Life is interesting. You think you’re going to end up in one place, and, surprise, you end up in another. I think that’s very much like the world we’re preparing our students for. Nobody really knows what the world will look like 10 years from now. We’re preparing students for jobs that don’t exist, using technology that hasn’t been invented, to solve problems we don’t know about. How do we do that? It’s not by focusing on content. Instead, it’s about skills. And for me, what’s the most important one? The ability to learn.
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn – Alvin Toffler
Most of this process involves a lot of failure. When I fail, I have a choice. I can blame it on external factors, or I can dig down deep, develop…
An interesting exercise when you are starting an endeavor is to make a list of all the people who really believe you can do it and all of the people who really believe that you can’t – as well as all the people who fall in between. For argument sake, I will use a six point scale to describe my list when I started my first novel and most of the way through the writing process:
Really believe that you can do it: My two daughters & my dog.
Think that you probably can do it: My wife and a few friends. Me sometimes.
Wonder if you can do it or not: Me sometimes. A few more friends.
Think that you probably can’t do it: Me often.
Really believe that you can’t do it: Me sometimes.
Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18
in Music, Poetry | April 4th, 2013 1 Comment
In 2001 or 2002, guitarist and singer David Gilmour of Pink Floyd recorded a musical interpretation of William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18″ at his home studio aboard the historic, 90-foot houseboat the Astoria. This video of Gilmour singing the sonnet was released as an extra on the 2002 DVD David Gilmour in Concert, but the song itself was apparently connected with When Love Speaks, a 2002 benefit album for London’s Royal Academy for the Dramatic Arts.
The project was organized by the composer and conductor Michael Kamen, who died a little more than a year after the album was released. When Love Speaks features a mixture of dramatic and musical performances of Shakespeare’s Sonnets and other works, with artists ranging from John Gielgud to Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Kamen wrote much of the music for the project, including the arrangement for Sonnet 18, which is sung on the album by Bryan Ferry. A special benefit concert to celebrate the release of the album was held on February 10, 2002 at the Old Vic Theatre in London, but Bryan Ferry did not attend. Gilmour appeared and sang the sonnet in his place. It was apparently around that time that Gilmour recorded his own vocal track for Kamen’s song.
“Sonnet 18″ is perhaps the most famous of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. It was written in about 1595, and most scholars now agree the poem is addressed to a man. The sonnet is composed in iambic pentameter, with three rhymed quatrains followed by a concluding couplet:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Life is interesting. You think you’re going to end up in one place, and, surprise, you end up in another. I think that’s very much like the world we’re preparing our students for. Nobody really knows what the world will look like 10 years from now. We’re preparing students for jobs that don’t exist, using technology that hasn’t been invented, to solve problems we don’t know about. How do we do that? It’s not by focusing on content. Instead, it’s about skills. And for me, what’s the most important one? The ability to learn.
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