once a month, only ten more blogs. It’s a weird feeling. But all I’ve found I can do about it is write. but i guess that was what i was going to do in the first place so.
media! if there is anything that can help me get out of a rut, or at least get to a place where i am feeling anything besides a weird lukewarm version of sadness all the time, it is media. though when people think about media they tend to only think about movies or maybe a podcast or two, which is fair i guess. but for the sake of both a more encompassing definition and an easier time writing this, when i say media, i mean any form of artistic entertainment. but formalities out of the way, lets get into contributing to the same format that i found myself reverting with the blogs in my junior year and name some pieces of media that have inducted the most emotion in me.
first off i cant talk about media that has really impacted me without mentioning this painting, i know that out of all forms of artistic media that is considered to be artistic media, paintings are one of the last things that come to mind. however i think that Nighthawks, an oil painting created in 1942 by edward hopper, is different, i think that it is interesting because of the indifference it provides when it comes to its level of recognition. a painting like this exists within the confines of a void. it was one of the first paintings in its time to reflect ideas of loneliness through vices of minimalism as well as capitalistic settings.
when it comes to books there are so many different things that i could have mentioned, bram stoker, mary shelly, one of my favorite books of all time is a story written by a smaller author named Hanya Yanigahara. but for the sakes of appreciating a classic that was way ahead of its time i think i have to talk about the picture of dorian gray, this story is so incredible for a number of reasons, most of all it is one of the best “descent into madness” arcs i have ever read in my life. the story surrounds a man named dorian gray, a child of wealth and a prominent name within the upper crust of london. it is a 200-ish page story that tells the story of gray’s descent into madness as he slowly grows an admiration (soon turned fear) of a portrait of him that was painted by a close friend.
for my third instance of media that has moved me i knew that the soft white underbelly was something that i was going to have to talk about, even with that understanding there was still a part of me that wasn’t sure if it would be a good fit in the first place, but i decided that leaving it out would go against the core values of what the soft white underbelly is actually about. now a know a lot of you might be asking, what even is it, and that is a good question. The soft white underbelly is actually a youtube channel that follows a premise that was completely unheard of before they started the channel. the soft white underbelly is a channel that primarily does interviews with various types of people. they don’t do interviews with actors or models, but people, dealing with problems unimaginable. whether it be deep conversations about the lives of current heroin addicts, the stories of people who grew up in a way that not many people experience, such as amish, children of abuse, or even members of organizations like the KKK.
what i love so much about these videos are the levels of raw understanding and emotion that you can see seeping throughout every crack. another great aspect is the fact that many of the people who are interviewed end up getting help from the representatives of the channel, many of which work to get clean with that help. however, that is not always the case, a lot of people who are interviewed about their addictions do end up how many people with those issues end up, yet the soft white underbelly is able to create a legacy of information through immortalizing the stories of each of these peoples.
some people might recognize another person who made a similar prompt and a similar choice but i plead the fifth, all that means is they are right, because oh my god neon genesis evangelion is one of the best pieces of tv of all time and no one can hope to change my mind on that. whether it be the classic 90’s anime look, or the sci-fi aspects that didn’t seem too stereotypical or in your face, or the characters themselves. this anime is one of the best of all time, in fact if i was to go out on a limb i would honestly say that the only anime in my opinion that even holds a chance against this one in terms of quality it would be death note. but once again i digress. i am not going to explain too much about the plot of this show just for the sole reason that i think anyone that hasn’t seen it should definitely give it a watch.
for my final addition to this i would recommend the album the gaping mouth by a band called lowertown. while it is a lot newer than some of the additions on this list (the album coming out only three years ago) it is a must listen for me. i think that this album is especially unique because it so much different from some of their other works. the band lowertown is a two-person band who is on the smaller side when it comes to popularity. one of the coolest things they have done is open for a band called sign crushes motorist, which is one of my favorite artists of all time, but they are for a different day.
The process of creating a poem is one that I wish that I even had close to down. It’s one of those things that are pretty much as sporadic as the mood swings that I wish I could overcome. Anyway, I didn’t mean to go that deep into a tangent in such a short amount of time. When it comes to my own personal development of artistic literary pieces it is always usually dictated off of one factor, that being the title, and whether I think of the idea for the poem itself first, or whether I think of the title first. For this specific piece that I am going to be sharing today I decided on the title first. This wasn’t because I couldn’t think of what to write (it was) but because I thought of it and how many metaphorical vises I could attach to it. But anyway here is the poem itself, I want to hear all of your opinions and process though too. I will touch on that in a second.