Luzon

There aren’t many times like those left. The antiquated contraptions in the mulch and grass were adorned with rust and graffiti, yet we enjoyed them anyway. Fathers and sons away on the swings. Us, sitting in the wheel, looking anachronistic. The girls laughed as we were spun, the world outside looking like a polychromatic blur. Like drunken fools we stood and stumbled, laughing at our childishness. “Twelve-year old, looking for a pimp. 36D,” written on the wheel. We ran to the swings as the parents observed us, teens in a child’s hovel. Competitions for who can jump the farthest. Twisting in the swing as much as possible and taking off like a cyclone. How many more of those moments? we asked ourselves. My friend’s obsidian-colored camera spying us in its lens as we tried to bottle our moment. Then it was gone, another whirr on the wheel, spinning as fast as our youth seemed to go. Laughing so hard, and feeling so dizzy we exude nausea. “I hope you had the time of your life,” croons the tiny voice on the speaker his iPod. We walk on the sidewalk, every moment a symbol for our impromptu film. The wind buffets some leaves to the ground. The street connecting Luzon with the rest of the neighborhood. Four roads, four of us. Our own crossroads, each of us standing over our imponderable futures. Moving on. But to McDonald’s first for a drink, save the rest for later. The swings move in the wind, meshed with our memories and joys. The wheel at Luzon, still spinning, acting as the hourglass for the rest of our youth before the deep plunge unto the uncertain future.


Antiquated: Adj. old
Adorned: V. to lend beauty to
Anachronistic: Adj. not in correct time period
Polychromatic: Adj. having or exhibiting a variety of colors
Hovel: N. small dwelling
Obsidian: N. a dark, volcanic glass
Exude: V. to send out
Buffet: V. to force one’s way
Imponderable: Adj. not ponderable
Meshed: V. to become entangled

Take a Sad Song and Make It Better

Hey Jude, don't make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her into your heart,
Then you can start to make it better.

Hey Jude, don't be afraid
You were made to go out and get her
The minute you let her under your skin,
Then you begin to make it better

And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain,
Don't carry the world upon your shoulders
For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder

Hey Jude, don't let me down
You have found her, now go and get her
Remember to let her into your heart,
Then you can start to make it better

So let it out and let it in, hey Jude, begin
You're waiting for someone to perform with
And don't you know that it's just you, hey Jude, you'll do
The movement you need is on your shoulder

Hey Jude, don't make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her under your skin,
Then you'll begin to make it
Better better better better better better, (make it Jude) ooh

Na na na nananana, nananana, hey Jude... (Repeat X amount of times)


“Hey Jude” by the Beatles

They were just a tiny band from Liverpool. A man named John met a guitarist named Paul at school, and they formed a band called The Quarrymen. Soon after they met a fellow named George, and a few years and a name change later, a drummer named Richard Starkey, who eventually became known as Ringo Starr. They signed a record deal and recorded an album in Abbey Road Studios, and, less than a year later, became a huge sensation in not only their native UK, but in the United States as well. In fact, they became so popular, a term was coined in their honor in an attempt to describe the frenzy surrounding them: Beatlemania. Album after album was released, containing songs destined to be classics. Their material started to be deeper and deeper in meaning, until every song was analyzed as a philosophical masterpiece, or a drug-induced tune. Yet their fame was starting to become too much for them, and John, after meeting a lady named Yoko, left the band, as well as his previous wife. Paul, in an attempt to console John’s son, Julian, wrote a ballad called “Hey Jude.” This song was one of the final masterpieces of that Liverpool band, and has quite often been named a classic by several professionals and listeners alike. It was forty years ago that The Beatles released it, and, to commemorate it, Rolling Stone would like to bring you a story on the greatest rock band of all time, and to find what they had been saying for years in their best masterpiece: “Hey Jude.”

The Beatles began with softer, lighthearted songs, like “Twist and Shout,” “Love Me Do,” and “P.S. I Love You.” Their brand of music was popular at the time, and related most to the rock and roll of the 1950s, with influences from artists like Buddy Holly. The teen girls of the UK and US fell in love with the band, along with seemingly the rest of the world. As time passed, they matured, with experimental albums like “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and their White Album, simply titled “The Beatles.” They sounded completely different from what had come before, and even what they had been when they first started out. When psychedelic rock reached its zenith in the hippie-era of the mid-1960s, The Beatles were there. Their music during this time was innovative, with mind-bending songs like “I am the Walrus,” and the ever-popular “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Their instruments shifted all over the spectrum, which infected their sound with an Indian vibe, or a classical piece turned rock and roll, like “Across the Universe,” or “Eleanor Rigby,” respectively. “Universe” was released during Vietnam, and its peaceful point reflects it. The Beatles were staunch believers in peace, which John Lennon actively took part in trying to spread. His ally in this was Yoko Ono, his love and future wife. Unfortunately, when Lennon met Ono, he was married to Cynthia Lennon, and had a son, Julian. John eventually divorced Cynthia and married Yoko. Julian was feeling depressed about the end of his parents’ marriage, and so Paul was driving to his house to comfort him and his mother. “I thought, as a friend of the family, I would motor out to Weybridge and tell them that everything was all right: to try and cheer them up, basically, and see how they were,” said Paul. “I had about an hour's drive. I would always turn the radio off and try and make up songs, just in case... I started singing: 'Hey Jules - don't make it bad, take a sad song, and make it better...' It was optimistic, a hopeful message for Julian: 'Come on, man, your parents got divorced. I know you're not happy, but you'll be OK.'” Thus, McCartney came up with one of The Beatles’ greatest hits.

The song is sung relatively slowly and delicately. McCartney’s voice sounds consoling, full of wisdom and hope. The first two verses seem to say that to overcome the pain, one has to acknowledge it. Yet in the next verse, he warns that, after the pain has been acknowledged it must be pushed away. This can be done by “taking a sad song and making it better.” By finding the positive in life, the outlook seems brighter, and the darkness in life is dimmed, for the pain is temporary. And if the pain ever tried to overcome someone in a moment of weakness, one must focus on that positive thing, that dark thing turned good, and the pain would be abated. In the fifth verse, McCartney sings that it is just “you” that can change the pain, and one should not wait for someone else to try to get it started.

The Beatles broke up in 1970 after personal disputes and weariness of working together. John Lennon was killed in 1980 by Mark David Chapman, and George Harrison died from cancer in 2001. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have since embarked on solo careers, both meeting success. Yet the “Fab Four” will always be remembered as The Beatles. Their fun, thought-provoking music is some of the most popular in the world. “Hey Jude,” along with several of their other hits, are all easily recognized and well-known. In the end, the message of “Hey Jude” is to find the positive in the negative. Jules was meant to find it in his parents’ divorce, yet the song works because it is a universal message that every human being can relate to. It worked for its time because Vietnam was in its death throes, and people were enveloped in a quagmire of depression. People needed that light at the end of the tunnel, letting them know that even though things were bad right now, it would eventually work out in the end. That in everything dark, there is a light. That meaning carries through today, where the world continues to suffer. Yet we can try to make something good out of it. To quote “The End,” the final song from The Beatles, “In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” One must work for that love, which is what The Beatles always wanted: for everyone to love. That is why “Hey Jude” is such a classic, and why it is one of The Beatles’ greatest songs ever.

Hypnopaedia

The hypnopaedia statement in the video, “Suicide is Sleep,” reflects the life of people in society today. People are in a constant state of motion, and it is believed that resting for even a little while will leave you behind in this fast-paced world. With a coffee bar at every corner, and the pressure of working 24/7, it is no wonder stress is such a terrible factor. The video at the beginning features two peacefully resting people, stress-free and innocent, against the calming backdrop of “Moonlight Sonata.” As “Suicide” appears on the screen, the music jumps to the hectic, hypnotizing sounds of The Beatles’ “Revolution 9,” along with images of the stressed and laboring, convincing the young to work or nothing will ever be done.

The Savage

I thought it would be wonderful.
The world, the new world, would be good and noble.
But this… this new world is not that.
The world is just as savage as my own.
“So quick bright things come to confusion.”
My dreams of enlightenment and wisdom are gone.
Life is not as it was, nor was it meant to be.
The drug that dares to numb those who need the pain.
The pain, the acknowledgement of awareness.
Oh forgive me! Please forgive me!
Oh forgive me for tasting the fruit of the strumpet that they call their land.
For in that place it belongs to everyone.
“Out damned spot!”
It will not leave me! Oh mother, how could you fall prey to that spot?
That spot that I call evil and abandonment!
Even as a child you left me to him that infected you with the tastes of this world.
Why did such evil come to us? Why?
They know not. You know not, that sit dumbly and idly as your minds are eaten.
Such apathy.
Why has this time come?
How could it have come?
“Beware the ides of March.”
Alas, they are here every day.
Like Caesar I am stabbed by her.
Strumpet, how dare she try to seduce me!
It is not her fault.
No, it is.
No.
They have no guide, like I did.
A mother who loved me, even when she was lost in her mind.
Yet now there is the father that rejects me.
My mother is now gone, preferring the cold comfort of the fatal pill.
Who is left?
Just you, John, just you.
The Savage must subsist on his own.
I, the forsaken, in this barren land.
But still they hound me.
Leave me!
“O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are here!
How beauteous mankind is!”
If only he could see this day, he’d spit upon the graves of their leaders.
Why won’t they leave?
Why did I ever leave my home?
O brave new world!
Perhaps the next will be a better one?

Found Poem

He knew something about human nature, all right,
But he wasn't really in touch with the world.
"They can't keep me from running," he said.
The man knew he was next,
For he could hear the slosh of water and the gulping and inhaling.
He beckoned to the man and he comforted him before the plunge.
"It is a vacation from being you," he said.
"For life is motion." Besides they are all dead.
"But sometimes death is a cold silence like the arctic night."
"Not always," said the murderer.
"There is some hullabaloo about it."
He grabbed his scalp and pushed him under.
It was all a breathless monotony, suddenly cut off, never a blunder.
Then there he was, the flower in the cranny.

Setting and paradox

Setting
O’Neil’s Long Day’s Journey into Night takes place in the vacation house of the Tyrone family. The place is the only constant thing in the Tyrone family, and encapsulates the mood and beliefs of the family as it remains shrouded in fog, symbolizing their blindness to everything but the past. They wander about, seemingly “ghosts” in their “haunted” house. They, like these specters, don’t seem to realize their pasts hinder them in the present. Combined together with their narcotics, the foggy house of the ghostly Tyrones will never become a home.

Paradox
James Tyrone and Jamie Tyrone are constantly at odds with one another, yet each one shares similarities with the other creating a paradox. For instance, their names are only a few letters off, and their habits, such as drinking and laziness, are both apparent in the other. James found success in acting as the same character and lost all his artistic credibility. Jamie, too, is too lazy to find a job, and wastes any money he has on immoral acts. It seems, then, that no matter how much they detest each other, they are the same person.

Eugene O'Neill mini-research paper

Tyler Watson
Period: A-3
Long Day’s Journey into Night blog essay
Biographical



O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night portrays the author’s own family and the dysfunction within it that led him to become the playwright known today. The son of Irish Catholics, he lived in a constantly changing world, with the only stable thing in his life a house named Monte Cristo (Gale). James O’Neill was an actor who had found success playing the same role over-and-over; Mary Ellen, his wife and mother of Eugene; and James Jr., Eugene’s brother. Each character, including O’Neill himself, was incorporated into the play. Pain was an everyday experience, yet it formed him to become a gifted, if troubled, writer.
The play takes place one summer day in the Tyrone family that leads into a dark and twisted end. James Tyrone, the frugal and alcoholic ex-actor, represents the real James O’Neill, who shared many similarities. James found success playing the character of Edmund Dantes from The Count of Monte Cristo every time he was on stage, leading to vast sums of money, yet little artistic integrity, which he eventually felt guilt over (Gale). He bought a summer home in New York and christened it Monte Cristo in honor of the play. It is a form of this house that appears as the setting in Long Day’s Journey into Night. The importance of this house allows the reader to gain insight into O’Neill himself. Here, the life-changing events take place, instead of a hotel room, which shows how precious Monte Cristo was to O’Neill. The fog that lingers outside of the house in Long Day’s Journey into House represents the troubles that the house protected O’Neill from in his younger years, only to eventually seep in, representing his coming-of-age, in which he became more opinionated and independent, meaning that the safety of Monte Cristo was behind him.
James Jr. O’Neill, Eugene’s older brother, also faced challenges that became present in the character of Jamie. He was also an alcoholic, spending most of his time in bordellos (Gale), much like Jamie. After coming home from such a meeting, he shows sorrow for his romanticizing of immorality (LDJIN pg. 169), something that the real James Jr. had done as well. Yet this sudden upsurge of guilt begins when he finds out about his brother’s illness, something that he and Mary know all too well of.
Mary Ellen O’Neill lived the same way Mary Tyrone had, with the story of her meeting James almost exactly the same as Mary meeting James Tyrone (Gale). Her second son, Edmund, died of the measles from exposure to James Jr., leading to a terrible guilt for both Mary and her son. As in the play, Mary became addicted to morphine, yet, a few years afterward, broke free of her habit. As the reader knows, Mary Tyrone does not have the same fate. This may lead one to question the impact of the addiction on Eugene. Perhaps this was a traumatizing period for him, something he could only express in the horrifying ending to Long Day’s Journey into Night.
O’Neill’s upbringing led him to become a Nobel Prize winning playwright, yet the pain he experienced troubled him so much he could only relieve himself of the cross by writing Long Day’s Journey into Night. By the end of the play, the Tyrones face a, foggy future. However, the O’Neill family had several moments of happiness that were dichotomized with their failures. The darker experiences may have had a stronger emotional impact on O’Neill than the lighter, forming him into a troubled, if brilliant playwright.
Works cited:
Stilling, Roger J. "Eugene O'Neill." Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature, Part 3. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 331. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Gale. LEE COUNTY LIBRARY SYSTEM. 21 Sept. 2008.

The sun encroaches

The sun encroaches.
The flowers bloom
While a man reaches his doom.
The resurrecting machines roar to life
While those inside them are full of strife
for his fellow man.
The lovers entwine beneath the bells
While to another his soul he sells.
The future bright learns
While future dark his knowledge he burns.
The night dawns and there is peace.
The sun encroaches.