Series Finale

I won't lie, the Andrews article confuses me, however, and that may be more the fault of a tired brain than anything else. On one hand she seems to be pushing the idea that knowledge and application of performance can help writers. To this I agree. No one in the class could honestly say that they have never written a paper that was not a performance to their audience. I typically call these kind of papers the "dance monkey, dance" type. Now, there is nothing wrong with this type of paper, it is a needed aspect of the writing world and part of the idea of audience awareness that we have been so keen about this semester. The second thing Andrews seems to be talking about does not really seem to be connected to me and that is the idea of minorities finding voice in small non-professional publication. For some reason this latter concept does not seem to be connected with her previous concept.

Back in the first grade I had what is perhaps the best music class in the twelve years I was in “normal” school. In kindergarten and second grade on up music class was boring, repetitive and made no sense. Teachers would ask us to with play on some little plastic flute till our throats hurt or list the style, artist/composer, and date of a piece they play. However, in first grade I had a teacher who was in love with classical music but never told us that. Instead of putting on an old recording of Mozart or Bach and asking us what was it, who was it and when was it, he told us to close our eyes and just listen. When the piece was over we were told to write or draw (which ever we preferred more) what we saw when we were listening to the piece he played. I learned more about listening to classical music and the feelings and meanings behind those compositions in first grade than when I took a class on classical music in eighth. The reason I am telling this story is because I believe that what my first grade music teacher did is the same thing that Alejandro is talking about, and if it is all I can do is agree with it.