Tuesday, August 30, 2011

"Across the Universe" by The Beatles

1. Three images in the song are rain in a paper cup, light dancing around, and millions of suns.
2. The suns symbolize love, whether it is from a significant other or friends and family. The rain and cup symbolize pressure, which would most likely be the pressures of life.
3. One symbol that I know is the color white, which symbolizes purity. This is more than an image because throughout basically my whole life I have learned about the being pure and how white represents it.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

"Inspiration Information" by Shuggie Otis (1974)

1. The feeling is one of calmness and serenity. It is smooth.
2. The keyboard and guitar put off this vibe because their sounds are mellow. The singing is nice and low, and there is a slower tempo.
3. The musician had the choice to make the beat fast or slow; he also had the choice of what instruments to use, AND how to use them. His choices worked; for example, if the beat were faster, the song wouldnt be as calm. Also the noise levels worked too, as the singing and drums were softer than the keyboard and guitar, which were louder, focusing on the instrumentation and not so much the lyrics.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

"Semeadores" by Diego Rivera Response

SOAPSTone:
S-People working too hard for their money, which most likely isnt that much
O-A time when there were economic hardships, or in the 1950's-60's during the communist movement
A-People in the same situation, or anyone who hasn't been, so they can understand his pain
P-To show the grief and hardships they endured
S-Someone who knows what is happening first hand
T-Passive or sympathetic

I think the big idea is how hard and gruesome it is for those out there who don't have the same priveleges as you or me. This can be supported by the position of the shoveling man. He is hunched over with his head tucked in, showing his tiredness. The organic lines that make up his body give him a weak look, and his feet seem as if they are trapped in the ground, as if he cannot leave his situation.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Approach to Writing Blog

1. They all get together, get an idea of what they want/like, then they "destroy" it and re-create to make it better than the first time.

2/3. First, I try to think of a general idea. Next, I make an outline/prewriting that incorporates this idea with more detail. When I do this, I seperate my idea into sections, and then those sections into paragraphs. Thrn, I start writing the paper using this outline. Afterwards, I go over the paper I just wrote, changing whatever I don't like.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Old Times Response Blog

1. Nostalgia is the thinking of the past, and how good it was, not necessarily how bad it was.

2. When I hear this music, I think of bright colors, jukeboxes, and older people dancing around together. They are dancing faster in the first song, and slower in the second song. They are happy.

3. When I think of my childhood I think opf sunny skies and my old house. I think of me running around outside, playing with my brothers and friends. I also think of when I was in gymnastics and competing.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

The Pinch of Poverty Blog Response

1. Some of the major contributing factors to poverty are lack of food, education, and oppurtunity, size of family, natural disasters, substance abuse, work ethic, and laziness.

2. I believe that the artist portrays poverty in a negative light, because the children look somewhat sad and the mother looks disaoppointed, like she is about to give up on trying to get out of poverty.

3. The message is that poverty can affect anyone, and is a sad and horrible thing.

4. Two elements of art that enhance the message are color and perspective.
     Most of the colors used in the painting are dreary neutrals, as the family's clothes and background are a gloomy color. The only brght colors are the yellow of the flowers the girl is holdng and the red head shawl on the baby. This shows the sad life they have to endure.
     Those two brght color spots also most likely make up the focal point of the painting. Eyes are drawn to the middle focal pont, and one can see all that is surrounding that point. Ths brightness shows some hope in the family coming out of poverty, but it has still affected the family in a horrible way, shown in the mother's, son's, and baby's faces.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Divakaruni v. Singer Reading Blog

In the two articles about the forced child labor, there alot of differences between the two authors. Chitra Divakaruni's opinion is that while "child labor is a terrible thing, especially those... who... have no way to protect themselves from the abuse", it would also be a terrible thing to for America to pass the bill to try and stop child labor, as the kids would be without "food or clothing or shelter" when living free. Peter Singer's opinion is that Americans should do everything they can to help those unfortunate kids, saying that it is "very wrong [to not] send money to one of the organizations" of UNICEF or Oxfam America. I don't really have a reader bias, as I have never really thought about these children's situations that much.

I ultimately agree more with Divakaruni's argument about how freeing the children would leave them in even worse conditions, like how they might "turn to the streets, to [survive] through thievery and violence and begging and prostitution". I can relate to this opinion better because it is a much more realistic argument, as opposed to Singer's. In his argument, he basically is trying to persuade the audience into donating money to help the children. When thought about from my perspective, it is just unrealistic to send a large amount of money to children that I have never even met. I am not even guaranteed that money is actually sent to the right fund. While he does add in good examples of what people can easily do to give money, I feel that he is just trying to persuade, and from the looks of it, unaffectively to certain people, as not everyone has the same beliefs as him. So, Divakaruni's argument was much more effective to me than Singer's.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Ariel Pink's Haunted Grafitti- "Round and Round"

Some of the musical facts that I had discovered is that the song has drums, guitar, and keyboard/synth in it. My opinion was that I liked the song because of the instrumentation and how the song is sung. My musical facts influence my opinion because of the instruments used to make the song. Some songs, like this one, are most likely meant for the music itself to be heard, and not so much the lyrics, as heard by how the instruments are somewhat louder than the lyrics being sung. This shows the correlation between the facts I picked out snd my opinion. I don't really have a bias, because I am pretty much open-minded to alot of music, and I give it a chance before deciding if I actually don't like the song.