Beyond the Palette

Finally coming back home from school, you drag your feet down the same old, cracked sidewalk. The houses and trees blur into the background, the sky seems gray, and the wet puddles from the rain this morning feel as though they reflect images devoid of any color. The sounds around you start to fade, and the only thing you hear is the rhythmic beat of your footsteps. You just walk, waiting to arrive in the safety of your home.  For many people, this is what life feels like -- maybe even you. From walking home from school like in the story, or even taking a quick detour to the pantry for a little midnight snack, our society has forgotten to just sit and observe our environment.  This week in AP Language, we read and analyzed the short speech " This is Water" by David Foster Wallace. In doing so, I had come to a momentous realization: the scenario described in the beginning had been how I was living for the past few years. This is Water underscores the idea that by observing ty...

Art isn't just lead on paper, or paint on canvas, but art is art because of the thought and meaning put behind those drawings and paintings. In fact, art can be many things, even stone statues and marble objects meant to commemorate someone or something. In the same way, memorials are also art, not because of how majestic they look or how beautiful they are, but because of the meaning and emotion being put into the process of building them.  This past first week in AP Language, we learned about memorials and the aspects that make them so significant. Specifically, we learned more in depth on the small details that the sculptors and architects intentionally add, the geographical importance of the monuments, and the placements of these monuments.  The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, for example, is sunken into the ground, instead of towering above visitors like traditional memorials. This choice in architecture was actually intended: to make visitors feel as though they are look...