Rain

When I was younger I carried around a lot of pain and sorrow. My father was never there and my mom was a single, independent woman, who worked to support her kids. I felt the weight of society against me and I started to wonder if I was doomed to a life in jail or drug dealing like the rest of my family. People around me were dying constantly and I felt powerless to stop it. I shed a lot of tears, but something that helped me deal with the pain was rain. It sounds crazy, but the rain felt like it reflected my deepest and darkest emotions. It was peaceful but dangerous, calm but wild. The rain is a beautiful thing; it helped even in my darkest days. I couldn’t help but take sight in the beautiful rain, I would stand in it for hours just thinking about my life and the problems in it. I would hear the lightning strike and as I grew mentally and physically the lightning inside me struck the lightning outside, the thunder cracked and boomed and I would just listen and feel it. It was almost as if the lightning and thunder was one with me. It felt so empowering, it gave me strength to walk when I was down. I would feel a crack and boom, a powerful strike of lightning inside that would never let me give up. I felt like it was telling me to keep going. There wasn’t a time growing up where I felt that the rain couldn’t help me grow mentally as a person. The lighting inside is what helped me strive for greatness.

Personal Quote: “ Look To The Sky For Courage When Your Down, Always Settle For Greatness Never Less”

Written by: Delante Madden

Guys, I went to an opera!

For a field trip, mind you. I was forced to go! I mean, I sure as hell wouldn't want to go to one willingly! I’m a man! Men don’t go to operas!

Or, so I like to tell myself.

But yeah, I went to an opera today, and decided I was going to write about my experience. Some may say that is a review, but I don’t think this counts, as I am not an opera connoisseur, and don’t have much prior experience with the form of art.

Art? Art. Sure, why not.

I’ll start from the top. We saw Così fan tutte at the new Kauffman stadium, and man, that place is beautiful! We sat on one of the highest floors of the auditorium thing, and I almost threw up when I first looked down at the stage. It was pretty intense at first, grew accustomed to it. Which may have been unfortunate, because I would have had an excuse to not actually watch the thing.

I can honestly say checking out the new stadium was my favorite part of the trip. Everything was so white and clean! The seats were relatively comfortable, I had a nice view of the stage, and each seat had it’s own screen where you can read the subtitles of the opera on it! And let me tell you, when watching an opera that isn’t in English, you watch that screen almost as much as you watch the stage.              

My view of the action. And yes, my camera and photo-taking skills are quite amazing, thank you.

Which is going to bring me to my first complaint of the actual opera. It wasn’t in English. While I know that isn’t an actual valid complaint, it wouldn’t have been such a problem if the subtitles weren’t so inconsistent. Sometimes during a song or scene, the subtitles would just cut out and stop translating the action. It’s very frustrating trying to keep up with the story when every now and then you have literally no idea what is happening or what anyone is saying. This happened near the end for me, so I’m not even 100% sure of how it concluded.

Which is a shame, because I thought the overall story was interesting enough to keep my interest. It was very over-the-top, which I think suits the opera format quite well, as I find operas to be kind of ridiculous in a sense. There were actually parts where I laughed at the dialog and the hammy acting.

While I did find the story to be interesting, the actual pace of which it was told is monotonous. I have never seen such a story so drawn out in my life. Having a character talk to themselves for 10-15 minutes about how bad she feels for cheating on a loved one or something is insufferable. I’m not even exaggerating, I pulled my iPod out and started my stopwatch each time a character had a solo or a monologue.

But maybe that is par for the course with opera’s. Hey, I don’t know! But if it is, I can say that I would never want to attend another one ever again. While I’m not saying things shouldn’t have a very deliberate and slow pace, which can be very effective if executed well, I’m just saying I would like if the story kept moving, and had some momentum to it.

Do people go to an opera for the story, though? It’s for the singing and stuff, right? It seemed fine and inoffensive. Maybe one of the setbacks of being so far away from the stage was I sometimes had trouble hearing things, but from what I heard, it was fine.

I loved the live orchestra they had! The acoustics in the stadium were amazing, and how the sounds echoed around the auditorium was really cool. Playing some silly music to go along with the hammy acting was nice and funny too. If we went there for a live orchestra concert instead, I would have enjoyed myself quite a bit more.

But, I don’t know, I had fun. While if I had the choice, I wouldn’t go to another opera, but I don’t regret going to this one.