another one about montage

My last post was about montage, and how I wasn’t quite sure if I was doing it correctly. I never thought that I would have had an epiphany and want to write my project three essay in this new (to my world) form of writing: montage. We were in class kind of clarifying again what montage was, and one of my class mates gave the example of sitting on a bench in New York City and having each excerpt of the montage be a different perception of what is seen. Dr. Morris then elaborated on that thought and started to talk about the subway. She gave the example of a person sitting on the subway. One of their excerpts could be what the person next to you is doing and what they look and smell like. Another could be the vision of a person walking on the subway and describing the packages that they’re caring. Another could be a description of the blur of lights that are seen while traveling on the subway. And finally, one could be the experience of traveling under the city and a description of all of the happenings going on in the city above.

This example that Dr. Morris gave completely inspired me on what to write my third creative nonfiction essay about. My topic for the semester is travel, and I figured that traveling on a subway is something that millions of people do every day. I was excited that I had finally been inspired to write my third essay, but I was worried about the montage aspect f the writing. I think I am intimidated by montage, because of the fear of it not being successful or doing the montage wrong. I know that you learn by trial and error, but it is just an intimidating thing to conquer.

I am playing with the idea of instead of using the subway, I thought about using the Kutztown University shuttle bus that travels through campus. I could ride the shuttle bus for a couple of the loops around campus and take in my surroundings, which will help to draw off of my own experiences and make the essay true to the word nonfiction. I could describe the setting around me as I ride the shuttle, I could describe the movements of the shuttle and the mass amounts of people that get on and off in packs, I could write about the people that I experience on the ride: what they look like, smell like, are they happy or sad, if they are people interacting with each other and if so what are they talking about. I think that if done correctly I could write a really powerful creative nonfiction essay. What worries me is that I will have too much detail in each excerpt, and my writing will be longer than a traditional montage would be. What also worries me was the point. What is the problem that I would face and try to bring to light? I don’t know what point I will be trying to prove by writing this essay. 

Montage

For our class today we were assigned to read Keep It Real pages 95-108. The topics included, “The Lyric Essay,” “Metaphor,” and “Montage Writing.” So last night I sat down to do the reading, and I scanned over the first two chapters, and then I got to montage writing. And by that point I had already read the story called “The Brown Study” in In Fact, which I didn’t enjoy reading at all but that’s beside the point. So by now my eye lids were growing heavy and I didn’t really want to continue to read about montages. So I read the first page or two, and I went on with the rest of the reading that I had to complete. Yes of course as the average college student I left my homework until way later than I should have. Either way, I get to class today and what are we talking about? Montages. Oh god. “Well at least I have a slight understanding of what a montage is. This shouldn’t be too bad,” I thought to myself. And in essence it wasn’t too bad, but I just couldn’t get inspired at first to get something down on paper. Dr. Morris, as well as the class, kept giving examples of movies and writings that montages were used and either I had never seen the movie or I didn’t understand the concept they were trying to get across.

Dr. Morris gave every student in the class a piece of paper with a quote on it, which was set to be our inspiriation to write our own montage. Me still not completely certain what a montage was I was filled with anxiety, as well as a few of my classmates. No one wanted to be the one that messed up or be the one to do the assignment wrong.

My quote was, “some people would rather die than think,” by Bertrand Russell. It immediately reminded me of all the people I know that would rather do thoughtless things rather than intellectual things. There are definitely times that I am one of those people (I love trashy television), but there are other moments were I would  much rather read a book than do anything else. I drew on real like conversations that I have had with people and came up with this as my montage,

“Dude I am so pumped that the new ‘Call of Duty’ video game came out. I’m going to try and beat it tonight. I’m not going to sleep until I beat this video game.

*

The new series ‘Real Housewives of New Jersey’ starts tonight. I wonder if Theresa will flip a table this season like she did on the season finale. And I wonder what Danielle will do. She is such a bitch.

*

Obama you have about five minutes to wrap up this speech about our involvement in Libia before you cut into Dancing with the Stars’. You’re already taking up the time slot for ‘Wheel of Fortune’. Wrap this shit up.

*

I am definitely going to the bar tonight. It’s karaoke night. I can’t miss out on that. All my friends keep telling me to put off studying at least for happy hour, and then I can go back to studying.”

I was worried that it wasn’t too much of a story, because it didn’t have a beginning, middle, and an end, but I was happy with the outcome because all of those montages definitely connected together with my quote.

bullshit budget

So with this new budget proposed for the state of Pennsylvania proposed by the oh-so-well-liked Governor Corbett I have to ask myself how much I will be affected by the cuts that will be placed on Kutztown University. It has been said that our tuition will go up 32%. I cannot believe that the governor wants to cut budgets at schools, but he wants to raise the budgets for prisons. It is just crazy for me to think about. Doesn’t he see that when the tuition goes up it will force people not to be able to afford college, resulting in less people employed (because they aren’t educated) which could then result in more people having to go to jail because they’d say be forced to steal groceries since they don’t have a job. It’s obvious for me to see. How is he so oblivious to this fact.

Being from New Jersey I wasn’t sure if I was able to write my local legislature about this budget, because my legislature is obviously from New Jersey. So when we were in class we pulled up the website I was able to write a letter to the legislature for the Kutztown area. My tuition is higher than those students in-state to begin with so I don’t even know if I’d be able to attend Kutztown still if this budget is passed. I know that lots of other Kutztown University students are in the same boat as I am in.

I know that having rallies and writing letters to our legislature is showing our opinions to our government, but I still have to think of the facts. I asked the students in our class, who many of them did write a letter to their legislature, “How many of you are actually registered to vote in the state of Pennsylvania?” Not too many people raised their hands. I explained to them that these legislatures are going to take our letters into consideration, but at the same time they understand that a VERY low percentage of those who did write letters expressing their opinions are not registered. So to break it down simply, the letters and rallies can only do so much. Everyone that is being affected by this budget needs to be registered to vote, and they need to actually go out to vote if it is brought to the polls, whenever that may be. I am registered to vote, but again I am registered to vote in New Jersey so I am a little bit helpless when it comes to voting in any kind of election. So the only thing that I can do is beg and plead every single one of my friends to get out and get themselves registered to vote. I am so afraid that this vote will be stalled until May or so and by then I hope people will not lose their drive and devotion because they won’t be at school anymore. I’m afraid that the students who are so fired up about this topic right now will get in the out of sight out of mind phase and nothing will be fixed.

A different perspective of opinion editorials

So in class we defined opinion editorials as being a somewhat reported article with opinion spread throughout it. When my group was asked to lead discussion in class we decided that we would have three different sources and have our class members place each source on a scale. On one end would be journalism, and on the other end would be fiction. Our goal was to keep the sources a secret from the class so it would not sway the class one way or another. We wanted them to focus only on the words being written rather than the source that was writing them. The first source that we chose was a blog post by Perez Hilton on Charlie Sheen. Hilton technically followed the guidelines that we set as a class that defined an opinion editorial. He gave direct quotes from Sheen, and he was obviously very sarcastic in his tone. Hilton gave facts, his opinion, and was very sarcastic. The class ultimately decided that the post did not give enough information to be considered an opinion editorial, but they placed source number one closer to the side of journalism than fiction. The second source that we chose was definitely a true opinion editorial. It was taken from the LA Times, and it discussed gay protestors rallying at soldiers funerals. The class put source two in a similar position to source number one. The final and third source we chose to share with the class was actually the script to Stephen Colbert’s at the White House Press Corps Dinner. He said things like, “By the way, before I get started, if anybody needs anything else at their tables, just speak slowly and clearly into your table numbers. Someone from the NSA will be right over with a cocktail.” Obviously, Colbert being a comedian it was very sarcastic and humorous. The class decided that source number three was off the chart of the fiction side. It was really amusing to go back to show the class the publication of each source. It really helped to show that there can be opinion editorials all over the place, ones that people wouldn’t always necessarily recognize to be opinion editorials. I think the class really benefitted from the discussion. It was a way to look outside the box and really see that there are a lot of different ways to look at pieces of writing. Even though Perez Hilton is considered to be a blogger it was interesting to see that we kind of tricked the class when they had to choose where to put that source on the scale. There were definitely some students in the class that didn’t agree with where to put that source. They actually didn’t want to put the source on the scale at all, because they didn’t think that there was enough information given to draw a conclusion. After we revealed that the source was Perez Hilton those few were happy that they stood their ground, that they were fooled by our trick of hiding the author. It was a fun, different way to look at opinion editorials. The moral of the story is in a way don’t judge a book by its cover. Don’t rule certain things out because if you look at them from a different perspective they may be different than what you would have perceived.