I created three songs revolving around the theme of time. The first song, titled “We’ve Still Got Time” is about being in the last year of high school, and how it feels like time is moving quickly. It’s about the emotions that come with knowing that all things come to an end. The melancholy feelings of change come through in the lyrics and chord progressions. It is more traditional because I recorded guitar (electric and acoustic), drums, and vocals. The second two songs are tied together in an EP titled “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.” They are completely made up of found sounds from my life that I recorded on a handheld microphone. I took these sounds, like trucks, car honks, city soundscapes, and manipulated them to sound musical. Each recording captures a moment in time, each sound is different from the next, unable to be replicated exactly the same way. These instrumental songs utilize everyday songs to bring the listener into new worlds of sound.

The greatest mandatory structure for someone my age is school. It is a compulsory activity, meaning “required by or as if by law” according to Merriam-Webster. Meaning, I don’t have a choice. Technically I could stay home, not go, but then there would be consequences. And if I go I technically don’t have to do my work. But if I didn’t there would be consequences too. So, by extension, this assignment is a mandatory structure of my life. If I didn’t do it, and then didn’t do the next one, or the one after that, two things would occur: 1) I would acquire a bad grade, and 2) I would not be challenging my mind and learning new material to broaden my perspectives on life. Personally, the latter is more important to me. But the former is what really matters to society. If I don’t get good grades, my chances of getting into a good college drop, and while not mandatory, college is yet another structure set up to unlock for those lucky enough, abundant resources and prescribed slots in the economy. My education also allows me to have the tools that let me understand this very system which I can then critique. And the more I understand it, the more thoroughly opposed I am to being “mold[ed]… into a slot” (46). My best option is to become educated and learn the best ways to evade the mandatory structures as well as I can. So yes, I do the assignment, even though I do not want to.

My distaste grows for the system as I learn about the complete normalcy of corporate America, the gross disease of constant consumerism, and the mainstream thought that plagues our ability to change. In a world of insane people, everyone can call themselves sane. And those self diagnosed sane people write the rules of society, and “society is what decides who’s sane and who isn’t” (44). In the ward in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest there is a rigidity that is impossible to break from. But McMurphy uses laughter as a jolt to wake those deep in the trenches of their constricted normalcy. His laughter is like my somewhat educated grab for something different than business as usual. It is hope. When he first arrives at the ward, he laughs and “it’s free and loud and it comes out of his wide grinning mouth and spreads in rings bigger and bigger till it’s lapping against the walls all over the ward…I [Bromden] realize all of a sudden it’s the first laugh I’ve heard in years” (10). It is easy to get stuck in a rhythm, and hard to break from it. The nurses and staff at the ward have implemented strict schedules and rules about when the patients can eat, watch television, and play games. This kind of structure is exactly what McMurphy is trying to get the patients to believe they can do without. He is trying to revive them with laughter. During a group meeting, McMurphy loudly whispers a joke to Cheswick and then “leaned back in his chair and laughed so hard that nobody else could say anything for nearly a minute” (145). What he is achieving is disruption, which, for anyone who’s learned about direct action, is a main goal of protests. “If we don’t get it? Shut it down!” goes a popular chant heard at climate strikes and protests. When people walk en masse down a street, or stand with their arms chain-linked through each others’ in front of a building entrance, or a frequently traveled road, they are disrupting business as usual. They are stopping the incessant flow of mindless traffic, and insisting that people take a second to hear a specific message. McMurphy is protesting, and he “was getting a lot of kick out of all the ruckus he was raising” (145).

But, as the sad moral of this story goes, he too gets beat by the system. The Man, capital M. By page 159, he “don’t crack a smile.”

Lit log #2:

For my You & The World project I decided to focus on renewable energy. In my previous post I wrote about different solutions, like innovative technology, how we have to implement those solutions, and the plans and demands for change that have been made within the past few years.

An organization that stuck out to me was a company called Pavegen. They create kinetic tiles that capture the energy of footsteps when people walk on them. I briefly talked about them in my last post, saying that their tiles have lit up soccer fields and airport hallways. Although these tiles can’t make everything renewable, they are a part of the change that we are moving towards. We have to switch to renewable energy, and innovative technology is a way we can do it.

For my Agent of Change I decided I wanted to reach out to Pavegen for a possible project. I thought their technology was really cool, and wanted to see if it was possible to put these kinetic tiles in SLA. My idea was to see if we could have a hallway with these tiles for students to power the lights.

I first looked at Pavegen’s website more, and saw that they have a section for education specifically. They have put these tiles in some schools already, and have an email specifically for education enquiries. So I decided to email Pavegen about my project.

I didn’t get a response, and later saw that an automatic one had gone to my spam telling me to fill out a project enquiry on their website. So, I went to the site and filled out the enquiry. I set up a meeting with Mr. Kamal to talk about what he thought about the project as the Engineering teacher. He told me about corporate sponsors and how they could help if we had to fund the project. He helped me fill out the project inquiry, and I submitted it.

I then got an automatic response email to the project enquiry. I haven’t gotten a response back, which is okay, so I don’t have anything else I can do. But it was still interesting to learn about and reach out to a company that’s creating innovative technology for a more sustainable future. It was exciting to email a company that is creating sustainable technology. And it was fun to brainstorm about making SLA more renewable. Even though this specific project didn’t work out, I’d like to continue thinking about renewable energy, and maybe think of other ways that SLA can be more sustainable.

I liked this project a lot. Even though I wasn’t able to do a complete project, I still enjoyed learning about renewable energy, and reaching out to a company. I think I did everything I could for this specific project, I reached out to the company multiple times, and the rest was relying on their response. I could have made a back up plan, such as informing others about renewable energy, or other sustainable ideas. But I wanted to focus my work on a possible big project. My project was just an idea, and there’s a lot left to do. It made me think about making SLA a more sustainable school, and possible projects that could happen in the future. I hope that next year there can be sustainable projects, that potentially involve renewable energy, at SLA.

Here is my annotated bibliography

The climate crisis is a huge impending problem that we must fix before it’s too late. We can’t continue to ignore the impacts of the crisis, and we have to stop burning fossil fuels. During the pandemic it’s been hard to think about all of the crises that are still happening and destroying our planet. But they’re still there, and there are things that everyone can do and learn about. But instead of focusing on the problem, I wanted to learn about the solution. So, my focus is on renewable energy. We need to eliminate fossil fuels from our atmosphere and transition to renewables. Something really important that everyone should know about is that we do actually have all of the technology to stop this and change. We’re not waiting for a big breakthrough, we have the solutions, we just need to implement change.

Transitioning to renewable energy is a crucial step in stopping climate change. And you may think that this is too big, and yes it is going to take a lot of commitment. It will involve transitioning to electric appliances, and switching energy usage.

This is a video made by Grist that shows how a hypothetical town could completely switch to renewable energy. It’s a small scale example that has to leave out the fact that individual cities can’t completely do this on their own because everything is connected to the power grid, but it still shows that it is possible to transition.

And it will cause many people to lose their jobs in the fossil fuel industry. But you know what? Renewable energy will create millions of new jobs, and benefit the Earth. You may also wonder how in the world are we going to do all of this change? Well, we already have the technology and the plans to do it. Some of the renewable technology that we already have includes solar, wind, and hydro energy. Those are popular, efficient, renewable energy sources. In my research I found other, innovative renewable energy sources, such as using kinetic energy. There are floor tile designs that capture the kinetic energy of people walking on them. In a Wired article about these floor tiles, they said that the tiles have “been used to help light soccer pitches in Brazil and Nigeria, a hallway in Heathrow Airport, and offices and shopping centers in London.” There is so much technology that we can use to transition to renewable energy, and we can do it now with plans that are already laid out for us. The Green New Deal is a plan for the United States to dramatically change the current system. It says that the “United States has historically been responsible for a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gas emissions, having emitted 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions through 2014, and has a high technological capacity, the United States must take a leading role in reducing emissions through economic transformation.”

This is the cumulative CO2 emissions in countries in 2018. The graph is from a video that shows the cumulative CO2 emissions of countries around the world since 1750. It starts out with the United Kingdom being first, but you can see that the USA quickly gains speed and shoots ahead on the chart, passing the United kingdom in 1911 and has been steadily far ahead of other countries since, and continues to be in first as of 2018 when this was made.

The Green New Deal states facts about many of the current crises, such as income inequality, and racial injustice. It’s not just a plan to switch to renewable energy, it’s a plan to make the US a more just place for everyone. So, now you know that we have the resources and a plan to transition and stop this crisis. There’s more. In october of 2019 Philadelphia pledged to commit to 100% renewable energy. They passed a resolution that said that the city would be renewable by 2050 or sooner. And “over 170 cities, more than ten counties, and eight states across the U.S. have goals to power their communities with 100% clean, renewable energy,” according to Ready for 100. A recent development in the push for climate action is the call for a climate emergency by President Biden from AOC and Bernie Sanders. President Biden said he would back the Green New Deal and help make real change with the US in the climate crisis, and now is the time for him to fulfil his promises. The call for a “climate emergency” comes in the form of a House Bill that “compares the action needed on the climate crisis to the wartime mobilization during World War II” according to Grist. It lays out many of the disastrous impacts of climate change, and the impacts that the US will and has been taking. It also lays out a plan for President Biden to take, by first declaring a climate emergency, and then having many response projects that will help restore the United States, such as modernizing infrastructure so it’s best for citizens and best used with new affordable energy. Something really great that Grist said when reporting on this is that “the National Emergencies Act could give Biden real powers: The president could use the declaration to reinstitute a ban on crude oil exports, send emergency aid packages to states, or even redirect billions of dollars of funding away from defense projects and toward the production of renewable energy.” This is really amazing. The President can make priorities, and have a big impact on how we solve this crisis.

I’ve learned about the different goals, and bills that have been made so that there is more action on climate change. I’ve also learned about how we can go renewable and what technology there is that can help us do that. It’s clear that there are a lot of people that want to do this, and are pushing for a change. There are many plans, and things that we can do to transition to renewables and help the Earth. My question is why aren’t there big changes? The Philadelphia pledge to go renewable was made two years ago and I can’t find any recent developments. So that’s what I want to know now, what do we do next? We have the plans, we have the technology, it’s time to make the change.

Here is my annotated bibliography

The pandemic has been an emotional ride. And since so much emotion can be shown in music, I wanted to make a dynamic composition that represented my own feelings throughout these past months. The beginning of my song represents “normal” life. For this, I took one of the most common “pop” chord progressions: I-V-vi-IV, and played a basic rhythm on guitar, with some simple drums. It’s a boring, basic resting place, but we accept it as normal. I then abruptly cut the intro so the happy music spins down and is replaced by distorted drums and a mood of confusion. This is the time of chaos where the song creates a “wait, what?” feeling, like when I suddenly couldn’t go to school or see my friends. After this section it switches to an uncertain mood. In the beginning of the pandemic during lockdown, I remember my parents being scared that they or our friends were going to get COVID. I remember sitting on the couch and feeling like all of the chaos was circling around me and I was just confused. I didn’t understand what was really happening, to be honest I was just inconvenienced. At the end of the third section it starts to speed up, creating a very unpleasant feeling. Each bar the tempo increases which makes me feel really unsettled, and reflects the weird “what?” moments of the pandemic. The fast tempo also creates a scared feeling. I remember being out in public with my parents around people, and finally being really scared. I was scared that my family was going to get COVID and I couldn’t stand that. At the end of my song I took the opening guitar, but reversed it to make it sound sadder and more emotional. I also pitched it up to create a kind of spooky uncanny feeling. What we’re in now is like a mixed up, reversed way of normal life. I go to virtual school and everywhere with a mask. This is our “new normal,” and I’ve fallen into a new rhythm.