the music our collisions would make!

I think it’s really interesting how people can be in a mood for music.  Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of mewithoutyou.  How music is able to make someone feel is amazing.  In going to college, I’ve easily gone through one of the biggest transitions in my life.  I didn’t predict this to be a difficult change for me, and it wasn’t.  But music was one of the things that kept me sane in high school, and it’s keeping that up in college.  I do believe that music is a uniting factor; it’s what has introduced me to my best friends here. 

It’s also strange how music can be used to describe things.  There’s a reason why “Details in the Fabric” by Jason Mraz is my top played song.  There are reasons why I have only recently been able to listen to certain bands and songs again.  There are reasons why I will never be able to listen to certain things again.  It helps me to understand things going on in my life, and things that happened to me.  High school got dramatic at times.  It really sucked some days.  But one thing that kept me going was the music, the knowledge that there was someone who went through what I went through and clearly they survived because now they’re singing about it. 

I really don’t know what I’m trying to say here.  I’m trying to be witty and philosophical while really I’m just sitting on the floor of my room surrounded by half-finished knitting projects.  I guess I’m just rambling.  I have a lot to say but I don’t know how to say it.  Maybe that’s what music’s about, what it’s meant to say.  It was created by people who didn’t know how to say what they wanted, so they made it melodical. 

This doesn’t make any sense.  It really doesn’t.  And I get that.  But I feel as if I have something that I want to say, but I just don’t know what yet.  I really want to find out what it is so I can finally say it.  And when that day comes where I know what I’m saying, I’m not going to hide it from the world like I did back in high school.

life and literature

A student asked a teacher, “Why do we study poetry?  I’ll never use it after May.”

The class laughs, as most of them probably agree.  The teacher laughs also.  The class is made up of nearly all seniors, all of us going our separate ways in two months.  The atmosphere is relaxed and open for discussion, so we discuss.    Why study this?  The teacher proceeds to ask all of us what we want to be; a mix of engineers, teachers and lawyers, with the occasional original aspiration thrown in.  The teacher then returns to the question.  Why study something that seemingly has no relevance to what we’re going to spend the rest of our lives doing?

His logic was incredibly simple, almost elementary.  But it made so much sense to me. 

Although we may not all become writers or English teachers, it’s not just about becoming one thing and being labeled as it for the next sixty years.  The career path we choose does not define us, nor should we let it. 

“Life is about so much more…it’s about living.” 

We are not meant to be set in stone, and we are not meant to be described by a single noun.  And that was his point.  He didn’t want us all to become the next Walt Whitman or Maya Angelou.  I think he’d puff his chest out if he could say he taught a Pulitzer Prize winning author, but the point of this impromptu discussion was not to get us all enthralled in the world of literature.  I took away that he wanted us to understand things.  Whether it’s a poem or a law, a person or computer; he wanted us to be able to look at something and get it.  He wanted us to open our eyes, and not close ourselves off.  It was so simple, yet so profound at the same time.

Back to the student.  He still thinks the idea of studying poetry is trivial.  He wants to be an engineer. 

From the teacher-“I hope that you become more than that.”