Creating a Myth

It is one thing to experience mythology, it is another to create it. Now that I read that last sentence, it sounds incredibly self-important and melodramatic, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't true. When we are learning how to do anything, read, write, drive, do our taxes, the process is two steps. What do people always say? Watch and learn. But there is an implicit third part to that statement: watch, learn, then do. The "doing" is an incredibly important part to the learning process. We first observe, taking in all the information we can on technique, then we apply it. Creating my silly little myth about brain rot with silly little characters with silly little names was the "doing."

 Through the act of creating my own myth, I feel like a I got a much better grasp of the basic elements that make a myth work. When reading old mythology, often characters or plot points seem absurd. What do you mean Cronos ate his children? What do you mean Izanagi created the islands with a spear? The events themselves are nonsensical, but it is intentionally done so to create a fictional reality. This fictional reality is one of godhood, where a sneeze can be an act of creation. For mere mortals like us, we could never imagine creating life by simply having a thought, but for deities, that's just another Tuesday. So in creating my myth, I tried to tap into this alternate reality where grand acts of creation or as simple as a wave of the hand. 

In doing so, I began to understand mythology a lot more, and perhaps, glimpsed its purpose. When I was a young kid, my family would all drive to Las Vegas together. I'd see the mountains in the desert and say, "They look like sleeping giants!" We would make up silly stories about who these giants might be, why they're sleepy, what might wake them up. We'd give them names and backstories; we would create a mythology. It didn't matter whether or not the story was real, it created a sense of shared experience while connecting us to the natural world. Humans create myths all the time. We tell silly stories about that squirrel in the park, or why that billboard has been there so long, or how Jared Leto keeps getting work. We tell these stories to connect to each other and invite an opportunity for shared experience. It's almost like a cultural inside joke. But of course, that's just how it feels to me. Perhaps you feel differently. 

Reading versus Writing Poetry

"If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way?"

-Emily Dickinson 

An Introduction and Some Thoughts on Media Technology

Handshakes and Hand Grenades

Greetings! Are the iPad kids 'cooked'? (no they'll be alright)

Happy Friday! I know that title is a bit of a doozy, so I'll start off small with handshake. Nice to meet you all! My name is Jeremy I'm in my last semester at CSUN (finally!) after six, yes, SIX years of college. I graduated in 2019 and had the bright idea that I wanted to be a big Hollywood director one day. It was a lofty dream, to be sure, but one that I was never fully committed to. Every time I told someone I wanted to be a director I couldn't help but feel like I was trying to convince myself it was true. I was uncertain. So, I entered community college (shoutout to Pasadena City College) tentatively pursuing film. Of course, not even nine months later in March of 2020 the world collapsed in on itself. I spent the next three years taking some classes and bouncing between film, television, radio, and then back to film as my major. By 2022 I was adamant I would apply to film school. I had put in the work and actually completed my entire portfolio, but as I sat with my application completed and awaiting submission, I stopped. I thought, "is this what I really want?" And the answer was no. I wanted a career that didn't sap my energy. A life free of the next big thing, months of shooting on location, press tours, studio politics, and the inevitable crash and burn. And that was if everything went well. I decided I wanted a career where I mattered, where I could positively affect the lives not of entire societies, but individuals. I wanted something that would leave time for family, vacations, and a home. So, I considered what I was good at and here I am. In the next couple years, if all goes right, I'll be teaching English.

Now for the second heavier part. Inside each of our pockets is a bomb. It weighs about half a pound, is about the same size as your hand, and has more computing power than the entirety of NASA on the Apollo 11 mission. It's your smartphone. While our phones are our greatest tools, they are also our most dangerous and self-destructive weapons. Nearly all of human knowledge sitting in your pocket and we use it to watch AI slop which leads me to the question I posed above. Are the iPad kids 'cooked?'

What we, as teachers, will face is a generation of children raised on instant gratification and an underdeveloped ability to find pleasure in reading. Reading is hard. Think about what your brain is doing in reading this blog post. It's taking in the visual stimulation of black pixels on a white backdrop, yes. But it is also interpreting those visual signals into words and then deriving meaning from it. You may be imagining me speaking. You almost certainly 'hear' a voice in your head. It's work. It's why our brains prefer scrolling endlessly on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, anything that isn't academia. So, what role should technology play in the classroom?

My inner Luddite wants nothing to do with any screen; to go old-school. Pen and paper only. Handwritten assignments. The works. But is that fair to these kids? They enter the age of information, and it is highly digital. I write differently when I type than when I write by hand. I can work faster, edit in real time and save money on materials while doing it. Yet my writing can bloat while when I write on paper, when my fingers cannot keep-up with my mind, my words become more deliberate. More succinct. For the kids and teens, we will be teaching in the future, it's our job to give them the skills to tackle either job.

Technology can be a bane in the classroom but also boon. It's up to how we use it. A phone doesn't have to be an intellectual hand grenade, but a tool. The so-called iPad kids know technology better than any generation before them, so we should use that. Teach them when certain programs and approaches on a screen are useful and what the limitations are. After that, it's up to them.