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I have chosen to read and analyze songs from the album "Today Is Nearly Yesterday And Everyday Is Stupid" by Crywank. I have chosen this album from Crywank because it is filled of the speakers anxieties, depression and worries mixed with becoming self aware of not only the true world around him but also who he really is. The album is a spiral downward of panicking and accepting that he is bad.

The first song I chose to analyze is "Momento Mori" and just in the title of the song it means "remember you must die" which is a reminder of the inevitability of death. The song is an ode of the realization that he will die and so will everyone around him that he loves. The speaker states "Everyone I love is gonna die, and I will die as well, I think about this before I sleep, And have since I was a child". He has come to be too self aware of what life is and how it will end at some point and this thought plagues him constantly to the point of terrifying him before he sleeps. It attacks him at all moments and overthinking becomes an immediate reaction to everything around him. The speaker then begins to analyze that perhaps the way to escape this fear is "Maybe no mind is the answer to the conundrum". Then he begins to spiral downward yearning to escape all his thoughts and to be a baby again. He repeats over and over the lyrics "Oh, I want to be a baby again, Oh, I want to forget, Oh I want to be a baby again, Oh I want pure thoughts in my head". The speaker is growing up and being aware of what life truly is and this brings distress into his body. He realizes that when he was a baby all he knew was joy and knew nothing of what reality is. He is desperate to escape life and hide in the innocence of a child's mind when adults would shield the pure joy of a child from the rigid reality of the world.

The second song I chose to analyze is "Only Everyone Can Judge Me" the title already gives the listener an idea of what the song will be about. The title gives a sense of giving up and feeling like everyone can judge him since he is not good enough so he should be judged. The song is about the speakers anxieties that everyone is judging him and that it's impacting him heavily to the point of feeling useless. We listen to him sing "Waiting for a new embarrassment to tear right through me" signifying his weak state of being that any small thing can knock him down. Furthermore, he claims "And this confidence I fake only makes matters worse" admitting that he uses a fake persona to get by his daily life as to not fall apart around people. However, carrying up this facade has him drained and hiding who he really is and hiding his true feelings from everyone. He fakes being okay while he is decaying internally from any and every comment made by others. Moreover, he waits for "Another day I won't remember, another day I wished away" and in previous songs he admits to using alcohol and marijuana as a way to escape from ideas and events and in this sense he does it so often that his memories and days begin to fade away. It can also be seen as a sense of trauma or anxiety where victims repress things as to not break their psyche and survive. At the end of the song he admits "Now I remember, It doesn't take much to make me feel small" that allows the readers understand that he is so fragile that any simple event, face, tone or word can crack the speakers life.

Lastly the third song I chose is "Leech Boy". This song expresses that the speaker knows he is a leech and a burden to everyone around him and yet he won't do anything to be better. He lives his life doing the bare minimum or even less using and abusing his friends kindness to survive. He acknowledges that he is a bad person now and uses his self awareness "For if I recognize my flaws, You'll assume I'm trying to change, but I am lazy and disheartened". He tricks those closest to him to care for him as friends should and knows he is using their pity "And leave you guilt tripped until you take" to be jobless and lazy. He knows he is pathetic and likes it so he continues to do so rotting away everyday while still being afraid of death and losing everyone he loves. He is in a paradox of emotions. He has given up on living and being a good person he only accepts help not to be better but to be even worse and once the person kicks him out "No shame no dignity left in me as I scout brand new friends, To invade with my dependence and let it start again". It all started with anxiety and depression and he has arrived to the point of no return as he is exhausted and disgusted with himself. He no longer has hope nor does he have anyone to love for he does not even love himself. He has arrived to the worst point he could have ever ended up at he allows himself to rot away into oblivion and nothingness. He is a man child and a leech boy.

The song after "Leech Boy" is called "I am shit" where he only repeats desperately screaming out that he shit over and over which stitches to the listener his breaking point.

The following picture is what I imagine he feels like always clouded with dark thoughts that he feels he can never escape and it eventually becoming his mind. Allowing for no positive thoughts of his own.

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The album Flower boy written, composed and sung by Tyler the creator has every main stage of the coming of age course. The main stages being the exposition, the conflict, struggle, turning point, and the initiation as the last stage. The exposition is the innocence of the speaker before he starts the car and his journey begins in the "Where this flower blooms". The speaker is thinking back about how his childhood was filled with poverty but now his current life is with financial steadiness. He brings up that in the past he dreamt of toys he couldn't afford but now he is wealthy and smells like Chanel. The contrast of his innocent childhood and his wealthy adulthood is more than just money but also the mentality his ego has grown. Although his ego has grown he is still innocent and only his materials have changed but not his heart. His conflict is demonstrated through the lyrics of "See you again" about his sexuality and societal standards. He speaks about how his fantasies and dreams are what he aspires to have and live by but he lives in reality which is different from what he wants. He continues to question his sexuality and love but falls in the term of infatuation that he thinks love is. His unhealthy way of loving is intoxicating and society is crushing him by all sides. The struggle is understood in the song "Garden Shed" where he is struggling with his sexuality whether to come out or not and if he wants to continue hiding in the shed which is metaphor for being closeted of his sexuality. His internal conflict is drowning him by societal expectations but he finally decides to come out of the cocoon to be his true self but in the process loses people who are important to him. "911/Mr Lonely" is another extended struggle of his when he speaks of his deceptive fake alter ego to shade his fear and his suicidal thoughts. He continues calling out to the listener to call whenever that he will answer whenever and he sounds more and more desperate with the passing verses that are his dark thoughts crawling into his mind and tainting his reason for living. He references that he has the ego that was spoken about before that takes control of his life that is all but real but it's what the people want from him so once more societal expectations are morphing him into something he is not. At the end we see that he tells people to "Ask me how I'm really doin So I never have to press that 911" which is his way of speaking about how his suicidal thoughts are getting worse and might do something he doesn't want to do. The turning point is "November" and "Glitter" where the speaker really begins to question things and stops his car to carefully think things over. In "November" he is thinking over how much he has grown and begins to realize that cash and materials was everything he wanted as a kid as he always thought of things he couldn't afford. However, now that he has it all he realizes it doesn't fulfill his desires or covers his loneliness. In "Glitter" he becomes happy and feels fulfilled. He speaks about love and blocking out toxic people from his life like a lego. He finally moves on from the suffocating societal expectations and accepts love and his type of love and falls in love. However, he is scared of unreciprocated love and feels frustrated because he finally started feeling better and he lives in fear of feeling how he felt before again. Building up only to lose it all. And lastly the initiation is "Enjoy the right now" where the rhythm and emotional movement of the music is more upbeat and the listener can speculate that he needs no words to explain his acceptance of himself. He is finally happy and you can feel it because happiness needs no words or materials or expectations it just is a feeling.
Below is an abstract painting of happiness and it seems like flowers are blooming at the bottom which is how I imagine his happiness is blooming and splattering all over the canvas as it cannot be contained.

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The Last Poets by Christine Otten has a variety of themes imbedded into the story and characters. Every character has many themes they live through that the reader gets to read and soak up to later think about and connect to. A theme that I've been wanting to talk about is one of the more obvious ones that I believe every character and every person outside of the book can relate to. "One's environment can greatly affect how one grows up to be as an adult" when I think about this I think of Felipe because of how smart and talented he is in his school work and his physical abilities but because of his inability to belong anywhere due to his environments abrupt changes every few months or years he is left a fragile child falling into any crack of comfort he can fit into which oftentimes is not the safest or best. As Felipe grows up he tries to do anything to fit anywhere even in jail he uses his abilities like story writing to be of any use to those who protect him. Furthermore, it is seen with Jerome as he is forced to become an adult at such a young age due to his environmental factors of having an inherently absent father and a sensitive mother who gets down talked by his dominant grandmother who treats him awfully. For Jerome growing up in such a toxic household filled with dominant toxic family members and the one person he holds close being a victim like himself it is undeniably permanently damaging. Seeing his mother be pushed around and abused can easily connect to the fact that as an adult Umar thinks nothing much of the women he sleeps with or even the woman he claims to love and share children with. He has a lack of emotional connection with female companions and has left him searching for other ways to cope like drugs just to feel good and lose himself in his thoughts. Moreover, Umar becomes a very explosive and short tempered character as time progresses with The Last Poets which is due to not only the drugs he is taking but also having to do with him slowly becoming more and more like his father. When one grows up in a toxic household they either become a victim as an adult who looks for partners that resembles their abuser or they become like the abuser. It's a horrible cycle but one many survivors have to deal with but with help can break free and become better and live a happy life. Many people can definitely relate to both Felipe and Umar either a lot or in some ways that having a parent who either is not healthy emotionally or mentally affects their life in a deep level growing up as the time period of growth is the most sensitive for a person to understand how to view and act in the world. And I believe Christine Otten not sugar coating or even trying to hold back in horrible events in the characters youth is for her to convey the message that the environment can either build up a child or destroy a child not only in the present of their childhood but their future as an adult. Lastly although Charles was never "severely" abused compared to Felipe and Jerome we can read the fear and lack of connection he has with his authoritarian father. Which led to him having a lack of roots to his family and unimportance to someone who should be important to him.

The picture I added is to give a basic scientific knowledge of how child abuse can affect a persons mind.

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Personally I grew up in Turlock California and growing up here has been very liberal and accepting of any and all people. Even during my schooling I was in an immersion program so I usually was surrounded or around people who spoke Spanish fluently. As I moved onto high school and the program no longer stretched to there it was very weird to be around people who didn't speak the same language or slang as me. Even though it was the same little town as always I had felt like I stepped into a new world one where people would look at me weirdly when I talked in Spanish slang in regular conversations or also known as "spanglish". As Felipe moved to and from California and New York I related to his distress of not feeling like he fit in. His geographical setting consisted of New York and California two very different places and his reaction to not wanting to leave both places after settling in is understandable. Going somewhere new and starting again is stressful and nerve wracking especially when you had just settled where you are now. When I was going into high school I felt my stomach drop and I couldn't stop my hands from shaking all I wanted to do was stay in middle school where my comfort was in being in classes with all my immersion program friends since elementary. When Felipe made his click with the gang he joined with the help of his cousin Jose you could read his comfort in fitting in somewhere even if it went against what he already knew. Especially when his gang continued to remind him that if he wanted to fit in he had to not do well in school anymore and how they would have their eye out on him for that. This is one of the times Felipe's immediate environmental setting impacts his character and how his surrounding mirrors his loss of control and stability. He needs a group to teach him how to be and what to do to feel safe which mirrors his personal life of not being able to control his circumstances of moving. The conflict Felipe faces is both internal and external. His internal conflict is deciding on who he wants to be between the goody two shoes that his teacher knows he is or the tough gang member his cousin and gang knows is deep in his roots. And yet it all boils down to him wanting to be accepted somewhere and feeling stable which is an anxiety his mother caused by being selfish and moving so much for her own personal reasons rather than how her own son felt. Then his biggest external conflict comes from man vs fate which for Felipe specifically is his eventuality of moving away again like how it usually happens. When he gets the news that he will be moving again soon his dreams crush from imagining going to college and reading all the books his teacher suggests. It's almost like he saw his teacher as a mother figure and confused the comfort he felt with her as love which is something he has never felt with his own mother. He attaches easily from his deep abandonment issues that cause him to do anything and everything his family and friends ask him to do in fear of being left for refusing to conform. Lastly, I know that his confusion on who he is comes from his deep roots of rejection and change in his early childhood that never allowed him to connect to someone deep enough to feel safe. His mother chose religion and being selfish over making her child feel safe and loved. She gave herself to religion and love for men. Felipe quickly became a people pleaser.
The picture bellow is an art piece that I feel explains a bit of how Felipe is in the regard that he molds his beauty and his life to be turned into what will benefit others the best. Just as he wanted to stop doing good in school to fit in with his gang.

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I have decided to analyze the character named Umar who is the protagonist of this story. So far from what has happened and what has been said he narrates in first person view and he is not a reliable narrator. This is due to the fact that he often acts and responds to others based on emotion rather than logic at times. Umar is a limited perspective because as a child he narrates as Jerome and him being a child there is much he does not understand but as the readers we still get some clues along the way. Umar is very much a round character as he is a very complex individual with very distinctive humanistic emotions and reactions both as a child and as an adult. Furthermore, even though Umar makes numerous mistakes that could have been dangerous and reckless as the reader I tended to feel deep empathy for him. He suffers so much throughout his life and seems to only get worse as time passes but although things become more hard for him he is a dynamic character as he goes through immense changes. This is prevalent in the first few chapters as Jerome suffers from some sort of speech impediment but throughout time he continued to get better and eventually could communicate perfectly with others. At the beginning of the book Jerome not being able to communicate left him as a victim from his grandmother who would abuse him verbally and left him with deep anxieties. Just within his household he began to suffer tremendously as his family did not have much money. He began to work as a child shining shoes at bars just to earn some money for his mother. His siblings were unaware of much that happened at home while Jerome always kept an eye out and his ear poking through the door to hear his mother. His father was an alcoholic who was constantly gone both mentally and physically and as time passed Jerome had to step up as the man of the household. The amount of stress and real life complications he went through as a child was enough to even traumatize an adult. As someone who has been in and out of therapy throughout my life seeing problems at home especially between your parents is immensely damaging. I related to Jerome at the fact that he would do anything to protect his mother even going to the extent of doing something dangerous just to keep her safe. As a child you feel that you are supposed to help your mother when she is in trouble even if the problem is not for you to resolve. As I read I felt the distress and panic in Jerome of wanting to do anything just to keep his mother safe while his siblings slept through the problems. Jerome was hyper aware of the issues going on in his home and due to that he felt it was his duty to step up and be in charge. Moreover, Jerome suffered outside of his home as well through judgements of others especially from the principle of his school. As a child you hope at least teachers will help you to be better but in his case he was horribly judged instead of helped and forced him to spiral down and not even try in school. Between working at bars for men who treat him horribly and being judged by adults in school and his grandmother verbally abusing him how could anyone hope for Jerome to be okay? And to take it one step forward it crushed me seeing Jerome be taken advantaged of by Carla and forced into giving oral sex to an adult as an 11 year old. Jerome is forced to grow up and be an adult at such a young age even Reggie does not grow up this fast and he quickly responds to people or happenings with anger and power. This demonstrates how much Jerome wants to fight for and fight against he is a poet who uses words as his power. Although he has his great friend reggie he does not talk much to him about his private life and keeps to himself. So much anger and ideas bottled inside of him and he turns it into actions and words. He is an activist who fights so hard to the point of changing his name to Omar and becoming a black muslim to which his mother disagrees with but accepts. Omar will make a big impact and I could feel it since the moment he snapped at his father.

I attached an image of a young child with his mind exploding with so many visuals and ideas which is what I imagine Jeromes head is like. A mixture of chaos, fires, ideas, colors, aspirations and sexual images.

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Hi everyone :D my name is Kiara and I am a second year my major is bio but I am in the process of changing into psych. My career path is a bit wonky at the time but my ultimate goal is to be a therapist so I can help people. My hobbies vary I used to be an art student in high school so I am an artist a very poor artist might I add. I also like to play video games with my buddies very excited for back 4 blood to come out this year. I also play piano and love to read. I read all types of books and manga and of course I do watch anime. A weird hobby of mine is to collect organs in jars uwu. I have a pet cat who beats me up and I wholeheartedly adore. I am very excited to get to meet you guys!