What If
The band that comes to my mind when someone mentions abstract lyrics is the modern, popular, yet sophisticated group, Creed. I thoroughly enjoy their music, although not strictly for entertainment purposes. They have extremely creative ways of stating feelings, telling stories, and sharing ideas through the lyrics they produce. Their song, entitled "What If," is an excellent version of poetic writing that exemplifies mixed emotion and portrays an undefined depth in meaning. It is quite possible to interpret this particular song differently according to the listener's point of view and the personal background experiences that may influence their portrayal of the music. However, I see certain parallels to the Bible story of Jesus praying to God on the Mount of Olives. There are several lines that suggest the connotation of how fearful, anguished, and lonely Jesus felt before he was crucified.
The very first verse is definitely the context of Jesus' pleading words of prayer to God shortly before he was betrayed and arrested. He was certainly in a state of depression, acutely aware of the fleeting minutes of freedom left for him on earth. The intense dread Jesus felt must have been overwhelming to him as he obediently kneeled in submission to God's will, desperately trying to understand His reasoning. At this particular time in the pre-crucifixion, it is only logical to associate the tremendous burden Jesus was going through with his great frustration of human ignorance and sin. Thus, the meaning of "not finding rhyme in reason, losing sense of time and seasons, and feeling beaten down, by men with no grounds," is explained to clarify the starting point of my interpretation.
In the second set of phrases, the first two...
... middle of paper ...
...e words of men who have no grounds
I can't sleep beneath the trees of wisdom
When your ax has cut the roots that feed them
Forked tongues in bitter mouths
Can drive a man to bleed from inside out
What if you did?
What if you lied?
What if I avenge?
What if eye for an eye?
I've seen the wicked fruit of your vine
Destroy the man who lacks a strong mind
Human pride sings a vengeful song
Inspired by the times you've been walked on
My stage is shared by many millions
Who lift their hands up high because they feel this
We are one We are strong
The more you hold us down the more we press on
What if you did?
What if you lied?
What if I avenge?
What if eye for an eye?
I know I can't hold the hate inside my mind
'Cause what consumes your thoughts controls your life
So I'll just ask a question
What if?
What if your words could be judged like a crime?
Even though the speakers are identified as the authors, they can more accurately be described as characters based on themselves. We know that this type of lyric was most likely performed in front of an audience probably set to music. The public’s relationship to such work can be likened with dramatic performance of today such as a musical or a...
Sexual orientation is a term used to describe a person’s physical, sexual, and romantic attraction to another person, whether they be Male or Female. The term is relatively new and the idea of having a homosexual identity has only been around for one-hundred years at the most (APA).
Lyric analysis – Lyric analysis is a popular music therapy method, defined as the expansion from existing song or lyrics to any broader use. Sometimes two songs are chosen, and patients are asked to compare both the similarities and differences in musical style, timbre, lyrical content, levels of emotion, kind of emotions, and ways of expressing those emotions. Songs mark many solid memories from important life events, and the music may improve a person’s ability to look back over their life. Either with patient preferred music or songs that address topics to focus on, lyric analysis may be used to facilitate life review and reminiscence.
The Mayans were a great powerful group of people that followed what they believed in, build big beautiful temples. The Maya build a big temple inside the big jungle of southern Mexico. The temple is so big that you can see it from high in the sky. You can still see the temple today, but the temple lays in ruins because of the thick jungle that have grown over it. At that temple, they sacrificed people for the gods. If the Mayans had died out because of all the desices the Spanish brought we could have learned more about them.
Since the beginning of discovery, the Maya have always been known as “an indigenous people from Mexico and Central America” in 1800 B.C. to about 800 A.D. (“The Maya Civilization,” 1/1). One of the most dominant societies of Mesoamerica, the Maya geographically centralized in one “block”: the Yucatan Peninsula and Guatemala, Belize, Tabasco and Chiapas (Mexico), and the western part of Honduras and El Salvador (“Maya,” 1/1). Their constant location, over a period of almost 3000 years, shows that the Maya stayed safe from invasion by other peoples. The Maya Empire peaked at 600-800 A.D. and suffered a decline when the Spanish conquistadors rose.
To sustain their large and ever expanding population, a populace that approximated 2 million inhabitants around the time of the prolonged drought’s commencement, the Mayan people employed an extensive array of agricultural practices that enabled them to amass wealth and food (Armstrong, 3). The Mayan people developed an extensive network of canals across the Yucatan peninsula to drain and elevate infertile wetlands to produce arable land that was previously inaccessible to them (Wylie, 8). Furthermore, the Mayan civilization employed slash and burn tactics to produce arable land that could be utilized for agricultural subsistence, contributing to extensive deforestation in the process (Wylie, 8). Although such agricultural practices effectively served the Mayan people before the shift of climate, primarily because the fertility of the land was refurbished by frequent and extensive rainfall, the droughts of the ninth and tenth centuries swiftly diminished necessary agrarian yields (Armstrong, 4). The environmental degradation brought about by Mayan agricultural practices amplified the consequences of the drought (Armstrong,
In the Central America, most notably the Yucatan Peninsula, are the Maya, a group of people whose polytheistic religion and advanced civilization once flourished (Houston, 43). The Maya reached their peak during the Classic Period from around CE 250 to the ninth century CE when the civilization fell and dispersed (Sharer, 1). Although much has been lost, the gods and goddesses and the religious practices of the Classic Maya give insight into their lives and reveal what was important to this society.
Although, I wished that the poem included more about the resurrection. It was good that it discussed Jesus return and the Day of Judgment, to encourage man’s repentance and salvation in Christ. I wondered if this poet who must have lived sometime in the Early Middle Ages actually had a dream where he imagined a tree speaking to him about the death and resurrection of Christ and then he wrote it down. If that was the case, then I can understand why the poem is not perfectly accurate and somewhat jumbled, when compared to scripture. Often our thoughts are jumbled, when we dream. The order of events seems to be a little offset. For example, the earth did not tremble, until after Jesus spirit left Him. The poem appears to put the trembling ahead of Jesus death. However, there is a lot of the good, the true, and the beautiful in this poem. It celebrates the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross and it encourages us to look to Him on the cross, so we don’t forget how much He loves us. Also, it encourages us in our faith and knowing that Jesus will return someday, to take us into eternal glory with Him. It was good that the poem concluded with the Dreamer feeling enthusiastic about the cross, looking forward to eternal glory, and desiring to share the good news with others. This is the way that
A literal reading of this passage tells us that Jesus “began to be grieved and agitated” while in the garden as he prepared for the impending challenges that were ahead of him. But ancient and medieval theologians pushed against the ideas that Jesus was truly grieved or even that Jesus was asking for God to “let this cup pass from me” because he was not fully aware of what was to come or what his sacrifice would mean for humanity. According to Kevin Madigan, “Augustine appears to agree, denying that Christ felt true sadness and alleging that when Jesus prays ‘Take this cup from me,’ he pleads not fo...
This paper explores information gather from several articles that report on the Mayan Civilization throughout the years of their rise, their conquering, and their fall, as well as their interactions with other civilizations, specifically the Spanish. The Mayan civilization dates back before the 16th century, before they were conquered by the Spanish Conquistadors and the civilization diminished. During their reign, the Maya civilization thrived in what is now parts of Southern Mexico and Central America. However, their supremacy was struck down when the Spanish and their beliefs
The European and Mayan civilizations had inverse experiences during the Classical era, but they were similar in some aspects. While the Mayans were basking in their glorious success as a civilization, the Europeans stood in their shadow. However, after the Renaissance Era, it was as if the Mayans stood in the shadow of the European revival. These two societies have a definite inverse relationship, in that while one was succeeding, the other was squandering. For example, the forward thinking of the Mayans and their knowledge of arithmetic and science was overshadowed by the revolutionary ideas created by European scientists, the fact that the Mayans had created a complex, and accurate calendar wasn’t nearly as celebrated as a European man who got hit by an apple.
These are a flaw because it combines and mixes the bad in one making it seem like Mayan culture was evil civilization. The film combines together “Classic Maya” period with the time period just a couple of days before the arrival of the Europeans. The movie details a period of agricultural failure and extreme food scarcity created thanks to a decreasing amount of rainfall, extremely descriptive of the Classic Mayan civilization of 250-950 C.E. (Lucero 2002; 814, 820). Some may argue that maybe Gibson perhaps to try and show the audience as much Mayan as possible in the film. The second is the wild exaggerations and violence that is seen in the movie. It is seen in the film that Jaguar Paw and his tribe never heard or seen a Mayan city where there are huge monuments and temples. According to the National Geographic “During the Classic period Maya settlement was so widespread that you lived at least within 10 to 20 kilometers [6 to 12 miles] of a large community. Pyramids were never more than 20 kilometers away from anywhere in the Mayan world.” So typically it’s impossible for Jaguar Paw to have never heard of the Maya before. The movies makes it seem like the tribe is the only living civilization living at the time and when they first meet the
According to the Oxford Dictionary of the Bible, "contrition is a penitent’s spiritual sorrow for the sins he has committed, and it necessarily includes hatred for such sins, as well as the determination to avoid them in the future." In the first stanza, this "spiritual sorrow" is apparent by the contrast Eliot uses, of the Magi’s difficult journey. In fact, the central focus of criticism has been on the journey; the "cold coming" (line 1) during "the worst time of the year" (line 2), emphasising the climatic statement of the stanza: "A hard time we had of it" (line 16). The Magus talks of their sorrowful past life of ease, the times they "regretted…the silken girls bringing sherbet" (lines 8-10), and in the same way that they are ‘physically’ moving towards Christ, they feel they are progressing spiritually, putting a personal ban on the sinful lives they have had. This act of contrition seems genuine because they are pressured by the "voices singing in [their] ears, saying/ That this was all folly" (lines 19-20). These are the voices of the camel men, the hostile cities and the unfriendly towns, voices that tempt the wise men to cease their foolish journey and fall, once again, into spiritual degeneration. In the end, the difficulty of the jour...
For many years, psychologists described homosexuality as a disorder or a treatable complex. Recently, homosexuality was removed from the DSM and is no longer considered a disorder. The gay population is no longer treated as sick but accepted as a diverse set of individuals. The many distinguishing attributes and characteristics of a gay or lesbian individual are considered to be personality attributes.
The feasibility study should examine three main areas; - market issues, - technical and organizational requirements, - financial overview. The results of this study are used to make a decision whether to proceed with the project, or table it. If it indeed leads to a project being approved, it will - before the real work of the proposed project starts - be used to ascertain the likelihood of the project's success.