Blog Note

For all the songs, the crappy blog frmat moved all the chord changes as far to left as possible, eliminating all correlation with the lyrics. Very Frustrating . . . .

If I Can't Have Your Lovin'

Bluesy & Fast-paced Strut
Standard Tuning
Key of E
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E7
Don’t Hurt Me
A7
Don’t Desert Me
E7 A7 E7
Please don’t leave me alone outside
B7
All I want is your lovin’
E7 A7 E7
Don’t you try to hide
A7 E7
Inside
A7 E7
Inside
A7 E7
Inside
B7 . . . Hold into next verse
I’m comin’ in


I won’t leave you
Girl I breath you
And I ask you to come home
All I need is your lovin’
I got it in my soul
O no
O no
O no
I got it now


Yea you found me
You unwound me
Babe you turned me into a man
I love your lovin’
It’s all that I demand
Your hand
Your hand
Your hand
Come give it to me


So what you say girl
Yea which way girl
Is it true that you tell me no
If I can’t have your lovin’
Then tell me who’s it for
A7 E7
Not me no more
A7 E7
Not me no more
A7 E7
Not me
A7 E7
Not me no more
A7 E7
No more
A7 E7
No more
A7 E7 Fade out/End
No more

Sweet Dirty Lovin'

Slow Blues (8 Bar)
Key of G
4/4 Time
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

G7
There’s a storm a brewin’

It’ll rattle your walls
C
And I won’t be there
C7
To hear your calls
G
Why don’t you bring your
D
Sweet Dirty Lovin’
G7 C G D7
On back to me

You know I love ya
Just like a man
But when we finish
I wanna do it all over again
Why don’t you bring you
Sweet Dirty Lovin’
On back to me

Well I got a woman
Way cross town
And if she hears ‘bout you
I know she’d put me down
Why don’t you bring your
Sweet Dirty Lovin’
On back to me

Now it ain’t easy
Bein’ true
But when you look like that
What am I supposed to do
Why don’t you bring your
Sweet Dirty Lovin’
On back to me

We keep this quiet
Just like a mouse
And then you bring yourself
Right back down to my house
Why don’t you bring your
Sweet Dirty Lovin’On back to me

Day & Nights

Moderate Tempo
Key of A
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A6 E (in beginning and between each verse and chorus)

Verse
A6 E
You welcomed me here
A6 E
With a smile and a chance to change
A6 E
Two days before my date of birth
D A6
We did speak

And there were days you pushed me down
Climbing trees and crossing streams
And we shared our first bottle of wine
And we cried

Chorus
D
If I left tomorrow
A
Would you leave today
D
Our days are all still at hand
C G
We are free
A6 E
Cause I gotta go
A6 E
And I gotta go
A6 E
Yes I gotta go
D A6
Right Now

Now we did meet in circumstance
Unknown to us for common sense
We did nothing but talk and laugh
Covered Inside

And in your eyes I tried my mind
Spent my time wrapped in your game
Waiting for the days to go
To be alone

You get more than all the rest
For you did hurt me to my bone
And if I did declare my dream
Well who knows

In the days we see ourselves
Is it hard to be yourself
Won’t you please come go along
Go with me
Cause I gotta go
And I gotta go
Yes I gotta go
Right Now

One night doing shots of rum
Tender traced in the other one
And leave through your lengthy step
I ask why

And you used to sing to me
And all we claimed was purity
Doing things in your special way
I still want you

You were such a sweet transition
So sweet and easy on my eyes
But in your pain you did not sleep
Waiting for me

If I was to come see you
As the man I am not the man I wanna be
Could you just hold me in your eyes
And keep from changing
Cause I gotta go
And I gotta go
Yes I gotta go
Right Now

Now I spent hours in my door
And waited to do nothing more
Shook me with your defiant roar
And I screamed no

As for you you have escaped
Left from my broken sight
I can only see you in the sleep
Of my nights

A6 E
And my days
And my nights
And my days
And my nights
And you get the idea . . . (not a lyric)

Personal Statement

My interest in songwriting has been a long standing love of mine. Since I first picked up a guitar at 14, I’ve been captivated at the possibility of writing and playing my own material. In some form or another, I’ve been doing just that since my early days of high school, both by myself and in front of other people. To me, there are few things more fulfilling than singing a song I wrote myself, for a crowd of people.

In my junior year of high school, I began becoming comfortable enough to share the songs I was writing with other people with the goal of forming a band to play true Rock & Roll music, not the standard monotony that’s been heard on the radio and MTV since the early 1980’s. My goal was to get a group centered around my songwriting in which I could take the spotlight off myself, have someone else sing the songs, playing the stand-out instrumentation, with me hiding behind a bass guitar off in the corner. Throughout the rest of high school, I was basically successful at doing just this, but it was deeply unsatisfying.

Since the start of college, I have been creatively preoccupied with enhancing my own horizons in literature, media, and music. The result has been a great enhancement in my ability to compose songs of meaning. In art, it is said, “To evoke emotion is to produce great art.” While I can’t vouch for my own work generating great emotion, I can state that is my goal and I see evidence in myself to see that I am making progress. I’ve begun singing and playing my own material, both solo and accompanied by others. I personally feel that this an important and pivotal step in my own songwriting evolution. Experiencing response to my own material as fist hand as possible allows me to see what works and where changes and improvements are needed. I have been a very studious learner in these recent performing experiences and have seen the potential for true growth in all I am trying to do.

My universal goal is to find ways to put soul back into the music the everyday person listens too. I want put the “roll” back in Rock. I want to wipe the music culture of today’s celebrity first status. I compose many different kinds of songs, many of which that come off sounding many different ways that can seem different from edgy to soulful, heartfelt to nasty. I want music to get back to a place where it is at forefront of cultural experimentation and I want to take it there if I have to pull on my own back. I know I am not where I need to be. But with some hard work and the right kind of path, I’m going to be a part of changing the face of modern music.

Introduction Letter

Dear_____________,

I am writing this letter to introduce myself and let you know of my interest in your company/business/opportunity/group/show. I am a songwriter who would love to be a part of what you guys are doing.

I currently trying to get a little more serious in the field. I know I’ve got what it takes to be successful for you guys in the short term, if not more so in the long term. Currently, I am on a job search around the business and I know it won’t be long before I find something that suits me. I’d prefer to come on and join you guys over anyone else as you seem to be about the same things I’m about

I’ve attached my resume and you can reach me at______ or all me at _______. I hope to you and am looking forward to the possibilities of what we can accomplish. Thank you for taking time out of your day.

Sincerely,


Matthew DeMicco

Blog 16

Desired Career: Songwriter

Writing Required: Songwriting
Music Composition
Self-Marketing Material (Early on)
Anything that could make you seem different/interesting from the cluster of
Other Creative pieces to take your mind off the stress of your "work"

Final Process Narrative

I flip open my lighter and torch a cigarette, dragging it hard until my lungs fill with smoke. For the next five minutes, I’ll smoke this cigarette as anyone else would, taking indulgent rips on the end of the filter until it is ready to be flicked from my finger tips. I won’t consciously think about each inhalation that I undergo every few dozen seconds anymore than I would of every other breath I take. My doing it just happens naturally in my mind and is implemented through my hands, out into the world. This is my writing process personified. I think about what I will write beforehand as much as I think about smoking that cigarette beforehand. I get a feeling that strikes me and I can’t shake it free. In the case of writing, that thought will be put on the page in the mood with which I found it. In the case of a cigarette, it’ll be smoked in the mood with which I desired it. Both methods are raw and emotion driven. And just like emotion, it cannot be controlled. It may be possible to control how one’s emotions are perceived by others; but, on the inside, no one can eradicate a feeling that’s washed over and hit them like a tidal wave. And as I dive into that emotional pool, a hunger to interpret what I feel creatively almost always appears; and then I write. If I feel raunchy, then it comes out as though my tongue is a whip. If I feel lonely, then it could be a personal arrangement of existential despair. No matter what it is I’m feeling or whatever mood I may be in, my writing reflects it in a way that is both narration and creation brought to life with the subconscious and direction.

For the five years or so that I have been interested in writing, and have essentially enjoyed it, it’s always been about the “doing” and not about planning at all. Any academic piece of writing I do, such as the Literacy Narrative, is essentially the product of flat out procrastination and then, the night before the paper is due, writing the whole thing out from start to finish, encompassing editing in the entire process. There is no prewriting and pre-thought is basically, but not entirely, non-existent.

I will not dismiss the act of thinking before hand with academic writing, because I know it happens sometimes. On some occasions I will think about what I might do with an assignment when it’s being assigned, days before I write it, or even the hours leading up to when I know I’ll have to (usually the day before it’s due). With academic writing, it is written as though I were playing a game of Russian roulette, for I rarely proofread after I have completed it either, as I am just thrilled with the thought that I have finished the wretched thing and don’t have to touch it again. It may not be the best way to write for a grade, but I have been doing it this way for a very long time and can’t complain too much about the results.

I write creatively for personal reasons quite often. I typically keep a notebook on me at all times specifically for making sure I don’t let some idea I have go to waste by relying on my suspect memory. By far, the things I write the most are poem/songs. I lump them together because if I can play music as an accompaniment and recite or sing it, than it is a song. If can’t, then it is a poem. I’d say I will write down some line or a stanza of something about three times a day. I average a piece that I like and go back to or play about once a week. That’s not to say I get good things once a week but rather, some block of days I’ll get as many as three or four things (the extreme) I complete and deem as acceptable and then I will go a month (another extreme) without doing anything worth noting.

The process I go through for poems/songs is the best representation of my writing process as a whole. Around Thanksgiving this past year, I had been drinking lightly and was hanging around the fringes of being drunk. It was late and I sat down in bed and picked up my notebook, for I had a case of “Mama, you’ve been on my mind” for a lovely young lady I had been spending time with. I knew I had to get something out on the page and all of it just came to me fairly quickly. The first thing I wrote stayed as the first line of the piece, followed by the second, then the third, etc. I wrote the rest accordingly, stopping only to get the right word or phrasing here and there. I’d say the whole thing, totaling about 20 lines, took just under ten minutes. I then set my book down and went about the rest of my night. Afterwards, I did ditch the whole last stanza but the rest of the piece remains untouched, except for the last line of the first verse (it made me sound like a giant second grader). With this work, I simply tapped into a mood I felt strongly and interpreted it as poignantly as I could with a pen and paper. Furthermore, I do believe that the slight amount of alcohol in my system did help the process by allowing me to eliminate and self-consciousness that I would have with my own words. It sort of “lubricated” the composition of the piece.

My writing process is no stranger to different substances one would use to seek inspiration. One of the more significant pieces (significant to me that is) I’ve written came along under the influence of relatively popular “vegetable.” I was over a friend’s house well into the morning hours before finally heading home. When I finally arrived I immediately grabbed that same notebook and went to work. Filled with a particular feeling of determination and a desire for self growth, I wrote a very personally powerful piece. It is entirely driven by two things: 1) my need to “turn a corner” as a person and 2) the emotion that had derived from the influence I was under and the thoughts that influence had provoked. Like the aforementioned poem/song piece, “A Transition” was composed in entirely one attempt and, although I have tried to improve upon it since, I have lacked the ability to find anything better to include or replace other lines with. It is as though my ability to feel the way I felt in that moment or perhaps even to be that version of myself that I was died the moment I deemed the piece finished and closed my notebook and walked away from it. Even in the case of revising an already existing piece, my ability to create things I am satisfied with has never been something I can tap into.

Beyond poems/songs, I write short stories here and there. One that really sticks out in my mind was about my father dying five or so years down the road and how I would deal with it. I wrote this about a year ago in two separate sittings (two separate sittings = giant leap forward for my clogging funnel of a writing process) about half a week apart. The piece totals about 5000 words. Overall, I like what the story does but I can’t stand the ending and would love to change it. I’d also like to fill it out more if possible. I’ve tried to do both (especially change that horrific ending) around a dozen times I’d say over the past 12 months. I can’t get anything at all. Everything that I have gone and done to it has been awful. Where the original is so full of that raw emotion and mood I’ve been going on about, every revision has this fake, Disney feel like I’m writing for twelve year olds. I can’t get any of the realness that I sought after and attained in the first take. There is the one segment where I describe my brother picking me up from the train station and how neither of us is talking about what’s actually happened and why I’m home. I’ve tried to put dialogue in it and it just never takes. It’s like oil and water. No matter what I do to the story, I have yet to find anything that gives it some much needed improvement.

It’s hard for me to consciously tap into the mood I need to complete writing I’m proud of. My writing process is driven by what I feel and what is happening around me in that moment. This form of composition is not the most trustworthy or effective in getting results. As one who aspires to write and become more accomplished in it, obviously I’d like to refine the way I do things. Even with this piece, it was composed entirely in order and edited in order. For my academic writing, I am generally satisfied with what I do. There are exceptions. With this piece (and other‘s of a similar nature), I do see the value of me putting all I can into it, but my very rigid process does limit my ability to get everything out. In my own personal writing, I have the ability to put things on paper I like, but can’t clean them up enough. I’d like to develop my writing to a point of where I have more control. I’d like to be able to tap into my capability to “write well” Even now, as I type these very words, there is an air of “not quite doing it,” that I can’t shake. It’s not that the process doesn’t serve me well at all; it just doesn’t every time I need it.

I would definitely like to have a more conscious control of my writing process. I like to write and would be satisfied in doing it in some form or another, as part of a career. I personally don’t feel that I am capable of doing this with the place I am as writer now, though. I need control and drive. It does appear to be somewhat of an advantage to have the roots of my process be subconscious. It allows me to pull in all the things that influence me, no matter how little an influence they are, that are around me without having to deal with too much a filter. It lets me step outside my mind, if only for just a while. But I want a more conscious effort and the ability to change my own words effectively. By reading my classmates’ drafts, I now find that I need to certainly have a more accomplished editing process and maybe dabble in some prewriting; somewhat of a whole writing process rework. Will it happen? Maybe, and I hope so. I’d love to work at it (and work at it consciously) but that hasn’t been my method so far. I’ll need to get some drive, inspiration, and maybe a little liquor. Well, maybe more than just a little.

Things to tell me about:
did i just talk to much about the works rather than the process
does it read well
did you like it
is it terrible
does my theme match the evidence i presented
suggest a conclusion maybe?
anything else you think . . .
you can ignore these and just go too

Note: I did not entirely finish but almost
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I flip open my lighter and torch a cigarette, dragging it hard until my lungs fill with smoke. For the next five minutes, I’ll smoke this cigarette as anyone else would, taking indulgent rips on the end of the filter until it is ready to be flicked from my finger tips. I won’t consciously think about each inhalation that I undergo every few dozen seconds anymore than I would of every other breath I take. My doing it just happens naturally in my mind and is implemented through my hands, out into the world. This is my writing process personified. I think about what I will write beforehand as much as I think about smoking that cigarette beforehand. I get a feeling that strikes me and I can’t shake it free. In the case of writing, that thought will be put on the page in the mood with which I found it. In the case of a cigarette, it’ll be smoked in the mood with which I desired it. Both methods are raw and emotion driven. And just like emotion, it cannot be controlled. It may be possible to control how one’s emotions are perceived by others; but, on the inside, no one can eradicate a feeling that’s washed over and hit them like a tidal wave. And as I dive into that emotional pool, a hunger to interpret what I feel creatively almost always appears; and then I write. If I feel raunchy, then it comes out as though my tongue is a whip. If I feel lonely, then it could be a personal arrangement of existential despair. No matter what it is I’m feeling or whatever mood I may be in, my writing reflects it in a way that is both narration and creation brought to life with the subconscious and direction.

For the five years or so that I have been interested in writing, and have essentially enjoyed it, it’s always been about the “doing” and not about planning at all. Any academic piece of writing I do, such as the Literacy Narrative, is essentially the product of flat out procrastination and then, the night before the paper is due, writing the whole thing out from start to finish only stopping so I may glance at the television. There is no prewriting and pre-thought is basically, but not entirely, non-existent. I will not dismiss the act of thinking before hand with academic writing, because I know it happens sometimes. On some occasions I will think about what I might do with an assignment when it’s being assigned, days before I write it, or even the hours leading up to when I know I’ll have to (usually the day before it’s due). With academic writing, it is written as though I were playing a game of Russian roulette, for I rarely proofread after I have completed either as I am just thrilled with the thought that I have finished the wretched thing and don’t have to touch it again. It may not be the best way to write for a grade, but I have been doing it this way for a very long time and can’t complain too much about the results.

I write creatively for personal reasons quite often. I typically keep a notebook on me at all times specifically for making sure I don’t let some idea I have go to waste by relying on my suspect memory. By far, the things I write the most are poem/songs. I lump them together because if I can play music as an accompaniment and recite or sing it, than it is a song. If can’t, then it is a poem. I’d say I will write down some line or a stanza of something about three times a day. I average a piece that I like and go back to or play about once a week. That’s not to say I get good things once a week but rather, some block of days I’ll get as many as three or four things I complete and deem as acceptable and then I will go a month without doing anything worth noting.

The process I go through for poems/songs is the best representation of my writing process as a whole. Around Thanksgiving this past year, I had been drinking lightly and was hanging around the fringes of being drunk. It was late and I sat down in bed and picked up my notebook, for I had a case of “Mama, you’ve been on my mind” for a lovely young lady I had been spending time with. I knew I had to get something out on the page and all of it just came to me fairly quickly. The first thing I wrote, “Your smile greets me like the sunrise on my doorstep,” stayed as the first line of the piece and I wrote the rest accordingly, stopping only to get the right word or phrasing here and there. I’d say the whole thing, totaling about 20 lines took just under ten minutes. I then set my book down and went about the rest of my night. Afterwards, I did ditch the whole last stanza but the rest of the piece remains untouched, except for the last line of the first verse. With this work, I simply tapped into a mood I felt strongly and interpreted it as poignantly as I could with a pen and paper. Furthermore, I do believe that the slight amount of alcohol in my system did help the process by allowing me to eliminate and self-consciousness that I would have with my own words. It sort of “lubricated” the composition of the piece.

My writing process is no stranger to different substances one would use to seek inspiration. One of the more significant pieces (significant to me that is) I’ve written came along under the influence of relatively popular “vegetable.” I was over a friends house well into the morning hours before finally heading home. When I finally arrived I immediately grabbed that same notebook and went to work. Filled with a particular feeling of determination and a desire for self growth, I wrote a very personally powerful piece. It is entirely driven by two things: 1) my need to “turn a corner” as a person and 2) the emotion that had derived from the influence I was under and the thoughts that influence had provoked. Like the aforementioned piece, “A Transition” was composed in entirely one attempt and although I have tried to improve upon it since, I have lacked the ability to find anything better to include or replace other lines with. It is as though my ability to feel the way I felt in that moment or perhaps even to be that version of myself that I was died the moment I deemed the piece finished and closed my notebook and walked away from it. Even in the case revising an already existing piece, my ability to create things I am satisfied with has never been something I can tap into.

Beyond poems/songs, I also like writing short stories here and there. One that really sticks out in my mind was about my father dying five or so years down the road and how I would deal with it. I wrote this about a year ago in two separate sittings (that’s a real big deal in my case) about half a week apart. The piece totals about 5000 words. Overall, I like what the story does but I can’t stand the ending. I’d also like to fill it out more if possible. I’ve tried to do both (especially change that horrific ending) around a dozen times I’d say over the past 12 months. I can’t get anything at all. Everything that I have gone and done to it has been awful. Where the original is so full of that raw emotion and mood I’ve been going on about, every revision has this fake, Disney feel like I’m writing for twelve year olds. I can’t get any of the realness that I sought after and attained in the original. There is the one segment where I describe my brother picking me up from the train station and how neither of us are talking about what’s actually happened and why I’m home. I’ve tried to put dialogue in it and it just never takes. It’s like oil and water.

Blog 13

Charney's Overall theme: to review relevant educational and psychological research on reading regarding the problems hypertexts can pose.

-the more cohesive the text the easier it is for readers to create a good mental representation
-people rely on structure and expectations to decide on what's important
-readers rely on the writer to tell them what they should really know
-readers are not good at assesing the adequacy of the information they have encountered
-reader's preferred learning methods may determine how well they use hypertext
-dependence on patterns creates a contradiction between creativity and "normalizing"

Blog 11 Revisited

For my literacy process work, I still don't have a solid idea what I want to do with it. Here are some of my jumping points and detail ideas:

-Talk about individual events where a similar procedure but the details surrounding my composition of a work are compared and contrasted, highlighting what worked and what didn't.

-Gather information a series of different moving writing process' that I take notice of and breakdown basically as they're happening.

My writing process can be broken down as following:

Personal Writing
Observe something that inspires me, be it in person, on a screen, in my ears etc.
Take that inspiration and begin to rapidly brainstorm, sometimes on paper.
Write it. just get out everything I can before the fuel runs out.
Leave it. Come back later. Fix what I see can be better if I have something better.

Academic Writing
Get assignment and give it some immediate thought that is never recorded.
Procrastinate
Deadline is very close. Do entire paper in one fell swoop. typically with no post editing and never
any prewriting.
Hand in.

Both of these ways of writing are typically effective for me but also frustrating. The former, because I have no control over it and anytime I force my creative writing I get crap; and the latter, because I'm always pulling all nighters and that's annoying.

This my my very simplified and generalized writing process.

Blog 12

Going in to the editing of m Literacy narrative, I was looking forward to changing quite a bit in my paper to make it have more the focus the original assignment asked for. Now, a week after handing it in, I don't think I changed enough. My whole conclusion was basically stripped and redone. I ditched the whole "writing proclamation" last paragraph and really built up the problem's that I have. I'm happy with this change. However, where I should have more clearly stated my focus throughout the body of my paper, I simply made simple modifications to different sentences and themes. I still think my paper works and is good, but not good enough. I'm sure it's clear I'm very constricted about it.

Blog 11

My Literacy process is simple. It is always one of or a combination of the falling things:

1) I hear or see something that I really dig and am inspired create something of my own off it.

2) I take some intoxicant and get in a "mood" I can go with and come up with a least the skeleton of an idea I almost always seem to like. (This is usually my most effective process)

3) I am under pressure to do a paper or something of that nature bacuase it's due like tomorrow and I just pump it out all on a whim, usually without any revision.

Note: I never prewrite. In my own works that I do for me in my time I do revise but only if I come up with something I like. I never force it.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Me And Writing

For 20 years, I’ve lived entire life to get to this moment right now. I haven’t necessarily spent all that time building up to write my climatic literacy narrative for my Writing class, but rather, all I have is this moment right now. The same will be true in ten years and then, should I do this exercise again, I would certainly write a drastically different piece. As for my relationship with reading and writing, it can be summed up in 2 simple stages in my young life: 1) A long “Dark Age” with small increments of notable material - and - 2) A still existing renaissance that started about 5 years ago. Since this mental “rebirth” of the written word (and language in general) within me, I find myself constantly reshaping the way I perceive everyday. As for the purposes of this paper, I will present the logical evolution in my literacy development as well as my own memory allows. Furthermore, I will begin at the beginning.
My earliest memories of reading and writing are few and far between. My earliest, I couldn’t have been more than 4 for. Every night before bed, my mother read me the same Thomas the Tank Engine picture book. Eventually, I would read it to her. I had not mastered reading at such a young age; I simply had it memorized.
A few years later, I’d say around age 7, I was working in my phonics book in school. My teacher asked the class to turn to page whatever. As usual, she asked if anyone wanted to try to read the directions (my class and I was learning to read around this time as well). I raised my hand and said I would try. I read those directions like I had been reading for years and received three gold stars for it. It was pretty epic.
Around the same time as the direction reading affair, I was in the car with my mother and the radio was on. Some generic 90’s College Rock song was on that I happened to like at the time. When I arrived home, the melody was still in my head so I did something I now find very interesting; I wrote my own words to the tune. I wrote a song. I vaguely remember the lyrical content being about some baseball players I was a fan of and the girl across the street I had a huge crush on then, but I can’t recall specifics. I’d give quite a bit today, to have that piece of paper I scribbled that chicken scratch song onto. Unfortunately, it was probably disposed of within the few days after it was written.
Flash forward a few years and you’d find I had moved once, grown a lot, and developed a knack for not doing my homework. You would also find me, at least on one evening, in my parent’s kitchen, crying. What 5th grader wants to do a book report? As you’ve probably guessed, certainly not me at the time. I remember I had barely read the book I had to report on and my paper had almost reached the two page requirement, when my mother asked to proofread it. As soon as I handed it over, I knew trouble was on the horizon. “You have to rewrite this. There are mistakes everywhere.” Already fed up with this stupid book report, I wouldn’t have it. I got very angry first, but when that didn’t get my way, I began to cry. The last thing I wanted to do was rewrite that damn report. In the end, I lost. The paper was rewritten.
There would be a long gap in between this event of significance and the next. In that time, I moved again, went through all of middle school, got a whole new set of friends three different times and changed the person I was every four or five months. I was a very confused young adolescent. But then, like a beacon shining out over the sea on only the stormiest of nights, I found someone real to me. I was a Sophomore in high school. I was typically angry all the time, misunderstood. I had acne. I was to skinny. I hated wearing eye glasses. School was going awful. I felt terrible. I met Holden Caulfield.
It cannot overstated how much The Catcher in the Rye changed and reshaped me. Up until I read that book, I hated reading and writing. The deepest thoughts I had were what was I doing after school. Then, all of a sudden, I found myself engulfed in what this fictional kid, a year older than me had to say about a few measly days in his life. I finished the book the day after I received it. I went crazy. I reshaped every thought I had ever had. It’s harder to explain than it is to understand, but I believe it is best described as a change in direction. My ideas were reinforced by the prospect that others who read the book told me that Holden reminded them of me. I was completely reinvented. I quit the terrible band I was in and started playing by myself, and writing my own songs. I began reading every book I could get my hands on, at least if they seemed like books Holden would approve of. It was around this time I began to drink and go to parties and really expand myself socially. It all happened in an instant and yet it took more than a year. More significantly, I now know had only made a small leap in where I wanted to be. I wanted to write and I loved music. I wanted to write songs. But I hated that high school heart ache bar chord terrible monotone screaming no talent bull shit that I was listening too. I needed something else to give me something more. I found it in what I think is the greatest way I could have.
I had tried smoking marijuana well before the start of my senior year of high school. I did it once in a while but it was only casually and with no real developed taste for it. Two close friends of mine asked me early on in Senior year if I was interested in going out with them one night. When they picked me up, I asked where we were going. They said we were just going to drive around and as we left my neighborhood, I was handed a joint to smoke. After getting well away from the main roads we each lit up simultaneously and I heard the sound of a voice I’ll never forget hearing for the first time. “I dig a pygmy by Charles Halltree on the deaf-aids! Phase One in which Doris gets her oats!” That was all it took. John Lennon’s gibberish at the beginning of the Beatles’ album opened the door for Let It Be to kill me on the inside and left every pore of my skin to be filled up by the rest of the albums that follow. Revolver, The White Album, Abbey Road, Rubber Soul. I couldn’t get enough and the three of us at least a few nights a week met up and let them blow our minds all over again. We’d roll a few joints, get in a car, put on whatever we wanted to listen to. Soon, Pink Floyd, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel (among others), joined the party. It was a great awakening for all three of us and any others who joined us on random occasions. And yet I still had so much left to learn.
By the time 2007 approached, I had some direction. I wrote sparingly, mostly short stories and little pieces of songs. I began reading the classics. Tolstoy, Joyce, Hemingway all now graced my bookshelf. But unfortunately, I could not write a thing that I enjoyed or was happy with. It got worse as my high school graduation approached and I became more removed from being a student. That summer I wrote almost nothing and as college approached, I wanted nothing to do with a classroom. As my first semester progressed, I began hearing a name I always knew about, but never cared much for, all over the place. He was being mentioned in my lectures in class. He was showing up in different things I read about. He was all over the “composer” spot on the music on my computer. He was Bob Dylan.
I had never really given Bob Dylan any kind of a fair shake in my headphones. He was this enigma I knew was important in the music world who wrote ridiculous songs and couldn’t sing worth a dime. Basically, I didn’t know the guy’s work, except for a few songs that were real famous that basically everyone has heard a few times. But I made a conscious decision around this time to seek out Dylan’s work and at first I was unimpressed. His voice did annoy me. And the songs sounded like word vomit that I couldn’t grab on to. Still, I knew something was there. I pressed on listening and was rewarded like I have never been rewarded before. I can now say more than two years later that Bob Dylan has and still does ruin music and the English language for me. With Bob, I discovered how to write like me (which can sometimes seem like I am writing like him). I can be irreverent, descriptive, forceful, or tender whenever I am inclined to do so.
One of my problems, however, has been my lack of control in my ability to write. If I am not inspired to do so, I don’t. Without a creative emotion that I’m feeling, I can’t put it out onto paper. This, of course, is only with personal and creative writing. Academic writing is helped along by the idea that I have deadlines to reach. Lately another thing troubling my mind has been my lack of originality. Just recently, I’ve started creating my own based entirely off other pieces that really struck we well. This includes songs, poems, movies, books, things friends have said, my brother and it’s been quite unnerving. The only thing that gives me solace in this is a quote by Leo Tolstoy I heard sometime ago. “Good poets imitate. Great Poets Steal.”
I love writing. I write with rhythm and I always seek out correlation in my work. I bring things full circle if I can. I write songs about the things I do and poems about things I don’t understand. I want to write books. I want to write a movie. In the end, My goal is to be able to write freely; free from the constraints of everyone else and free the constraints of my own head. When push comes to shove, I just want to write.

Blog 7

For all these long winded research essays we read, I couldn't take much from any of them. It just isn't in my nature to learn that way. I read them, almost in their entirety and got the gist of what each one was saying. The fact is, the authors of each of these only have a slight idea what they are talking about. They, like any other person in relation to writing, can only see it as far as their own perspective allows them, no further. All the research in the world can't change what each commentator has been through from birth up until the moment they finished their critique. Because writing must be something experienced. It isn't tangible or malleable, except for in one's own mind. It is one of the most existential concepts man has; the written word. It's impossible to put someone in the middle of reading Breakfest at Tiffany's by telling them what the story is about. Even seeing the movie doesn't convey the tempo and mood of each sentence and paragraph that hit Truman Capote's typewriter so many times over. Perhaps more significant is, every draft he wrote was a window into his mind, if only for a brief moment and; it is the only window that can stand out longer than the moment his thoughts are spoken from his mouth. Writing is a wonderful, eerie, unperfected, ridiculous form of expression. Anyone who thinks they really understand it, can't really understand much.

Literacy Draft

For 20 years, I’ve lived entire life to get to this moment right now. I haven’t necessarily spent all that time building up to write my climatic literacy narrative for my Writing class, but rather, all I have is this moment right now. The same will be true in ten years and then, should I do this exercise again, I would certainly write a drastically different piece. As for my relationship with reading and writing, it can be summed up in 2 simple stages in my young life: 1) A long “Dark Age” with small increments of notable material - and - 2) A still existing renaissance that started about 5 years ago. Since this mental “rebirth” of the written word (and language in general) within me, I find myself constantly reshaping the way I perceive every day. As for the purposes of this paper, I will directly relate my developments in literacy with my reaching the age of reason, as well as; I will present the logical evolution in my literacy development as well as my own memory allows. Furthermore, I will begin at the beginning.
My earliest memories of reading and writing are few and far between. My earliest, I couldn’t have been more than 4 for. Every night before bed, my mother read me the same Thomas the Tank Engine picture book. Eventually, I would read it to her. I had not mastered reading at such a young age; I simply had it memorized.
A few years later, I’d say around age 7, I was working in my phonics book in school. My teacher asked the class to turn to page whatever. As usual, she asked if anyone wanted to try to read the directions (my class and I were learning to read around this time as well). I raised my hand and said I would try. I read those directions like I had been reading for years and received three gold stars for it. It was pretty epic.
Around the same time as the direction reading affair, I was in the car with my mother and the radio was on. Some generic 90’s College Rock song was on that I happened to like at the time. When I arrived home, the melody was still in my head so I did something I now find very interesting; I wrote my own words to the tune. I wrote a song. I vaguely remember the lyrical content being about some baseball players I was a fan of and the girl across the street I had a huge crush on then, but I can’t recall specifics. I’d give quite a bit today, to have that piece of paper I scribbled that chicken scratch song onto. Unfortunately, it was probably disposed of within the few days after it was written.
Flash forward a few years and you’d find I had moved once, grown a lot, and developed a knack for not doing my homework. You would also find me, at least on one evening, in my parent’s kitchen, crying. What 5th grader wants to do a book report? As you’ve probably guessed, I certainly didn’t at the time. I remember I had barely read the book I had to report on and my paper had almost reached the two page requirement, when my mother asked to proofread it. As soon as I handed it over, I knew trouble was on the horizon. “You have to rewrite this. There are mistakes everywhere.” Already fed up with this stupid book report, I wouldn’t have it. I got very angry first, but when that didn’t get my way, I began to cry. The last thing I wanted to do was rewrite that damn report. In the end, I lost. The paper was rewritten.
There would be a long gap in between this event of significance and the next. In that time, I moved again, went through all of middle school, got a whole new set of friends three different times and changed the person I was every four or five months. I was a very confused young adolescent. But then, like a beacon shining out over the sea on only the stormiest of nights, I found someone real to me. I was a Sophomore in high school. I was typically angry all the time, misunderstood. I had acne. I was to skinny. I hated wearing eye glasses. School was going awful. I felt terrible. I met Holden Caulfield.
It cannot be overstated how much The Catcher in the Rye changed and reshaped me. Up until I read that book, I hated reading and writing. The deepest thoughts I had were what was I doing after school. Then, all of a sudden, I found myself engulfed in what this fictional kid a year older than me had to say about a few measly days in his life. I finished the book the day after I received it. I went crazy. I reshaped every thought I had ever had. It’s harder to explain than it is to understand, but I believe it is best described as a change in direction. My ideas were reinforced by the prospect that others who read the book told me that Holden reminded them of me. I was completely reinvented. I quit the terrible band I was in and started playing by myself, and writing my own songs. I began reading every book I could get my hands on, at least if they seemed like books Holden would approve of. It was around this time I began to drink and go to parties and really expand myself socially. It all happened in an instant and yet it took more than a year. More significantly, I now know had only made a small leap in where I wanted to be. I wanted to write and I loved music. I wanted to write songs. But I hated that high school heart ache bar chord terrible monotone screaming no talent bull shit that I was listening too. I needed something else to give me something more. I found it in what I think is the greatest way I could have.
I had tried smoking marijuana well before the start of my senior year of high school. I did it once in a while but it was only casually and with no real developed taste for it. Two close friends of mine asked me early on in senior year if I was interested in going out with them one night. When they picked me up, I asked where we were going. They said we were just going to drive around and as we left my neighborhood, I was handed a joint to smoke. After getting well away from the main roads we each lit up simultaneously and I heard the sound of a voice I’ll never forget hearing for the first time. “I dig a pygmy by Charles Halltree on the deaf-aids! Phase one in which Doris gets her oats!” That was all it took. John Lennon’s gibberish at the beginning of the Beatles’ album Let It Be killed me on the inside and left every pore of my skin to be filled up by the rest of the album that follows. Other Beatle albums followed: Revolver, the White Album, Abbey Road, Rubber Soul. I couldn’t get enough and the three of us at least a few nights a week met up and let them blow our minds all over again. We’d roll a few joints, get in a car, put on whatever we wanted to listen to, and get high as hell. Soon, Pink Floyd, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel (among others), joined the party. It was a great awakening for all three of us and any others who joined us on random occasions. And yet I still had so much left to learn.

Literacy Method Notes

My writing process consists completely of moments of inspiration. I used to let them waste away when, due to lack of motivation, but I’ve wised up. I can only write anything of value to me when I’m emotionally/psychologically/aesthetically/sub-consciously inclined to do so. I have no control over it, although having my mind tinged a bit doesn’t hurt. That’s really it. I don’t do a lot of pen exercising.

Literacy Narrative Themes

Personal Growth. That’s my theme. At every stage I’ve had some breakthrough with reading and writing, it’s generally lent itself to helping me grow as a person. Whether I was 4 years old with that Thomas the Tank Engine book I memorized, or if I was 15 and with friends out and about, spending time with the influences of our influences. I arrived at this theme listening to music in my room. With Funkadelic in my ear (I was enjoying the title track of their best album, Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow), I realized that I wanted to be real (Hence, why I brought it up in class). The stories I will use to be this real are:

Childhood:
Thomas the Tank Engine Book, Reading the directions when no one else could, the Pokémon game boy games, reading the sports section with the cat

Turning Point:
The Let It Be Affairs in the Mustang, The Smokey Car Jamboree, My first poem, Dylan ruining music and words for me forever, Sitting in that stream/Make You, Finding how to use the mood and the inspiration… Yep

Blog 2

As I read the socially driven theory on writing, I saw a lot of relative ideas in it to me. It made sense. Now this may be because it was simply easier to read, but for our purposes lets just say it clicked logically with me (at least more than the hardwired writing theory). I really recognized the idea that one's association with reading and writing could be directly related to a few isolated situations ion one's early life. This makes sense to me cause it comes as no surprise to me. In many psychological studies in recent years, it is found that trauma in one's young childhood is one of the largest factor that shapes their adult self. It's a kicker really, your parents can only do you harm it seems . . . Besides the fact that this was 14 times easier to read than our previous assignment, I also liked the ideas about the stereotype of literacy. It definately has at least some merit. The guy that can't read is typically looked at as the guy who doesn't bath, and in truth, the two are not mutually exclusive. Yea.

Blog 1

I did not enjoy reading the information about writing being hardwired in people. The idea of this really interested me, but I can't stand reading research papers as much as I can't stand writing them. The part that really did catch my attention though, was the micro stuff I was assigned to read. The idea that writing evolved along with the rest of us is an idea that I find intriguing and could see as real possibility in how we have gotten to this point. I don't know if writing is a naturally ordained trait the evolved human possesses, but if it is, this theory certainly makes sense to me. Overall, all the content in this is very interesting but very uninterestedly presented.

Gigantic

See the movie Gigantic starring Paul Dano. It came out a couple years ago and it's ridiculous. Just watch it and you will know