Just A Biographical Essay Where I Talk About How Weird I Am

This is an essay that I wrote for a college application. Note to college admissions people: If you somehow get here by googling the essay from my application, please do not get the idea that I am plagiarizing from my own blog.

Looking back at this essay, this is actually so bad, haha. I can see why so many colleges rejected me. 
Also, I just realized that this is the first post on here where I talk about my own music. I totally forgot to post about that on here at all since I started making it. Here's my page: https://soundcloud.com/lylajeanx

I prefer things that are unconventional, experimental, or surreal across different styles of art - visual, storywriting, playwriting, poetry, and music - to catch my interest and inspire my own art. I appreciate works that defy my expectations about what art is supposed to be, and this is reflected in my personality. People see a 4’11 Asian girl who looks about 4 years younger than she really is, and while we’re taught not to judge, I have sadly experienced being misunderstood. People reveal, through their reactions, that they had preconceived ideas about my personality. I have been seen as too quiet, shy, unskilled, or having shallow tastes. However, I have a willingness to surprise people with my interests and what I am capable of creating.

My height has caused me physical and social disadvantages since I was a child and I feel that is where the judgment comes from. People don’t realize that shorter people need more space. When tall people stand in front of me, it’s not only unfair to me because it blocks my sight, but it is indicative of how some people just really don’t care, and fail to even notice that I’m there. When I reveal that I go to a top high school, or that I’m a senior, the consistent shock on people’s faces gets tiresome. But I want to continue to defy those stereotypes of what a person who has those characteristics is supposed to look like, particularly in my art and schoolwork.
An example of how I’ve tried is that I’ve recently been writing songs with personal lyrics, recording them with simple guitar, and sending them to friends. I wrote a little song called “Smart” that was inspired by when people were surprised at my true characteristics. One of the lyrics is “Wow, look at this girl, she does things not for her. Sure, I love to be praised. Not in this silly way.”

One experience in particular inspired those lyrics. Imagine going to church and seeing a 12 year old girl sitting in the tech booth at a Mac computer, controlling the sermon’s audio/visual aspects. That was me when I started volunteering at my church. It was easy for me, but few others knew the technology. In my early days, I remember someone walking past the booth and looking at me with a shocked, smiling face. I didn’t realize she reacted that way because she didn’t expect someone like me to know how to work a computer that well.

Writing music is strange because of my tastes. When I started discovering music at age 12, I refused to listen to anything that was popular or conventional. I wanted to find something unexpected, or shed light on lesser known artistry. Much later, I finally decided to learn guitar and write my own songs. But I was more interested in creating something experimental. Despite my still-developing skills, I wrote and recorded a rough demo “concept album” of songs from my dreams. My music almost sounds like “outsider music” akin to famous outsider artists Jandek or The Shaggs. I have always focused on experimental music, so I don’t know how to make something that’s normal. Since I have no formal musical training and barebones guitar chord vocabulary, people are surprised that I am not writing simpler songs.
This bias towards the experimental has translated to my interest in visual art and all other mediums. There is a way to be avant-garde in each form, and I am always pursuing it.

It has helped me become a better critic and analyst, too. I enjoy discussing and interpreting others’ art and giving thoughtful feedback. My experience doing policy debate, knowing to avoid ad hominem arguments, and giving useful feedback to lower-level debaters has helped. This in turn has been useful for school, because for art class I had to analyse the formal and conceptual elements of art, and in English class I have discussed the deeper meaning behind diction, rhetoric, or plot events. On the flipside, I analyze avant-garde art simply for enjoyment, in a similar manner, because it’s impossible to take something so provocative just at face value, or we lose the intended experience and leave without gaining anything.

But in the same manner, we cannot take a person at face value. We’ve all heard it - don’t judge a book by its cover - but many others and I still experience people’s subtle reveals of what they expected us to be, and it can be painful. People see my height and immediately form an opinion before I can express my individuality. The world may never change, but that’s what makes me want to change. I’m going to continue to defy expectations.

Joni, Kate, and Bjork

This is an essay that I wrote for a college application. I kinda wrote this in one night and didn't edit it so it's not really that good. Note to college admissions people: If you somehow get here by googling the essay from my application, please do not get the idea that I am plagiarizing from my own blog.

“Little pigs, French hens, a family of bears. Blind mice, musketeers, the Fates. Parts of an atom, laws of thought, a guideline for composition. Omne trium perfectum? Create your own group of threes, and describe why and how they fit together.
—Inspired by Zilin Cui, Class of 2018”

My group of threes is some of the most influential and interesting singer-songwriters of our time: Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, and Bjork. They have similarities in their talents and classic boundary-breaking albums, but also in how they are disregarded by popular culture despite deserving so much more recognition.

Joni Mitchell is a Canadian singer-songwriter who started out as a painter, but started releasing folk music in the 1960s inspired by her tragic early life. Mitchell’s music is always deeply confessional, and the songs paint a very detailed and specific picture with their lyrics. Her 1971 album Blue was monumental because of its stark confessional lyrics and multi-octave vocals. Lesser-known is Mitchell’s experimental period, starting in 1975, when she began to include many different styles in her folk-based music. Her early folk songs have become hits and covered many times, but her more innovative eras are very often forgotten.

Kate Bush is an English singer-songwriter who debuted with the unexpected hit single “Wuthering Heights”, inspired by the book of the same name, at the very young age of 18 in 1978. Her music is always extremely literate and theatrical, and gradually got more experimental over time; the most extreme example being 1982’s The Dreaming, which is my favorite album. Bush writes about controversial, uncommon, or intense subjects in her music such as war, homosexuality, death, and birth. Her music is celebrated by millions across the world, but is vastly underrated; Bush has never won any Grammy awards, and is an unrecognizable name to most people.

Bjork is an Icelandic singer-songwriter who joined the music business at age 11, but it wasn’t until she released Debut in 1993 that she became very culturally significant. The title was ironic, but perhaps it meant a reinvention of herself, as the music was like nothing she’d done before; for the album, and all her subsequent records, she focused on electronics and dance music and avoided using any guitar, which was something almost unheard of for pop artists at the time. She gradually got more experimental with each successive album. Her groundbreaking 90s albums helped to bring electronic and experimental music into the mainstream culture. The albums that came after that were built on huge concepts such as 2003’s Medulla which is almost entirely a capella. However, like Kate Bush, Bjork has yet to win any Grammy awards. Bjork is close to being the artist with the most Grammy nominations without a single win.

All 3 women are extremely influential on other artists, especially those who are female or experimental. Their innovations paved the way for many more famous artists to come. However, none of them have become household names; ask any American teenager about any of the 3 artists, and it’s unlikely that they’ve heard of them, and practically impossible that they would be able to name a song or album.

Also, all 3 artists have experimental eras that casual fans tend to overlook, which is disappointing because it’s their best work. The Hissing of Summer Lawns is easily Joni’s best because of its extremely intelligent and political song subjects and jazz-inflected instrumentation that was ahead of its time, i.e. including “world” music and synthesizers in pop music before it was popular. Yet, most fans see the album as “too difficult to get into”, or ignore it completely in favor of her accessible folk albums. The Dreaming is arguably Kate’s best album, because of its incredible uniqueness, even to this day, and its abundant variety and depth in songwriting. However, many, especially critics, dismiss it as a “she’s gone mad” album and instead just a chaotic “warm-up” for the more popular Hounds of Love that would follow 3 years later. Bjork has been increasingly experimental with every album since Vespertine, but most casual fans will dismiss anything past that as too weird or niche, which is a shame, because I believe Medulla and Vulnicura are her most innovative, conceptually complex, and emotionally convicting works.

Sadly, it is likely that misogyny plays a role in society and critics’ failures to recognize these talented women’s art and where the true gems are. Each of them gets dismissed for some petty reason: Joni is too folksy, too cutesy, or too feminine. Kate’s voice is too high and annoying. Bjork “sings like a dead animal” because of her accent that she can’t help. But I bet if it was a man that had those same qualities, and released the same songs, they would be the most famous artists of all time, and every song, no matter how seemingly experimental/hard-to-approach, would be a classic.

Nick Drake's Sincerity

This is an essay that I wrote (and reused) for a few college applications. There was a word limit, so the wording is a bit awkward in a lot of this, hehe. Note to college admissions people: If you somehow get here by googling the essay from my application, please do not get the idea that I am plagiarizing from my own blog.

"Using a favorite quotation from an essay or book you have read in the last three years as a starting point, tell us about an event or experience that helped you define one of your values or changed how you approach the world. Please write the quotation, title and author at the beginning of your essay."

“Actually in the down periods you might not write the songs, but you write them about being down. Pink Moon is about emerging out of the depression and looking back down into the abyss.” - Paul Wheeler, about Nick Drake, from Remembered For A While

I read a biography on singer-songwriter Nick Drake with 2 others. Both were songwriters, and inspired me to write songs and seriously consider being a musician. We would interpret Nick’s lyrics; how he wrote about human subjects using nature metaphors, and conveyed emotion despite cryptic language, inspired my lyrics. For example, for songs like “Come Into The Garden”, the meaning is not quite clear and you have to match every line to an interpretation; I think the song is about suicide. Nick committed suicide two years after his last album.

The book analyzed Drake’s songwriting technique, and how he used simplicity to build songs around single concepts, which intrigued me. I don’t write songs that are straightforwardly understandable. I pick stories or emotions from my past or present, and think of the ways I want to express it. It’s almost like writing an essay; I make sure to cover every facet of my emotions. But I make my lyrics cryptic and vague in a profound way, so people can find their own meaning in it instead of being forced.

As Nick’s friend Paul Wheeler said, Pink Moon is about emerging out of depression and looking back. To me, it’s a perfect album because it’s not overly depressing. People describe it as depressing, but that’s not right. Some parts are joyful in a laidback, sentimental way. “From The Morning” is about taking beautiful things from the morning and placing them in the night. The album is about looking at past failures and losses of love, and seeing them with new maturity and acceptance of personal darkness. “From The Morning” is such a forward-facing song, even in its melody, and is a perfect closer. An entirely depressing and broken album would not be as influential or artful.

Nick recorded the songs for the unfinished album that would have come after Pink Moon while he was in a dark period, right before he died. You can hear the brokenness and deterioration in his voice. As he sings “I’m growing old and I wanna go home” on “Black Eyed Dog”, he does sound older far beyond his years. The songs don’t have the same effect as Pink Moon because he struggled to be coherent; “Rider On The Wheel”, for example, is bittersweet and devoid of meaning. But these songs are interesting in a completely different way. When you’re in the middle of a dark period, there’s a sincerity that you can’t recapture.

This idea that some emotional moments can’t be recaptured goes for all my art, even my drawings. I have some old art that should be technically worse because I’m always improving; but sometimes they have haunting qualities, due to what I was feeling at that moment, that I can’t recapture. I see this pattern of early art having an untouchableness in a lot of artists. It interests me that they may think their old art is bad because they’re not in that emotional state anymore, but it’s actually just amazing in a different way.

But like Nick, sometimes I write songs about past situations instead of what I’m feeling at the moment. Sometimes, the song can even come out more emotionally convicting when I’m looking at the situation through a new lens. Writing about my past mistakes makes me enlightened because I realize how I’ve changed and how everything shifted for the better. It even tells me that in the future, things might not be so bad, because I can look at the past and see how the now is easier.