Discussion Board Post

I can tell this is going to be a difficult assignment for me- not because I've got any problems with literacy, and more that I don't remember where I got it all. I've always been like this, really- I have all these words, all these facts in my head and I've no clue where I found them, aside from the fact that a good number of them I probably sought out myself at some point or other.

I've been trying to nut out a memory that links at all to literacy for the last week and a bit, and I'm not really any closer to finding one. Every time I think of it, I get a quote from Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, thus;

Guildenstern: What's the first thing you remember?
Rosencrantz: [thinks] No, it's no good. It was a long time ago.
Guildenstern: No, you don't take my meaning. What's the first thing you remember after all the things you've forgotten?
Rosencrantz: Oh, I see... I've forgotten the question.

Perhaps not very relevant in terms of developing literacies, but it's a very interesting book, either way.

I think perhaps something that might be relevant is how I learnt that songs can be dissected. I remember I was in the car- no clue of age, but I can't have been very old, probably in primary school- driving somewhere with my parents. My memory seems to say there was hilly country outside, so we were probably on a long trip.

We had a CD on, because my family is nearly never without music- just one of those things. Anyway, it would have been Whatever and Ever Amen, by Ben Folds Five, because we were listening to the song 'Brick'. I remember asking something to the tune of "Why is the man saying his girlfriend is a brick?"

My parents explained to me that that wasn't really what he was saying, and that the lyrics could mean things without saying them outright- had it been a school setting, some mention of metaphor and allegory might have been made, but as it was, the explanation was simple. I think that was the first time I properly realised that songs could be decoded beyond just hearing the words in them. I'm the sort of person now who will really consider the lyrics of a song and what they mean, and if I get metacognitive and realise I'm doing it, I think of 'Brick' every time.

From the understanding I have so far (albeit simple, I will admit) I'm fairly sure the story links in with literacy as far as understanding how to decode a thing (and by extension encode that way if one is so inclined) is concerned.