20% project update

So we are at the halfway point for our Passion projects. My project was that everyday I was going to take a picture of something that was happening in my life. Thinking about my project right now, I am realizing I am in really bad shape. I keep forgetting to take pictures! Its a problem because it’ too late to switch but I won’t have a picture for everyday. I know my goal was to take a picture to represent something different everyday but it’s not as easy as I thought it was going to be. On the bright side I do believe that I found a way to  present my pictures!

Martha Graham- Outlier

Martha Graham is what we today would call an outlier. Martha set a revolution. Graham in how she revolutionized dance was compared to how Picasso revolutionized the world of art.  In the 1800’s dance was pretty simple. It was mainly centered around Ballet. Ballet is like Mexican food actually. It’s essentially all the same thing, done a 100 different ways! Martha Graham has been side to be the one that brought dance into the twentieth century. Graham was 68 when she started her own company! Martha danced and choreographed for over 70 years. Martha taught some of the other most influential people in the dance world. This including, Alvin Ailey, Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor, and worked with some of the best composers of her day.

Martha Graham fits the mold that Malcom Gladwell has created. Martha’s dad was wealthy, he had the money to send her to a prestigious dance school for the first 45 years of her life. Her parents raised her in concerted cultivation, pushing her to be the best she could be (making her possibly even crazy). Graham was able to get the training she needed to be amazing at what she does, she had a accumulative advantage of good training, leading here to be successful. To be successful Graham had to surpass Gladwell’s “10,000 hours” theory. Now, I can not email Martha Graham since she has passed away, but I believe she passed that 10,000 hr. mark with flying colors. Matha was in the performing arts field for over 70 years! Dancing in a professional company with previous training and then going on to own her own company, there is NO way that Martha Graham did not dance over 10,000 hours! Martha Graham also had a great deal of practical intelligence. She was able to convince people that she was right, what she was doing was possible, and everyone should do it too. Just to show how successful Martha was, she and her company was the first to even perform at the White House for the president.  

Fifty years into Martha’s career is when she stepped out of the boundary. Martha arranged her first piece to kick off the start of her company. The piece was completely out there and weirdly……. extraordinary. I watched it myself. Im telling you it was weird! But, there was something about the performance, that made you watch, that made you interested. It was amazing in a freaky way. Many people criticized her piece, calling her insane, mentally unstable, crazy. These people were right. Choreographing a masterpiece, and revolutionizing ANYTHING, takes being crazy! Being able to think outside of the box takes being insane. I will have you know that Martha Graham has won many awards, created a new style of dance, and even had a documentary made all about her. Its like the quote, “Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music”- Friedrich Nietzsche

Joyas Voladoras By: Brian Doyle

              It seems that everything I read in this class I never understand. I guess this is really an understatement because I always end up loving and understanding practically everything I read and go home to rave to my parents about it. I honestly thought the entire writing piece was a research essay. A really good one too I might add! It was so detailed and described well. There were a few parts that really spoke to me. I really liked the part when it’s talking about the Blue Whale’s heart. I never really understood how big a whale really is. For a human being to be able to walk through the heart of an animal seems so surreal to me. I have to admit I kind of want to try) without dying of course)! I also loved how the author described the magnificent colors the humming bird can have. It seems almost impossible to describe such beautiful colors, and yet he seemed to have been able to do it, to get me the reader to know exactly what color he was meaning really mesmerized me.

 I happen to love the last paragraph too. It seems to sum up some of the best things and worst things in life. The sentence “we are utterly open with no one in the end—not a mother and father, not wife or husband, lover, not child, not friend.” Is so brutally honest and made me almost rethink things. What is the point of putting yourself out there, making friends, going on dates, sharing the good things and the burdens in your life with others if in the end, “We live alone in the house of the heart.”?  Brian also seems to state the wonders in life. For example “a child’s apple breath”. To me the thought of smelling someone’s breath kind of sickens me. I’m just not in that point in my life where i know what a baby’s breath smells like. I guess the feeling different if it’s your child. The sentence that really got me was about the cats. “a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, The brush of your mother’s papery ancient hand in a thicket of your hair, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.”  I know it’s a lot to take in. The part about the cat made me really.....sad. I don’t know what else to call it. I don’t even like cats, that’s why I don’t understand why I got upset. But again I guess it’s the reality that makes me so angry. The second part of the sentence gave me the worst vision. My mom was on her death bed and she was speaking her last words, taking her last breathes, her heart beating its last few beats, and her running her hand through my hair much like her own. My mom is my best friend. I don’t always tell her that, I get angry with her often too. But she is the most important woman figure I have in my life (duhh, I mean  she’s my mom) but a lot of people don’t even have a mom or don’t even have a good relationship.  Then the part about my dad. I feel that my dad and I are best friends. He was always around more than my mom. It’s not that my mom wasn’t around; she was just at work more. I have no idea what I would do without my wonderful parents!

Something worth Knowing!

There are many important lessons in life. I believe that life offers its biggest challenge its self. I also believe that it’s important to know how to communicate. What I mean is, In school you’re taught how to talk, read and write. But you cannot be taught to how to speak your feelings or read someone else’s. You are not taught to read “between the lines”, or write what you really feel. These skills you just need to find within yourself. Sometimes you need to just let your conscience take over. That’s what I’m doing as I write, right now. I speak my mind inside my head and my hands just follow. Sometimes what I write doesn’t even make any sense. But it’s important to know how to let your mind wonder but still get where you need to go. I don’t really know what I’m trying to get across while writing this tough. I guess you just need to……to…..wonder, and open up. This skill isn’t something you can be taught, it just happens.

Waste Land

To me the most memorable part of this documentary was the people. Their stories were incredible! For example the woman, whose son died, then her husband and daughter left her, and refused to ever talk to her. Its stories like these that really make me grateful. I also learned how people’s life is so different from mine. The wonderful people who work there are surrounded by garbage and I put that garbage out at my curb (even though they are in Rio the concept is still the same). Honestly if I was them, having my life portrayed I would be embarrassed. This is from my perspective as a middle class American. If I was really in this situation, and was living around a garbage dump I would want to be helped. I would feel that this opportunity would help my family and I. Therefore I would have wanted all of the help I could get. I feel that there is nothing that interesting in my life that would or even could become something so meaningful and life changing.

Delicate.

This is my glass fish I chose it because of how delicate and fragile it is. I also like this because of the beautiful patten.

Outside.

I took these when we went outside for rogate. #nature #ghost #dirt #trees #rogate #bahahaha #swag #imdonewithhahtags