in television is very disheartening. The constant cuts and boring composition may be some of the factors controlling our attention span and turning us to zombies.
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