I picked the poem History teacher by Billy Collins because as someone who comes from the Bronx I’ve seen that many children now a days have been deprived of their innocence. I would not say basically deprived but children now a day tend to know a lot of things i did not know when i was 7 or 8 years old. It is quite interesting seeing 8 year old kid cursing, calling each other “niggas.”

One way in which this happens, is that kids are exposed to so much at a young age. Unfortunately some of these things is out of their controls. Some are exposed to many things that happen inside their home, which is then incorporated to the way they behave and the way they talk.

I’m not sure what i want to do exactly in my video but i know that i want to do something in which i demonstrate how important and beautiful it is to maintain the innocence of a child. Although lying is not a good thing, it is something that might be necessary to make sure these kids find out adult things. Kids are very curious and i feel like if they are exposed to all these things they are not supposed to, then they would like to act on it, just like saying bad and inappropriate things.

We live in a culture that constantly bombards us with images and media that tell us who we should be and could be. Then there are those people in our lives who push their opinions on us. Some of us are so influenced by external forces that we have a hard time finding our own voices and expressing our authentic selves. Plastic surgery can be found easily in modern society, nobody is born perfectly with a perfect skin, a cute nose or perky breasts.

Every year, millions of women and men select surgical treatments to enhance, minimize, nip and tuck all manner of physical features. From face lifts and tummy tucks, breast augmentation and liposuction, to laser hair removal and Botox injections, there is a procedure out there that can repair, remove, lift and smooth just about every inch of the human body. This phenomenon shows us how physical imperfections domains upset everyone who has them, of course. And for some, they can shape poor self-image and influence their confidence levels. Even that, plastic surgery is still a medical procedure that can affect your physical well being and health. While physical beauty is something we all appreciate and strive for, but surgery is not the answer. In another hand, it’s always easy to tell who feels healthy and natural, and who doesn’t based on how they present themselves, natural beauty is no mystery. It’s easily within everyone’s grasp, and no one has to portray themselves to achieve it. Natural beauty is more about presenting oneself in a style that suits that person individually without major fuss. In collected poems of Audre Lorde, “Good Mirrors Are Not Cheap” best reflects to this phenomenon in our current social perception of beauty created by the dangerous plastic surgery to fix what’s imperfection, causing unrealistic expectations. This poem also tells us about inner confidence of ourselves. The beauty that supposed to be seen was blinded. The mirror will not tell us what we want to hear and will not show us what we want to see.

In my digital essay I will show plastic surgery is a way to improve your appearance, better body image and maybe improve your self-confidence at the same time. However, there are no 100% guarantees that you will get the results you really want. You will be so regretful if your plastic surgery has gone wrong. And the important thing about plastic is it could be harmful to your health.

I chose the poem” When You Are Old”. The reason is because I really enjoy the atmosphere that created in this poem. It is not only a confession made by the poem to his lover, but also it tells something that is really important in today’s life. People can really learn something from this poem about the relationship. And also, the beauty of sentence is another part that the readers can appreciate. I believe it is challenging task. I have some ideas.

1: Visual impact.

In order succeed in this digital project, visual impact will be the key because the poet creates a very vivid picture by his words. A old woman sit on the chair, read the book wrote by the poem, the fire is on, not that strong. The whole situation will be set in a countryside house. A women recalls her story, especially the part with a young man, who has crushed on her in her youth.

2: True love & times

The perspective would probably start from the youth of two people. The man falls in love with the woman and crazy about. Therefore, he proposes, and being rejected. He continues, and being rejected again. frustration, despair are all over. However, nothing could stop his love toward the woman. The last scene probably turns to “When She is Old” with no body around and find only he(the poet) is still in love with her.

3: Regret

Imagination starts. The old women start to regret about the things happened in her youth.

To put the poem’s experience in this project, I think

The poem I chose is “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.  I like the idea of taking risks and not conforming with everyone else.  He concludes the poem by saying he took the road that was less traveled and it made all the difference.  This idea makes me think of people like Steve Jobs and how he stated in a famous speech “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”  It also made me think of a line stated by Wayne Gretzky. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  Don’t be afraid of taking the road less traveled.

For my digital essay I have a few ideas I have to try to sort out.  I believe I want to start off by showing a path of two roads.  Somehow I’d like to show how most people are going one way but that is not necessarily the right way.  I want to focus on being unique and the positives of it.  Maybe show some clips of famous people who have standed out and have become successful because of it.  Also, I might like to portay diversity stating how people from all different backgrounds have the ability to become whatever they want to me.  A slide show of courageous people who have caused positivity in this world by standing up for their beliefs is somthing I’d like to focus on.

Another idea I had one the concept of not giving into peer pressure.  Maybe showing people doing something wrong and trying to convince someone to join in and they refuse.  Afterwards the wrongdoers all get in trouble while the other person is safe because he or she took the less traveled route.  I have a few ideas I need to sort out but this poem I like very much because I strongly believe in taking the road less traveled.

The poem that I’ve chosen is “A Woman Speaks” by Audre Lorde. The reason why I chose this one is because of the last sentence which is “I am woman and not white.” We have read “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” in class and it really impressed me of how Audre Lorde had made her own voice heard. When I think of the Occupy CUNY protest recently happened at Baruch and will happen again tomorrow, I suddenly realized that most of us still remain silent on most of the issues that are related to ourselves. Or maybe we could say we are afraid to speak our own voices. There are always things that preventing us from speaking out. However, I think we can break the silence through our efforts.

Therefore in my digital project, I want to focus on the Occupy CUNY protest, mainly happened at Baruch and try to express how we can make our voices heard. In order to achieve this goal, I am going to observe the protest which will happen on November 28 at Baruch and capture or maybe record the protest and hear what the protests say about their voices.

I plan to divide the video into three parts. At the first part, I am going to make the video in black and white since I want to relate it back to the black history when black people have no rights to express their own opinions. Then at the second part, I will make it in colors as our freedom of speech progresses. At the third part I will relate it to the Occupy CUNY or Occupy Wall Street protest and express the message that Audre Lorde tried to convey “Silence will not protest you!”

I will continue to update my progress.

“The Dog Days Are Over” by Florence + The Machine is classified as “Baroque Pop”. Baroque is usually said in reference to an unusually shaped, discolored, yet beautifully veiny pearl– basically a misunderstood gem. In this spirit, the goal of my digital project is to encompass this sense of heartbreaking, ugly beauty that Florence Welch often tries to promote. The actual music video for the song is of Florence dressed in strange red rectangular eye makeup and white allover body-paint, wearing various mullet-hemmed and tiered dresses. It is clear that all normality has fallen to the wayside in the production of this song, and I intend to capture that essence.

My personal interpretation of the song’s lyrics are a bit biased, but that is what I intend to base my paper on– my own opinions of the piece as a sort of conjuction with my self-journey, which I think has it’s own heartbreaking, ugly moments, but is in essence beautiful, as all life journies are.

My video will be composed firstly of a mix of pictures and video, alternating between the two with the quarter beats that the harp plays at first– images of someone running down: a subway track, a path at Central park, the woods in Prospect Park. Bubbles coming out and going back into a bubble blowing wand, and dirty water draining in a kitchen sink. I plan to literally interpret the lyrics, but choose various locations around New York City that I think fit the description. Since the song depicts someone who is trying to escape happiness, I want to end on a possibly happy note– the images and videos will get lighter and lighter as the video goes on.

It’s really hard to explain what I’ll do step-by-step, but I have confidence that I’ll be able to figure things out.

The world has become so media-oriented that everywhere we turn, we get bombarded with images of photo shopped beautiful women in television, movies, and the internet, even on billboards on the street. My four-year old niece told me that she needs to go on a diet. There are even air-brush makeup kits available for sale to the general public that helps you look photo-shopped. Really? Photo-shopped is the real ‘beautiful’ these days?What is happening to this world? Audre Lorde’s poem “Good Mirrors are not Cheap” is an excellent form of poetry that directly reflects the horrible consequences of the current social perception of beauty created by the media’s constant objective of achieving flawless perfection, causing men to have unrealistic expectations and women to feel less competent and beautiful creating a general dissatisfaction among people; she highlights how perceptions need to be changed instead, not the literal appearance of the individual.

For my project, I want to create a video through still images that tells a story of a girl. The stills start with a text slide zooming out which says: “Once upon a time…” The background music at this point would be “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves. We see a girl, smiling, having fun, and just being herself. The still images show her walking. She is at this point in sweatpants, without a care in the world about the way she is dressed. Her parents enter in one slide and it is shown that they are yelling at her. The music now slowly changes to Evanescence’s “Good Enough”. The next slide shows her changed into different clothes, dressed in a more feminine, sophisticated apparel giving in to her parents’ wishes as to what is beautiful.

She continues walking until she meets her friends. They talk about her in a negative way. The next slide shows her with her hair and makeup done in a flawless way.
She continues walking until she meets a boy, whom she is obviously attracted to. He is seen to be making fun of her as well because of how she looks. She changes her appearance one more time.

She comes home sees a mirror, and a transformation is made in cut-outs from magazines, which leaves her nothing as to how she really is. But she still does not approve of herself. The mirror distorts her reflection.

She is seen to be upset, and then she realizes that she is happiest when she is herself, pleasing only her and no one else. The music changes to Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful”. She changes back to her sweats and t-shirt. A rewind is seemed to be made of the slides showing her walking backwards. She meets the boy and leaves him, meets the girls, leaves them, sees her parents and hugs them. She is seen to be dancing in front of the mirror now. The video ends with a picture of her in front of the mirror posing like a supermodel in sweats and no makeup that says: . “I am beautiful because I am real.” The last slide fades to black…leaving a text slide that says: “and she lived happily ever after…”

The moral of the story is that you are beautiful no matter what. You don’t need any makeup to feel that way.

I apologize for the mistake i have made in class, regarding your final paper we only need to find at least one article or source on your writer or poem, not three. It is mentioned on the instruction paper where says “Step Two”. And again I apologize about it! Enjoy your holiday 🙂