The first thing that I did to start the Letters mashup was
decide on a theme. This helped me to focus during the element searching process.
I started this search in the Letters to a Young Poet book, since that’s what
the mashup was based on. I ended up basically rereading the book to do this,
while marking each quote that had to do with patience or waiting, and a few
that I just liked. I ended up collecting more than 10 possible passages, and
narrowed it down based on how well they “fit”. This was a good method to use
because I know I didn’t miss any usable quotes, and I got a better
understanding of the book by reviewing it after our class discussions.
Now that I
had some ideas of what aspects of patience I wanted to touch on after looking
in the book (such as patience: with self, with creations, and with others) I
started looking for the other elements from the Humanities curriculum. This
part took some thinking, and was probably the most challenging part of making
this mashup. Since I did not know where to look first for these passages, I
just pulled out all the stories, articles, and other readings that we have
discussed this semester.
Next I
looked them all over and tried to figure out which ones would have mentioned
anything about patience or waiting. I normally would not have expected the
article about Grit to have anything about patience in it, but after skimming it
again I realized that in order to have grit, that you must have the patience to
stick with your goal; and I was able to find a quote that ‘went with’ the theme
of patience with your creations and work. Before even looking through the story
Cathedral I thought there would be a passage about having patience with others,
since patience and understanding is what it took for the two men in the story
to get along in the end. Another source from the Humanities curriculum that I
thought of and reviewed for this mashup was the book Einstein’s Dreams, since its
main theme is time. I was able to find a good passage from it that I thought
described perfect patience. I collected a few more passages from elements of the
Humanities curriculum, but these three made the best connections with the other
elements that I had already decided to use.
My next task
was to figure out what elements to use from outside of the Humanities
curriculum. Through the whole mashup process I was already thinking of lyrics,
quotes, and other books that would have something to say about patience, but
now I was really collecting and considering many sources. Much like I did with
the elements from within the Humanities curriculum, I narrowed these options
down based on how well they went with the passages from the Letters to a Young
Poet book.
After some
critical thinking and making the final decisions on the passages in all three
of these categories that I had collected from, I typed the ones I had chosen up
on a word document. This made it easier to come up with a good sequence for
them, since I could copy and paste the elements easily. Even though I anticipated the ordering
process to be very challenging, it ended up being easier than I thought since
all of the elements that I had chosen went so well together. I started by
matching up some quotes that ‘spoke’ to each other. Then I just had to figure
out in which order would create a deeper meaning / progression. This process
took quite a bit of time, thought, and rereading in different possible orders.
I felt like I was creating a poem from mixed sources, because this process was
similar to the process I went through when I used to write a lot of poetry; I
would usually come up with a theme and few good lines I wanted to include, and
created the rest based on these things.
After coming
up with a good order for the passages, it was time to add my own reflections to
the mashup. Luckily, my reflections fit in well with the other elements in my
mashup, and even served as transitions between elements. I liked that we could
include some elements that were in our own words because I was able to explain
my interpretation of the ideas that Rilke was trying to get across in Letters
to a Young Poet. I think these reflections made my mashup much more personal.
This project
reminded me a lot of the final from last semester, because we were required to
use so many different sources, but this process was more relaxed because the
elements are able to speak for themselves, if placed in the right order. I’m
really glad that I took time in the beginning to create a big inventory of
elements, because it ended up saving me a lot of time in the end. First of all,
I did not have to go through my sources more than once, because I collected all
the passages that I could need the first time around. Secondly, since I had so
many possible elements, that it was easy to swap passages if I figured out
something I had picked before did not fit. I did not have to waste any time
trying to force a passage to fit in my mashup, because I could just pick a new one
from my inventory. Also, I am very glad that I did this mashup in little parts
at a time, because the process didn’t end up being stressful or rushed.
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