Best of Today: The Creative Mind

Today in Humanities we had a repeat of one of my favorite days, we had a youtube film festival. These aren't just ordinary youtube videos though, the videos we watch have to pertain to the humanities, not just be an ordinary funny video. After leaving class and looking back on it, three of the videos we watched today really stuck in my mind. The first one being the video of the one singer dubbing himself over and over to create a full song. This video really stuck to me at first because of my love of music. The guy was a very good singer and had great presence on stage. But looking deeper into the video I realize the craftsmanship and the artistic thinking that went into the video as a whole. It took a creative mind to think up of the idea of dubbing yourself over to create a masterpiece tune. The next video that demonstrated this creative thinking was the video on the wall mural. This video went through the intricate design and craftsmanship of creating an outstanding mural for a wall. Watching the artists go through and carefully paint and draw each detail made my mind go wild. I couldn't fathom to think that a human could not only think of such detail but then do it by hand as well. And the third video embodied the same creative thinking that the first two did as well. The third video that caught my attention today was the video of an artist who utilized live looping to create a digital masterpiece of himself singing a song. This video was probably my favorite of the ones we watched today. I liked it because I am into recording as well. I know how to loop and have tried it in the past. Watching someone else try and master the art of looping live really gave me an appreciation for what I do and what many others do around the world. Digital recording is a lot of fun and takes a creative mind to be successful. These three videos were definitely the highlight of my day.

Inconvienient Truth: Celebration of Death

Something that has always bothered me are the different angles on Death. Some people see it as something to celebrate, others see is as a time of mourning. Granted, these feeling are also based on who is dead, but still I don't like how celebrating the death of someone is socially accepted. The most recent example of this type of celebration is the death of Osama bin Laden. I remember coming down stairs the morning he died to my parents full of glee telling one another, THIS IS A TIME OF CELEBRATION!! TRULY SOMETHING TO CELEBRATE!! Even though it may be a good thing for the United States that he is dead, I still don't find a reason to truly celebrate his death. We have been trying to kill him for years yes, but why are we as humans excited when someone dies. Now lets talk about a relative or friend who dies. At a young age their death may be described as unexpected and tragic. This is by no means a reason to celebrate, this is a time of true mourning and grieving. And from the funerals I've been to when there is a young person in the coffin, it is not a happy and pleasant time. Now lets say the person is old, like in their 80s or 90s, In that case it depends on the family. Most people in the family will be calling their death a "celebration of their life," so not exactly happy but not exactly grieving. Instead it's a happy medium. In other cases, lets say the person dies from cancer or another serious illness, the death is a celebration of them finally being at peace, no more pain. But yet it is still a celebration. So it seems to be that people are mostly sad when the person is very young or dies unexpectedly. This is an assumption from my own experiences and observations, so it depends person to person, but when someone dies people tend to be sympathetic and understanding, and in times happy. Which is what brings me to the inconvenient truth of all of this: We are afraid of death. Yet we celebrate it... Doesn't make sense does it? Why are we so afraid of dying when we celebrate the death of some of the most important people in our lives? Don't you want to be celebrated? Don't you want to be recognized and remembered?? This is what bothers me so much about this topic. It is an on going paradox of fear and celebration. I still don't fully understand it all, all I know is that I'm scared.

Blogging Around

My first comment was to Angela Poulos' blog called An Inconvenient Truth: Wars & Hatred. This blog was addressing the issue of people hating and criticizing one another. An issue that is prevalent everyday in all of our lives.

Comment: I completely agree with you. It's so sad that our culture is based off of striving in the downfalls of others. This is especially prevalent in high school because of the different groups and cliques that people are involved with. Most people also strive on building themselves up by rating others down. Which is so sad and mean :( And you're definitely right it's not about to get better any time soon. Especially with the killing of Osama. This is a perfect example of the issue you are trying to bring forward. The Americans are celebrating his death, which to me is very morbid. I feel that what we are doing is disrespectful and instead of celebrating we should be thankful of the accomplishment and move on. I really hope that one day world peace can be come true.

The second comment I made was to Katie Taylor's blog titled Connection: Challenging the status quo/ happiness. This blog is directing an issue that we face everyday by interacting with people and living out our lives. Challenging the status quo is so hard to do right now as we are all fixated to a schedule. In my response to her blog I tried to think out possible ways to enrich our happiness by challenging the status quo at the same time.

Comment: I've learned to this year that in order to achieve happiness and be content with yourself it is important to spend time with yourself. In high school our lives are so wrapped around a tight schedule that includes our normal hang out times with our friends but often leaves out yourself. The status quo is what we're used to, the constant schedule and repeating of events. But by challenging the status quo and doing things out of spontaneity maybe your happiness could prosper. I'm trying to accomplish this right now, and just keep my mind guessing because it is so much fun to live in the moment, not around a schedule.

Best of Week: TED presentations

I have really enjoyed listening to the different TED presentations. A lot of the topics the speeches are on are topics that I have never been acclimated to before or have payed attention to in life. One topic that has really interested me was the water conservation topic. I never think about the issue of water conservation, because we live right by a lake that has good water. But when listening to Marina talk about her family in Basnia, I learned that water is a resource that is in danger. Another TED presentation I really liked was the one about restaurant management and food sustainability. I was captured by the fact that we as human beings throw out so much food, and we don't even know it. This fact scares me because if we aren't aware of our waste, how can we recognize that we need to make a change to help eliminate it. After the TED presentations I take away a new understanding of an important issue.