Categories
Music Personal

On 8th Grade Music.

I have a pretty big catalog of music, or at least I think I do. I know it pales in comparison to some real music fans who have devoted much more time than I have to their collections. I have been thinking about when I actually started really getting into music. That brings me to 8th grade. That’s as far back as I can remember when I started seriously listening, examining, and enjoying music.  I decided to extract my top 5 albums that stand the test of time. These were awesome back then and are still amazing even now. I must clear up that these albums may have not been released when I was in 8th grade, these are simply when I discovered them. Also, they have no place value.

Weezer – Blue Album

Weezer – Green Album

The Ataris – Blue Skies, Broken Hearts…Next 12 Exits

The Strokes – Is This It

Coldplay – Parachutes

If you have never listened to these I highly recommend them. I plan on doing more of these. It’s really a chance to connect with a younger me and make awesome musical suggestions. Well, I did it. 2 posts in one week. Hopefully this makes up for my lack of post the week before.

Categories
Personal

On my horrible inefficiency.

Well kids, I already failed. I was aware of it the whole time too. I don’t know why I find it so hard to just sit down and write something. It really isn’t bad. Instead of giving up I am going to try to write two blog posts this week. I hope that will make amends! I don’t have any real place for these pictures so I am just going to spread them throughout this article with no rhyme or reason. They are just Purdue after a snow. It’s not record breaking snow and nothing really noteworthy about them save the snow.

Snow!

So, I thought I would use this article to explain my blog process, since I can’t seem to settle on anything this week. Basically I have like a million things per day I would love to write about. For whatever reason I feel the need to flesh everything out and make it into a novel. It really doesn’t need to be and there probably would be a lot more content on here if I just wrote little mini posts more often. That’s kind what this resolution is about though, figuring out a more effective and efficient process.

Purdue Memorial Snownion!

Basically, my current procedure involves this:

  1. Think of an idea.
  2. Explore that idea.
  3. Get really excited about it.
  4. Record it in a place to be remembered later.
  5. Don’t look at it for weeks.
  6. Try to write the post.
  7. Write the opening sentence.
  8. Never write sentence two.
  9. Repeat.

Campus and Snow

The really long blogs, the ones I actually like, are basically thought of and written within a very short time. I really need to cut down on the latency between thought and writing, it keeps things fresh. Well this was boring, but I will have a MUCH better blog hopefully tonight or tomorrow morning. It’s a music one!

Categories
Personal Philosophy

On Art.

This is another attempt at writing this post. It never seems to have the legs to go the distance. It’s not a matter of knowing what I want to say, it’s a matter of organizing it into a cohesive post without it going every which where. The basic premise is my definition of art.

Art is many things to many people. You could make the argument that just about anything is art, and you wouldn’t be wrong. It’s really a matter of interpretation. For me art is derived from the human experience. It’s the manifestation of placing a cage around a large, nebulous matter. Art for me needs to be the conveyance of some emotion, even if the emotion is not a deep one. That’s about as much of a dotted line I can draw around what art is. I don’t think art is confined to a specific set of items, such as paintings, poems, and sculptures. Art can find it’s way into just about anything you can think of.

That brings me to my subtopic of this, and that is the declarations that only certain things can be art. I think that’s extremely short sighted. I don’t mean to beat the video game horse to death, but this has been hotly disputed for a while now. To me I don’t see how you can’t consider (some) video games art. Just as poems, books, and paintings draw the viewer into their world and inspire thoughts, feelings, and emotions so too do video games. One doesn’t even have to look that far to find examples. Take Final Fantasy VII, you will be hard pressed to find a hardcore gamer who doesn’t have fond memories of this. When Aeris dies there is at least some part of you that is moved. Some people were affected so much that there is hacks to bring her back into the game. My point is that defining art to such a narrow view will really keep you from seeing so many beautiful things around you.

Well, that in a nutshell is my definition of art. How does yours differ? I’d love to hear what you think art is defined as. Drop me a comment below!