TOW #21 - Lin-Manuel Miranda is Awesome

     Puerto Rican Lin-Manuel Miranda, writer for a Broadway show that is sold-out for months in advance, amazing rapper and freestyler, is possibly one of the coolest people ever. In honor of his awesomeness, I’ve decided to read an article about this show. In his article, The Case for Hamilton as Album of the Year, Spencer Kornhaber pulls quotes from songs and compares Lin Miranda, the lead and writer of Hamilton, to other artists in order to argue for Hamilton as the album of the year by rhetorically analyzing it.
     Like any good piece of rhetorical analysis, quotes are absolutely necessary. He writes, “it probably took a month alone to figure out the right phrase to rhyme with ‘revolutionary manumission abolitionists.’ ” By implementing quotes into his writing as shown, he allows the reader to make decisions for themselves and see first-hand how Miranda used certain techniques to create certain effects. In this way, he can show the reader the intricacies of Miranda’s writing and musical technique, proving Hamilton to be the best album of the year.
     Kornhaber also includes comparisons to other artists, including hip-hop artists like Kendrick Lamar and Drake. He writes, “You can find this Hamiltonian idea of hip-hop refracted through rap’s other great works this year. You hear it in the verbosity, the craft, the daringness, the desperate idealism, and the death-obsessed drive of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. You hear Hamilton’s obsession with legacy, his unwillingness to back down when challenged, his profligacy—’why do you write as if you’re running out of time?’—in Drake’s multi-mixtape 2015 output.” In this way, Kornhaber proves the validity of rap as an expressive tool in musical theater, perhaps even more effective than just singing. This is seen in the song “Farmer Refuted,” in which “Hamilton tears Samuel Seabury’s words apart by literally speaking between them—basically, it’s Miranda proving the supremacy of rap as a form of expression.” Kornhaber argues that even though Miranda’s use of rap is unconventional, it’s wholly effective in musical theater.

     Kornhaber’s direct quotes from Miranda’s song and comparison of Miranda’s songs and other artist’s songs allows him to successfully rhetorically analyze Hamilton all while supporting his argument that Hamilton should be lauded as the album of the year. In this rather rare piece of rhetorical analysis in the “wild,” Kornhaber has made me even more excited to go see the show in New York!

TOW #20 - How to Listen to Great Music (IRB)

      How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to its History, Culture, and Heart by Robert Greenberg has been a great read--and listen--so far! As I mentioned in my intro post, the book goes along with a lecture on Audible.com that I’m listening to with my dad because how can you learn how to listen to great music if you don’t hear any music? I started listening to the lecture way before I started reading the book, but I’m now ahead in the book because my dad and I don’t have a lot of time to listen to the lecture. Either way, it’s been interesting to hear how similar Greenberg’s speaking and writing styles are. In his book, Greenberg writes how he speaks and uses an extended joke about a gerbil in order to help the reader understand just enough music theory to appreciate the complexities of great music.
As soon as Greenberg opens his mouth, or puts a pen to the page (or is it finger to the keyboard?), his style is obvious: expressive, passionate, flowery, casual, and again passionate. Obviously, Greenberg really likes, and knows, what he’s talking about. On page 1, he writes “Music is an intensification, a crystallization, a celebration, a glorification, of that movement and those vibrations. Pretty heady stuff.” One can almost hear the crescendo of his voice as the list of nouns goes on in the rather formal and flowery first sentence. Then in the next sentence, which is really just a fragment, he drops the formal tone in order to better relate to the audience. He then continues: “one need not speak Ashanti in order to groove to West African drumming; or German in order to be emotionally flayed by Beethoven; or English to totally freak when listening to Bruce Springsteen. Say it with flowers? Nah. If you really want to get your expressive point across, say it with music.” His diction in this section, using words like “totally freak” and “nah,” show his casual style, which in turn makes him more relatable and credible in the audience’s eyes as he’s just one of us. This relaxed style allows the audience to in turn relax around the author, making it easier to explain harder technical concepts to an audience that doesn’t know much about music.
Greenberg’s gerbil jokes also add to his relatability while simultaneously explaining or exemplifying a difficult technical concept. On page 14 he writes, “Try it at home! Sing in the shower. Your unaccompanied voice is singing in a monophonic texture. Having left the shower, grab your wife or husband, partner, children, cat, or gerbil (okay, maybe not the cat), and sing the same thing together. Despite the fact that there is more than one voice singing, the voices are singing the same single, unaccompanied melody at the same time. It’s still monophony.” This is the first time the gerbil character appears in this book, and it keeps the book light and funny while explaining the rather boring and technical concept of monophonic music. The gerbil joke comes up again and again while explaining types of polyphony and homophony. This method of keeping the book interesting while teaching has time and time proved itself to be very effective.
Overall, Greenberg’s How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to its History, Culture, and Heart is a great read--and listen!--as the author writes colloquially and makes education fun through jokes in order to teach a wide audience of people how to listen to great music in an easily understandable way. Not only is Greenberg’s prose and writing style fun and unique--something that I want to emulate using my own personality in my own writing--but his book has also exposed me to a lot of great and interesting music and is a must-read for anyone into history and/or music!

TOW #19 - “Hollywood Needs to Fix Itself”

     In lieu of the Oscars tonight, I’ve decided to write my TOW about one. Recently, many people have been upset over the fact that the Oscars are white-dominated. Most people blame the fact that most Academy members are white and male, and the author agrees. However, the author, Slate writer Aisha Harris, argues that the problem is not just in the Academy members but in the Hollywood industry itself, which I agree with. The real problem is the issue of diversity in the entertainment industry, not just within the awards.

     Harris writes, “How many nonwhite and/or female studio execs are deciding which projects deserve to be greenlit? How many talented up and coming writers and directors of color are being sought after and mentored by more established directors, writers and producers? Where are the adventurous casting agents who don’t automatically assume that a character written of nonspecified background has to be white?” Here, Harris is getting to the root of the matter. Of course awards are going to reflect the industry, so in order to have more diverse awards ceremonies (that are still fair), there needs to be a change at the root of the matter. It’s not enough to just change the surface of the problem.
     Just making the members of the Academy more diverse is like affirmative action. It may change the end results (like who wins and who gets accepted), but it doesn’t actually address the root of the problem. The film industry will still be white dominated, and there is still an education and economic gap. It’s much more difficult to fix the root of the problem, but that’s what needs to be done in order to make a difference in the world.

TOW #18 - The Joy of Psyching Myself Out

     This week, I've decided to read an editorial piece published by the New York Times called "The Joy of Psyching Myself Out". The author, Maria Konnikova, is an ex-psychologist turned author. In her piece, she discusses the underlying misconceptions behind writing and the scientific pursuit of the mind and how, despite their differences, they both require exact-ivity and creativity. Additionally, separating the creativity from the world of physiology is not only unwarranted but also downright destructive. To emulate this, Konnikova utilizes concrete examples and employs parallel structure to add factual support and a sense of convictions and passion.

     In order to make the argument that the freedom to explore is crucial to scientific discovery, Konnikova talks about the revolutionary psychoanalysis Sigmund Frued. She first gives background on his methods of studying and researching- and how he relies on creativity to come up with his hypothesis. Because of his willingness to think abstractly, he was able to achieve success. This creativity made him  “a breed of psychologist that hardly exists anymore: someone who saw the world as both writer and psychologist, and for whom there was no conflict between the two.” That boundary melding allowed him to posit the existence of cognitive mechanisms that wouldn’t be empirically proved for decades.

     Konnikova also utilizes parallel structure to end the editorial on a powerful note. At the end, she refers to the reasons why she left the field of phycology; saying, “ I left psychology behind because I found its structural demands overly hampering…most new inquiries never happened — in a sense, it meant that objectivity was more an ideal than a reality. Each study was selected for a reason other than intrinsic interest.” Then, immediately following this claim, she declares, “I became a writer to pursue that intrinsic interest. But I do so having never quite left the thinking of the psychologist behind” and foes onto talk about the merits. This structure revolving around the word intrinsic interest and the comparison of pros and cons leaves the reader with an underlying feeling of torn interest. It is up to them to derive their own opinion through the information presented oh so jumbled and befuddled by Konnnikova.

TOW #17 - Logo Baby (visual)

     The baby depicted in this image is covered with logos of various prevalent companies in today’s culture. The maker of this image (uncredited) is most likely arguing that we are influenced by the media and advertisements around us now more so than ever, even from the moment we are born. In this way, today’s kids are more products of advertising and the media than ever before.

     This claim definitely applies to many aspects of today’s world. Nowadays, all you have to do to keep a kid busy is give them an iPad. With the Internet at their fingertips, they are now so much more connected to the rest of the world than we were at their age. Although they have more resources, they are also exposed to the media and commercials more often. In this way, they are molded by and made a product of the media from a very young age.
     For example, my younger sisters got their first iPhones in elementary school, while I got mine in eighth grade. Today, they are so much more in touch with pop culture than I am. My youngest sister is obsessed with Snapchat, Instagram, and Musical.ly. Whenever she’s bored and standing around waiting, she whips and nae naes. It’s kind of embarrassing that she knows more about pop culture than her teenage sister, but it makes sense since she’s been using her iPhone from such a young age.
     However, this does not apply to all people of the world. There are still many people without access to advanced technology or Internet. Although the picture makes a great statement about developed countries like the one we live in, not everybody can relate to it.
     Overall, the maker of the image’s claim that today’s kids are exposed to technology and the media at a very young age and that this exposure makes them a product of pop culture has merit but cannot be applied to the entire younger generation since there are still many people without access to technology that we have so readily.

IRB Intro Post #3

     This marking period I’m reading another book that’s connected to one of my dad’s audiobooks. However, I’ve mixed it up a bit by choosing to read a science book. I’ve decided to read Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History by David Christian. I can’t wait to get started!

TOW #15 - The Lorraine Motel and Martin Luther King

     I read this article in the spirit of MLK day, the reason we don’t have school today. In this article Allyson Hobbs writes about the motel in which Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, the Lorraine Motel. In order to effectively describe its history in a moving way, Hobbs uses descriptive language and quotes from people who stayed at the motel in its heyday.

     When describing the Lorraine today, Hobbs writes, “The large motel sign features “Lorraine” printed in a dramatic script against a bright yellow background, and ‘Motel’ is written in large red block letters, each letter stamped inside its own white circle. A large white wreath hangs on the balcony outside Room 306, to memorialize the spot where King stood at the time of the assassination. Standing in front of the motel transports visitors to a bygone era. If you close your eyes, the iconic photograph of King’s friends pointing off into the distance, at the place from which they believed the shot was fired, comes into sharp view.” Instead of just telling the reader that seeing the motel is like looking at another era, she shows us by painting the picture. This allows the audience to become more immersed in the story and the scene and better understand what the Lorraine is like today.
     In order to help readers understand the Lorraine of the past, Hobbs uses quotes from people who stayed there. She writes, “As Isaac Hayes reminisced, ‘We’d go down to the Lorraine Motel and we’d lay by the pool and Mr. Bailey would bring us fried chicken and we’d eat ice cream. . . . We’d just frolic until the sun goes down and [then] we’d go back to work.’” This helps readers much as the description does, but since Hobbs mostly likely wasn’t at the Lorraine around the time it was in its heyday, she has to rely on other people’s descriptions. These descriptions still have the same effect as hers.
     In order to describe this important historical motel, Hobbs uses descriptive language and quotes. Today, the Lorraine is no longer a motel. Instead, it’s been converted into a civil rights museum. The room that MLK stayed in when he was assassinated, Room 306, still stands today for visitors to gaze at.

Martin Luther King, Jr., lies at the feet of civil-rights activists pointing in the direction of his assassin. The Lorraine Motel, where King was murdered, later became a civil-rights museum.CREDIT PHOTOGRAPH BY JOSEPH LOUW / THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION / GETTY