Sunday, February 12, 2017

Week 29: In Which Elder Newton sets out to write a Missionary Life Update, but just reviews a poem instead

Discover Inertia
Pull and Push
Short ignition but continuous movement
Stop the Problem
How?
Conduct the Orchestra
The proof is work
Inertia

The following is the Poet's analysis of his own work; it should be noted, however, that Discover Poems are made to be a little meaningless, and any analysis probably gives the poem more meaning than it has on its own. This is really just what went through my mind as I wrote this.

This particular piece began its inception in the final talk of our Seoul Stake Conference. President 박성식 was giving a talk and I was understanding about 50% of it. (I swear, the day I understand what goes on in church will be the day I feel confident in Korean.) I just knew he was talking about happiness a lot, when out of nowhere he mentioned Newton. This caught my attention, and I got up to about 60% or 70% understanding as he explained to the congregation the law of inertia. He then went on to talk about how we should all continue in happiness, but that's not relevant to the poem. All that matters, is that I had my first line.

"Pull and Push" came easily enough. Inertia is a law which requires outward movement, and "pull and push" already alliterate, so we good. 

Short ignition but continuous movement

For this line I went back to my roots in Discover Imlk, and went for some wackier words. "Ignition" isn't really related, but it is a starting of action. Then I tied it back to 박성식 회장님 and went for the continuous movement. It's one of my weaker contrasts, I'll admit, but it gets the job done. 

"Stop the Problem" and "How" are always there, and for that reason, they appear in this work.

The action following is always meant to be completely unrelated from the beginning. Sometimes I see the first three lines and the last three lines as completely different poems, joined in the middle by lines 4 and 5. Thus we see that I just waited a while for the end of the meeting, and as I watched our ex-opera singer conductor (I forget his name) lead the choir, the line came to me.

"The proof is work" was actually pretty fun. I just meant it to be maybe missionary work, or the work of putting up chairs, but it fit in with the physics theme nicely and so I kept it. 

Finally, the last line is always the noun from the beginning. When performed aloud, generally this line should be whispered. However, when desired, any dynamic is acceptable. 

And yeah, that's about it. We met with Sherlock* again. He's so great. We asked him to read like one chapter of the Book of Mormon last week, and by the time we saw him next he'd finished 2 Nephi. He had a lot of questions, so we just spent the lesson talking about those. It was fun. 

And, yeah, there weren't any real noteworthy pictures this week. Sorry, y'all. Maybe next time?

Best Wishes, Elder Newton
 
* a pseudonym

No comments:

Post a Comment