jonathn's life ideas

Jonathan Velasquez IB Lit & Performance Due: October 7, 2019 The first time I listened to "Trauma" my eyes were opened to another perspective of life. It made me understand reality, but the kind of reality that makes you angry, confused, and most of all, sad. The way the poet, Meek Mills, presented this beautiful work of art, was quite impressive. He gave me the sense of motivation. This poem shows all the struggles a black man goes through in life in America, but also encourages the reader to never back down, to rise above the line and exceed dreams. The struggles an African American male go through in life are very tragic. The poet talks about the injustice that he faces in life. There's a line in the poem that says, " They shot that boy 20 times when they could've told him just freeze Could've put him in a cop car, but they let him just bleed ." This is a perfect example of how Black men as a whole go through injustice. They have to st...

Meek Mills ~ Trauma Used to be a dreamer Dreamin' of a fire Uh, my mama used to pray that she'd see me in Yale It's f*cked up she gotta see me in jail On the visit with Lil Papi, it hurt even though I seemed to be well They got a smoker with a key to my cell, damn And even worst, my judge black don't wanna see me do well It's either that or black people for sale Gave me two to four years like, "F*ck your life, meet me in hell" And let it burn like Lucifer, you look even stupider Tryna impress them people in power when power abusin' us For 44 dollars a hour, you coward they using ya Is it self- hate t hat made you send me upstate? This where the so-called "real n*ggas" sweeping up for cupcakes And that's your phone time, if you ain't got no money, you ain't online Hey call your son, call your daughter just to wish them more prime Oh God, don't let them streets get a hold of 'em Your d...

What was hard and what was easy for you? What made the performances interesting to watch? What worked and what didn't in the class as a whole?  Personally, I feel like I did a pretty great job overall on my performance. In this assignment, I honestly did not find anything hard for me to do, but I wish I could've done more than one stanza. This was out of my control because the plan was to do one stanza each, but that is okay. One thing that I felt that was pretty easy or easier than I expected was memorization. I was able to memorize all of my lines in one day, and that helped me take on my performance better. From great eye contact to projecting my voice well, and  also to my all around body language while I was performing. All of these things would have made my job much harder if I did not memorize my lines that fast. In the performance, if you look closely at my performance you could see that when I was talking, I made eye contact with everyone, not just the phone. I foun...

"Have a place and a time to sit with your thoughts". I found this line very interesting because people now a days, especially me, are always on the go. Personally I never shut down until 10:45 on a good night. I feel like taking 5 minutes to yourself everyday could lead to a much more peaceful life. I'm gonna try to do this now, too.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-fAopz8D_l8ZZucLP-Rt1eRLBaZQK9NpSAMlvBuI61U/edit

Video link and written reflection due on blogs -- what did you do well? what do you need to work on more? what did you notice about others' perfoemances that made them strong? what do you think we as a class need to work on more? In my opinion, I feel like a did well with projecting my voice and pausing in between my monologue. It made my monologue sound more realistic. Like I was having a real conversation. I feel like I need to give better facial expressions. They were good in the beginning of the video, but they started waring away towards the end of the video. I liked the different perspectives people acted out on the same script. Abrahams was very serious, while mines was serious but calm. I found that pretty interesting. I think we all need to work on body movement while acting, and also the facial features we make to go on with our monologues.

Into My Life I'm an evolution basketball. People say I'm the best ball out off all the balls in the world. I look like I could be a basketball model for Nike, even though they have their own balls. From my, rounded shape, to my amazing fresh smell,to the way my ball grips the player's palm. I even bounce better than all the balls. When I'm being played with I feel like a superhero. I hear the players talk to me when they shoot. " You got this bro", "swish", "Waterrrr". I hear it all. But I also could be the worst thing in the world when I don't go in the hoop. It sucks but I'm just like a human. I have pros and cons but I'm pretty cool in my opinion.