Girl in Four Colors

beanbunny:

so-relatable:

CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY THIS WAS FORCED UPON US

Sure, let’s go.

I’m your music teacher. I see what’s going on in the public schools — I see that your other teachers really only want you to learn math and reading, because that’s what’s tested under NCLB, and really even then if they could cut it to one of those subjects, they would.

But I’m different. I see that you’re an individual. I want you to understand the world, because you’ll be out in it some day, and I want you to understand the parts of it that aren’t explained by numbers or words. You need to understand how the world feels, how people feel, what they mean when they express themselves, or even what the greater universe at large means when it expresses itself through nature, or sounds, or any number of things too big to list in a Tumblr post. 

That is the end goal of arts education.

To get there, from a musical perspective, you need to understand the basics first. You couldn’t read this if you didn’t understand letters, how would you understand that Brahms wrote four symphonies about the pain of not being with the woman he loved if you don’t know what a pitch is? Your music teacher understands better than anyone that learning happens through creation and imitation. The recorders are cheap (so your parents didn’t have to put down a couple thousand on a violin — do your parent’s have that? Mine didn’t) and easy (so that literally everyone in the classroom can master it, even the kids that might have problems in the regular classroom suddenly have a very easy tool that they can be successful with). Also, they sound quite beautiful if you’d quit blowing so hard.

But no, by reblogging this, apparently you’d rather lose the ability to understand art and the world around you. Fine, more for me.

team-joebama:

mediaite:

Wayne Brady calls “bullshit” on Bill Maher.

I would be happy if anyone beat Maher’s ass in public, but especially so if it were Wayne Brady

and more context from the article:

Maher first explained his desire for Obama to be a “real black president” who “lifts up his shirt so they can see the gun in his pants” during a monologue in 2010. Subsequently, Maher referred to Obama as “your Wayne Brady,” a characterization that put into question the African-American credentials of both Obama and Brady.

“I’ve respected him as a comedian, and what he does on HBO is great,” Brady told Hill. “But when he starts to drag me in, to use me as the cultural linchpin of his not-black-enough argument, that’s bullshit.”