In an effort to better my technique and brighten my idealistic future I have spent many late nights recording and mixing for my close friends and bandmates. For the select few of my readers who are familiar with the recording process they know that it can be quite draining. But why do I, and these select few, do it? We do it to get the music that we love heard. No matter how much work it is and no matter how many hours it drains from my life I still feel obligated to get each song done. In the long run I consider it fulfilling; after all, it is brightening my idealistic future.
But on a slightly bitter note, I would like to point the irony of my previous paragraph. I say that recording is brightening my future but here I am at quarter to eleven on a Sunday night racing to finish my homework for school that starts too early tomorrow morning. If you call me a procrastinator I will not be insulted. My only reaction may be an overly dramatic look of self loathing on my face.

Aging

I must agree with Tim O’Brien when he says that people never change throughout the course of their lives. Though some things might be different due to age or experience but by an overall view, people are always the same.
I too can relate to looking at old photographs and feeling a connection to the child I was then and the child I still am. In old photographs I am a timid little child afraid of people I do not know to well. I was even timid around people in my family and the people I call friends. Shyness never fades away. Sure my mother no longer combs my hair or picks out cute little outfits for me, but I have the same childish smile. My hair is darker and I am much taller, but I still sing to myself in the shower. Some things never change. I still like to be held and comforted. Nervousness still makes my stomach ache. I still keep to my self.
I believe that when I am forty I will still be this way. I will ask my wife to hold me and comfort me. I will learn more songs to sing in the shower. And I will still be hesitant to meet new people. I am not afraid to deny this. These characteristics have gotten me through my first seventeen years of life and I think they will stick with me for another seventeen or thirty-four years.
Though we might change physical, our childish emotional and psychological characteristics are always somewhere in our minds.

Jon Krakauer Why I Write

Since I was very young I knew that would become a writer. I knew that I was the one who needed to tell the stories of great adventurers. People who could truly inspire the people of the world. It is truly my calling.
When I heard about the tragic death of Christopher McCandless, I knew that his story was the story I needed to tell to the world. But I needed to know the whole story first. I gathered all of the information that I could possibly get my hands on. I got the story from the people that Chris was close to. The people that knew him best. The people that he knew best. I write to get the whole story. What is the point of telling a story if it is not the true story?
It is not easy. I never know how to start. Though I might have the information, I never know where to go with it. I need to work of the order of the events. I need to select the perfect word order. Language is key. I need to know how to tell the story without over exaggerating it. I need to become attached to the story and make sure my readers become attached to the story. Since Christopher McCandless’s story is, obviously, not my own I sometimes find it difficult to attach myself to it and not dramatize it. I need to control myself by making it realistic, but as passionate and exciting at it possible can be.
I do not write out of egoism. I write to tell the story the best that I can. I write for myself. I write for my readers. I write for Chris McCandless.
-Jon Krakauer

Bravery

“People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.” (Eliot)
Chris McCandless’s journey may not have been out of bravery, but there is no way to deny that it was brave. In Chris’s memoir Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, he ventures off into the wilderness to find himself in solitude; he is a modern day Henry David Thoreau. He believes that only in his solitude he will be ably to truly learn to be content with himself and the world around him. He left behind civilization, companionship, and all of the objects that were, as he considered them to be, useless and unessential. He lasts two years exploring the country only finding discontent in every place he sees. He believes that only in the vast wilderness of Alaska he will find true tranquility. He is determined and believes that he can survive the obstacles that are laid before him, but, unfortunately, he is sadly mistaken.
It is not long before he slowly dies of starvation and poisonous vegetation. As courageous as he thought he was, he was still not able to successful provide for himself off of the fruit of land. In his last hours he learns the most important lesson of his life, “HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED”(189 Krakauer). He did not need the thrill of adventure, the solitude of the wilderness, the exploration of the unknown, or the comfort of nothingness. What he needed most was everything he left behind. Not necessarily the material aspect of what he left behind, but the intangible things. He needed companionship, security, and love. He longs to see his family member’s face, to reunited with the many people that he met on his journey across the country, and the love of his nearest neighbors.
Only in death did Chris McCandless learn that loneliness is not living, but that loving is living.

Birds (Not the Alfred Hitchcock Film)

“Then, out of nowhere, a flock of birds flew by the window, extremely fast and incredibly close. Maybe twenty of them. Maybe more. But they also seemed like just one bird, because somehow they all knew exactly what to do. Mr. Black grabbed at his ear and made a bunch of weird sounds. He started crying− not out of happiness, I could tell, but not out of sadness, either”(Foer 165-168).
In literature, movies, and music birds are a common symbol for freedom. Even terrible bands like Lynyrd Skynrd use imagery of birds in the terrible song “Free Bird”. It is not hard to understand why birds are a symbol for freedom. As they sore through the sky they are untouchable. They are elegant. They are courageous. They are free. And it is not hard to understand why the flock of birds flying past the window was the first sound that Mr. Black heard in Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
Mr. Black lived a life of solitude in his lonesome apartment 6A. The doorman Stan referred to him as a ghost. He was lifeless. He fell in love with the woman he would soon marry. He left his life as a soldier to become a husband. But when his wife died he was alone with no purpose in life. But how ironic is it that the purpose he was looking for was one floor below him in 5A.
While Oskar Schell was crossing off names on his list of Blacks he came to the next name. He met Mr. Black and immediately connected with him. They were both lost and alone and they were both in need of companionship. Mr. Black spent twenty-four years in silence. He refused to hear the world around him and turned his hearing aid off. Oskar finally convinced Mr. Black to join him on his quest to discover the secret of his father’s key. Mr. Black chose to reenter the world and experience all it had to offer, including its millions of sounds. As Oskar slowly turned the volume up on Mr. Black’s hearing-aid a flock of birds flew by.
With a renewed sense of freedom Mr. Black joined Oskar to discover a new life. The city was no longer too much for this man of one hundred and three.