To Be Heard

Occasionally, I have students who want to be rock stars. They have started a band, and they are spending their weekends and off hours writing songs and practicing. Without fail, these kids know everything there is to know about new music. They are listening all the time—they can discourse on Bob Dylan as easily as they can talk about the new e.p. from a new band from Little Rock, Arkansas, or wherever, and they have a whole hard drive full of demos from obscure artists that they have downloaded from the internet.

I wish that my students who want to be fiction writers were similarly engaged. But when I ask them what they’ve read recently, they frequently only manage to cough up the most obvious, high profile examples. What if my rock star students had only heard of… um… The Beatles? We listened to them in my Rock Music Class in high school. And… And Justin Timberlake? And, uh, yeah, there’s that one band, My Chemical Romance, I heard one of their songs once.

How awful would that be?

Young writers, if you want to be rock stars, you have to read.

—Dan Chaon (via mttbll)

(Source: thereviewreview.net, via mttbll)

fiftystatesofawesome:

lollard:

shelikespretties:

notmissmarple:

dorkery:

dendropsyche:

Like, I knew shepherding was a boring job

but these guys really had nothing better to do

Oh my god

this is the BEST THING

I HAVE SEEN

ALL MONTH

Could not hit reblog fast enough.

…This is the best spent few minutes of your day.  The sheep. THE LIT UP SHEEP!

If somebody loved me there’d be The Dark Is Rising fanfiction about this. I do not care that it was the 1970s.

I didn’t actually think it would be in Wales….I was wrong.

O.O

(Source: extremetanning, via dosgordogatos)

montereybayaquarium:

Is it a dance? An embrace? No one on staff had ever seen the likes of this recent exchange between a wolf eel and volunteer diver Mike Guardino in our Kelp Forest exhibit. Thanks to visitor Crystal McKenzie for the fantastic video!