I typically prefer silence when I am trying to do work or study, however, sometimes that is not possible. If someone is cooking dinner, doing their lawn, or a kid is screaming outside I often find it difficult to focus. Freshman year, living in the dorms, I had to learn how to study and deal with all of the noise. When this happened, I would put on concentration or study music that I found off of YouTube to drown out all of the other miscellaneous noises. My friends would often refer to it as “spa music.” I decided to look at SoundCloud for any tracks that could make studying a little easier and came across one that is calm enough where I don’t get distracted, but still blocks out the outside noise.

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Recently I was scrolling through Instagram when I saw one of the people I follow posted a SoundCloud song. I typically do not spend much time on SoundCloud, but since we worked with it in this class, I was curious to see what song they made. To my surprise, it was a song about quarantine, a topic it seems we all cannot escape. What I noticed is that you can find a song about anything if you search for it. However, it was pretty good and I was able to listen to the whole song.

A show that I have recently been loving for the past couple of weeks is The Last Dance. This 10-part documentary series gives insight into the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan’s career, including his last seasons with them (1997-1998). I have always been a fan of basketball, but what I really like about this series is that I am able to see basketball players that are no longer playing that made such an impact on the game. It is also interesting to see how the game has evolved from then to now. Although the series is not over yet, I feel like I have already learned so much about previous players and the struggles they went through. This is a series that keeps pulling me in.

I decided to look at the Top 50 most played tracks on SoundCloud this week. Once I began listening, I noticed some on them were from TikTok. After this, I was curious to know how many of them I recognized from TikTok. Although I am not on TikTok a crazy amount, I did the best I could with what I know. There were about 15 songs on the Top 50 list that I recognized from TikTok. I’m not sure if TikTok made them popular or if SoundCloud made them popular to be used on TikTok. However, I was surprised to recognize that many of the songs just based off of the small snip-its that are used in each video.

Sometimes I question what I liked as a kid because looking back at it while being 20 makes me wonder, “what was I thinking?” I had one of these moments today when I was watching the Disney Channel Original Movie Pixel Perfect (2004). I always remember this being a good movie and now that Disney+ exists and I have to opportunity to watch some of these older movies for the first time in years, I decided to watch it. It’s not that it is a bad movie, it is just not as good as I remember. Maybe that is because it came out 16 years ago, but I always find it crazy to look back on old things that I used to love and realize that they are not all they lived up to be when I was younger. It is kind of upsetting to realize this, but I guess that is something that comes with getting older.

After being home for 40 days, I have finally reached the point where I’d rather be back at school. Actually, this happened a few weeks ago, but now I am experiencing difficulty. I never though I would say that I would prefer to be at school, but trying to do school from home is much more difficult and complicated than waking up and going to class everyday. The workload has increased dramatically, which I never thought would be possible and the ability to concentrate and try to teach myself has disappeared. Not having the ability to take my daily stress laps around campus has caused me to become and anxious mess. I have started to see articles about the uncertainty of returning, however, nothing has been officially stated. Hopefully we will be back on campus and experiencing in class learning soon and I do not think I will ever complain about being on campus. At least not as much.

This may be the most relatable song to us all at the moment. We are all constantly dealing with the fact that we are not able to go out or go to many places because they are closed. If there is anything we all have in common right now, it is this. This song essentially represents the anthem of quarantine as it consists of things we say and deal with everyday at the moment. Instead of just going through this, why not enjoy it with a SoundCloud song that can make us all feel better about going through this unprecedented time.

The scene in A Star is Born (1937) that stuck out to me was the scene where Norman was “saying his goodbye” to Esther and later walked into the ocean. There are a few reasons why I found this scene to be an interesting and essential part to the film. Although this scene does not explicitly say anything or make it obvious what is going to happen, it creates an all-around curiously somber feeling where you can infer what is going to happen, but you are never told or cannot visually see it, until the later scene.

This feeling is created because of the editing. Although the dialogue that makes you aware, the issue starts in the previous scene, but you can watch this scene and see where it is going. The dialogue begins with Norman being loving and trying to act like everything is normal and he is going to the ocean. You can almost feel the pain in his eyes as he hugs Esther and looks out at the ocean. That is when you become aware that something is going to happen. Before he heads out, he says, “Do you mind if I just take one more look?” a common phrase that occurs throughout the movie. The music playing in the background conveys the feeling that something is going to happen. Norman pauses in the middle of the line and fidgets with his hands as he says it. All of these components mix together to put the pieces together. Finally, as the movie cuts to him walking down the beach, without showing his face, and leads to him walking out into the water, diving in, and his robe being washed away, as the music intensifies, you become aware that he has just killed himself. I feel like without all of the editing and carefully detailed dialogue and music, it would not be very clear what has happened until the following scene.

Another aspect that I found interesting is that at this time, mental health and suicide were topics that were taboo and seldom talked about or acknowledged. I appreciated how a movie from this time touched on the topic, yet never officially says it as the next scene indicates that he “perished in an accident.” I think this is a topic that is pretty advanced for the time that this movie came out, yet it was still depicted in a way that the topic was not avoided, but also not explicitly stated, and the editing, music, and dialogue allowed the scene to show just that.

A Star is Born (1937) is a romantic movie taking us through Esther Blodgett’s rise to stardom. Coming from North Dakota, Esther has dreams of being an actress and she decides to move to Hollywood, with the support of her grandmother. On arrival, she is made aware that the chances of “making it” are rare, but she does not let that stop her. Time passes and she gets a job as a waitress at a Hollywood party. At the party, she encounters Norman Maine, a lead role actor, who falls for her. Norman gets Esther a screen test with his friend and producer Oliver Niles. Niles is impressed and signs Esther to a contract and gives her a new name, Vicki Lester. Norman’s film, The Enchanted Hour, becomes in need of a female actress, in which Norman suggests Esther plays. This film puts Esther on the map, and she becomes a success.

Norman, already falling out of the public eye because of his drinking problem, decides to propose to Esther, and she says yes on the condition that he stop drinking. This lasts for some time until he realizes Esther’s continuing success, as she wins the best actress award, and his continuing demise. This leads him on a dark road where he later gets arrested for drunk driving. Esther decides to take him into her care instead of him going to jail, giving up her career for him. After talking with Oliver to discuss he plans to give up her career, Norman overhears the conversation. He does not want to see Esther give up her career because of him and drowns himself in the ocean. Esther decides she is going to quit and return home but is stopped by her grandmother who shows he a letter that Norman sent when they got married stating his love for her. This persuades Esther to continue acting.

This movie takes the viewer on a rollercoaster of all different emotions. It begins with a girl who has dreams to make it big in Hollywood and ends with the most tragic love story as her husband comes to realize that his own inhibitions are not only destroying his life, but the life of his one love. In this film, you feel the anxiety and excitement Esther faces as she moves out to fulfill her dreams, followed by her fairytale love story that cannot be hindered by anything, until the end where Norman’s demise shatters her. However, the show must go on, and it does because of love.