I am a carbon-based life form, an undergraduate history student, a musician, a writer, and an observer. I occupy time and space and use the planet's resources. Occasionally, I post something on this blog, usually when I'm supposed to be doing something else.I value writing as a beautiful and powerful medium for expression. Luckily for me, opportunities to practice this art abound in my field of study. I used to do a lot of writing when I was a child, but over the years since I’ve started university, it seems that the only writing I do anymore is limited to the topics and eras I’m studying and is restricted by the need to please professors and obtain scholastic credit. However, I still occasionally feel a desire to write about something other than, say, 16th century European syphilis outbreaks.
That desire resulted in the creation of this blog.
About This Blog
That desire resulted in the creation of this blog.
About This Blog
"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."–Macbeth, V:V:26-28
This line from Act 5, Part 5 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth has stuck with me ever since I first read the play, and I feel it is particularly appropriate for this blog.
I can easily describe this blog as “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” University and personal experience are conditioning me to deconstruct, to steadfastly defend myself, and to think critically. Then I turn around, and the world tells me that I am small, I am insignificant, I have no value or capacity for change in and of myself. I am young and I am educated, two attributes that, according to most of society, denote me as arrogant and self-important. The stereotype pictures me as one of millions who thinks of herself as king of the world. As I balance the two images in my mind, I wonder if it is not possible to be both.
Macbeth offers forth these words as he considers the life that is passing away and falling apart around him. He wonders if life has any meaning, if the time we spend and the things we do have any value at all. Does what I think and say have any real significance beyond the meaning it holds for me? I have no real way of knowing, nor do I particularly care to know.
Here, I borrow Macbeth’s quotation of hopelessness and despair in a context of hope and wonder to represent my own words and my own experience as I discover where my thoughts and my life are taking me.
Whether this is truly “a tale told by an idiot,” I leave that judgement up to you.
