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I really appreciate how media-rich your project is!  There's so much to look at and think about.

What I've had trouble locating in this piece, is a clear articulation of a claim. This could have been achieved by labeling one of your content boxes "Claim" or by using the connectors to show a central hub for your project. As it is, you appear to try to support three claims and this makes it challenging to develop a cohesive throughline for your texts/media.

However, I think there's a lot of strong work here.  Some of your most interesting analyses happen in your media and LiRT.

Note: Because you didn't indicate that the LiRT you decided to use was one of yours, at first I couldn't discern whether or not these were LiRT that had already been submitted or whether these were additional media that you'd submitted.  I went back into VoiceThread to confirm that these were previously submitted LiRT to make sure you didn't lose any additional points

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The last piece of media that I am incorporating is a Tik Tok by Anisa Benitez. In this Tik Tok, she lists four signs when she knows she is falling in love. She says that actually falling in love is different than how it has been marketed to us in the media. According to Anisa, the first sign of being in love is not loving someone in spite of their flaws, but loving someone for their flaws. This echoes Moses' argument that true love transcends the physicality and focuses on the human being. The second sign is when she notices that she does not want to be with someone all the time, but is very comfortable taking space from them. This is reminiscent of Lorde's idea of loving yourself first. If you are comfortable with yourself and practice self love, you do not need constant external validation from someone to know that you are worthy of love. It will come from internal sources. The third sign, Anisa says, is when she knows that the person she is with accepts her for who she is and how she looks, and she doesn't have to try to put on a face for them. This once again echoes Moses words. The last sign is when she feels like she has a basis of friendship with this person; they are not her other half. This contradicts Aristophanes' work on the etiology of love. While I see both sides, I agree with Aristophanes more. I believe that when you are in love, it should feel like something was missing before. It should feel like your life something has been added to your life. You should feel completely compatible with this person. You should feel fully and unconditionally connected to this person.

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"If We Were Vampires" is a song about the transience of human life. One of the most powerful lines of this song is, "Maybe time running out is a gift, I'll work hard 'til the end of my shift, And give you every second I can find, And hope it isn't me who's left behind." The inevitability of losing a love- whether through death or through a break up- is what makes love so powerful and beautiful. As Isbell sings, if we were vampires, we would never die, and then loving someone would not be as special. You would not be constantly running out of time. You wouldn't feel the need to soak up every second of existence with your lover. This song elucidates my argument that, in order to take advantage of the human experience, one must fall in love. One of the conditions of human life is that it is fleeting and temporary. While many are saddened by this thought, I believe it is a gift, like Isbell says. If we lived forever, we would not take advantage of our time on this planet- we would not feel a need to love. Because of life's transient nature, we allow ourselves to love fully and unconditionally, because our time will come to an end at some point. Like hooks says, even though the pain of losing a love is inevitable, this is what makes it even more special.

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Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - If We Were Vampires

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"The Riddle" by Five for Fighting is a song that addresses the meaning of life. "There are secrets that we still have left to find, there have been mysteries since the beginning of time, there are answers we're not wise enough to see... if you're looking for a clue, I love you free." This song is about a man searching for the meaning of life. He seeks out answers until he realizes there is no answer. The only thing we really have on this planet is love: "I guess we're big and I guess we're small, if you think about it man, you know we've got it all, cause we're all we've got on this bouncing ball, and I love you free." This relates to my argument that even though we don't know why we are here, love is one of the reasons that life is worth living. Life is full of pain and suffering for many people. If you think too deeply about why we are on this planet, you can go through an existential crisis. What's the point of it all? I believe that the point is to love. Love is one of the most fulfilling endeavors that a human can undertake. It is the means through which we learn most about ourselves and others. It is the vessel through which we can experience the most pain and the most joy known to human kind. While we don't know the reason for life, this is a reason to love.

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Five For Fighting official music video for 'The Riddle'. Click to listen to Five For Fighting on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/FiveFFSpotify?IQid=FiveFFTR As featured on Two Lights.

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For my third LIRT, I chose a song by the queer artist Mary Lambert called "Secrets." In this song, Lambert sings about all of her traits that society would deem to be flaws. She says, "They tell us from the time we're young, To hide the things that we don't like about ourselves, Inside ourselves, I know I'm not the only one who spent so long attempting to be someone else, Well I'm over it" This song reminds me of Lorde's excerpt on owning one's erotic side. Lorde describes how acknowledging one's eroticism is a form of self love. Using our erotic sides to guide ourselves and embracing our emotions instead of our logic, like Salami would suggest, allows us to practice the purest form of loving ourselves. Lambert lists all of her "flaws" and then goes on to say "I don't care if the world knows what my secrets are." Owning all of the parts of herself and her identities is a form of allowing her erotic self to take over. Loving ourselves is important in order to love someone else. You cannot be happy with someone else until you are happy with yourself. Lambert's song is a perfect example of the new wave of female eroticism and how this is conducive to human flourishing.

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For my second LIRT, I chose a quote that I found on instagram: "To love everyone unconditionally does not mean to give everyone your unconditional time. Sometimes to love completely we must never see someone again. This too is love. This is giving someone the freedom to exist and be happy even if it must be without you." While I wholeheartedly agree with this quote, it goes against Aristophanes ideas in The Symposium. He believes that people have one true soulmate that we will hopefully be reunited with one day. This soulmate will share our mutual, unconditional love, and once we are reunited we will never part. However, I do not believe that this is true love. I do not believe that picking one person and staying with them forever, no matter how unhappy they might be, is truly what it means to love someone. I believe that true love is wanting someone to be happy above everything else, with or without you. While I agree with Aristophanes that love is longing for someone's soul and the feeling of being complete, I believe that unconditional love needs to be redefined: it is not loving and staying with someone no matter what. It is loving someone enough to be able to leave them and ensure their happiness if this is what is needed.

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For my first LIRT, I chose a poem by Makenna Misuraco, a queer poet. The poem I chose was:
"Have you ever stood in a room with high ceilings and listened to someone play the piano?
Being with her was like that. Losing her was the silence that followed."
This poem reflects bell hooks belief that you cannot have love without loss. To experience the full range of human emotions, one must fall in love deeply and unconditionally. However, pain from this love is inevitable. But hooks says that, "It is easier to articulate the pain of love’s absence than to describes its presence and meaning in our lives" (xxvi). This poem contradicts this statement. Misuraco describes both the sensations of love and loss, each of them stemming from the same origin. This relates to my argument that love lets us experience the full capacity of human emotions- even though there is intense risk involved in a loving endeavor, the reward is worth it.

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In Plato's The Symposium, Plato recounts the story of a round table on the topic of love. Aristophanes' account of love reflects my argument that without love, we are just existing. Aristophanes' describes a genealogy of humanity in which the original condition of human beings is that two soulmates were combined into one round entity. Following a betrayal of the gods, the humans were cleaved in half into two discrete beings. They spent the rest of their existence searching for their other half, in a constant state of desire to be complete. This condition was solved by the creation of reproduction. However, humans were forever condemned to spend their lives seeking their soulmate. By Aristophanes' definition, love is a sensation of belonging, a feeling of completion, and "a longing of the soul" (192d). "'Love' is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete" (193a). Without love, humans are in a state of despair and longing. We are just existing. Once we have found love, this is when we truly start to live. We are complete; we are one. This is reminiscent of bell hooks' belief that love is necessary to truly experience life. Life is not worth living without love.

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In Sensuous Knowledge, Salami describes the importance of emotional knowledge. In chapter one, she explains how humans are not simply logical, rational individuals- we have a sensuous side to ourselves that is very important to tap into. This echoes Lorde's assertion that the erotic is one of the most powerful tools that we have to guide ourselves through life. It is important to balance both the logical and the emotional sides of ourselves. However, there is a difference between sensuality and sensuousness: "While sensuality is related to bodily appetites and self-indulgent pleasure involving the physical senses (touch, taste, sights, smell and hearing), sensuousness transcends the instincts.  When something is sensuous, it affects not only your senses but your entire being—you mind, body and soul" (14). To me, sensuousness reflects what it means to truly be in love. Sensuality is purely lust and superficiality. Sensuousness is the unconditional love for one's entire being. Like Moses would say, it is loving the human being instead of the body.

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How to Make Love to a Trans Person- Gabe Moses

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How to Make Love to a Trans Person- Gabe Moses

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In this poem, Moses redefines the concept of sexuality. Instead of the heteronormative, traditional way that humans engage in sex, Moses challenges us to do away with body parts and instead focus on the human being- "realize that bodies are only a fraction of who we are; they're just oddly-shaped vessels for hearts." Being a human is not about sex; all creatures on earth are programmed to reproduce. What makes humans unique is that we are able to express love. This is what defines the human experience. It does not matter what shape, size, or form the body comes in. What matters is its capacity to love and be loved. This is what love truly is: the feeling that you cannot be close enough to someone. A burning sensation in your chest that suggests a "good" kind of pain. The unconditional desire to love someone and be with them, no matter the way they may look. Being in love with one's soul is the mark of true love. When we transcend the superficiality of physical attraction and enter the realm of attraction to one's soul, this is when we can experience the depth of love.

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Uses of the Erotic: the Erotic as Power- Lorde

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Uses of the Erotic: the Erotic as Power- Lorde

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In this work, Lorde defines the differences between the erotic as a sensation versus the erotic as a guiding power. She describes how the erotic is a feeling that cannot be ignored by women, and this feeling provides knowing. As she says on page 56, "beyond the superficial, the considered phrase, 'It feels right to me,' acknowledges the strength of the erotic into a true knowledge, for what that means is the first and most powerful guiding light toward and understanding." She then goes on to explain that pornography is not erotic- it is in fact the opposite, as it glorifies a suppression of our true feelings. "It emphasizes sensation without feeling" (54), as Lorde says. However, Lorde's most important point for the argument that I am making is her section on self-love. Acknowledging one's erotic self is one of the purest forms of self-love, as is being in touch with one's erotic and trusting this connection. In order to truly love others, one most trust their erotic selves and practice self love. Loving oneself unconditionally is perhaps the most important aspect of love- if you do not love yourself and the opportunity to be alive that you have been given, you will not be able to flourish as a human being.

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In this book, hooks posits that love is a necessity for a human being. She states that "life was not worth living if we did not know love" (ix). This ties into how one can live without love, but this is merely existing- to truly be alive, one must love. Another potent point that hooks makes is that love and loss are intertwined. You cannot know one without the other. She believes that, "it is easier to articulate the pain of love's absence than to describe its presence and meaning in our lives" (xxvi). hooks goes on to describe the power that love has in any social movement, and how she fears that the nation is turning its back on love. This work supports my point that love is necessary to experience the depth of the human experience- what is the point of living if it is devoid of one of the most beautiful sides of humanity? Even though the pain of losing this love is inevitable, this is what makes it even more important to seek out and hold onto.

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Love lets us experience the full range of human emotions. Emotions are a spectrum; many people exist in the middle of this spectrum, never feeling too much pain but also never experiencing that much joy. When we love, we feel immense heartache but also immense happiness.  It is impossible to know one without the other. But loving is the vessel through which we can explore the emotional capacity of the self. It is this immense happiness- this feeling of being alive- that is what makes love so special. This is what allows humans to fully experience life.

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One can survive without love, but this is merely existing. To fully be alive, one must love. Love is necessary to experience the full depth of the human experience. The act of unconditionally loving is necessary to truly flourish as a human being, whether it is loving the self, family, or a partner.

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Love is the reason that we are alive. In order to fully take advantage of the fleeting human experience, one must fall in love deeply and unconditionally. The risk that comes with this love— the inevitability of pain and heartache— is part of what makes it so precious. While we don't know the reason for life or why we are here, love is one of facets of humanity that makes life worth living.