KIMHOR

In this third of English Literacy class, I learned how to analyse a song which we can choose the song that related to our theme ( Mental Health) and analyse it into a paragraph. Within this section, I learned how to identify the song lyrics, and elucidate the lyrics into more descriptive sentences. Days and days pass by, I decided to pick one song to analyse for my final assessment called shake it out, sung by Florence Welch. 

The song called “Shake it out” has been written down by Paul Epworth, Tom Hull, and Florence Welch. This song is one of the most famous songs that is connected to the mental health issues which sung by Florence Welch or most people called her Florence the Machine. This song is written based on her life, who’s used to get into darkness by the control of alcoholics. When she hangover by alcohol, all of her regrets come to her mind when thinking about her past to her present life. In this song, Florence finds it difficult to forget her memories which she always thinks of it as it was bold. Based on this song, it talks about her past that is filled with bad decisions and her past is truly the darkest point in her life. Her past afflicted with her present-day life, which cannot see a way out of her abysmal and oblique past. This song proposes to any kind of person who stuck their life with their darkness of the remarkable memories in a way to encourage and inspire those people not to think and to not put pressure on their past to their present-day life from their wrong decision that they took and switch it as their experience. Also to embolden those people that, there’s always bloom after wither. 

I assume that the main idea of this song is to get rid of these regrets and to stop continuing to think about the mistakes they may have made in the past. The past is over now and to keep these regrets in their head is only going to hold them back. It is difficult to continue living and growing if they keep dreaming of what they wish they could change about the past. The message that this song wants the listeners is to let them shake all of the past to imply that they should have fun and move on rather than dwell into that past. This could tell that the tone of the song is dark, but slowly as the song progresses, the artist becomes more hopeful in what she believes.

  To support the tone of the song, Florence chose many good word choices to support the song’s emotion, such as the word “demon” used referring to the bad spirit which compared to the Florence past in a way to convey the listeners more attention and put in their feeling into the song. As the song goes on, the tone starts to change from dark to something hopeful and inspired which is the word “restart”. This word is a good word choice because it persuades people to start their new life as a new piece of paper with a pencil, and don’t think and worry too much about what had happened in the past, because the past cannot be changed, present just be happy, and the future is yet in their power. The word choice changed in the opposite direction because at the beginning of the song, Florence was very sad and conflicted, but throughout the song, she found more courage and forgot about her regrets. She became happier through the process of the song; her happiness started to show and she regrets multiple times that it is hard to dance with them on their back, or hard to find happiness when thinking about the past. In between this chorus she continues to show that happiness is easier to obtain by forgetting regrets.

At the beginning of the song, the middle part of the song, even the end part of the song is every engages the listeners by using figurative language in the song to make the listener curious and use their imagination to think what is happening in the song and what that figurative language means in their perspective. At the beginning of the song, it used “Regrets collect like old friends.” I think this phrase, Florence referring to how regrets may be forgotten about for a little bit but they come back together again and one might find it hard to let them go. This can fill one’s mind with negative thoughts. This phrase contributes to the song because these regrets forming together are what Florence is saying someone needs to “shake out” or forget about, so they’ll be left with no regrets, and therefore a more positive mindset. In the middle part, I think Florence used “It’s always darkest before dawn” wants to compare how the happiest moments will come after tough times, just as dawn doesn’t come until after the sky is dark. Dawn usually symbolizes hope or a positive awakening, although the darkness of the night can symbolize fear or bad situations. The darkness is being connected to tough times. One message that Florence could be giving is that just as darkness has to come every night, we all experience tough times. Although we all have tough times, happier times can come from them, just like how after darkness, dawn returns. This phrase contributes to the message the song gives about forgetting the regrets they’ve had and don’t sink in them because although they may have done something they wish they hadn’t, positive outcomes can come from them, so we shouldn’t regret these memories. Last but not least, Florence used the phrase “Tonight, I’m gonna bury that horse in the ground” wants to compare burying a horse in the ground to forgetting about all the mistakes she’s made. When they bury something, it becomes difficult to get it back. It is still on Earth and still exists, but it is underground and doesn’t conflict or get it the way of anything else above ground. Similar to this, the past and the mistakes one has made are done and have already occurred. One cannot go back in time and change it, because the mistakes one has made are not changeable. Instead of regretting them, forgetting about them can leave them so that they do not continue to affect one’s pursuit of happiness, even though the past still happens and mistakes have occurred. Considering this, when they forget about their mistakes, it is almost as if they are burying them. This phrase strongly contributes to the rest of the song because the idea Florence gives of “shake it out” her regret refers to the meaning of this metaphor. 

In conclusion, this song is written based on Florence story, which she had decided on a bad decision which she always regrets about that past, but it never be forgotten in her mind. This song chooses many good word choices to insert with the phrase and figurative language, which is even more persuasive and conveys the listeners not just to regret their past, but also to forget all of the bad things that had happened in the past, bury it underground and never let it vex with their present day. If one can discontinue the desire to alter the past, and instead look forward to the future, happiness will become a more frequent and accessible sentiment. 

I hope you enjoy reading these paragraphs, and get some knowledge about how the song has been analysed based on the song lyrics. 

In English Literacy class this round, we learned about mental illness and how people with mental illness or disorder been stigmatized by society, and being discriminated against by many people, including their surrounding and the world. 

Besides learning about mental illness, we also learned about literary devices which our facilitator ( Hannah ) brought up and assigned each student one of the literary devices, perhaps some students got another extra, which means some students have two of the literary devices. There are plenty of literary devices that have been discovered, but our facilitator only assigned 20 literary devices which she thinks could influence more to help with our creativity of writing and speaking. For me specifically, I have been assigned for two of literary devices which are Anthropomorphism and synecdoche. With these two literary devices, I need to use my creativity to come up with a creative way to present about these devices to my classmates. She gave us a should able time for me to research about these devices to understand in my own, and present to the whole class. 

Finally, I only presented about anthropomorphism for this round, and synecdoche will be presented in the next round because of the time constraint. 

So, if you want to understand about anthropomorphism, please keep reading and I’ll walk you through this device. Now, what is Anthropomorphism? 

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics and qualities to animals, natural phenomena, deities or non-human beings. In example of anthropomorphism, the animal or deity is question is behaving like a human, such as in the case of talking animals or deities involving themselves in the affairs of humans as in ancient Greek dramas. Where does anthropomorphism come from? An anthropomorphism comes from the combination of Greek words “anthropos” and “morphe”meaning “human” and “form” respectively.

Furthermore, why is anthropomorphic being used, and what are the significance of it? 

Examples of anthropomorphism have been a part of human culture for millennia. Many ancient tales and fables feature animals or deities as main characters who speak, have feelings, and make complex decisions. These tales and fables were often used to teach lessons and impart wisdom. Some famous authors of anthropomorphic tales have argued that the clear fiction of the story–the listeners are quite aware that animals do not talk–allows for greater truth to be told.

Well, I believe that learning without using example wouldn’t really help to understand much, so let’s get into some of the examples of anthropomorphism. 

EX 1: Two cookies jump into a pot of chocolate milk.

EX 2: A dog and a cat walking to school together.

EX 3: An apple tree is going to the supermarket to buy some apple fruits

EX 4: A chair and a table talking with each other about the party last night.

EX 5: Fluffy the bunny got dressed and cooked herself some breakfast. 

These are some examples to show how anthropomorphic is being used, but in reality can all of these could do those things, of  course, no. 

To be concluded, I could feel by designing and making a presentation to teach my classmates to help me to be confident talking in public especially presenting about some sort of topics. Also, this could help to learn how to plan a lesson plan for teaching, and how I get to be prepared with all of the work and with its organization to make it easy for the students to understand as well as getting them to be engaged with the lesson. Lastly, I would like to thank my facilitator for bringing these ideas to help me and other students more with their creativity, and I would like to have more of this kind of work because it is very helpful with my academic. 

       Stress is a common dangerous mindset that could lead you to a very serious health problem. According to Cambridge dictionary, stress is a great worry cause of different situation, or something that cause to a danger condition. Stress can cause from burn out, meeting the deadline and despondency…etc. Stress is automatically response developed in our ancient ancestors as a way to protect them from predators and other threats. Faced with danger, the body kicks into gear, flooding the body with hormones that elevate your heart rate, increase your blood pressure, boost your energy and prepare you to deal with the problem. Drink a cup of cold water if you ever get stress. If you ever get stress you are absolutely come to right place to solve these mindset problem. Here are some step that you can do:

Step 1: View the beautiful vista of nature

          Stress get to people naturally which mean that nature is one of the most important objects to get rid of stress, especially flower. Flower is one of the plants that grew up with beautifulness, and strongness. It’s has different color and their own shape, also flowers are very strong. It’s grew up with the defensive of the air that blow up and down, left and right. Not just the beauty of flower, according to Linda Chalker-Scott, and associate professor of horticulture and extension specialist at Washington State university said “ power of flowers provide a necessary splash of color, there are also an incredible amount of benefits to keeping plants in your home. A few of these advantages include improving your health, promoting healing, and providing a great way to de-stress ” If you get you should go to somewhere that has flowers and relieve the stress through the smell and the flowers and tries to look at an open view for some mind refresh.

Step 2: Listen to music

         Music is one great way to relieve stress through the music melody, tune and the rhythm. Music has its’ own tune with different emotion through the music lyrics and beat such as: sad, happy, excited…etc. But if you are stress you should choose the right power of the music emotion which is energetic music. Energetic music created to cheer up people to be happy and tobe refresh through the beat. Not just energetic music that can make people relieve their stress but you can listen to any kind of music that you think will help you with stress because music is one way that keep you healthy. Researchers at Stanford University have said that “listening to music seems to be able to change brain functioning to the same extent as medication. They noted that music is something that almost anybody can access and makes it an easy stress reduction tool ”. So, music is absolutely useful and helpful to relieve stress.

Step 3: Involving in playing sport

       Sport is marvelous way to keep you body healthy and get rid of stress. Sport are not just football, basketball, volleyball…etc, it also can be running, execering, swimming..etc. Exercise is also considered vital for maintaining mental fitness, and it can reduce stress. Researchers show that it is very effective at reducing fatigue, improving alertness and concentration, and at enhancing overall cognitive function. This can be especially helpful when stress has depleted your energy or ability to concentrate. Which is good to do when you are stress. Why doing that? When you have stress you might not able to do something well such as working, so don’t do it, move to somewhere else and play some sports. When you play sports you get sweaty and tired which burn up your body temperature. When it burn up your body temperature, you can talk a shower with cold water and it’s will cold down the temperature which you can feel very good and refresh your mind.

Step 4: Meditation & Yoga

        Stress is in come from your mind, so you should go to somewhere that is quite and has a good view to do some meditation and yoga. Meditation can help to relieve stress because when you do meditation you don’t think of any things which help to clean all dreadful moment and wake you up from stress.

Step 5: Drink cold water and wash your face

       Over thinking causing a very serious stress which cause you lazy, but there is way to defense from the problem. When you get that stress just go to the bathroom and wash your face with cold water, and you will feel halfway fresh you mind. After you wash your face just drink some cold water and it will 100% fresh your stress out.

All in all, stress are very critical problem, but there are also a way to solve those problem. There are many different way to solve stress problem, but those five solution above are very useful to use while you have stress and you can use your own strategy to solve those problem. Enjoy the rest of your day and I hope you learn something from the text. Thank you

Reference: American Psychological Association, American Psychological Association, www.apa.org/helpcenter/stress.

“Stress Symptoms, Signs, and Causes.” HelpGuide.org, 28 Mar. 2019, www.helpguide.org/articles/stress/stress-symptoms-signs-and-causes.htm.

Filed under Online Flower Delivery, Order Flowers. “Benefits of Plants – Advantages of Flowers for Health.” Calyx Flowers, Inc, Calyxflowers, 24 Jan. 2017, www.calyxflowers.com/blog/flower-power-health-benefits-plants-flowers/.

“Releasing Stress Through the Power of Music.” Releasing Stress Through the Power of Music | Counseling Services | University of Nevada, Reno, Unr.edu,

www.unr.edu/counseling/virtual-relaxation-room/releasing-stress-through-the-power-of-music.

“Physical Activity Reduces Stress.” Anxiety and Depression Association of America, ADAA, Adda.org, adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/related-illnesses/other-related-conditions/stress/physical-activity-reduces-st.