In recent months and especially in the last two weeks, I've started to become very interested in clothes and fashion. I'm not positively sure why, but I think it has partly to do with the fact that I'm graduating next year and can no longer rely on throwing on my uniform every day, and partly to do with the fact that I am feeling very academically inspired by my English teacher, and she happens to be extraordinarily fashionable. My best friend also has a stunning sense of style, and I occasionally think to myself that it would be nice if I could be a stylish as her (you could analyze it and say something about wanting to be as an amazing person as her -- she has spectacular character traits -- and transferring those traits to her clothes).
The reason why I find my sudden interest (borderline obsession, considering the amount of time I've been spending on online clothing shops without actually buying anything, Pinterest, Etsy, fashion blogs, etc.) in fashion so startling is because of my strong adversity to it in previous years. I had formerly told myself that fashion should be functional (which I still think is true), and devoting so much time and energy into fashion seems to be rooted in some sort of unfortunate values of artificiality and consumerism.
It occurred more recently to me that fashion may in fact be yet another form of art.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Life of Pi
I fell in love with Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil about a year ago. There was something beautiful in his luscious sensory language that kept me riveted and enchanted. Where some Victorian novels are (in terms of their descriptive language) like a very, very, very dense cake, and where some modern novels are so sparse in their use of language that they are so geometric and almost bleak, Beatrice and Virgil seemed to be just the right blend of descriptive language and plot.
Yesterday, I finished reading Yann Martel's Life of Pi. What an amazing story! It is considerably different from Beatrice and Virgil, although they both actively employ animals in their stories (albeit in very different ways). I highly recommend both Beatrice and Virgil and Life of Pi!
Yesterday, I finished reading Yann Martel's Life of Pi. What an amazing story! It is considerably different from Beatrice and Virgil, although they both actively employ animals in their stories (albeit in very different ways). I highly recommend both Beatrice and Virgil and Life of Pi!
Monday, March 19, 2012
1984
About a week ago, I read George Orwell's 1984. I did the majority of my reading on in the airport, in the plane, in the car, and in the hotel in Halifax. Living in in the GTA, I would have thought I would have spent more time enjoying the outdoors of Halifax (especially considering the spells of nice weather that we had for two of the four days spent in Halifax), but I spent most of the time indoors at Dalhousie University and the University of King's College. The time I spent outside was mostly the 20 minute walks to and from the university and the hotel. I would have gone out more often, but it always seemed to be quite late when I finally came to the hotel, and by that point, my parents were quite tired to go with me, and they did not want me wandering around an unfamiliar city on my own at night.
So, I spent my evenings reading. Orwell's 1984 is a captivating and fast-paced dystopian novel. It is a social critique. Published in 1949 and set in the then-future 1984, the novel follows protagonist Winston Smith as he quietly attempts to challenge the oligarchical dictatorship of Big Brother's Party.
The premise of the dictatorship is the Party's ability to limit all thinking. There is no critical thinking in the society of Oceania. The language, Newspeak, is so limited in its vocabulary that it lacks all the beautiful subtleties and colours of today's English, known derogatorily as Oldspeak. Newspeak users speak in a quick staccato, and the language's quickness makes it so much easier to rush over the meanings of the words. You don't dwell on the words meanings because you don't have time. The word "Minipax," for example, which refers to the Ministry of Peace (which, oddly enough, concerns itself with war), is so easy to roll off your tongue that you don't think about the word "Ministry" and its meanings of institutions and hierarchical judgement. You don't think about the word "Peace" and its corresponding ideas of contentment, values, safety, security, and its opposing associated ideas of war, violence, discontentment, etc.
The book makes me wonder about Tumblr. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good (few hours?!) spent on Tumblr -- there are some posts that are absolutely hilarious! I wonder whether the pace at which we scroll through Tumblr though means that we don't have time to actively think about the images and text that we see and read. Instead we just digest it, without any sort of critical thoughts. We talked about this in English class a bit. It stuck with me, and came up again while reading 1984.
So, I spent my evenings reading. Orwell's 1984 is a captivating and fast-paced dystopian novel. It is a social critique. Published in 1949 and set in the then-future 1984, the novel follows protagonist Winston Smith as he quietly attempts to challenge the oligarchical dictatorship of Big Brother's Party.
The premise of the dictatorship is the Party's ability to limit all thinking. There is no critical thinking in the society of Oceania. The language, Newspeak, is so limited in its vocabulary that it lacks all the beautiful subtleties and colours of today's English, known derogatorily as Oldspeak. Newspeak users speak in a quick staccato, and the language's quickness makes it so much easier to rush over the meanings of the words. You don't dwell on the words meanings because you don't have time. The word "Minipax," for example, which refers to the Ministry of Peace (which, oddly enough, concerns itself with war), is so easy to roll off your tongue that you don't think about the word "Ministry" and its meanings of institutions and hierarchical judgement. You don't think about the word "Peace" and its corresponding ideas of contentment, values, safety, security, and its opposing associated ideas of war, violence, discontentment, etc.
The book makes me wonder about Tumblr. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good (few hours?!) spent on Tumblr -- there are some posts that are absolutely hilarious! I wonder whether the pace at which we scroll through Tumblr though means that we don't have time to actively think about the images and text that we see and read. Instead we just digest it, without any sort of critical thoughts. We talked about this in English class a bit. It stuck with me, and came up again while reading 1984.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
There's no such thing as a setting sun.
Canadian hip hop musician Shad is the man behind Keep Shining, a beautiful video with beautiful music. As someone who listens mostly to Classical and contemporary music, smooth jazz, indie pop, alternative rock, and pieces that can only be categorized as easy-listening, I was surprised to find myself so enraptured by Shad's hip hop piece. The music and video is centred around eliminating prejudice and empowering women to speak out and speak up; having only men in the rap industry means that only half the truth is being spoken.
My favourite part of his lyrics are posted below.
Well, you can’t be everything to everyone,
so let me be anything to anyone.
The world turns, and there’s clouds sometimes,
but there’s no such thing as a setting sun.
It always keeps shining.
Listen to his work on YouTube at this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3nbTB2KHuM
My favourite part of his lyrics are posted below.
Well, you can’t be everything to everyone,
so let me be anything to anyone.
The world turns, and there’s clouds sometimes,
but there’s no such thing as a setting sun.
It always keeps shining.
Listen to his work on YouTube at this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3nbTB2KHuM
Saturday, March 17, 2012
A draft of the introduction to the play that I am writing
Dim lights. A clarinet plays a light melody with a pure tone.
A large wooden chest is on the stage, just off the centre and to the right. It is deep brown and is perhaps made of mahogany. It gives the appearance of being altogether mundane, antique, and oppressively heavy. A lock keeps it tightly closed.
With slow and deliberate movements, a girl enters the scene. She appears about twenty-seven, although she could be older. Still, there is something in her movements that make her seem sixteen or seventeen years old. Perhaps it is her light step.
Eventually, she notices the wooden chest. She steps towards it, but hesitates. She takes one long, visible breath, and then approaches the chest, bends down, and touches the lock.
GIRL: It's funny how we forget some things and how we remember others.
Silence. There is no one around to answer her. She jiggles the lock lightly.
GIRL: I don't remember them giving me a key.
A large wooden chest is on the stage, just off the centre and to the right. It is deep brown and is perhaps made of mahogany. It gives the appearance of being altogether mundane, antique, and oppressively heavy. A lock keeps it tightly closed.
With slow and deliberate movements, a girl enters the scene. She appears about twenty-seven, although she could be older. Still, there is something in her movements that make her seem sixteen or seventeen years old. Perhaps it is her light step.
Eventually, she notices the wooden chest. She steps towards it, but hesitates. She takes one long, visible breath, and then approaches the chest, bends down, and touches the lock.
GIRL: It's funny how we forget some things and how we remember others.
Silence. There is no one around to answer her. She jiggles the lock lightly.
GIRL: I don't remember them giving me a key.
Friday, January 6, 2012
University Applications
Ask me to write a paper on Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and I'll write one, right away. It wouldn't necessarily be a good essay, but it would have some structure, and I would know how to take a theme from Tess and develop it into a thesis, which I'd then flesh out in my body paragraph before wrapping the whole work up with some sort of thought-provoking summation.
Ask me to write a paper on myself, and I'm lost.
Unfortunately, this situation is faced by countless number of youth across Canada and the world as post-secondary application deadlines approach. We haven't practised writing 400 word 'essays' on our deepest desires, so how can we possibly be expected to write effectively, eloquently, and efficiently?
Ask me to write a paper on myself, and I'm lost.
Unfortunately, this situation is faced by countless number of youth across Canada and the world as post-secondary application deadlines approach. We haven't practised writing 400 word 'essays' on our deepest desires, so how can we possibly be expected to write effectively, eloquently, and efficiently?
Thursday, January 5, 2012
On voluntary writing and blogs
It's a curious thing to find the blog of one of your teachers. I suppose I'm just not used to reading my teachers' writing outside of the context of handouts, assignment feedback, report cards, and the occasional e-mail.
Perhaps it is even odder when you find yourself thoroughly enjoying your teacher's blog, and reading pages and pages into the blog's archive.
Regardless, blogs themselves are a curious sort of medium. They aren't quite journal entries in the sense of a diary, but they are more or less a published journal. Anyone can read them, but few do. I doubt that there are many people who read this blog, and of the people who do read this blog, I doubt that any are 'regular followers.'
Still, people blog all the time, without a huge concern for who might or might not be reading their words. It is somewhat of a consolation to be able to write and then to go back and see that what you have written exists somewhere, even if the Internet is a somewhat abstract and elusive canvas.
I wonder if there is an art to blogging. If there is such an art, I am sure I have yet to master it. There are surely lots of blogs that are poorly done; blogs with ridiculously informal language, laden with grammatical errors, rude content, etc. Many blogs are pointless -- this one is perhaps one such pointless blog. However, the pointlessness of such a blog is maybe what attracts the writer to create it. We write so often because we must write; we write assignments, we write business e-mails, we write messages to people because we find it is socially acceptable to keep in touch by talking about the weather (and often also because we do actually want to keep in touch with them, but we just don't know how to go about it, especially when they live halfway across the country or halfway across the world). With a blog, though, you write because you want to write; there is nothing 'forcing' you to write.
I wonder when this blog will fall under and fade away. When will I forget about it? When will I stop going back to it and posting the occasional song lyric, ramble, or poem?
I think I will always write for pleasure, be it in this blog or elsewhere.
Perhaps it is even odder when you find yourself thoroughly enjoying your teacher's blog, and reading pages and pages into the blog's archive.
Regardless, blogs themselves are a curious sort of medium. They aren't quite journal entries in the sense of a diary, but they are more or less a published journal. Anyone can read them, but few do. I doubt that there are many people who read this blog, and of the people who do read this blog, I doubt that any are 'regular followers.'
Still, people blog all the time, without a huge concern for who might or might not be reading their words. It is somewhat of a consolation to be able to write and then to go back and see that what you have written exists somewhere, even if the Internet is a somewhat abstract and elusive canvas.
I wonder if there is an art to blogging. If there is such an art, I am sure I have yet to master it. There are surely lots of blogs that are poorly done; blogs with ridiculously informal language, laden with grammatical errors, rude content, etc. Many blogs are pointless -- this one is perhaps one such pointless blog. However, the pointlessness of such a blog is maybe what attracts the writer to create it. We write so often because we must write; we write assignments, we write business e-mails, we write messages to people because we find it is socially acceptable to keep in touch by talking about the weather (and often also because we do actually want to keep in touch with them, but we just don't know how to go about it, especially when they live halfway across the country or halfway across the world). With a blog, though, you write because you want to write; there is nothing 'forcing' you to write.
I wonder when this blog will fall under and fade away. When will I forget about it? When will I stop going back to it and posting the occasional song lyric, ramble, or poem?
I think I will always write for pleasure, be it in this blog or elsewhere.
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