Know your audience

In my “know your audience” response I was astonished at how many people neglected to mention the music of their life. I expected questions about kids, favorite colors, how many pets and even my question about vacations.  I was excited to answer this question about music because I feel music is a great way to communicate. It makes you feel alive.

Feel that warm summer breeze on your back, in a shack down on the bayou? You can feel the soul coming through the back door off the water. Come on now dance with me, you feel me? How about a slow dance on the ocean with something melodic, smell the salt, feel the spray of the ocean, sense the blue of the water, as the darkness of the sky consumes you.  How about that cool evening chill down in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains in October? Listen to that lonesome whine of a steel guitar, the pitch of a harmonica as you begin to tap your foot and sing along with the banjo.

College is not what I anticipated it to be. I don’t know everything that I had in mind but it’s certainly not what Hollywood has made it out to be. It never portrays the fact that people are not on an even playing field when it comes to classes. If you haven’t taken the class  before, you of course do not know how to respond. We all have those moments of ignorance where we gaze at the screen thinking “huh?” What is the professor wanting me to write again? For most of us, we live lives fast or slow, stay at home moms, stay at home dads, single moms and dads, full time workers, some of us with no job. Feel like you’re listening to the end of the Breakfast Club yet? I feel that my audience is just learning how to write, either for the first time, or again. Just like myself. It’s going to evolve for all of us. We will all have a favorite song defining our lives one day. We will all have a vacation, a lot of us will have kids, we all have a favorite color, and I am sure we all have high school friends we will meet up with again in life. 

“Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did *was* wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question?

Sincerely yours,

The Breakfast Club”

Works Cited

Hughes, John, writ. The Breakfast Club. Narr. Anthony M. Hall. 1985. Universal Studios. Web. 27 June