FORGET // REMIND // REMEMBER

A blog made by a sixteen year old vancouverite girl who finds the world in short films, music, books, poetry, and art. We forget, we are reminded. And above all, we remember.

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LOST WORDS (SHORT FILM)

Being involved in the drama department at Templeton Secondary, I often find myself wondering how the students in the adjoining film program are able to steadily top themselves every year. However, this short film took the cake for me; i'm impressed at the organic feel and sheer quality of the cinematography and the emotional buildup to the last shot; and to think high school students managed to put this entire film together, filming and editing included, in forty-eight hours! The particular group who made this short film received the theme of "Revenge" and then, by rules of the Zoomfest 48-hour Film Competition, had to create a film based around that given theme. Though i'm a huge fan of the excellent quality of this film, I would have like to see a clearer depiction of the theme they were following, as I was quite confused as to how the video directly corresponded to that. The plot line of the film is also slightly abstract and very open to individual interpretation, but I would have preferred for it to be either less objective or more objective, so that viewers would have a less difficult time deciding on how to perceive and approach the film.

VIDEO LINK:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fImZKYMPGR8

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OLLY ALEXANDER - TRAPS (ACOUSTIC PIANO COVER)

Olly Alexander,  a rising young British actor and musician, is part of an indie-pop trio called Years and Years. Some of you may recognize that name from one of the previous blog entries I wrote about their recent single, Real.  In this video, you can watch Olly sing an acoustic version of Traps, beautifully but simply. I immediantly fell for his naturalistic, flowing voice and the simplicity of the delicate, yet piercing,  piano chords. Watching this video and hearing him sing reminded me of the magnificence of the internet and how it can be such a gift and a tool to use as a platform for people who want to share and appreciate art. Here is a young man, with no fancy clothing or back-up dancers or mind-blowing visual effects or bikini-clad models, sitting in a small room with nothing but a piano and his own voice, telling a  heartbreaking and strikingly honest story of love, loss, and desire.

VIDEO LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rGkKIa933Q

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THE OUTSIDERS - WRITTEN BY S.E. HINTON

The Outsiders is a classic cult favourite written by S.E. Hinton when she was only fifteen. I had an old copy of it laying around my house for as long as I can remember, and so it wasn't long before I eventually read it. The Outsiders portrays the divide between two rival gangs, the Greasers and the Socs, that shape the relationships between teens in Tulsa, Oklahoma, circa 1965. The novel is narrated by Ponyboy, a fifteen year old teen who is in the Greaser's gang. He comes home after violating his curfew and his brother scolds him. The discussion quickly turns into a heated argument and his older brother hits him. Ponyboy runs away to meet his friend, but are confronted by a group of drunk older boys belonging to the Soc gang. An adrenaline-rushed fight breaks out and Ponyboy's friend stabs one of the Socs out of fear. Just in case some of you haven't read The Outsiders,  I will stop summarizing the novel. However, don't let that discourage you from reading it! I was intimidated and apprehensive towards this novel at first, primarily since it was set in a time and place that was so alien and unfamiliar to me. Despite this, I forced myself to read it anyways (Sunday nights without a book and a cup of something hot were too much to bear) and learnt that good writing is timeless. Though I wasn't initially appealed towards time period The Outsiders took place in, the starkness of intimacy between characters, the accuracy of Hinton's depiction of fear and human instinct and morals is much more than enough to prove The Outsiders worthy of being named a 'timeless gem'.

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THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER - WRITTEN BY STEVEN CHBOSKY

I didn't know it was possible to hate with such an absolute passion and yet fall so deeply in love with a book. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, written by Steven Chbosky, depicts the life of a unique fifteen-year-old boy by the name of Charlie, who narrates his story through his hand-written letters to an unknown recipient. Charlie, who has a "wallflower" type personality, is anxious about the upcoming school year. His only friend, Michael, had recently committed suicide. Charlie approaches the school year with a delicate and intriguing sense of neutrality, always observing the people around him but never judging. His entire life changes when he meets Patrick, an eccentric boy who is secretly dating a popular boy on the school's senior football team. Charlie questions everything around him with a simple yet powerful child-like ability. Once he begins to make friends, he is riddled with snippets of memories of his aunt, whom he loved beyond measure despite her molesting him. These memories and his feelings of confused fondness for his aunt are brought to light as he finds himself displaying the same affection for his new found friends. The Perks Of Being a Wallflower emphasizes the importance one's teenage years and provides a window into the mind of young adults. Charlie tells his story with an unfiltered clarity and honesty that is hard to come by.

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THE DEATH CURE - WRITTEN BY JAMES DASHNER

The Death Cure, the final novel in the Maze Runner trilogy, took a shockingly unexpected turn. Having enthusiastically read the other two books in the series within a span of a month or so, I had very high expectations for The Death Cure. Though the novel ended up expanding beyond my initial expectations, it did so in a way that surprised me. Thomas, the protagonist of the series, in thrown (once again) into countless tests of character and strength, and some major supporting characters are broken emotionally and physically in brutal ways. The barriers that WICKED, a controversial super government, has set in order to keep the wick of surviving mankind aflame is snuffed out by the oncoming and growing threat of total human annihilation.  The realism of the apocalyptic world is increasingly personal and haunting in this final book, and the urgency of trying to find the cure for The Flare, a devastating disease festering among Earth's residents, kept me there  with the characters in real time. 

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TUCK EVERLASTING - WRITTEN BY NATALIE BABBIT

I first read Tuck Everlasting in the eighth grade in my English class. It was always a book I had meant to read, but had never gotten to it. The plot line of the novel revolves around a fifteen year old girl named Winnie who belongs to an upper-class family. Fed up with the over protectiveness of her parents, she runs away from home and into a nearby forest, where she encounters a beautiful boy named Jesse Tuck, who is drinking from a freshwater spring. Winnie spends the entire course of the novel becoming antiquated with Jesse Tuck and his welcoming, hearty family. She eventually falls in love with Jesse, but suffers knowing that she cannot be with him because of the secret him and his family share. Reading this book made me immensely uncomfortable, and when my eighth grade English teacher  moved on to a different novel for us to read I was grateful. However, looking back on my thoughts on Tuck Everlasting, I think the only reason the book made me comfortable was because it made me feel. I felt the lightheartedness of the love but I felt the cuts of the pain the characters felt. When a character fell, so did I. Being subjected to so much emotion because of a book must have been slightly overwhelming to my thirteen-year-old self.

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GREEN DRESS - (PERSONAL POETRY AND MY MANTRA)

if you knew me

would you still?

if you were me

would you still?

if i cut

and if i lied

if i scraped

and puked

and cried

would you still?

there's nothing more and nothing less

dare to hold this mewling mess

this ruined state of hardened hate

swallow spikes

and strangulate

but let me love you in my mind

a place where love is sweet and kind

for the last time, close my eyes and run

the wait is over

the dream is done                                                                      

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I wrote this poem after being inspired by a lot of the anxieties that were creeping up on me at the time. Whenever I feel overwhelmed with life, I find comfort in expressing myself through various art forms, whether that be painting, sketching, writing poetry or short stories, listening to/creating music, or acting in rehearsals at school. I find that this is therapeutic for me because i'm taking negative energy in my life and i'm consciously choosing to use it as fuel, as paint to create and explore and fix. During both peaks and troughs in my life, art brings to light the things I live for and the things I would die for. Words, brush strokes, piano chords, the click of a shutter, the tremble in a voice, the flick of a wrist; these things, so delicate, and yet so crucial, are what string the world around me together. I live for art. I live for the beauty and the magnificance and the solidarity and the glamour of art. But more than anything, I live for the ugliness, the vulnerability, the weakness, the story, the brokenness, the delicateness of art. I wanted to share this poem as an example of what I pursue as a person. I want to be able to keep writing poetry like this. I want to be able write poetry different from this as well. I want to take that same raw emotion and weave it into everything I create; because I believe that this is the purpose of life. To share, to laugh, to hurt; but most of all, to create.

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YEARS & YEARS - REAL (Song/Music Video)

Years and Years, a blooming indie-pop group trio, has recently came out with a new song, titled Real. The song's lyrics and the accompanying music video depict the story of unreciprocated love between an infatuated man, whose love is pure and unadulterated, and a woman whose hardened shell prevents her from ever returning genuine feelings. When first watching the music video and hearing the song, I was drawn to the curious amount of subtle detail in the lyrics and the camera shots. I also felt that both the song and the music video evoked emotion from me, because they are both very naturalistic, simple concepts an yet stay true to the human condition. The song lyrics are not intricate or genius but they somehow manage to still paint the picture of the sheer tragedy of unrequited love, as if you were to ask a child what they thought sadness meant. Real  does not provide listeners with a textbook, run-of-the-mill definition of sadness or loneliness like many songs or books or movies might, but rather sparks that feeling within us, reminding us of a part we've all tried to bury away.

VIDEO LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3T2RnTBp_4

[forgetremindremember-blog]

AFTER JULIET - WRITTEN BY SHARMAN MACDONALD

I came across this play after finding out the drama department at Templeton was holding auditions for their yearly spring production. Set in Verona, the play focuses on the aftermath of Romeo and Juliet's dual suicide and its affect on the cousins of the Capulet and Monague families. A truce in now held between the two rival families, and the tension of years of hate and blame thicken the air. A trial is begin held to punish some of the people that were involved in Romeo and Juliet's secret fling; the apothecary, Juliet's nurse, and Romeo's servant Peter. The play zeroes is on characters such as Rosaline (Romeo's ex-lover), Valentine (Mercutio's twin brother), and Benvolio (Romeo's best friend who also happens to be infatuated with Rosaline), I was fortunate enough to get cast as the lead role of Rosaline, which really helped me to understand the different thought processes and experiences that steep the various characters in the play. At first, I was not fond of the script; it's definitely not purely Shakespearean, but it's written entirely in verse and is not in what you would call "conventional" language. Because of this, I initially found the plot hard to follow. However, after more in depth study and rehearsing of the play, the journey of the story became clearer and clearer, and I found the characters and the situation and choices made frightening relateable. The references to many other Shakespeare plays (examples include line/character references to Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, and Othello) were also a very unexpected but wonderful treat. In addition to a strong,  thought provoking play steeped in beautiful language, After Juliet has brought to light the very core of all human instinct and emotion, the basis of all action, the two components that drive and bind every person who has ever lived; love and hate.