Exercise Your Memory - Read

"Literature helps you to exercise your memory because your memory is keyed to feelings associated with memory and literature specializes in calling forth feelings."

- Gold, Joseph. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 259

Das Efx - Dum Dums

Love this beat, love the sample, love how Das Efx has the flow that everyone tried to copy but just couldn't match.

I also love the sample set for this album you can get from Hip Hop is Read.

Just thought I'd share the love today.

Follow the link to check out the original source of the sample for this song "The Happy Song" by Otis Redding and listen to it.

I hope you have a happy day.

You Can't Tune it Out

Dr. Tom: "Infidelity, where does it begin?"

Author: "Interesting, tell us more."

"There is a woman, not my partner, and, to be honest, I find this woman to be infuriating - rash, she's headstrong. But, I don't know, deep inside she's like this melody that keeps playing back in my mind.

Erica: "You can tune out a melody."

Dr. Tom: "Oh, I've tried that. It's not so easily done. Ear-worms, I think you call them. You know those songs you get in you head and you just can't get rid of them."

Author: "Oh my goodness that happens to me all the time.

Erica: "You can distract yourself. You can turn the music up really loud, do everything it takes to avoid seeing... to avoid seeing what's right in front of you. Like with Leo"

Author: "Who's Leo?"

Erica: "My brother. He betrayed me and I didn't want to see it."

Dr. Tom: "He was a great brother, but he also had serious flaws... It's so much easier to live in denial and we do it to protect ourselves from the things that we don't want to acknowledge."

Erica: "But if we do that, then we're just living a lie. No matter what we tell ourselves."

Dr. Tom: "'The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.' - Winston Churchill"

- Being Erica Season 2 Episode 9 A River Runs Through It...It Being Egypt

Become a Person of Value

"Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value."

- Albert Einstein

I found this great quote on Twitter today and thought I`d share it with you here.

It was posted from this account - http://twitter.com/tested

Happy Monday Everyone!

We are the Heroes

"Our call to adventure – for we are the heroes of the new myth – is that which is stimulated by our wonder and awe in the presence of the interrelated cosmos revealed to us by mysticism, psychology, and the new understandings of the physical sciences."

- Leeming, David. Myth: A Biography of Belief. Oxford University Press, 2002 pg 158-9

All Writers are...

"I thought all writers were either British or dead."

- Barbara Haworth-Attard

I saw her at a reading last night at my public library. She was very funny and entertaining.

This quote is for all the would be writers out there. Just do it. Go ahead and write because the only truth is that all writers write. That's it.

Enjoy!

Free Album by D-Sisive

D-Sisive has released a free album today. You can find some of his other albums for free but this one he has released for free ON PURPOSE. So if you feel his music, go check this one for free and support him by buying his other stuff.

http://d-sisive.bandcamp.com/

To celebrate this release, I thought I'd share with you one of my favourite tracks from his last album.

"I’ve spent many moons with my head on the pillowcase
Retinas to the ceiling, John Lennon dreaming
John Lennon jealous of the dreamers that achieved it
I’m better off John Lennon (laying in) bed and sleeping
I John Lennon don’t believe in Jesus
But I’m running out of people I can speak with
I was never one to get on kneecaps elbows on my mattress
Both palms pressed below the whiskers on my glass chin
I don’t give a shit if Kanye said it
Or Rhymefest wrote it, or whoever gets the credit
Nobody walked for me except my dad and my mom’s legs
And both of them are missing from my holidays
Pardon my francais, f*ck your pumpkin pie
All I need is a notepad, open wide
And a sharpened pencil for my thoughts to jot you a letter from my heart
Signed, a nobody with a notepad

I’m just a nobody with a notepad
Forever standing in the shadows of my old man
I’m just a nobody with a notepad
Forever standing in the shadows of my old man

Red pen pressed against the pages
Laving ink stained trails as I pen my pain
Instruments speak through my speakers
Influencing the pictures my right fingers paint
Self portraits exposing my flaws and traits
And facing uphill crawl for props and praise
‘Cause I’d rather draw than trace
R. Crumb, I keep on trucking, feet keep running
At Usain Bolt speeds, pen bleeds to the rhythm
Chest pounding, before I rip through the rib and kill the kick to the snare
Fists hit the air, now hit me with your rolls like we’re living on a prayer
Take my hand we’ll make it I swear
Solemnly so, I got me my note… pad
And a sharpened pencil for my thoughts to jot you a letter from my heart
Signed, a nobody with a notepad

I’m just a nobody with a notepad
Forever standing in the shadows of my old man
I’m just a nobody with a notepad
Forever standing in the shadows of my old man"

- D-Sisive "Nobody with a Notepad"

We All Play (Pretend)

"Sometimes it's easier to pretend things are okay rather than face a difficult truth. So we go through the motions, the rituals of everyday life. We hope the comfortable rhythms of familiarity will hold off the inevitable just a little longer. Return things to normal...anything to buy us more time. Playing pretend, make believe - it might be one thing we never outgrow."

- Narrator on an episode of Everwood

Thing's are Good!

"Sometimes it feels like I can't catch a break
but then I remember that it's just a feeling
and things are actually good (if not great)"

- Chase March

I freestyled this as I was driving to work this morning. I think it is a great way to start off the week here at Thoughtful Cacophony.

Remember that you have a lot to be thankful for and sometimes a feeling is just a feeling and that things are probably better than you think.

Happy Monday Everyone!

Teaches Greatest Gift

"Giving children something with which to surprise their parents is one of the greatest gifts a teacher can bestow."

- Richard Dawkins

Tell the Story Again

"The storyteller leads us into expectation, makes us think we understand, and then crack open reality, creating surprise and curiosity, sending us back through his story again and again."

- McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principals of Screenwriting. ReganBooks: New York, 1997. pg 237

Glory

Welcome to What!?! Wednesdays. Every week I share with you a song and since today is Remembrance Day, I couldn't think of a better track to share with you.

This is "Glory" by D-Nice.



"Back in the civil war days of 1863
was the year that free blacks would try to adapt as soldiers
Live as equals and get what's owed us
And in this time they had yet to find inner peace
Which comes from the heart and mind
So listen close as I explain the story
of the regiment of blacks on the path to find Glory

Here's an example of courage and strength
that dwelled in the men that went the whole length
To prove that each can stand as a man
And demonstrate, he can carry his own weight
But there was some tryin to add to the plight
of the black man, denyin his right to fight
as an equal, for self-esteem
Ran through the crew or so it seemed
Cause even in times when life seemed colder
He still remained proud to be a black soldier
Waitin for the chance to advance
and under the circumstance, managed to enhance
his courage, and when put to war
he'd do much more than what's bargained for
And each man, that can tell the story
knew from the start deep down in his heart they'd find Glory

These brothers have died and cried, for power and freedom
But now look what we've done
We're robbin and killin our own race
Black and rap will be lost without a trace
So take heed to the knowledge I'm bustin
You're sellin yourself short, that's "Self Destruction"
The song I sing to let freedom ring
So listen to the knowledge I bring as I speak about Glory

Courage, spirit, and honor .. as I speak about Glory
Courage, spirit, and honor .. yeah

Courage, spirit, and honor
Courage, spirit, and honor"

- D-Nice "Glory" from the album Call Me D-Nice and the soundtrack to the motion picture Glory

Let the Bus Go...

"I saw at one point that our mothers are...

the bus drivers...

They are the bus.

See they're the vehicle that gets us here.

They drop us off and go on their way.

They continue on their journey.

And the problem is that we keep trying

to get back on the bus

instead of just letting it go."

- Tony Soprano (character in The Sopranos) Season 6: Episode 19

Learn From It!

"Failure is success if we learn from it."

- Malcolm S. Forbes

Another great quote to inspire you throughout the week.

I really like the collection of motivational quotes at the back of Deb Austin Brown's Growing Character. Every teacher should find this book. It is amazing.

Happy Monday Everyone!

Slow Down to Speed Up

"Slow down to speed up."

- Audrey Hind
I went to a workshop where Audrey made this statement. I'm not sure if she is the original source of this quotation or not.

But it is a great quote that reminds us that good teaching practices take some time. Setting up these practices may take longer than we think. They use more time than we'd like to devote to them, but this time is valuable. If we slow down to teach these things, the rest will come easy and we will be able to speed up after the fact.

The Power of Story

"For the first time then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be. It wasn’t a matter of confession, penance, and absolution like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person, that she had made a mistake and the mistake changed her."

- Orson Scott Card. Speaker for the Dead. Tor Book, 1986. – transcribed from audio book

I really like this quote and how it speaks to the power of story. I think Card is an amazing storyteller and is doing more than just delivering a tale to entertain us.

This book is the second in what is known as the Ender series. All the books have been produced as stunning audio books with full cast narration and sound effects. I highly recommend this series. The first book Ender’s Game is amazing and this second book is even better.

I Quit (I Give Up)

"Could it be possible, I'm all dried up, it's all gone?
My worse fears confirmed,
in other words,
there's no more songs.
The ones I had before, so, they were never really mine.
Woke up today to face a steady decline.
And everything I've ever built myself up to be

in my own head
is a misperception of self,
maybe I was born dead.
These moments I thought I lived,
well, hell they're just dreams.
I was wrong about, you, me, everything.
And maybe this little bit of hope
the one I feel now is a lie too,
it's also not real
and none of it's been anything more than a mirage
and I'll keep going, going, till I'm gone.

(chorus)

I quit, I give up

nothing's good enough for anybody else,

it seems."

- OK Cobra "I Quit (I Give Up) from the album Delirium Tremens

I found this song by just randomly using YouTube as a jukebox this week. I'm glad I stumbled across it because this track is fire. I hope that I transcribed the lyrics correctly and that you enjoy this video.

If you want to hear some more great hip-hop today, head on over to my main blog, Silent Cacophony to check out the Cale Sampson podcast and interview transcript. It was after I found his videos to embed in this week's post that I stumbled across this video.

Enjoy!

Love Can Be Blinding

"Love has a way of blinding even the sharpest minds. We don't look because we don't want to see. But once love is stripped away, we see the real person clearly. There revealed to us, with all their flaws, their foibles, and their secrets."

- Lionel Luthor on Smallville Season 2 episode.

Look For the Good in People!

"Look for the good in people and expect to find it."

- William Shakespeare as quoted in Growing Character by Deb Austin Brown.