Recently at University of the Pacific a Poetry slam was held in the Faye Spanos Concert hall. While I personally was not there, this lead to the need to spread the word of poetry slam.

Before I talk about what poetry slam I have recently enoyed I’d like to clarify to anyone unfamiliar with poetry slam that it essentially amounts to somewhat unscripted or scripted free style poetry typically meant to express and/or evoke emotions and may tell a story along with it.

On https://www.youtube.com/user/ButtonPoetry there is a video called “OCD”, this video does have the most views on this channel, but for good reason. Out of various poems on the channel I felt that this one in particular was not only short and sweet, but chalked up with emotions and powerful storytelling. While I personally don’t have OCD or know anyone close to me with OCD, the way he expressed his emotions helped me to understand the immense weight of how his mind forces him to act in certain ways. The Video is only around 3 minutes long and I’d reccomend anyone to give it a watch.

 

“Suffering is bad” A simple statement that many people would agree with without a pause. However, in our world it is a commonly known fact that thousands, tens of thousands, an unfathomable amount of people are going through their lives without our understanding. We are not like the buddha prior to his journey where he was blinded to the misery of people. Many of us understand that other humans are going through the mental equivalent of an internal bleeding heart, unable to stop the bleeding on their own.

In the movie “Shelter” it portrays the elements of homelessness and mental illness in the real world and how it affects people even when they receive help. While the movie in of itself is shot well and creates an immersive experience along with pacing that keeps you interested this is not what it goes for. The movie could have easily gone the route of attempting to create shock factors left and right to scream at the audience to understand its message. Instead it chose to depict the reality of youth suffering through mental illness and the effect it has on them.

The movie tears through your heart tissue and bring you on a trip to where the only thing more painful than looking forward is to willingly look away – speaking in terms of empathetic emotions-.

This movie is not only a showcase of the suffering others go through, but the fact that while on a technical level, we could do more for our fellow humans, we simply don’t. This move reminds of a show titled “a series of unfortunate events.” Except with these events being a non-fictional version of tragedy.

Watching this movie has not inspired me to suddenly change my life plans. A common element present was a tragic childhood and the unwillingness to help. While this film released in February of 2018 has not created a national movement to help reduce homelessness or the events that caused them, it like other films have gradually spread awareness overtime, so that in the future we can at the very least reduce the amount of unnecessary suffering.

A beautiful campus for an attempt at creating a stunning movie. It makes sense that to try to create strong visual in movies, you would use an area with strong visuals. This idea is why at University of the Pacific many movies have used this campus as a basis for thier movies.

This friday a group of PACs semester 1 students were tasked to find various locations around the school that were used in the movies: All the Kings Men, Dreamscape, and Indiana Jones: The raiders of The Lost Ark. The pictures attached are my groups photos for our most recent scavenger hunt.

Learning is one of the many things students reach out for when they attend a university. Education comes in many shapes and forms where students may participate in labs or attend lectures.  On October 8, 2018 12:30 within a PACs course at university of the pacific students were pushed away from the norm and were learning not by taking notes or by discussion, but were playing Instruments educationally for a future upcoming project.

Students attended a concert at University of the Pacific that was known as “Musica Pacifica” a two hour session last sunday of irish,english and scottish music played by a group of 6 musicians who played 2 violin style instruments, 1 cello types instrument, a drum, various flutes, and an enormous piano. Afterwards these students were told by thier professor to then later bring instruments to class on the following monday.

The purpose of the following sounds that have been previously assumed to be “cruel and unusual” by an affiliated group was so that the students would have a topic to talk about in order to replicate a news style article. Later within the very same session an army of students let loose on thier various writing meduims in order to create multiple news article so that they could then leave thier lecture so that they may be freed from this article assignment so that they may go home and then be able to then write on the concert itself.

Title : My Brother’s Purple Elephant

When I was a young boy, something horrible happened with the daily newspaper. I saw the headline read “12 dead after deadly elephant attack”. I felt a shock down my spine. I continued to read the article and something amazing happened. I had a sudden realization : I was an elephant furry. I suddenly changed my gender from none to elephant. I jumped in a can of purple paint, allowing it to coat my skin. I hated myself, but I had to show others the true me. After painting myself, I looked like barney the purple dinosaur. As Barney the purple dinosaur would do, I left home and looked for other creatures myself.

I walked along the streets drenched in the coat of purple paint, searching anxiously. People glared at me, but I ignored them. I repeated to myself “Barney is love, Boney is life”. Then, I saw something. I saw a baby boy. I followed him, I followed him as Barney the dinosaur. I can’t believed I found the solution, the way I could fill the void! It was a dream come true. Then I decided to take matters into my own hands. I cracked his neck. As I relished in my deeds I heard the sirens and a Metal lock was slapped onto my wrists and I heard “We’re going to get you some help son”.

 

This was an essay written by a team of college students.

Hello Future Ranters!

Recently I have read an excerpt from Stephens King article “Reading to Write”. This excerpt was about the idea that in order to write effectively, a writer before all else, must be a reader. Stephen King argued for many points, however, to best explain his stance in a single sentence quote, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.”

A little background story can make this more clear, however. Stephen King explains that in his childhood he read a lot of stories. He engulfed stories of fiction and non-fiction alike and absorbed these stories to later assist his understanding and capabilities in literature. However, something that stood out from this article was that not only did he appreciate good writing but he acknowledged poor writing and learned from it. In fact, his attitude towards poor writing was that “He could do better” And as we have seen from his legacy, it’s hard to argue he didn’t.

Stephen King’s language throughout the article was very blunt and straight to the point. He did not try to dance around to stay vague to keep his statements infallible or avoid to disrespect. He made his points and why they were his points. While people can argue that by doing so, his statement was fallible and that he was overly disrespectful, this drew me in because not only did he make harsh statements, but he made realistic statements that any author or reader could benefit from and he made his statement for that exact same group. To me, he essentially screamed the idea that something can be good, and that things can be better in terms of quality of writing.

 

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton