Blog # 2

When you think of music your first thoughts are usually poetry, sound and lyrics. Different music artists have different styles of how they write and make their music sound. What is it that attracts and turns us off from music? Some people say it is the way it sounds; others say it is the lyrics and how it just speaks to them. Whatever it may be music has a huge influence on people especially our generation. These days’ teenagers can’t go a day without listening to Lil Wayne or Drake. Certain music has certain influences on people. It depends what the lyrics talk about and how it relates to someone.

You can take a song for example, Friday Night by Katy Perry, and the lyrics talk about what goes on during the weekend; parties, drugs, alcohol, sex, etc. What makes the song so popular is the message that the song portrays, that it is acceptable to live every Friday night like Katy Perry sang about. Then there is another song like, Light up the Sky by The After’s, It talks about how God’s grace and Love is all you need to be happy. It takes your mind off of the wrong things and helps you meditate on things that are good.

Sometimes music producers/music artists use lyrics to get certain points across to their fans and the world. They take their feeling and opinions and turn them into lyrics. Sometimes artist use their lyrics to express how they feel about lyrics. This can be a bad and good thing. It can be bad because if people disagree with the artist, it could hurt his/her career. It could be a good thing because one artist’s opinion that is turned into lyrics has the ability to reach a wide general audience; it has the potential to raise awareness on certain issues which could bring people together to strive towards a collective goal.

Rock against Racism was a mass campaign against the sudden rise of extreme racism in urban Britain in the 1970’s. Although it did not put an end to racism it mobilized hundreds of thousands of people and was a leading factor in the decline of the National Front’s proportion of the vote in the 1979’s general election. This was used in a good way that helped promote the decline of racism.

These days you hear in a lot of hip/hop music about President Obama and even Michelle Obama. This is neither a good or bad thing, but more of an informative way of talking about politics through music. When you hear music that involves any kind of politics it is interesting to listen and hear how an artist takes his/her opinion and turns it into something that has a catchy tune and how it flows together for you to create your own opinion.

I think music helps us realize things from a different perspective.   

Blog 1

Being an AP English language student requires a lot of reading and writing skills. It forces you to go beyond what is required in just reading a book or just writing an essay. Much more is expected from you. I like taking on challenges such as these and in the end feeling good about the finished outcome. In all of my English classes through the years I have learned that to be successful, you need to be smarter than what you read and to be able to put yourself in the authors point of view. By doing so this allowed me to learn all the different facets of life knowledge.
When I read , it usually takes me a while to finish a book. Not because I am a slow reader but because I can not stand finishing a book with unanswered questions. Finishing a book knowing every detail, plot, climax, ect makes me feel accomplished. One of those job well done feelings. Every book has a story, obviously. I like to think of it as every book has a story but every book has a meaning as well. There was reasoning and thinking that the author had to go through while he or she was writing it, that’s the part I like to find out and that is one reason I believe it means to be a reader.
Reading for me isn’t just about leaning new things or adding on to my vocabulary, reading also teaches simple things that can help you in other areas in your life. Now I am not talking about reading the “How to…” section in the Glamour magazine, yes reading makeup tips and weight loss articles is always something that a girl can use to benefit herself, but I am thinking more deeply than that. I read an article once, about a young Amish school girl who along with other Amish school girls were kept hostage in a schoolhouse by a local truck driver. The girls name I cant remember, but the article said that the girl told the truck driver to take her own life in exchange to let the other schoolgirls go free. At the end of the article it said that the truck driver ended up shooting all of the girls. Including the girl who offered to give up her life for the other girls to be set free. After reading this article, it forced me to think about my own life and what it means to have a loving heart. It helped me become that much more of a better person.
Reading takes a lot of impacts on my life, school readings, novel readings, newspaper articles, even magazines. They all seem to find a way to connect what I read to how I live. Whatever it is that I read, understanding, relating and incorporating the text into every day life is what being a reader means to me.
Its Important to understand what is going on in our world today, you can not know everything by watching TV. Reading helps with this, not only because its more personal but its more informational’ which makes reading that much more important.
I love to read and I love knowing endings to stories, figuring out the authors style of writing and most of all being able to say I read that. If I had to choose anything about being a better reader it would be, to become a better analyzer.