Literacy is up to You.

Daniel was sitting there, not really sure what to expect. If anyone else had walked into the room they would have assumed we didn’t even know each other. He was wearing nice dress shoes and pants, a grey button up shirt, and a vest, with his long hair slicked back. Meanwhile, I was in front of him with a WWU sweater, jeans, and messy hair. Next to me was my friend Moses who was only there to witness the interview, he was equally as well dressed as Daniel. You see Daniel and Moses play in the church band, and church had just ended. So me and the guys went into a back room in the church to talk. The room was small with cables laying around, computers, and giant audio mixer consoles. Its only lighting was an old yellow bulb. Moses and I, sat down in some chairs that were around. I told them about the interview and offered Daniel to do it. He agreed and pulled a kids chair from the corner of the room and sat down. He looked kind of awkward sitting in a chair that was three times as small as him, but he had a serious expression on his face as if trying to prepare himself for any question I would throw at him.

Who exactly is Daniel, you ask? Well, Ive known Daniel since I can remember, he’s my older cousin. Well, his real name is ‘Jesus Daniel Ceja’ but he goes by Daniel since Jesus is his dads name. Music is big part of his life his whole family are singers and musicians. So I thought interviewing him about music as a literacy would make an interesting interview. His answers surprised me however and weren’t anything like I expected, and it made me realize something that I didn’t before about literacy. A lot of conscious literacies are not taken advantage of, even with sponsors supporting them.

When I asked Daniel what were some books he read as a kid he responded by saying “ In school I wasn’t too much of a reader in terms of reading my own books. The only book I ever really read was ‘The Mocking Jay’ from the Hunger Games series.” The Hunger Games Series, a series that I couldn't even get past the first chapter, and Daniel had breezed through the third book. He later explained why he decided to read it by saying “ I was really intrigued I guess you could say by the hunger games movies.” A simple motivation as that, so it hit me that in a weird way his sponsor was a movie, by the story it was showing on screen, rather than an actual person. This was a form of sponsor I hadn't even thought about.

In terms of school however no one was really was pushing Daniel to read beside the teacher encouraging kids to read more and write. I then asked if he blames anyone for not pushing him, and he responded by saying “ Possibly my fault… I myself never gave the effort to be much of a reader or writer.” However, there was one other book that was a rare moment of obsession with a book, and that book is named “The outsiders” by S. E. Hinton. He started The Outsiders in school but breezed through it in about two days on his own. It was at this point that I realized that maybe Daniel could be a great reader if he really wanted too. Books that took me a while to read, he read with ease and had genuine interest in. These were the only two books he says he ever really read. So, although sponsors were available to him in terms of teachers or the library he only pursued them when he was interested in doing so.

When it came to writing he never really liked it because of the outlines and basic ways they taught in school. In high school however, he says he preferred free writing where you could write as you please. however, he explains “In subjects that were given to me it was a little bit harder for me to write just because if I wasn’t interested in the topic I was assigned.” However his poetry was one form of writing he was strong in and said he enjoyed in high school. When he told me this I was genuinely surprised because Daniel is a big 6'4 guy with long hair, a beard and at first glance you would assume he has never smiled a day in his life. I assure you however once you get to know him he is actually very chill, and cant stop cracking jokes. Anyways His teachers had noticed his poetry. So they came to him one day after class to talk about his writing, and how it was better than most other kids in class since they saw the amount of effort he would put into it. He liked poetry over other forms of writing because he had cousins and uncles who liked rap. so he saw poetry as a way to mend with his family. He would talk or try to rhyme with cousins and uncles just whenever there was family gatherings or things of that nature. It encouraged him and motivated him to get into writing and poetry a lot more. He however didn’t take it anymore and used it more as a form to privately express himself and never made it public. This shows that although he had a lot of sponsors like family and teachers he never really took his poetry anywhere besides privately just because he didn’t want to make his writing public. Although I respect this decision because I agree that expressing your deepest thoughts to people is difficult. I still believe it would have been interesting to see where his poetry maybe could have taken him.

When it came to music, I asked he if he considered himself literate in it and he surprised me by saying “ I wouldn’t really consider myself literate just because I don’t know basic music theory or read sheet music but as far as being able to work my instrument (I am)… I guess that’s where I shifted from poetry going into music.” After his poetry phase he really shifted into drums. he had a passion for it since he was four or five years old because of his family also being artist. He now plays in his church band and is a rare example of a literature I would say he took outside of person enjoyment and made something that can affect others.

I took a lot from this interview and it made me realize a lot of things. Although I didn’t talk as much about music as I thought I would have it still went well. It made me realize how important sponsors can be too literacy, and how they can encourage or inspire someone to pursue their literacy. However I also realized that as much inspiration or support you get its ultimately up to the person if they want to pursue their literature and take it some where.

Related posts:

See in this tutorial how to change the WooCommerce price display so you can show different things on your shop page using WooCommerce WordPress plugin As prices are based on skewer quantity, we want…

I talk a lot about the Cloud. In fact if I were doing shots every time I mentioned the word, I’d probably be facedown on my desk by 9AM. Like many buzzwords in the C-Suite there’s a lot of excitement…

In this volatile world of crypto with BIG percentage increases. A linear scale chart will probably not show a lot of patterns compared to the log scale, especially in long-term charts. Take a look at…