What Makes You, You?

Hello Audience,

                         I am part of a group called Harmony Movement. This group is about diversity and it is about finding yourself and becoming you and examining things that everyone thinks is the norm. I was invited to join this group and attend six classes, every Tuesday from 2:20pm to 4:00pm. These group sessions just started and I was given an assignment, just a simple question that  means so much and is quite complicated to answer. "What makes you, you?" This simple question seemed easy to answer and I thought it would only take me less than three minutes to answer it.  I thought I could sound so articulate that the group would think I am a genius. The first session was Tuesday November 2, 2010 and now it is Saturday November 6, 2010, 3:00pm, and I still do not know how to answer this question.

                                I was born on August 13, 1995, shortly after (four minutes to be accented) my twin sister was born, and together we would experience things and moments that no one would understand but us.We grew up together and we are best friends even though we do not act like it all the time. When we got older we started to grow and think more and understand things that we were not able to understand before. When I was five years old I could not get to sleep, it took me hours before I gave up. I went downstairs to our basement. At the time we were living in this "Perfect House"; one of those homes that the happy family lives with their pet and everyone in the house gets along, this is the norm family. I went down the main hallway to the stairs to our basement to watch TV or to play on the computer. This one memory has always stuck in my mind because this is what changed everything I thought our family was. I went down stairs and there was my dad sleeping on the foldout mattress on the couch. This little thing seems so insignificant and so stupid for me to remember but this is what changed everything that I thought was normal. Shortly after that we met this man and who told us that we were going to look at some new houses. We went to this really small house which was not nearly as big and grand as our other house. We went back there once and then twice and thrice,  and the third time my mom shook that man's hand and he said, "Pleasure doing business with you." A few months before that my dad left our happy family house and went somewhere else and would come back every so often to take us to these great fun places. One day we moved and I left the whole norm life behind and lived a different life that changed me as a person in a good way.

                      Sometimes in order to get to that good change something is going to have to shatter before you get there and in my case it was my family. For many years,  my sister, my mother, and myself lived together and were dependent on each others' support to get through the tough times. This event is what made me the way I am today and what makes me someone who can connect with other people and can help them through these problems. While living with just my mom and no man in our life who I could wake up and say good morning to, I went through some bad change. I started to bully people at school and my grades started to drop in primary school. I fell into the wrong crowd that got me into trouble rather than getting me to the places I wanted to be. I started to cut myself and went through counselling to solve this problem. After this problem was solved, I started to cry before I going to bed every night saying that, "I shouldn't have been friends with them." I went to another few weeks of counselling for that, this was during middle school. Middle School is what tested me the most and helped me become a better person and helped me define what is good and bad change and what kind of change will get me to the places I want to go.

                      For a very long time I was stuck in a glass box and I could not get out. I could not move and I just lay their until I broke that glass box and stepped over my border of what I could do. These experiences  made me into a successful student, helped me grow a thicker skin and get past these problems. All I have to say to you audience is to be vocal and step over your border and break out of that glass box and you will be successful.

                                                                                          Yours Truly,

                                                                                                             PBradford

I Feel....Wicked!

Hello Audience,

                          October has passed and we are now into the month of November. I like November a lot, I just do not like what it brings after that. The cold, the crisp sharp pain of cold, that makes your cheeks rosy and your nose drip even without you noticing because you are so cold. I love winter and I love snow but I just wish that  have this beautiful season of white sparkles of snow would be a little warmer; not hot, but warm.  I have nothing against winter or any of the months and seasons I just have something against the change from hot to cold. This change to me is like good to evil, or from good to bad. This makes me think how do I know that the cold is bad and the heat is good?   Maybe the heat is bad and the cold is good;  same thing when we think of the "bad guy". Who is this "bad guy" and how do we know that he is bad?  How do we know that Batman or Superman are good guys? Simple answer is because we have been told that they are the good guys, we have been told that they help us get rid of the bad guys, they throw them into jail. Well,  what about the bad guys?  There has not been one movie that shows the bad guys' side of the story. When we went to war in 1914 and 1939 England and Canada both thought that Germany was the bad guy, but we never looked on the German side and asked them, "What do you think of us? What have we done that have made you this angry?" If we would have asked them what are we doing wrong rather then saying, "What can you do to stop getting angry?" we would not look at Germany and think "bad guy".

                Finally, in the 21st century an author called Winnie Holzman wrote a book called "Wicked". This book was about the Wizard Of Oz, the famous film, where a little girl named Dorthy and her little dog Do Do fell into the magical world of Oz. "Wicked" was the story before Dorthy entered the world of Oz and when she was in the world of Oz, but it was not about Dorothy, it was about the Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba. This was the back story about Elphaba and how she was not actually bad. This story was picked up by the producer Stephen Schwartz and he turned this magnificent book into a Broadway play called "Wicked". This musical swept the world with its brilliance and it shines a new light on this story about good and evil.  It shows us that not all evil is evil if we are only looking at the story with one eye open. This play shows us that we were told in the movie "The Wizard of Oz" that the Wicked Witch of the West was evil. However "Wicked" shows us a different side - she is not evil, she is a good witch who was given a bad reputation because she was not normal. This proves that good will always prevail.

             This amazing musical shows us that good is in everyone and good is shown in many different ways not just in the normal ways. "Wicked" is one of the best musicals of the century and shows us very valuable lessons that can be used in many different ways in our society today. I recommend that everyone goes to see this musical and watch it and be amazed by the singing, dancing, acting, costumes, set design, and everything and everybody that put their heart and soul into this musical.

                                                                                               Yours Truly,
                                                                                                            PBradford

PSA

Dear Audience,

PSA, Public Service Announcement. This is a commercial that make you aware of what is going on in our world, a world issue. Unfortunately there are way too many issues in our world that prevent world peace. These issues occur because we did not deal with them before they became bigger and terrorized everyone on this earth. These problems are still growing and changing, and the changes are negative ones, but we can all learn and try together to make these negative changes into positive ones. This is not a one-man job, it is a world job; everyone has to be on board and if not everyone, then a band of people who do want to make this bad change into good change.

There are so many world issues now that people feel as if one is more important then another. If these issues are world issues then they are all equally as important. We, as people, and as global citizens need to band together and help turn negative events into something productive. I am one of those people who was more passionate about one world issue then another, but I began to think. I am a huge believer that shark fining should be illegal. Most people do not see what the big deal of fining sharks is because people believe that sharks are deadly man eaters that kill people every year, year round. These living creatures only kill three people a year whereas elephants kill more than ten people a year, and pop machines kill more than 20 people a year. These statistics are the cold truth. Sharks are not as dangerous as you think they are, they are humble creatures that only bite because of mistaken identity. Rob Stewart, the Canadian documentarist, (not the singer), filmed, directed, produced, and wrote an award-winning documentary called Sharkwater that shows the truth about sharks, shark fining and shows what killing all these sharks will do to our environment and lets the illegal fisherman know, "That the truth will surface."(Stewart Sharkwater). Sharks control two thirds of our world's oxygen and without them we would not be able to live on this earth, without them there would be no us. We as people believe that we have the right to choose what lives and what dies, but we don't, no one does. So why do we think we do?

I believe that if we, as global citizens, stopped something like shark fining and joined together as a group. we can stop anything. Doing this one thing could click in our heads and make us think, if we could do this then we can stop world hunger, child abuse, or anything we set our hearts to. With everyone joined together as brothers and sisters, as husband and wife, we, the people of this great nation of capability, of hope, and of dreams, can stop anything. We can change the bad into good and work hard at making this world a place of peace and happiness. We can feed hungry children, we can have everyone in our world go to school, we can stop violence, and we can prevent negative change. We, not I, but we are the people of this century and if we apply ourselves to something good, we are the generation who can achieve world peace by stopping one simple thing like shark fining and Press Start on the good change.

Yours Only,

PBradford

Nerves

Hello Audience,



So I get in front of the class for the very first time, some of these people I know while others I still have no clue who they are. The phone starts to ring and I mentally get ready. Then the spot light comes on and I hear a "Hello?" on the other line and then, my nerves overcame my whole body and I froze. I did not know what to say or what to do. I just sat on the stool and turned bright red in the face. Sometimes nerves are good, it pushes adrenaline through the veins and pushes you to succeed and become a convincing character, but then there are the kind of nerves I have. These nerves are embarrassment nerves, they are the kind that hold you back in so many terrible ways that it keeps you from being that person that the teacher or director is like, "Wow where did that come from?!"

I was always that person last year and I am supposed to be that person, but for some reason my nerves have really gotten the better of me that it is very difficult to go over the line of average. So this is something that I have to overcome, but how? Well I do not know how, but that is the great part about change, you learn how to change something negative into a positive just like the leaves changing colour in fall. The leaves just don't change their colour, they have to learn how to do it before they can, just like I have to learn how to get rid of these embarrassing nerves and make them into adrenaline nerves. This process is kind of like my own photosynthesis, I am just like a flower or a leaf trying to change its colour before it becomes winter.

Sometime change happens in the most funny places or instances, for you to Press Start on your adult life, on the life outside of the school walls and your parents' walls. Learning when and how to Press Start is something that I believe is the most dificult thing to do because you never know if it is the right time or the right place, even with the right person. That is why you have to learn how to change one step at a time.

Yours Only,
PBradford

Branding Enigma

Hello Audience,

Branding! What is Branding? Well Branding is something that you do when you have created a company. You create this huge presentation and perform it in front of the people who might want to invest in it. So this was basically like an episode of "Dragons Den" mixed with 'The Apprentice". It was very difficult but a great learning experience! This whole experience started in our class of 24, we were divided in half and separated into teams of 11 or 12. Each group was required to make a name, have corporate colours, visuals, and a great oral presentation , including a meal to go with the morning.
Thankfully I was put into a very strong-willed and smart group, which was great at some points, but sometimes when a group of very strong and passionate people are put together there are definitely clashes. This experience was really difficult because I was the "director" of the group and that was a huge responsibility. Being in this group I think everyone would have to say that they put their friendships on the line to get things done. Some new friendships bloomed, while others died and some were even thrown on thin ice. This assignment was really like 'The Apprentice' and it really made me grow and change as a person. This assignment was what the real world was going to be like if you join a starting company.
Our group eventually chose the name Enigma Productions, which means a mystery; a puzzle that brings entertainment to our minds and keep us interested trying to figure what is this Enigma that is planning with our thoughts and out minds. This was perfect for our group because I believe our group is still a mystery, a mystery that we will never be able to figure out how we ended up working together so perfectly and cohesively. Our group was always arguing and at each others' throats, but for some reason we still loved each other and cared about what each other was feeling and if they needed help. In fact the funny part was it felt as if while we were arguing we were still working and getting things done, our heads were always in the game and we were always determined to win.
In the end our group, Enigma Productions, did not win, but in some ways I feel as if it was for the best because in some ways we became a lot more closer as a group by losing. We became closer as classmates, friends, and even as family, we trust each other with anything we say and with our hearts. We went through a faze of the branding where everything that could go wrong did go wrong. That is why when the other group won, our group got together at lunch and we just started to laugh, laugh at how we did not win, laugh at how we argued, and even laughed at how close we have become and said thank to each other. We said thank you because without each other we would not have made it out in one piece, and we said thanks to our teacher because without her we would not have become so close and so much more like family.
Yours Only,
PBradford

Heart Strings

Hello Audience,

All of the leaves on the trees have disappeared and I am just waiting for them to blossom in the spring again. Watching something like this makes me thing more about change and how will I know when it is happening. How will I know what to do to make a bad change into good change?
One of my classmates in my drama class gave an amazing dissertation on pulling on your inner heart strings or inner emotions. What are inner heart strings? Well it is a metaphor for sympathy or empathy. You pull on these to get into character or to sympathize with someone in need. Sometimes it is very difficult to pull on these strings for different situations. This is because I always visualized that there are three different lengths of strings attached to your heart, a short, medium, and long string. Sometimes you can pull on the long one because you have experienced it and it is easy to pull on it and become that character that you were assigned to be, but then there is the shortest string. The shortest string is usually the string that you have to pull on if you have not experienced this emotion or situation before. This is the most difficult string to pull on and this string is probably the best string to pull on. This string helped me grow as a better person and helps me to figure out who I am. This little string is the most difficult but it is the most power full one I have and it is a life changing experience when you actually get a strong grasp on it and be able to pull on it so hard, that you actually become that character and be able to live like them and feel like them. It is one of the most emotional experiences I have ever gone through and I would never change it for the world.
Becoming an actor/actress opens up so many doors for opportunities and that are always difficult to choose from. At every occasion you have to be ready to choose a door and to pull on the inner heart strings to fit the setting on what is behind that door that, for some reason, caught your eye and pulled you in. These heart strings are what help good change, these strings have helped me change and have made me stronger.
Learning when to Press Start is something that does not come easy and it will not come easy if you rush. Learning how to pull on your heart strings will help you reach that start button and help you choose where you are going to push start, who you are going to push start with, and where are you going to end up when you have pushed start. This emotional roller coaster will bring you places that you and others have never reached before and that is why my inner heart strings will help me reach there no matter what happens.
Yours Only,
PBradford

Opening Remarks

Hello Audience,
Good morning everyone! Fall is coming in real fast and I feel so blessed to be able to watch the colours change on the trees and to see our earth change right before our eyes. This makes me think about the change that I am undergoing or will be in the few months that I have left of the first semester. Change is the beauty of our world, it is what makes everyone so original and so fascinating. Without change everyone would look, feel, and talk the same, so I find it so interesting that someone can go from really short to really tall in one year. This magnificent attribute of our world is what keeps me up at night, makes me think about how is this change happening and what do we do to control or release it. Change can also be the most positive or even negative attribute of this world, but what I am here to discover is how I can make change but when to press start.
From when I was little I underwent change all the time, but is was not always positive. This has sparked my interest in the phrase "Press Start". My mom has been my biggest inspiration for me and has taught me many life lessons and has helped myself and my sibling so much. She is the best mom I could and will ever have, and has brought me up to be the successful student I am today. This woman has been my role model for 15 years of my life and is going to be for the rest of my life. My mother also made the great choice of sending me to this great school that has made me into a great student and has given me the fantasic opportunity to work with a great and the best teacher in our school.
I am going to a great school and taking part in a T.V and Film course that is taking me for a wonderful ride. I am being taught by a great teacher who is down-to-earth and is a great role model for a being actor or actress. She is what is taking me on a great turn for positive change. This change has already made me a better person and a different more mature person. This is the kind of change that I have been looking for and this blog will be about my change and about when I will or have figured out how I choose when to "Press Start".
I hope to take you on this roller coaster journey that will bring all of us happiness and sometimes sadness that will change us and help us to know when is the right time to "Press Start" and begin to start a life that is written and directed by you.
Yours Truly,
PBradford