For this essay, we were given the creative freedom to write about whatever we wanted. We were told to write it in a creative way, similar to one of the books we studied in this unit, “Citizen” by Claudia Rankine. For this project, I decided to write about music, and the impact it had on my life.

Depths in the Sounds

The notes never leave

They’re trapped, all the melodies

All stuck in my head…

I’ve always connected with music more than words. My childhood was dominated with music, my mother was a piano teacher and I began playing  the violin early. My strictly musical upbringing changed the way I perceive music today; even when I listen to pop music, I’m oblivious to the words being sung, but the melodies and sounds consistently stick out to me. Because of my deep connection to music, I have come to question why music can be so powerful and emotional even without speech.

All of my feelings

Expressed through the sounds I hear

Change my perspective…

The true beauty of music hides within the feelings and emotions that it evokes inside of the listener. Music can be used to generate happy or sad feelings, through the use of different types of chords and the instrumentation chosen to represent the feeling. And even the power of music can extend to the realm of medicine as seen as a common source of relaxation. Music in the future may even have the possibility of one day healing patients from strokes and diseases.  As we discover more about how music can change the way we live, we can begin to allow music to become an even greater part of our lives.

I hear the music

The sounds never go away

I feel it changing…

The music that we listen to activates 13 key emotions within our brian: amusement, joy, eroticism, beauty, relaxation, sadness, dreaminess, triumph, anxiety, scariness, annoyance, defiance, and feeling pumped up. These emotions dictate the sounds you hear in your songs, the reasons why when you hear 90s house music you feel excitement and when you feel relaxed when listening to smooth jazz. The emotions that one feels from music is up to their interpretation of the track, as shown in the study that tracked peoples emotions towards different tracks. In the study, they measured how people felt about the theme song to Jaws, and the cultures in the study had differing opinions on if the song sounded negative or positive.

Music is changing

We dictate what it becomes

We choose the future…

Much of the music we enjoy relies on our emotional response to music. When we listen to songs, all the detail in the chord selection, sounds, and effects change the way that we perceive different songs and find the styles that we enjoy listening to.

Lyrical Essay Production

In Digital Media we made a video about our lyrical essay.

Honors Citizen Essay

Based on Claudia Rankine’s Citizen

Understanding Perspective

In Cyrus Cassells, “Notes of a Native Daughter”, Cassells uses these three words to describe Claudia Rankine: inventive, heroic, and passionate. In his eyes, he sees Claudia Rankine as an original, cross-genre artist, one who uses artwork, music, and video to connect emotionally with her audience. In “Notes of a Native Daughter”, Cassells compares the artwork used by Rankine in Citizen to jazz music, both forms of art left up to the interpretation of the reader, which he believes makes every individual image exceptionally powerful and evoking the feeling of “raw truth”. In his review, Cassells admires Rankine’s ability to discuss difficult subjects and bring these racist experiences to light through microaggressions. He feels that he can relate to the microaggressions in Citizen when he tells the story of his mother being treated unfairly in the 1950s. His mother, who grew up in North Carolina, had gone to a predominantly white town with many of her African American friends, and the citizens of the town refused to serve her and her friends because of their skin color. Cyrus Cassells feels the power in every microaggression, specifically the incidents that Serena Williams had endured during her tennis career because of the personal encounters his family had with racism. Lastly, Cassells recognizes that passion that Rankine has for this book, describing her as having an “unerring moral fire and superb mind venturing into the unspoken.” Cyrus Cassells finds this poetic collection of lyrical essays to be courageous, and he is thankful that Claudia Rankine brought this deeper view of racism to the light.

Upon reading this article, I have come to agree with most of the points laid out in Cassell’s critique, and I feel that Cassells truly dissected Citizen and the styles used to create the book. In his first point, he discusses how Rankine takes an inventive approach to writing and arranging her book. On pages 52 and 53 of Citizen, Rankine uses an image presented across two pages, writing the words “I do not always feel colored” and “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background”. At the top of the image, the words seem readable but as you travel further down, the words begin to smear together and become illegible. Artist Glenn Ligon created his piece, “I Feel Most Colored When I Am Thrown Against a Sharp White Background” this way on purpose, the blending showing the disappearance of racial justice towards African Americans. Glenn Ligon’s drawing is taken from Zora Neale Hurston’s essay “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”, where she recounts the racist experiences she received as an African American woman living in a primarily white community. Claudia Rankine’s creativity is apparent in the piece, shown by her use of different writing and art forms.

In his critique, he goes on to address Claudia Rankine’s bravery in writing Citizen. He writes in his critique, “it’s hard to imagine a more timely or needed volume than Rankine’s in terms of its prowess in addressing the insidious nature of racist behavior and acts that don’t leave “visible damage.” Cassells understands the magnitude of writing an essay about racial inequality in a time where everybody has differing beliefs and because of how Citizen addresses these problems in society, Cassells labels her heroic. Citizen was published in 2014, 1 year after the black lives movement was founded, and I presume that racial injustice was still a difficult topic to discuss during this time. Citizen helped people who struggled relating to the treatment received by African Americans, and because of this, I believe that Claudia Rankine took a very heroic approach in writing this book.

Lastly, I disagree with Cassell’s assessment of Rankine’s passion for the book. I feel that her passion is demonstrated by the research and knowledge she has accumulated to produce the book rather than the way that she crafts Citizen using poems. Every image used is perfectly selected, every word in Citizen holds significance, and everything little detail in the book holds a powerful purpose. From pages 83-86, Rankine discusses the impact Hurricane Katrina had in 2005 and comparing the hopelessness that people had during hurricane Katrina to the hopelessness African Americans face in society. She emphasizes this phrase in the chapter, “Did you see their faces?” and follows it with a picture of a dark face with light brushstrokes on top. I believe that the use of this example and image goes to show Rankine’s passion for this topic and the extent of the research she went through demonstrates her points on a deeper level.

Claudia Rankine demonstrates her creativity, heroism, and passion through Citizen, and invites the reader to her world and the daily struggles she endures because of her skin color. Cyrus Cassells helps the reader appreciate her book and recognize Rankine’s qualities that she had to form Citizen.

Reflection

I learned how to talk about my interests and express my thoughts through various techniques. I also learned how to use after effects to create videos that corresponded with my lyrical essay. This process, while it was difficult, taught me how to use formating and wordplay to create a story within the story.