Vinyl & Verses

       It was August 18th, 1969, and a crowd of hippies was awaiting Jimi Hendrix to take the stage at Woodstock. The song that he was about to perform, however, was one that you would never expect. In my opinion, it was the most impactful distortion of a song ever done in an act of protest. One might've expected him to play a hardcore rock song, but he ended up performing "The Star Spangled Banner", putting his own hippie-like spin on it.  He was able to voice his concerns about the social and governmental issues of the time, such as the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement, through music —a mode of protest that doesn't require you to give up your freedom. This is true Civil Disobedience.      This rendition not only exemplified an act of peaceful protest but also showed how impactful a mere performance can be. This heavily contrasts with the views of Henry David Thoreau in "Civil Disobedience", who takes an extreme position on what constit...

 It was a stressful school night at my desk and I had piles of homework. But somehow, I was able to drown all that noise and stress out with the sensation of music. Sometimes, music can be an escape from the world when you procrastinate your AP Lang blog, or you realize you have an AP Bio quiz tomorrow on like 10 pages of notes that you haven't even started studying for. However, some music, like songs popularized by Instagram and TikTok, can feel old and overplayed, and sometimes even annoying. Just like how David Foster Wallace taught us to be more conscious in life in This is Water , we should also be more conscious in deciding what music we listen to, because some of the most popular music, quite frankly, is horrible. Imagine this, you come home from a busy day at school and as you throw your bag to the floor and plop onto your bed, you decide to watch some Instagram Reels. As soon as you open the app, however, the first thing you hear is that gosh darn 6 7 song or another over...

    "Deep down inside I feel the scream. This terrible silence stops here."      What you just read were some of the haunting lyrics from the song "One" by Metallica, made to talk about the mind of a soldier in war, and how his emotions and experiences were being silenced.  Attempting to achieve the same goal, in a quiet and secluded park in Washington DC, an enormous mural of war stands. This is none other than the World War One memorial, showing the struggle of many soldiers through a bronze silhouette. These two modes play a vital role in making sure the voices of those who risked their lives don't go unnoticed.     The memorial depicts a bloody scene of battle, whilst the song focuses on the mind of a soldier in battle. The mental state of a human, especially during something as traumatic as war, cant be depicted through a mural. Similarly, a scene of battle cant be shown through a mere song, which is why these two modes work extremely well to...