Aerosmith's "Dream On" has clear connections to two different books we studied this year.
The first is Ishmael. "Dream On's" lyrics reminded me of Ishmael's main character: Ishmael, the telepathic gorilla.
"Everybody's got their dues in life to pay.
I know what nobody knows
Where it comes and where it goes
I know it's everybody's sin
You've got to lose to know how to win"
Ishmael explains to his student how the "Takers" are ruining the earth beyond repair. The first line says how "Everybody's got their dues in life to pay," and to me, this line was referring to the human race as a whole. Ishmael tells us we, as Takers, have to take responsibility for the damage we've done to our planet and recognize that we're on a crash course to disaster. The last line, "You've got to lose to know how to win," is similar to Ishmael's telling the human race to face our fate. The previous three lines talk about Ishmael's insight. All the humans are too blind and refuse to face the dire consequences of their actions. Ishmael, the intellectual gorilla, is learned in the ways of humans but sees the world from an animal's perspective. He "knows what nobody knows." He understands that it's all of the humans' sin and the point of Ishmael is to try and explain that point of view to the rest of the world.
"Dream On" also goes along with Siddhartha. In this novel, young Siddhartha is restless with his life as a wealthy brahmin and decides to leave to seek his own understanding of the world. His feelings are represented by the lines:
"Half my life is in books' written pages
Live and learn from fools and from sages
You know it's true
All the things come back to you"
Siddhartha is frustrated and unsatisfied with the mythology he has been taught throughout his life. This goes along with the line "Half my life is in books' written pages." He attempts to branch out and find himself. "Live and learn from fools and from sages" refers to the time he later spends with an old man by a river, where he truly finds inner peace. To passerby, the old man seems slightly crazy, but once Siddhartha understands him, he learns from him and his life is changed by the old man's philosophies.
The quiet, haunting melody of this song reminded me of the bittersweet tone of both these novels. In Ishmael, we are basically being told that we are destroying our way of life simply by living it, and all of the things our race has ever done wrong are brutally exposed. In Siddhartha, Siddhartha spends much of his life unhappy and searching. The song kind of tapers off, which is similar.
2. Superman (It's Not Easy)--Five For Fighting
Five For Fighting's "Superman (It's Not Easy)" relates to several texts we read over the course of the year.
The first, Gilgamesh, seems like a childish fable of the past when you first read it. But upon deeper study, especially towards the end when Gilgamesh faces the prospect of death, more subtle meaning comes into play. These lyrics describe Gilgamesh's views at the end of the book:
"It may sound absurd, but don't be naive
Even heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed . . . But won't you concede
Even heroes have the right to dream"
Gilgamesh is a hero of Mesopotamian religion and culture, this much is clear to us from reading Bentley and learning about Gilgamesh's various escapades in the novel. But once Enkidu, his best friend, dies, the book takes a more sober turn. Gilgamesh goes into a crazed depression where he is terrified of death, and these lines represent that. He's pleading that "Even heroes have the right to bleed," that he might be a heroic king, but that he still has fears and dreams just like the rest of the human race.
The other text that this song connects to is Life Of Pi. While Pi is stuck on the boat, he learns that despair and fear are his worst enemies. The following lines of the song show this:
"Wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
About a home I'll never see"
You see, Pi longs to mourn for his lost home and family. He wants to break down and sob and weep every time he thinks of them, yet he know that he can't. He learns to get past his fears in order to survive. This taught us as students about the power of the will to live. Pi says it himself: "...I have a fierce will to live." Without his ability to save his mourning for a more practical time, when his life wasn't in danger, Pi would most certainly have died.
This song has a soft, but sad tone to it. This fits with the themes it supports: death and facing death. The slow beat gives a more sober mood to the song.
3. Clocks--Coldplay
Coldplay's "Clocks" helps to define a play we read this year.
Oedipus, a play revolving around the misadventures of the fictional Greek king Oedipus, has a plot that focuses mainly on fate and its impact. These lines sum up one of the big themes of the play:
"The lights go out and I can't be saved
Tides that I tried to swim against
Have brought me down upon my knees
Oh I beg, I beg, I beg and plead."
The play starts out with Oedipus attempting to cure the city of Apollo's plague. He calls upon a prophet, Tiresius, to help him. Tiresius tells Oedipus that he is the source of the city's woes. Oedipus is shocked. Angered, he orders Tiresius out of his sight. After he leaves, Oedipus' wife, Jocasta, tells him about an old prophecy she'd heard: that his father would be killed by his own son. She comforts him by telling him it never came true: the king had avoided it by sending his son away to another city. At the end, Oedipus finds out that he was indeed the king's son. The line "Tides that I tried to swim against have brought me down upon my knees" correlate to the fact that Oedipus tried to change his fate, but it ended up happening anyways. The tides are the forces working against him, and "Brought me down upon my knees" refers to the end, when Oedipus is shamed, his wife/mother is dead, and he blinds and exiles himself.
Earlier in the story, when Tiresius scorns Oedipus for not accepting his fate, he says, "You are Thebes ungodly pollution." Oedipus vehemently denies this, but at the end he changes his mind. These two lines go along with his change of view:
"Am I a part of the cure?
Or am I part of the disease?"
Apollo's curse makes the city "sick." Oedipus is trying to "cure" Thebes by finding Laius' (the previous king's) murderer. When he finds out that he murdered the king, he is truly part of the "disease" that plagues his city.
4. Second Chance--Shinedown
Shinedown's "Second Chance" is a popular song that gives meaning to both Siddhartha and the play Antigone.
"Second Chance" again refers to the point in Siddhartha when Siddhartha realizes that the brahmin life is not for him, and decides to set out on his own. These lyrics help to diagram his restlessness:
"This is my life
I hope they understand
I'm not angry, I'm just saying
Sometimes goodbye is a second chance"
For Siddhartha, goodbye certainly is a second chance. While he's sad to be leaving his family, he ultimately finds what he is looking for: inner peace and harmony. Leaving was a risk he needed to take to find the better life. What he did is nearly incomprehensible to most of us: he left his rich, sheltered, comfortable brahmin family to seek an "inner peace" which he wasn't sure how to find or get. He went from a wealthy son to a homeless nomad, but in Siddhartha's mind, it was his "second chance," one step closer to where he was going in his life (even if he wasn't sure where that was yet.)
The meaning that "Second Chance" gives to Antigone, a play about one of Oedipus' daughters, is slightly more foreboding.
Antigone gives her life up so she can give her brother an honorable burial. She believes in family honor over the law, which says that her brother was a traitor and deserves to be eaten by crows and shamed for eternity.
"Please don't cry one tear for me
I'm not afraid of what I have to say
This is my one and only voice
So listen close, it's only for today"
When Antigone tells her sister what she's done, Ismene is horrified. She begs Antigone to take back the terrible deed and to obey Creon. Antigone recoils and and spends the next part of the play verbally beating Ismene. The line "I'm not afraid of what I have to say" says she's not afraid of death so long as she's doing what's right. When Creon attempts to take the blame off of her and shame her brother again, Antigone tells him she will simply go out and rebury her brother. When he arrests her, she hangs herself. For Antigone, the line "Sometimes goodbye is a second chance" means "sometimes you have to accept the consequences for what you believe in." In her mind, her death gives her brother's improper burial a second chance for honor.
In both the cases of Antigone and Siddhartha, the mood of the "second chance" may be opposite, but the characters' motives are the same. Both are standing up for what they believe in, even though Antigone's ends in death while Siddhartha's leads to life.
5. Love Remains The Same--Gavin Rossdale
Gavin Rossdale's single, "Love Remains The Same," helps to explain parts of the play Our Town. Our Town is a play about average life in a small town. These lyrics help us to understand several characters:
"Drink to all that we have lost
Mistakes we have made
Everything will change
But love remains the same."
A primary theme in this play is love. Between George and Emily, we see romantic love. Although their luck waxes and wanes as the story progresses, their love for each other, once found, never dies. Although they grow older and their parents pass away, they still love each other with the same intensity they did when they were teenagers. In fact, love is the only amazing thing in a story full of mediocre events. Also, familial love is common. Emily loves her mother and father very much, and even when they're sitting in the graveyard, their feelings are the same. We see love between friends and neighbors and begin to know of the feelings people develop when they get to know someone very well, whether they're friends, siblings, lovers, or daughters.
This song is repetitive and has a soothing rhythm. The steady beat emphasizes the fact that love is always constant, no matter the circumstances. Gavin Rossdale's deep voice accentuates the lyrics as well.
6. Godspeed--Anberlin
Anberlin's "Godspeed" is a song that relates mostly to Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. It perfectly portrays their desperate love and their refusal to accept reality.
"They lied when they said the good die young
Stay with me tonight"
These lines have a bit of dark humor in them if you attach them to the night of Romeo and Juliet's separation. They spend the night together, clinging to those last few precious moments of darkness. The line "Stay with me tonight" emphasizes that feeling of youthful despair. At the beginning of the scene of Romeo's departure, he and Juliet discuss whether the bird they hear is the morning lark or a night bird. Juliet desperately tries to get Romeo to stay for a few extra minutes. She knows he must leave once it's dawn, but she tries to fool him into staying with her just a little bit longer.
On the other hand, the first line, "They lied when they said the good die young," has creepy foreshadowing when applied to Romeo and Juliet's last night together. It represents their refusal to accept what's real and what's not. Their love is forbidden, Romeo is exiled, and their families hate each other with a burning passion, and yet the two are married. It shows the naivete of young love. While their feelings for each other are clear, their logic is flawed. Eventually both do die young, which is why this line is so ironic when applied to Romeo & Juliet.
The fast-paced rhythm and loud screaming of the lyrics really help us to associate this song with the desperation of an eternal separation.
7. The Remedy--Jason Mraz
"And what kind of god would serve this?
We will cure this dirty old disease
If you've got the poison I've got the remedy"
The lines of Jason Mraz's "The Remedy" really made me think about what we're trying to accomplish with the Global Citizen project. We're trying to make a difference in the world, trying to help the world, to cure it of some kind of disease: whether it be an actual disease like cancer, or a figurative disease like poverty or hunger. We are trying to find the "remedy" to a "poison" of this world, which will then be the focus of our project.
8. You Found Me--The Fray
"Where were you when everything was falling apart?
All my days were spent by the telephone that never rang"
These lines can be applied to both Siddhartha and Life Of Pi. Both have times of doubt in their stories, where they feel abandoned by God. Siddhartha has his when he realizes that he's wasted most of his life catering to his physical needs and not his spiritual needs. Pi has his when he's first alone on the lifeboat and no rescue in his near future. Eventually, both find their respective Gods again.
9. Time Of Your Life--Green Day
Freshman Academy has been one of the most challenging, confusing, and amazing programs I've ever participated in. Back in eighth grade, when I considered joining the Academy or letting someone else have a go at it, I remember being aware that whatever decision I made would affect my life for the next four years. In this way it reminds me of the first few lines of "Time Of Your Life" by Green Day:
"Another turning point;
a fork stuck in the road.
Time grabs you by the wrist;
directs you where to go."
In the end, joining Academy was a decision from the heart. It just felt right. The group feeling, the different curriculum, the unique teachers: all of that appealed to me in a way that just plain old Glenbrook South didn't.
As I've sat in English, History, and French this year, I've really grown up, both as a person and as a student. Personally, I had to meet new people and gain their respect through my intellect and social skills, something I used to have a lot of trouble with. I'm a naturally shy person, but the group feeling of the Academy changed that a lot for me. The discussions really helped me learn to think of something meaningful to say, and then have the patience to wait my turn to say it. For example, the first semester final was the first big test of this. I knew my grade depended on what I said out loud during that discussion, and so did everyone else. Unfortunately, this led to everybody talking for extra-long periods of time: I couldn't get a word in edgewise. I realized that I would probably only get one chance to make my point and that I needed to do it well. In that instant, it's like something clicked. Instead of just watching discussions, I tried to actively submit and listen to opinions.
Of course, I've learned to be a more responsible student, as well. I'm a procrastinator, but I feel like I've gotten better at doing my work as the year progressed.
The topics we explored became increasingly interesting to me. I was amazed at how much I enjoyed the Romeo & Juliet unit. I expected to hate it, since we'd already spent several months analyzing the book in eighth grade, but the ideas we explored really gave new meaning to the play. I was old enough to understand it more, too. For example, when we learned about the different types of love in Shakespeare, it made me think more about love in general, and what a powerful emotion it is. It affects our world in so many different ways. It amazes me that I can learn so much from the poetry of a playwright who died long before I was born.
All in all, my year has been one full of learning, which is how it should be. I've learned to study, to listen, to discuss, to ask questions, and to understand. Academy was a wonderful experience that will stay with me the rest of my life.
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