And, I must admit, I have seen my share of eye rolls and heard the "knowing" sighs when I have talked over the years about a lesson amongst some of my teaching peers. Not all of the lessons such as this connect with each and every kids. That discussion after class became a writing assignment, and an interesting classroom discussion. The student told me that the poem reminded him of the video because he felt the poem's theme of starting with a new, blank page each day was similar to, and yet starkly different from, the idea of the video, which he felt expressed the idea that while we all start with a blank page or canvas, every event of our lives, each and every moment, leaves its mark, and the splatterings, sketches, scrawls, blotches, and smears, whether beautiful or gruesome, all become part of the masterpiece that is one's life. Last year, as we studied the poem "Metaphor" by Eve Marriam, a student suggested looking at th e video Five Finger Death Punch's "I Remember Everything". The two pieces have nothing in common, except for everything. Ludo croons lines of intense contradiction that somehow fittingly describe such love amazing well. That is how much she loves him, supposedly. "I just love you to death." "I love you so much, I could just eat you up." Here was a young woman in love, if you want to call it that, or in a deep state of infatuation at the least, and she poetically muses about cutting up her lover into tiny pieces and scattering them across the sky to make the stars jealous.
When we speak of love, she explained, we so often speak of destruction, of consumption. The discussion with this young lady in my class that followed was insightful. That all the world will be in love with nightĪnd pay no worship to the garish sun. Take him and cut him out in little stars,Īnd he will make the face of heaven so fine She explained that she thought of the song while we read Juliet's speech as she waited for Romeo to visit her, not knowing her new husband had just killed her cousin.
Several years ago, while we were studying Romeo and Juliet, a young lady asked if I had every heard Ludo's "Love Me Dead". Usually, the lessons are initiated by students. We use "Another Brick in the Wall" as a springboard for a reflective project (I actually found that lesson in an issue of The English Journal during my time at Baker University many moons ago.) Sometimes we examine the ending of Gran Torino during our discussion of tragic heroes and symbolism. We examine the video "Crossroads" by Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony as we explore allusion and symbolism. Often, I learn more about and from my kids during these lessons than any other time. Sometimes the approach works, and sometimes it is, well, less effective than I hope. I have known several amazing teachers who share my interest and passion. I love using music and movies in my classroom to try and make our literary studies more relevant for our students. We had delved into the figurative language, allusions, symbolism, and themes of the song as an extension of our study of the short story "Like the Sun". As one student Tweeted after class: "this song will never be the same." Many of them, when I first hit play on the radio edit version of the tune, belted out the hook along with Rihanna, only to fall increasingly silent as they listened to the verses that followed, growing more aware of just how masterfully the artists crafted their words, and, as a result, how violent the images presented in the lyrics truly were. It definitely caught the attention of many of my students when we listened to the song in class a couple of weeks ago. The line above is the closing line of the final verse of "Love the Way You Lie" by Eminem featuring Rihanna. "Imma tie you to the bed and set this house on fire."
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