"Waits For Sleep" Dream Theater

Standing by the window
Eyes upon the moon
Hoping that the memory will leave her spirit soon.
She shuts the doors and lights
And lays her body on the bed
Where images and words are running deep.
She has too much pride to pull the sheets above her head
So quietly she lays and waits for sleep.

She stares at the ceiling
And tries not to think
And pictures the chain
She's been trying to link again,
But the feeling is gone.

And water can't cover her memory,
And ashes can't answer her pain.
God give me the power to take breath from a breeze
And call life from a cold metal frame.

In with the ashes
Or up with the smoke from the fire.
With wings up in heaven
Or here, lying in bed,
Palm of her hand to my head.
Now and forever curled in my heart
And the heart of the world.

            These lyrics by Dream Theater, when read without the music and having not heard the song before—although my word may not be quite accurate because  I have heard this song before and therefore can’t then unhear it—seems to almost have no rhythm at all, or, it is at least difficult to decipher any kind of such from just reading. This in fact works well for the feeling of the song which James Labrie takes to his advantage in the singing, and the rest of the band in the music.

            The song has seems to flow through itself, which works well when heard but not as well when seen. This is because the words in the middle of the lines draw themselves out longer, and by nature make the rest of the words seem shorter and rushed, creating an almost give and take, a rise and fall which happens throughout the song. For example, the line early on in the song, “hoping that the memory will leave her body soon,” shows this. Both hoping and memory are longer drawn out words. The only other two syllable word in the line is body, which is a word consisting of two short syllables as opposed to the longer syllables of hoping and memory. This creates a long beginning of the line, “hoping that the memory,” and the faster last half, “will leave her body soon.”

            Because this is a slower song, especially for the band in consideration, this rise and fall of the words and lines throughout add interest and texture over the music, and that is something Dream Theater does quite well. The music itself rises and falls, and with the words doing the same the ebb and flow the song is like water, peaceful and consistent, but still unpredictable. The lack of any fixed kind of rhythm or predictable stressing allows the singer to play with the words and work with the music, which is basically what the band does.

Embrace: Billy Collins

At first it seems like the reader is stepping into a lighthearted, almost jokey poem. The kind that steps out of parlor rooms where guests and hosts drink and laugh together, but that isn’t the case, you realize as you read through it and realize that there’s no guests here, no joking or laughter. Only loneliness. The narrator is embracing themselves, longing for the company of another. The embrace isn’t real, it’s a façade. “And from the back it looks like someone is embracing you…from the front it is another story. You never looked so alone.”

                The image you get from reading the piece is one which is comically painful. The image of a man standing alone in a room, arms crossed around himself with a “screwy grin”. The image of a man condemned by madness. You can picture him alone, or with a group laughing people, but either way the same feeling is accomplished. No matter how many people are there, he is ultimately alone and trapped in his own embrace, not the embrace he longs for.

There is only one main image presented by the author of the poem, but even with that one image he manages to transition it from lighthearted and funny—what we traditionally think of when we envision that motion of kissing oneself—to the image of a man in a straightjacket, locked up and smiling with his arms wrapped around himself. This transition flows with the emotions of the ‘character’ in the poem, the one who’s holding himself tight. At first it’s a joke, a motion to make people laugh and to be entertaining. Then it transitions to that view of the front, the absurd motions and face, the comparison to being crazy, to the need of a straightjacket and the whole mood shifts in just a single extra line break, a new camera angle which changes the entire perspective of both reader and writer.

The images set the lonely tone, and the change from lighthearted to a more disturbing one creates a juxtaposition which strengthens both sides. The man embracing seems happy; the man in the straightjacket is crazy with longing. The images offset and work with each other at the same time in a way that works with the entire feeling of the poem and the author and what they are trying to say about the ways in which people mask how they are really feeling. When you fake an embrace it is to make people laugh, to seem careless as though you couldn’t care either way, but turn the camera and you’ll see another story; that of the man who must embrace only himself.

Sonnet

My dearest Anna Leigh, don’t go to sleep tonight

when the sun inside those tealight eyes does fall

and stars come out to tempt the light.

I offered you forever, and though all

the world may crash and burn and fight

to us those petty lives and lies will be null

 and void, and we’re the ones who got it right.

But we didn’t, did we? And now I crawl.

And long for love which burned so bright.

Anna Leigh, don’t go to sleep tonight.

*This is a male point of view. Not mine. Just felt I should clarify that.

As You Like It

I sent a section of "As You Like It" by William Shakespeare to my boyfriend. He has a Carpe Diem tattoo, and when I saw it in the themes I knew that sending him something from it would be perfect. However, when he read the poem he had no idea what it was about. Of course. He's always making fun of me for the crazy things I read. But this time I made him read it again, and again and still he had no idea what it was about.

"Life?" He guessed. "It's unavoidable?"

Finally, he was getting closer. His previous guesses had been things like, "a dude," and "I have no idea, I didn't read the play." But now he was on the right track.

In the end he gave up trying to decipher the poem and showed me a song on youtube instead. Musicians--they're so easily distracted. The best part of whole thing was when he turned to me, toward the end of the song and said, "This movement is my favorite, it's Carpe Diem."

And he still doesn't know why I thought that was so fantastic.

A Telephone Man

                Tennessee Williams play “The Glass Menagerie” is one full of interwoven, complex characters who, in their lives, share a common pain and loss. The portrait of the long lost father, “a telephone man who fell in love with long distances” sits above the mantel as a stinging reminder of what they all could have been. They could have been a family, but instead are broken and torn apart by the loss. However, this common pain is what holds these very individual and unique characters together through their tense lives.

                Each character holds an important role in the family dynamic and in the events of the play, but none so much as the character who is oddly enough a mere ghost throughout it. The fifth character, that of the father, is the catalyst to the feelings which hang over this family and creates this tension, especially in the son, Tom. The relationship between Tom and his father seems especially tense, especially in later scenes in the play when the mother Amanda makes direct references to Tom as being like his father and wanting to leave. In fact, even Tom admits his yearning to get out of their small apartment and live the kind of free-form life his father took on. This parallel between characters is the most evident at the very end, in Tom’s final monologue when he says, “I descended the steps of this fire-escape for a last time and followed, from then on, in my father’s footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space” (1048). Just as his father did years earlier, Tom became trapped in his family life, in Amanda’s expectations and in his sister’s insecurities and felt that he could no longer remain there.

                The father creates other kinds of tensions, especially in the mother Amanda, who is intent on finding a better life for her daughter, Laura. It is clear that in marrying the father, Amanda married for love, and the regret in that is clear throughout her references to the successful men she could have married, the happy life she could have had. But no, she married for love. Her loneliness and pain from that betrayal causes her to feverishly hunt for a male suitor for Laura, although this obsession is in fact hurting her daughter more than it is helping. The absence of her husband seems a constant thought with Amanda, as she frequently references it, not just with family but with the gentleman caller, Jim.

                Imagining this family with a father would be difficult, as their relationships depend almost entirely upon this loss. Perhaps Laura would be more confident without her mother’s pressure to marry, perhaps that pressure would be alleviated if Amanda had no regrets about her past, and perhaps Tom would look at that “larger-than-life” portrait hanging above the mantel and wonder about all the places life could take one if only they took the risk to travel. The growth in each of the characters depends entirely upon this piece missing from their hearts and this story, this play, would not exist without that tension and longing. Longing for a life they could never get back, a life they may never have, and the possibility of a world that seems only imagined.  

To Build A Fire: An Evening on the Frozen Yukon Trail

The man and his dog are walking through the bitter cold. The man says it must be fifty below zero, but the dog knows that the stakes are much higher than that. It is seventy-five degrees below, cold enough to freeze a man to death, to make fire necessary at all times, and to make the danger of their journey almost impossible.

 Snow falls continuously in this environment, hiding the trail between the trees so the man must look carefully to remain constant in the right direction. “A foot of snow had fallen since the last sled had passed over,” and so we know they are alone in this treacherous environment (107). There are trees everywhere as they walk through woods which seem to go on forever on their way to Henderson Creek, where the man says that “the boys” will be waiting for him. They’re hoping to get there by six o’clock, late in the freezing cold, but they hope for fire.

Meanwhile, the man and dog continue to walk through the powdery snow, and after a while they come upon a snow covered creek, more dangerous than their previous setting, because now only a thin layer of snow and ice separate the man from the freezing water. If the man were to get wet in weather that cold he would certainly have to stop and build a fire to dry off or freeze to death in the snow.

   

    It is so cold that the man is unable to even pull his hands out of his mittens for a moment to eat without them going numb in the cold. He builds a fire to stay warm and even the dog, a husky, native to that land and equipped with a natural coat to stay warm in the hazardous cold, curls up beside it, restoring the warmth to his skin.

Wind has not blown through this area for some time, just the cold snow, and so the tops of the trees are powdered with it, heavy heaps of frozen ice pulls the branches down low to the ground where they threaten to fall with the slightest breath of air. The man doesn’t seem to realize this, and like an avalanche the snow comes falling down over his fire, shattering his only chance of survival.

     

The surroundings are insistent in their danger. Miles of snow separate the man from his home, where warmth and family await his arrival. Even the dog, bred for the temperature, is whimpering for fire. There is no chance in that weather to dry off, to undo the freezing of his limbs and blood. It is too cold to even heat the body by running, and all hope is gone. The setting is an unyielding, desolate, desperate, and dangerous frozen tundra; the kind in which a man could freeze himself to drowsing death.

Cathedral

1.       Who is the main character or protagonist of the story?

n  The narrator, who is unnamed throughout the story, is the protagonist, or the main character.

2.       Make a quick list of the character’s physical, mental, moral, or behavioral traits. Which seem especially significant to the action of the story?

n  Prejudiced, a smoker and a drinker, seems insecure. Most important to the story seems to the prejudice, which is present in both his actions and thoughts toward the blind man and his wife’s name. He judges before he even meets the man, and he judges the wife although he never has the change to meet her.

3.       Does the main character have an antagonist in the story? How do they differ?

n  The main character’s antagonist is his own prejudice against the blind man and his inability to connect with him, and through extension, his wife, all because of that initial prejudice.

4.       Does the way the protagonist speaks reveal anything about his or her personality?

n  You can tell he is slightly pessimistic. He looks at what can go wrong as opposed to opening his mind to new things. He likes things he can see. Blindness makes him uncomfortable, religion makes him uncomfortable. You can tell by many of his thoughts that he is the kind of person who needs physical proof.

5.       If the story is told in the first person, what is revealed about how the protagonist views his or her surroundings?

n  (see the above)

6.       What is the character’s primary motivation? Does this motivation seem reasonable to you?

n  It seems as though the narrator is motivated mostly by his wife and wanting to please her by being kind to the blind man. However, as the story progresses, his motivation changes and by the end it seems as though he actually wants to understand this man and what life is like for him. This curiosity is present in his question, “Something has just occurred to me. Do you have any idea what a cathedral is?” (90). At first the motivation seems halfhearted, like he doesn’t really care to make a true attempt to connect to the blind man, but by the end the motivation becomes more reasonable.

7.       Does the protagonist fully understand his or her motivations?

n  It doesn’t seem as though he understands them at the end of the story since it just happens almost automatically, yet in the beginning it is quite clear that he is only doing this for the woman and is aware of that fact.

8.       In what ways is the protagonist changed or tested by the events of the story?

n  By the end of the story he has become more accepting and open to other ideas, and other types of people. He realizes that his prejudices may be incorrect, and he realizes that he doesn’t understand the world as well as he previously thought. By the end, he has changed.