I chose to write about the song called “Sour Times”, by a relatively infamous artist actually, who is known in the U.K. as MC Riz. He has managed to create a fan following through his music, but is not so popular, as I would think nobody knows who I am talking about. Well, in the song, MC Riz talks about terrorism, through adding references of 9/11, and makes an argument against the accusing finger widely pointed at Islam for being the cause of it. Human ignorance is dangerous, and the need for humans to attempt to quickly explain everything they can is the major problem. People generally look to blame others for things, so as to quickly find a solution and still feel accomplished about themselves. Uneducated, ignorant people can be found very easily and widely in this world, and are prone to being brainwashed. The actions of people, and the weaknesses we possess cannot be used to target a whole religion and its followers. Riz argues that a religion is not the cause of terrorism, but people and the situations they are forced to deal with causes people to act in ways they otherwise wouldn’t act in.

This song touched me very deeply when I first heard it. It actually was my inspiration for some of the essays I wrote when applying to colleges. It inspired me, along with many other things, to think about doing something career wise in international relations, in which I currently am thinking about minoring in, but thats off topic. It is really emotional, in showing the extent to which humans can go to blame others, when in fact, they may be quietly committing the same injustices. Ignorance is very dangerous, and our need to blame in order to explain cannot always be justified. If humans continue to commit injustices against the peaceful, then this world can never become unified. This idea can also be appied to real life, and the many injustices people face today, in their everyday lives. It’s actually a very sad thing, that we as humans have not, even after all these years, been able to find a way to live in peace and harmony with eachother. What is missing, that is stopping us from doing so?

For my video I plan to do a mixture of background music with areas of video (slowed down) and areas of pictures shooting at the audience (fast). I will attempt to portray human ignorance and the need for humans to find answers, by focusing on the 9/11 attacks and perhaps incorporating things about other aspects of the idea. I actually did not want to use the original song, and instead use bits of other songs/tunes to go with the video/pictures.

My video proposal is the following:

I will be drawing out the entire poem through my analysis and make it into a entire cartoon of monsters and other imaginative creatures that run through this kid’s mind. The video will consist of someone drawing the entire scene while the video itself fast forward through the whole thing creating the illusion of it moving. at the end of the video everything will zoom out and you will see a clutter of cartoons and scenes put together, I am trying to take the audience into a adventure through the mind of a lonely child created by edgar allen poe.

What I chose for my poem was a song by Radiohead talking about marriage. The song is called House of Cards, and it is about a man asking a women to leave her failing marriage to be with him.

For my digital essay, I am considering 2 things. One was to build a house of cards and fast forward the process then blow the cards away in one video. Showing how it is so difficult to build, yet so easy to destroy. My second idea was the same process, however in pictures, and including some light graffitti (where you draw a picture with light).

Both are just proposals at this point, and my ideas could change along the way. A stop motion video was also one of my considerations. But it would be more difficult because i have never done one before.

I picked a poem by Igor Guberman, he is a russian poet. The poem’s original name is Нечто патриотическо, meaning something patriotic. I am not 100% fluent in russian reading, my dad showed me this poem about a week before the essay was assigned and i thought it would be appropriate. Also when i heard the poem it kind of touched me, the way it is written, the way each sentence is phrased, the strong structure and meaning behind each line and paragraph. The poem really flows and it is perfectly built. His style of writing is pretty much the complete opposite from Gertrude Stein.He also uses humor in his poem, for example he says the the morals he stands on is to love his county and in the next line he says that he wouldn’t mind to take a sit. The poem has really touched me since Guberman writes about israel and him and every jew being a patriot towards his country and i moved out of Israel about 5 years ago.I am thinking about filming some patriotic things like the israeli flags, maybe a shot scene from the “ten commandments”,  anything else that would come into mind that will show really strong patriotism, regardless to everything else.

Ive decided to write my paper on a song by one of my favorite rock bands. The band is Billy Talent and are an alternative rock band from Canada. In their song “A Pocketful of Dreams” we can truly see how money can consume people. The song is about someone who is so rich that she has let go of her dreams to continue living a meaningless life where valuables and money are the center of her world. This song can relate to the current financial struggle we are suffering from today. As everybody is so worried about money, we are losing touch with our dreams and live to make as much money as we can.

The poem I will be writing my paper on is the song Jeremy by Pearl Jam. This song displays a troubled young man who is going to commit suicide. This song has touched me personally because there were two troubled kids from my high school who attempted suicide. One girl was unfortunately successful while the other boy was fortunately lucky enough to have failed and was able to get help. I feel as though today kids aren’t thinking things through before they attempt to take their own lives. Our society today is no help to these students because kids and teenagers are cruel people.

My video project will be based on this song and it will portray a troubled young man who is considering suicide. I don’t have all the details of what the video will entail but once I have an idea of what my thesis will be then I think my video idea will benefit from it. The two will go hand in hand so that I can write my paper while knowing exactly what I want for my video.

I decided to focus on the poem “Phenomenal Woman” by Maya Angelou. This poem was
actually my second choice, but now it seems like the best fit for this project.
The poem reminds me of who I am not only as a young woman, but as a young black
woman in this society.  Women are also expected to look a certain way because
of the way we are portrayed in the media, but we should know it is unrealistic.
A lot of memories come to mind when I think of “Phenomenal Woman”. I have grown
up watching many African American movies that use this poem to empower the women
within the movies. This poem is uplifting,

which is why I feel like I ca

n relate to it. As a young woman, I

 lacked a lot of self-confidence, but as the ye

ars have passed by I found myself gaining confidence and

accepting who i am.

Now, as for my video I definitely want to voice over t

he song “Beautiful” by Christina Aguilera. It will start off with a guy ve

rbally abusing a girl, telling her she is ugly, fat, and will never find a

nyone or be anything in life. He will push her to the toilet, and leave her t

here crying. After this she will get up and walk to the mirror look at herself, w

ash her face, and fix herself up (this is when the song will start playing).

The next scene will be her walking towards the pier with a bag in her hand. The
bag is filled with items that reminds her of the verbally abusive guy, but she
will tear these items apart and throw them in the river. The video will then end
with a text from the girl to the verbally abusive guy quoting pieces from Maya
Angelou’s poem saying, “I am not cute or build to suit a fashion model’s size,
but this is who I am. Phenomenal woman, that’s me.”  Then it will show her face
in the last scene, and the credits will roll afterwards. I want the entire video
to be black and white, until her face at the end is shown.

I hope my video comes together perfectly. So far seems short simple and sweet.

I decided to do my digital project on “Contact Lenses” by Audre Lorde. After reading it over and over again, I really got to understand the poem a lot better. This poem can be interpreted in many different ways. I see this poem symbolizing self discovery through daily life struggles. While at the same time this is like a love poem. The contact lenses represent a break away from the fantasies society put into our heads. All along we structure our lives through the happily -ever- after  endings we see in movies, and the fairy tale love stories.  We end up seeing only what we want to see in our relationships. We start being less logical and lose ourselves. So this poem is about the journey back to facing reality and finding ourselves again/ realizing that relationships is not like the movies.

I am not too entirely sure what I am going to do for the visual part of this project, but I imagine the beginning of the video being blurry. Although it is blurry in the beginning, the video gets clearer and clearer as it progresses. I want my video to feel like a persons dream. The video is representing the fairytale mindset we live in and the video is suppose to guide the audience back to reality. I might be taking a lot of different clips from different chick flicks/ romance movies and putting them all together to display this dream stage. While in the end I will show a short clip of an actual couple oor a single person. I am not sure yet.

It’s a digital essay, the term is a bit off putting a digital essay. What do you have to do to make one it turns out there are many ways to make it. Now to choose which one of these options is a bit difficult. I’m still debating on how to do it now that I know i’m doing it on the poem The Wound by Tom Sleigh. Which is a bit dark, so it’s easy to imagine whats happening or have a visual image in your head while reading it.

I’ll make my choice once I see Luke Waltzer presentation and when I start writing my paper and coming up with my thesis until then, I’ll keep thinking about what works best and what I can do to make the project.