Jonathan Flaum's "Finding Your Howl" can be found here:
Flaum talks about a time he was in the fifth grade and was assigned to write a five page story. He hated the assignment and got a bad grade, but his friend wrote ten pages about a tiger who tried to escape from his cage and always woke up in a new cage. Flaum is trying to say that we can't escape our lives – we are the reason we are in certain situations and we can't blame anyone about it. We have to embrace our lives and push through it to find our passion.
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Lyrics to The Classic Crime's "The Way That You Are" can be found here:
To me, creativity is being completely original. It's finding your passion and going with it, whatever it may be. Flaum's message portrayed in "Finding Your Howl" shows that sometimes life can suck, but we have to push through it to find our "howl," or our passion and creativity. While it may seem like a simple task to pick my favorite song or poem or whatever that speaks to me as a creative person, I found it very difficult. I have issues with determining favorites in general because I feel like I cannot define myself based on one song or poem or whatever I might be defining. But, after a bit of searching, I found a song I like that fits the criteria of creativity and I feel goes along well with our readings for the blog.
"The Way That You Are" by The Classic Crime is an inspirational song about being who you are despite what other people think of you (to me, at least). A line in the chorus is, "Don't let them say this is the way that you are." To me, that says to be yourself and to be original. Don't do anything based on what other people want. And this has a lot to do with Flaum's article. The wolf had to go through his own prison to find his passion and feeling of life once again. That combined with the tiger who could never escape his prison shows that we have to accept ourselves and go through the difficult times to find our drive or enthusiasm for something.
You can still be creative even in difficult times if you push through it. "The Way That You Are" speaks to me as far as this because it completely embodies "Finding Your Howl." The song is saying that if you accept yourself, yourself being your perception of you, based on no one else's opinion, you can do great things with your life. You can be creative. And this is exactly what Flaum was talking about. If life hands you an issue, you have to work through it, and in the end you can still find your authentic self. When the song says "Don't let them say..." it's saying to completely disregard others, and I find that to be important in being creative. You have to base yourself on things that you like and enjoy.
In conclusion, while this was somewhat a difficult blog for me in the beginning, I found that it sort of pushed me to be a little bit creative. I had to find a song that made me feel creative, and in doing that I had to define what creative is to me, which was.... creative. Ha. The bottom line is, being yourself is the best way to find your originality, passion, and creativity. In the grand scheme, other people can help, but your creative sessions needs to be based on you and you alone; other people don't have a right to influence who you are by putting you down or forcing you to be something you aren't.
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