Esther's 2018-2019 Playlist

Talking about the Holocaust this week made me think of that memorial project we did a while back. I researched the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin and learned about the design of the memorial and the meaning behind it. The memorial, designed by Peter Eisenman, is hundreds of concrete slabs that are various heights aligned in perfect columns and rows. The different heights are supposed to create a montage effect, signifying that the impact of the Holocaust is still ongoing and prevalent. I think that this message speaks the truth for all traumatic experiences in life. We write books, compose songs, paint pictures, and retell stories to not only share the experience with others but also to relieve our own stress that we feel from these events. Although all of these ways are an outlet for people to express their thoughts and emotions, these platforms don’t necessarily give the audience the full experience. Jim Powell argues that “any art attempting to represent the Holo...

While there is a basic, universal definition for all of the words in the world, the specific definition for most words vary based on the person because everyone has their own personalized descriptions coming from individual life experiences and knowledge. The same goes for the phrase “real freedom”. In David Wallace’s address to a graduating college class he says, “the really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able to truly care about other people and sacrifice for them… that is real freedom.” He gives the graduates advice from personal experience and while his definition is completely valid, I do not agree with it completely. For me, having real freedom is not only being aware of others, but also allowing yourself to let loose and create. “The power of imagination makes us infinite” says John Muir, and I agree. When let loose, our minds are able to create and innovate in such raw and vulnerable forms, and it’s such a pre...

I remember when we were learning about the Chernobyl Accident in my seventh grade social studies class, our teacher was explaining the disastrous consequences of the event. She talked about the people and animals who lived there, and I remember her specifically saying, “I would show you guys pictures of the people and animals who were affected by the radiation, but they are a bit gory so I decided not to. If you guys are interested in seeing those, you can look into that on your own”, and this came to mind as we discussed the role of history teachers in relation to protection this week. Both my social studies teacher and the history teacher in Billy Collins’s The History Teacher displayed the same motive of “trying to protect [the] students’ innocence”; however, with different degrees. In the situation of the poem, we are all extremely frustrated at the teacher because he is taking away so much detail from the actual events, and the consequences of this aren’t helping the children ...

This past week I learned that absence is what highlights the presence of a being or object. The paradoxical meaning of these two words explain so many of the emotions that we experience when it comes to presence and absence. One’s presence is always appreciated more when he/she is absent. Although the aurora of a person may move others and fill the entirety of the space around them, the comparison of his/her absence with when he/she was present is far more impactful. Pain, sorrow, and suffering are the reactions to someone’s disappearance due to the fact that now the person’s presence will never return. Phrases like “you will always be with us” are constantly used when someone passes away to remind people that the absence of that person is what becomes the presence of their absence. In the Postcards from the Trenches, Booth states, “A corpse can be understood as representing the conflation of absence and presence, embodying proof both that a person is here and will never be h...