Well, this is to be the discovery blog, eh? I don't know what to write in particular, but I could just start with the idea of the personal essay. I guess since I always wrote songs, I never really wrote journal entries. When I conferenced with Dr. Kirklighter, I told her that my personal outlet was always my songs: like a journal entry, they always stand for how I felt or thought at a particular time. I'd like to think they are a little digressive like Montaigne, too.
But what is the personal? Even in the personal essays we've read, as telling as they've been, they often have a distance to them that doesn't quite the author. Another good example is The Squid and the Whale. Though Baumbach based the characters on his family, they were still fictionalized portraits. I tried to think about whether or not I did this with my songs, and I guess I do. Usually those songs arise from a particularly intense or meaningful situation for me, and I always have the impetus to write about them, but as banana stated, I sometimes don't have a purpose. Therefore, it takes a long while until I actually get around to writing them. By then, they've become barnacle encrusted with whatever other life experience I've had since the initial inspiration, and the meaning isn't the same. So instead of putting myself into that song, which would be difficult as it seems we never can remember how the most important times in our lives actually felt, I create a character. This now seems totally pretentious, but go with me here. The character is like any narrator/mask you put on. He/she serves as an avatar for you, or for feelings that you've had, or is symbolic of something in your past. The list goes on forever.
After that, though, you still need a purpose, a theme to direct the song towards (which was hard to explain to my Composition classes when they were doing their first project. I told them "It's like writing a song about nothing. You can't do it, unless you're R.E.M." I got blank stares). If you don't have this, the song falls apart. I suppose its the same with the personal essay. Even if they do digress, as Montaigne's certainly do, there has to be some overarching theme. But of course, there are those songs that come immediately as a raw, emotional response from your soul, which pretty much negates everything I just wrote.
5 comments:
I like how you compare your songs to the personal essay. I had never really considered the synonymous relationship that the two mediums seem to have. I completely understand what you mean when you refer to creating the narrator as a character as opposed to just "Garrett." It seems like we do that as a defense mechanism to protect ourselves from everyone knowing that it was in fact, an extremely personal event referred to in our writing. I think you have to do that in order to make the writing real. It also makes it easier because, like Baumbach, you can always say the really bizarre things were just character traits and not personal examples.
I guess almost any type of artistic medium could have this comparison made, which is pretty cool. I used to be really into art, especially drawing, and that's what I would do on my spare time instead of, say, write in those loads of journals I had. I didn't really have a problem filling up a sketchbook.
This reminds me of what I learned about in junior high when we were drawing self-portraits--that when people draw someone other than themselves, they tend to make the features of the person they are drawing look slightly like their own (by making a nose bigger, or face rounder, or whatever, depending on their own facial features). That way, each time they draw someone, it reflects the artist slightly. Then again, as you become more experienced as an artist, this might go away. I don't really know. I was just saying.
Wouldn't you say that your soul is adapted by your experiences? When your music comes from your soul that's your present soul? Just trying to sound smart :)
Sounds really awesome how you described your Portfolio One to your students. I wish I could put those ideas in the classroom. Sometimes I feel like I'm not relaying it to them in a good manner.
Awesome connection, Joanna. That's a really cool lesson (junior high). It's like Donald Murray :)
Regarding essay...substitute the word "rocker" with "scorcher"...see if that works.
I like how you change your mind at the end of the essay by providing the raw, emotional song example. I enjoy negating my arguments as well by finding those gem examples that send the original arguments on another trajectory. Before anyone can come up with the counter argument, you discover it first. I take issue with some traditional academic writers who set up the neat, seemingly full proof argument and leave it there waiting for the next academic to tear it apart. Why not tear it apart ourselves at the end and invite others to take it on from there?
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