Reflection / noitcelfeR

Key terms, the key to understanding composition and rhetoric, right? The problem is, most people don’t even know what key terms are, let alone which go where or how they interact with each other. For instance, if I were to say “Rhetorical discourse” how many students in let’s say a Calculus class would be able to say “Oh, well you need Rhetorical situation first.” Let’s hope maybe one.

In the literary world, key terms are necessary, if not essential to properly convey one’s thoughts, ideas, arguments, etc. Luckily, once you know one key term, many of the others seem to fall into place, almost like a puzzle.

Let’s say that Salley is studying rhetoric in college. Once she understands rhetorical situation, it becomes easier to understand rhetorical discourse, as well as the literary appeals, and rhetorical knowledge. A basic understanding of one leads to a simplified understanding of the others. In my perspective, many key terms overlap each other. For instance, audience awareness and argument are connected. It is impossible to understand one without the other. The rhetorical key terms work as a crossword, each one connecting to another to create the entire puzzle. And with that analogy, I mean to say that the overlapping pieces enable one to coherently form a single, identifiable object – rhetoric.

Can knowledge be created? Well I’m certain that if knowledge did not progress than we would be living in a completely different world. I think that knowledge can be manipulated and processed, but is always there on the surface, waiting to spill over in order to create something new; however, knowledge can be thought of as remediation. It takes a previous subject matter and manipulates it to create something “newer” and more advanced. Everyone relies on a previous understanding of something in order to move further up the intellectual chain. The knowledge of the past manipulates the knowledge of the future and challenges people in different ways. For me, the knowledge of my past enables me to do things better than I have before, and to succeed at something that I might have failed at in the past. For the WEPO class, knowledge and the remediation of knowledge is the whole reason the class exists. The knowledge of the past allows us to transfer ideas into remediated concepts that have enabled inventions such a blogs, glogster, Movie Maker, etc.

Sometimes when we look back, we see exactly what we want to see, but most of the time, we notice all the little pieces that we wish we could fix, and then, if we can, we fix them. I believe that reflection serves an important part in any creative process. As a composer, I have to look back on past work all the time, learning from past mistakes and duplicating things that worked. In class, we have to look back on the more recent past, reflecting on freshly turned in projects that have yet to be marked up or critiqued. A moment to reflect allows me personally to see where I might have changed an idea, or perhaps praise myself on something I found particularly thought provoking. Either way, the process enabled ideas and concepts to change or to mold into even better ones. Reflection allows a composer to critique themselves while provoking insight for future projects and develops their ability not only as a composer, but as a critic as well.

Overall, this course (in the very short time I’ve spent in it) has opened my eyes to a whole new world of composition, where I am no longer hindered by mere words on paper. The world of the composer is open to a whole range of mediums (this blog serving as one of them) and can lift an artist to levels they never knew existed.