Music feeds my soul

It's a boring Wednesday. It's dark and wet outside, and somehow my mood has decided to reflect this.

I drank too much wine last night, I'm behind on all of my work, both for teacher's college and for the PhD program I start soon. I haven't touched any of my personal writing in weeks. There are plenty of other things I should be doing right now.

Instead, I'm writing about music. I don't own an iPod, I don't go to concerts. I don't buy CDs or upload music from iTunes very often. I sing along to the radio, steal music from my siblings and stumble across artists in an haphazard manner. In all, I'm no music guru. I am not known for my amazing taste, my amazing talent, or my amazing knowledge of music.

Yet, music shapes me. It moves me. It sends my heart soaring, my mood plunging, my feet taping; my voice gets exercised and my soul fed.

I am an emotional creature, and music feeds my need to rejoice or sob. It allows me to brood over my decisions, lament the lost opportunities of the heart, grin and remember beautiful kisses and cuddling, laugh and remember all the silly moments of my past....music is a sensory recall, it's a reminder of the greatest and lowest emotions we feel as humans. I've always been a daydreamer, and secretly a hopeless romantic, and I think the time I get to enjoy these two aspects of myself the most is when I'm enveloped in a song, in music. I express myself through the words I write, yet I would kill to be able to express myself through song and words as so many musicians do.

Instead I must settle for borrowing their emotions, their joys and sorrows. Some artists simply get me moving and stick their badly rhyming words into my skull unvinvited. Others, however, tell stories so deeply moving I could weep hearing their words. They shift every part of my being into their mood, sweeping me into the ballad of their past heartbreaks.

There are a couple of bands/artists that can do this to me at the snap of their fingers, and on a day like today, when the weather begs me to brood and reflect, to long for things I can't quite reach and find unnoticed tears on my cheeks, I turn to them for solice, for comfort, for understanding and connection with words and music that echo the strongest of our emotions as humans. Songs that touch the darkest and lightest parts of us, just by singing along.

Artists like Adele, Priscilla Ahn, The Damnwells and Schyler Fysk have been on my repeat list today.

Adele's Someone Like You drags old skeletons out of the closet, making me mourn a bit for the broken hearted teenager I once was. Feelings I can't quite talk about here.

Priscilla's Dream is a haunting song of life lived to the fullest, a melody I hope is played at my funeral. Living my dreams is a daunting ambition to me at times. I feel like Bambi on unsteady legs when I think of my future and my potential as a human being. This song is an encouragement to me, to my future, to my heart, to my dreams. It says, be this person, the person that reaches for the best in yourself, that pushes to leave this world with a full life lived.

The Damnwells have an amazing ability to get my mood elevated SUPER high, or crash me into a sea of mellow and reflection. Their song Soundtrack strikes me as a sad version of Hey Jude. It's directed at a man letting the opportunity of love slip through his fingers. This is no girl band bitchfest, this is a genuine cry from man to man to not walk away from someone who needs him, who wants him, someone who will make him a better man. I've felt like that woman a time or two in my life, and hearing these lyrics from such a different perspective, interacting with pain, the emotions of the situation, the uncertainty and fear of all involved sheds light on the utter helplessness we sometimes experience when it comes to love. Sometimes, it isn't about us, about what we are feeling, or aren't doing. Sometimes it's just total uncertainty and an unwillingness to get hurt on the other person's part, and learning that lesson is important. We need to know we are only in charge of our own feelings, and we should never apologize for them.

Finally, dear Schyler Fysk. Covering Joshua Radin's Paperweight, Fysk brings a secret smile to my face whenever a moment or two of her song plays in my head. The lyrics "Happy to be here, just happy to lay here, I'm happy to know you" infuse my heart. They remind me on a day like today, when sad heartache lyrics draw me close, that songs about these intimate moments we can share with the people around us exist. We can be happy to lay on our beds, staring at someone who makes us smile.

And that is why I love music, why music feeds my soul. It shows me the colour wheel of emotion I am capable of. It sends me into daydreams, it keeps me humming and dancing. Music inspires me to feel, even when the last thing I want is to acknowledge my emotion.

reviewing my academia: Literocracy for Girls: A Gender-Centred Narrative of Literacies

I was reflecting today on literacy, and thought about this paper I had written several months ago while doing my master's degree. It was for an awful class with a professor I detested (and still detest) but it was one of the most interesting and satisfying pieces of work I had come to write yet. So, I feel like I need a 'hey, look how awesome I am' moment. Enjoy!

Literacy Educator: what a terrifying title. The very idea that my master's degree is preparing me for a career-long role of literacy education is haunting. Last September, literacy was a very simple and straightforward concept to me: learning to read and write, and to comprehend the written word. I was a History/English double-major undergrad, loved to read and engage in debates and discussions around books, and so I thought I was completely prepared for the role of literacy educator. Then I was introduced to the terms functional literacy, which is the traditional definition of literacy (and the type I have described as my earlier understanding of the concept) and multiple literacies. Weeks (2002) would suggest that multiple literacies, made up of both the traditional literacy of reading, writing and understanding text, and new literacies, reading subtext in T.V. programs or interpreting dance movement, are pertinent in the lives of children and how we as parents and teachers prepare them for the future. With this plethora of literacies placed before me, I have come to realize how important it is that I as a 'literacy educator' understand my own literacies. I believe it is important to reflect on my own literacy journey and my experiences with texts in order to understand the journeys my students embark on in my classroom. Self-reflection is the first step in creating a classroom space that values and fosters students' "economies of expression" (Fisher, 2005, p.93).

Expression and reading expression are the building blocks of multiple literacies. Students who are given the freedom to express will hopefully in turn see the meaning behind the expressions of others, whether that be media, text, or voices. Fisher (2005) labels this brand of literacy learning as Literocracy. She once had a discussion with D.J. Cipher, a famous New York radio station D.J. about her role as a literacy educator. Cipher questioned the word 'literacy', and suggested it was stifling and confining. From this discussion, Literocracy was born: "Cipher offered the term "literocracy" instead, and together we re-imagined literacy to be inclusive of orality, music, and other creative expressions that engage young people" (Fisher, 2005, p.92). Greene (2000) suggests that a key component of education today should revolve around the life stories of all in the classroom, to allow diversity of voice to flow throughout the educational process. "No matter what our personal inclinations, teachers especially can no longer obliterate the diverse voices, unashamed of their distinctiveness, speaking life stories and cultural stories sometimes at odds with or contemptuous of the sacred writs of mainstream life." (p.171) I would suggest that the analysis of my passage in literacy so far is the first step of allowing these voices into my future classrooms, giving students the freedom to explore their own narratives in similar and totally new ways.

Literocracy wasn't enough of a concept to tackle, for me, when deciding to engage with my literacy narrative. I also desired to insert gender into the mix. Another concept my master's degree has forced me to re-examine is my view of the word "feminist". I hardly would have dared to call myself a feminist before this year. Reading the narrative of Megan Rivers-Moore in Turbo Chicks (2002) gave me an Aha! moment about my own views on feminism: "So many young women won't call themselves feminists because they are afraid. Afraid of being called "man-haters," afraid of being unattractive, afraid of speaking too loudly or taking up too much space" (p.60). I was raised with four brothers, and while that has provided me with many tools for self empowerment, I realize upon reflection that this has also caused me to be worried about what my siblings thought of me, what their friends thought of me. I always wanted to be 'one of the guys', to hang out and be included. Feminist ideas had no place in that space.

Literocracy for Girls: A Gender-Centred Narrative of Literacies, therefore, will examine areas of multiple literacies that promote spaces where literocracy can be fostered: physical literacy, traditional literacy, digital literacy, and poetic/performance literacy. As I examine my personal literacy experiences in each of these literacies, I will also examine how my gender has played its role in my literacy journey. While these reflections will certainly be drawn from past experience, it is my desire to examine them using a poststructuralist lens: "The hope that poststructural theory offers is that the story of who we take ourselves to be is never concluded. We are always changing and becoming, even as we read" (p.280 Cherland). I hope that through this paper, I will open myself up to further change, greater growth, as a literocracy educator. As Greene (2000) states: "I am convinced that through reflective and impassioned teaching we can do far more to excite and stimulate many sorts of young persons to reach beyond themselves, to create meanings, to look through wider and more informed perspectives at the actualities of their lived lives" (p.172)

My Daddy says girls can play ball too!

I will begin my journey with perhaps the least understood of my literacies: Physical literacy. The definition of physical literacy provided by the Canadian Sport Centre (Higgs, Balyi, Way, Cardinal, Norris, & Bluechardt, 2008) is: "...the development of fundamental movement skill and fundamental sport skills that permit a child to move confidently and with control, in a wide range of physical activity, rhythmic (dance) and sport situations. Physical literacy also includes the ability to 'read' what is going on around them in an activity setting and react appropriately to those events" (p. 5). My entire childhood revolved around sports. When I wasn't swimming, diving, figure skating, doing gymnastics, jazz dance, tap dance, ballet playing basket-ball, hockey, baseball or soccer, I was sitting on a bench or in the stands at all these sports plus football for one of my siblings' games. My father coached basketball, baseball and football, and the entire family usually went to games. Our mealtimes and my father's work schedule orbited around our sports schedules and game seasons. I spent hours learning the proper baseball stance to hit a ball, hours shooting hoops in the driveway, long days in the pool perfecting a butterfly stroke. I learned the physical literacy of all the sports I personally played, as well as those my siblings played. My most cherished evenings are those spent at the football field, watching my dad draw out plays, my brothers go for long catches down the field, boys spitting mouth guards out to sip from the giant water bottles I was responsible for filling. I loved football. However, football was too rough for me to play, my mother felt. Too rough? For a girl who spent hours trying to battle her way out of suitcases and locked closets thanks to torturous older brothers?

I soon learned that being a girl did affect my ability to play certain sports. After too many pitches to the body while playing hardball, my mom asked me to switch to softball. I was one of two girls in the entire hardball league for my age group, and I clearly was no longer welcomed in the space of my childhood. The softball league played at a different baseball park in the city, and I was heartbroken to have to leave the Legion, where I knew the diamonds, smelt the river close by, and was on good terms with the Tuck shop workers. It is interesting now to reflect on the loss I felt at this injustice, for when I mentioned it to my parents they hardly seem to remember it being a big issue. Despite the setbacks and small injustices from being female, sports and physical movement were empowering assets in my young adult years. Whitehead (2007) states that physical literacy is based upon a solid foundation where children and youth can develop the skills, knowledge and attitudes across a wide variety of activities so that they might engage with poise and confidence. The agency that physical literacy has provided me allows me to force my way into discussions about fantasy football leagues, the NHL draft, and the latest homerun record. I can engage in conversations with male colleagues and male students that most women cannot. Promoting sports/physical literacy among girls isn't something that is popular in schools. Sure we play, but are we immersed into the language like young men are? Who would ever imagine that teaching girls the fundamentals of language of a game like football could bring down gender stereotyped walls? It isn't enough to learn to play it; one must learn the literacy of it.

Jane, Charlotte and George Martin: Traditional Literacy

From sports to novels, I travel from unique new literacy to traditional literacy. I could write an entire academic paper on my relationship with the novel, but for the purpose of examination and expression, I will focus on three authors and their particular works that have allowed room for identity formation in me as a reader: Jane Austen (namely Pride and Prejudice) Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and George R.R. Martin's series A Song of Ice and Fire. The first two novels are classics; I have studied them each at least twice in my academic career, read them a dozen times each, and own at minimum 3 copies of either book. I acted out monologues by Jane Eyre for a grade 12 literature course, daydreamed about being Mrs. Darcy, and aimed to one day write novels as fabulous as Brontë or Austen. Cherland (2009) suggests that "we share discourses with other people, which permits us to share ideas of how the world works" (p. 275). The words of these female authors, written almost 200 years before I was born, taught me ideas about love and relationships that have been hard to shake. Mr. Darcy is as real to me today as he was when I was thirteen.

I could list the numerous scholars who have discussed the character of Jane Eyre as a positive feminist example, but instead I will suggest that to the mind of a young girl, it felt like Jane was trapped by her love, crippled by insecurity and uncertainty just as badly as the physical deformities of her lover crippled him. Upon reading an article on the search throughout old folktales for stories of positive female role models, I reflected on whether or not I had been exposed to any positive female characters such as the ones they described: Concern over whether a strong female character existed in fairytales led a number of feminist scholars to search through old folktale anthologies to discover whether among the old tales there were not also stories that featured strong, resourceful, independent, and active females, females whose physical appearance is incidental, females who are quite capable of solving their own (and others') problems in the world. (Trousdale and McMillan, 2003 p.3)

The greatest example I could draw on came from a very unlikely source: Epic Fantasy. George R.R. Martin's series A Song of Ice and Fire is not at first glance a series one would tote as positive feminist discourse. In fact, some feminist scholars might have me burnt at the stake for suggesting otherwise. A series filled with oppressed women, women who have to use their bodies to get want they want, and the utter derision of female characters that play any role besides that of wife and mother, it gave me the opportunity to observe more women like those searched for in the old folktales than the novels given to me by my mother or librarian. Characters like Brienne, a young woman, unfortunate in looks, who is a swordswoman, fighting for a just cause, and attempting to rescue a missing young woman, taught me to hold my head high, even when not being ladylike. The Stark sisters, Arya and Sansa, are young girls completely different in thought and action, yet both facing the realities around them, determined to overcome whatever they face. For Sansa, it's losing the blindfold of chivalry and a beautiful court, to discover that her body and her father's title mean much more than anything she has to say or anything she feels. For Arya, the reality that the proper role of young lady her mother wishes she would embrace is too much, and she rebels continually, even getting permission from her father to be trained in sword-fighting. She murders, she steals, she lies, and she loses her entire identity, to keep from being turned into a hostage against her parents' good behaviour.

As I write this, I can think of at least 3 or 4 more female characters in this series that face more than Elizabeth Bennet could even dream in her worst nightmare, and I cherish the lessons in strength and expression I have learnt from these books.

Digital Who? Digital Me!

My literacy narrative would not be complete without a brief examination of the role of video games within it. I play videogames. Not simple word games or strategy games typical of most girl gamers (Gee, 2004; Jenson & de Catell, 2009), but hardcore, 'gamer' type games such as Knights of the Old Republic and DragonAge Origins. Yes, the infection of gaming seeped from the minds of my brothers into my unassumingly little head and drives me to this day to playing. Alberti (2008) notes the popular use of the phrase "to play videogames", prompting him to question the verb to play "While the verb "play" is used in reference to other art forms, it usually applies to the producers of artistic texts—musicians, actors—rather than their audiences, play video games" (Alberti, 2008). This brings into question the role of the person playing videogames. Alberti suggests that video gaming is a discursive situation where the processes of "creation" and "reception" mesh together (Alberti, 2008, p.262).

However, who takes part in the creation of this text? Are most women like me, or is my affinity for gaming simply a by product of my environment, the 'infectious' nature of belonging and togetherness I felt from participating with my brothers? Jenson and de Castell (2009) would suggest that my gender is still desperately underrepresented in this modern literacy, that "Girls and women...continue to be under-represented as players and are woefully few in the industry (latest figures from the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) put the number of women working in the commercial games industry at 11.5%"( p.2). The danger in this lack of gender discourse, the male oriented targeting of the industry, is apparent if one simply examines the games that sit at the top of the gaming ranks: Overtly sexual, often misogynistic. As primary targets of gaming industry, most games will cater to their interests, heroes, favourite sports, and overall social roles. Educators should be looking for ways to engage students, male and female, in a discourse that examines the day to day media and text they are ingesting. If boys are digesting texts that misrepresent both sexes in highly skewed and unrealistic fashion, and girls are completely cut off from most of the gaming world, we are failing to engage in critical literacy with young people.

I concluded my paper with an interesting interaction with poetry and my intense hatred for Bernie the prehistoric chauvenist (please ask me for details), but I feel like ending this post on a gamer note is more productive. More to come on my interaction with literacy, perhaps.