Tingling Souls

I love music. I have loved music my entire life. I was singing and dancing and making instruments out of the world before I even left the womb. My childhood was spent discovering every sound I could possibly make. I joined choir when I was 5, and sang my way through years of musicals in elementary school. My dad and I tapped out beats together at the dinner table. I was staring about 500 different bands. And my eight grade choir was by far the coolest choir my classmates had ever seen.

And then high school happened. Maybe it was hormones. Maybe it was the divorce. Maybe it was public school. Maybe it was nothing at all even, but I stopped making noise. There was a period of my life in which I barely had any kind art, especially music, in my life, and it was the most unhappy period of my life.

One day, my friend Daniel Zlotorowicz (Yeah, that's a shameless plug to his music page.) handed me a CD and told me to listen to it. So I did, and it changed the course of my life forever. (cue dramatic music) The CD was One Cell in the Sea by A Fine Frenzy.

I loved it. We went to see A Fine Frenzy that April, and it was one of the best days of my life. I decided to teach myself piano, and, that summer, I sat down at the piano bench, set up whatever sheet music or piano tabs I could find, and slowly started translating all the scribbles and letters into music.

I love music. I finally joined my high school choir (for my final semester), and I've rediscovered how utterly relaxing it is to stand up on stage and just sing. I know not everyone feels the same, but it's what I spent my childhood doing; it's like going home.

I love music. You can pour your heart and soul into it; belt along with your favourite song, and it somehow takes a little of the weight off your shoulders. Playing music, writing music, is just as incredible; when you lose yourself in music, it opens up all the floodgates of emotion and lets everything free. Like when your leg falls asleep, and you suddenly use it again, and all the feeling comes rushing into your leg, tingling and pricking.

We let our souls fall asleep, and music wakes them up.

Rate Your Brother

My brother made me a "best sister" pin. It's adorable. He is the best brother ever.

But let's talk about RateMyProfessors.com. The concept is horrifying. Really. The idea of "rating" people just sounds like the perfect chance for people to be absolutely stupid and rude, and their poor, hard-working professors (most of which are actually human, I assure you) are the victims. It is the perfect chance for people to trash-talk their professors and show a whole lot of disrespect.

So when I found how useful the feedback from students was, I was amazed. It turns out that, while there are some of the expected "TH1S TEECHR SUXXXX!!!" sorts of posts (none that horrifying for any of the professors at my school, thankfully), the majority of the "ratings" are from civilised people who have made the connection between the intangibility of the internet and physical reality. The feedback students gave is actually useful: many students seem to be aware that no class is for everyone, and there is a lot of information from students as to how the professor runs the class and what kind of people would do well (or not) in it.

What was, to me, most interesting though, was seeing how a professor has changed. One professor in particular had a lot of negative feedback a few years ago, many students mentioning how moody and hard to communicate with s/he had been. Slowly, as I went backwards through the ratings (the oldest are on the last page), they got better. Students started to leave much more positive feedback, and the complaints of moodiness became less and less frequent until pretty much all the reviews were positive. It was amazing. Proof that people change, right there on some silly professor-rating website.

I like to think that's sort of how my feedback would look, if I had a "rate your Elizabeth" site. Lots of complaints of moodiness and irritability years ago, but progressing in the positive direction. I'm not sure about old feedback (Who knows, maybe I was nicer than I remember? People from my early childhood seem to remember me as nice, despite what I remember myself as), but I think that "best sister" pin says a lot. There may not have been much competition, but I don't think he would have made one for a mediocre sister. He may be sweet, but he's brutally honest.

If someone ever makes a "Rate Your Brother" site, my brother gets a perfect score.

The Technological Age

The interview went quite well! And, more importantly, my unpaid internship is now a soon-to-be-paying job. THANK GOD. Funny thing about college: it costs money!

Anyway, this whole social networking phenomenon is incredible. The way in which we connect and communicate has changed so dramatically in just a few short years, and it's continuing to change even more dramatically. The idea of "privacy" seems to be vanishing at an exponential rate. All you have to do is read someone's Twitter or Facebook, and BAM! You know everything you never wanted to know.

And while our society evolves so rapidly, our brains don't. Long, long ago, we learned that "real" things are the things we can physically sense. It worked. But now we've created this second reality, and it's not instinctive to connect this second reality to the physical reality we know.

People act differently on the internet than in person. Our brains don't connect what we see on our computer screens to the people we know in reality. Nor do we seem to connect that the things we put on that computer screen are travelling through intangible space to the people in reality. It is literally like a second life.

We say whatever we want on the internet. If it comes to our mind, we say it. The results of our online actions are not direct and therefore harder for our brain to connect. It's not like it can't; our brains are amazingly powerful, and are the reason we have such amazing technologies.

There is no self-control on the internet. And now, as the internet becomes our primary means of communication, we are losing self-control in our communication. I wouldn't blame anyone for feeling misanthropic after a few minutes on some of the nastier parts of the internet.

But technology hasn't just turned us into rampaging monkeys with no self-control (sorry monkeys!). Technology has suddenly turned everyone into a "photographer" or "musician" or something. Even people with no budget can create just about anything now it seems.

Case 1: My little brother's toys were all over the staircase today, and when they were nearly pushed aside by an unhappy foot, he wailed, "But I'm doing a shoot!!" Apparently, he's working on some stop animation movies. I'm a little worried that the (future) lawyer in the family is doing more filmmaking than the filmmaker (and the filmmaker is doing much more legal business than him, but he's only a kid, after all).

But on the other hand, people seem to think that having the equipment for something makes them a professional. Newsflash!: Taking a picture of a flower with your camera phone does not make you a photographer, like microwaving leftovers does not make you a cook, like amusing your carpet does not make you funny, like copy and paste does not make you a writer, like AutoTune does not make you a singer, like owning a car does not make you a race car driver, like being on stage does not make you an actor, like nice clothes do not make you nice, like matching your outfit does not make you a fashion designer, like owning a surfboard does not make you a surfer, like never giving more than your 18% of effort for something does not make you cool.

It really irritates me when people call themselves "photographers" after taking one poorly-lit, mediocre picture of a flower in their backyard. Worse, when they take 30 of these, and there's nearly no difference between the pictures. Photography, like all art, is not simply re-iteration; something has to happen between when the artist first takes in the information and when they share it with others. It requires thought and feeling and emotion.

If you want to be a photographer (or anything, this is just my example because I just happened to read someone claim to be a photographer on Facebook with unexciting pictures of flowers), you can. REALLY. You just have to want it. You have to work, have to fight, have to learn.

And that's what excites me and scares me more than anything about the internet and technology: how accessible learning is becoming-- and how easy it is becoming to "function" without ever learning.

Thinking

I have an interview later today. I had no idea how nervous I was until I completely blanked and panicked on my English quiz. I'm sure I knew all the answers, but my mind was a complete blank. Burnt out, no doubt, from all the constant thinking it has been doing:

1. College thinking! "Should I take English 1A over the summer? If I placed into a math class much higher than needed for my major, should I even take math? How am I going to come up with all these thousands of dollars? I need a perfect 4.0 in all my classes to transfer and get the scholarships I need, but I have to work as many hours as possible to save up money, but I'm supposed to be working on as many film projects as possible to give myself a leg up over other applicants and aspiring filmmakers, but AHHHHHHH!!"

2. Interview thinking! "Should I wear make-up? I never wear make up! What should I wear? Is red too strong of a colour? Should I wear the big, expensive-looking coat, or the cheap, possibly more professional-looking jacket? Where did all my artwork for my portfolio go? Why is my resume such crap? What do I do with my hair? Should I wear heels? I don't have any shoes to wear! What time was the interview again? What do I say? What if I look stupid? This is stupid!"

3. Food thinking! "I'm hungry. Why is there no food in my house?"

4. School thinking! "What do you mean we were supposed to read? Why are we still pretending like the school year isn't over? Final project?? WHAT??"

5. Work thinking! "Why can't I find this font? Did I scan that right? How do you work this machine again? Adobe CS1??? But I use CS4! What am I supposed to be doing??"

6. Thinking thinking! "What am I supposed to be thinking about?"

As you can see, I'm quite thoughtful. Wish me luck!

No One and Everyone

Hi. Let me introduce myself: I am no one and everyone. It is your pick.

You may leave, close this page, stop reading at any moment, and thus I am made no one.

Or you may read, lather yourself in my words, visit every day, and thus I am made everyone.

Regardless of your choice, I will keep writing. Today marks day one of a lifetime of day ones, of restarts, of failed projects and plans. My life begins today, as it does every day. A lifetime of failing to succeed or succeeding in failing will not stop me from writing another day one, from waking up again, ready to start again.

I am unprepared. I lack qualifications. I am competing against thousands who are leaps and bounds more worthy than me.

Today, I begin with an old idea, an old dream, not a new one. After eighteen years of new, failing dreams, I return to the oldest ones, the ones I gave up on when reality hit. Reality is overrated. It's boring. So, today, I return to the dreams I once gave up on. Today, I have the bright, wild, crazy, passionate, idealistic, unrealistic dreams of a child: I will change the world. I will save the world.

To be specific, for anyone can dream vague dreams, the first of those dreams is to become a filmmaker. I love art of all kind, and what better medium than film to capture all kinds of art in one eternal form? Film is magic. I was going to create these wonderful films, epic [Note that I mean "epic" as it relates to those great works of literature and oral tradition, not the watered-down "cool" version of the word.] tales of brave and mighty heroes with heart and soul and passion, fighting valiantly for what they believe in.

That was before I met Reality.

Ah, Reality. She seduced me, tricked me into giving her all of me. And then she broke my heart, that terrible, terrible woman! And yet, I couldn't leave. I kept coming back for more. Addicted! It was horrible. Luckily, I finally saw Reality for the liar she was and left her for good.

I'm going to create those films. All the stories I dreamed about as a kid, before I met Reality, will be preserved forever in the magic of film, in my very own art and words, in the hearts and souls of every person I can reach.

This is my dream. I hope you think I'm everyone.

-Elizabeth