Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

Brian Donnelly. Six foot. Two hundred and ten pounds. Brown Curly Hair. Blue Eyes. All these things that make up what I look like, and what gives everyone their first physical impression have absolutely nothing to do with my identity. What makes up a persons identity? This tends to be a tough question because a lot of times it comes down to perception. Is your identity what other people see us as? Is it what we see ourselves as? What identity to me are the characteristics that make up who we are, it is what we like, what we think about, our beliefs, our character, and our identity.

We are a product of our surroundings. There for our identity is formed from the second we are born. In the beginning of our lives we are influenced into becoming who we are from our neighborhood and parents. They make us into who we are. From the beginning of my life I have been surrounded by music. Whether it was falling asleep to classical music for the first eight years of my life, or waking up to my mom singing Carol King to me each morning it has always been a part of my life. I still expect each time that my alarm goes off that my Mom will be coming in at any minute singing “You have to wake up every morning/With a smile on your face to show the would/All the love in your heart.” I am a product of music. Family engraves in you a set of belief and feelings. You are affected by what you grow up with, may it be a bad influence or a good one. My family has taught me to be loyal, respectful, aware, accepting, and most of all, and perhaps what I am most grateful for is the desire to never be satisfied with anything. This sense of never being fulfilled has led to many great adventures in life, and hopefully to many more. It was in these first eighteen years of my life that I drained everything they knew from them. Being part of a family that cared about me and encouraged me to do and be anything I wanted was perhaps the best fertilizer for my identity to grow and prosper. I am a product of my family.

It seems music has always shaped what and who I am. There is always a perfect song or album or band that can sum up what life has offered me. Music can take over your life and spit you out a different person. Walking down the street you can identify what kind of music a person listens to, it becomes who and what they are. What they represent. It becomes your personality, your aura, and your identity. It becomes who you are, a band dork, a guitar player, a rock star. Being on both sides of the fence, both playing guitar and saxophone it is an interesting combonation of personal identity. Throw in the fact that football players who loved classic and alternative rock surrounded me and you have quite the blend of personalities and genera’s of music. All of these different groups have their own sets of personalities and identities. Although stereotypical, all these groups have their own music that they like. The band kids like ska and punk. The guitar players like Zeppelin and Floyd, and the football kids Skynard and Pearl Jam. With each group you have their own set of music. As with each grade I had my “favorite Band of All Time” with each group my identity somewhat changed. You have to tweak who you are to get along with and relate to a certain person. I don’t see this as compromising ones self or identity, but rather relating aspects of your identity as a whole to relate. All these almost conflicting interest and styles have molded an identity for myself that is eclectic as my music. I am a product of band, football, and the music scene.

I believe that every part of your identity can be summed up, or at least related to music. Whether the music you listen to makes changes your identity, or your identity chose what music you listen to, it tends to be highly influential. For me both cases of music influencing life, and life influencing music has occurred, however probably the most powerful for me is when I am feeling a certain way and a band or album can capture how I am feeling. For example, recently I have been question a belief that I have held in my life since I was born. I was raised catholic, and until recently I believed and practiced with fervor and excitement. However recent events in the catholic church, my life, and other outside forces has made me question my identity as a catholic, or christen in general. It was at this time in my life that I was searching for something, some reason in which why we existed. It was no longer that I was not spiritual, or that I didn’t believe in a higher power, it was simply the mantra that is surrounded by the Catholic Church. It was here that I started to listen to Tool. A highly philosophical, socially aware, and political band out spoken on the power of religion to destroy freethinking. It was not that I listened to the band and adopted their ideas, but more found them to have similar views on the ideas of religion and spirituality. Religion can become a huge part of somebody’s identity, and can control the entire rest of who he or she is and what he or she is about. With this said, it is a huge reason why I started questioning religion. I wanted my identity to be more something I controlled than what was stated in a book. Tool put it perfectly for me in with their honest lyrics about the prison that religion becomes “Ignorant fibbers in the congregation. /Gather around spewing sympathy. /Spare me.” Without the structure of someone telling me what to worship I have finally been able to think about and decide what I want to believe. However with this said, it was also important for me to make sure that I didn’t just adopt their ideas with blind abide. Had I done this music would have become just a second religion, rather than an outlet in which to describe my feelings. I am a product of my spirituality.

Along with religion, politics have been a huge subject that has been the focus of much of my personal debate. Politics include in it many issues of identity. Although in this country we only have two main parties that people fall into, they do spilt people into major groups in questions of morality, personality, and community. This is not different than what musical genera’s do to people. Also, it is interesting to note that people with similar taste in music also have similar taste in politics, in which both affect each other. Music can sometimes not only be part of your identity, but it can be your identity. In recent years I have found myself to be on the liberal side of the fence. I also have found myself wishing that music would have as much as an influence as it did back in the days of revolutionary artist such as Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, and The Doors. Although this generation may not have as outspoken and pronounced politically charged musician and lyrics, I have been able to find a few bands that share my ideals on issues of morality and politics. Such bands as System of a Down, Pearl Jam, and Rage Against the Machine were able to capture the unease and wish for overhaul within the American government. Music like this has influenced my desire to become a political writer. Perhaps the best example of my feelings about our current situation in the world and my desire to change this would be Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War.” You put a gun in my hand/And you hide from my eyes/And you turn and run farther/When the fast bullets fly” Music is often timeless, and Dylan’s feelings on the war mongers perfectly relate to the feelings I have towards this administration and Americas views of war and politics as a whole. Politics carry a lot of weight and can tell a lot about a person’s identity. I am a liberal. I am a product of politics.

Since I am in the middle of my transition from childhood to independence I am also in the middle of a transition in identity. It started in my senior year, and the realization that it was coming to a close. Along with this transition came a shift in my identity. What I cared about and what I didn’t totally change. I become more interested in living life as a holistic thing, rather than just what was going on in the bubble that surrounded me. As a song by Modest Mouse put it “I've changed my mind so much I can’t even trust it/My mind changed me so much I can’t even trust myself.” It was a shift in personality, thought process, interactions, Identity. I am a lover of music, I like to watch sports, I like to play rugby, football, and lacrosse, I enjoy playing video games and going to concerts, I love to sit down and have conversations about politics and religion, I indulge myself in a drink probably more than I should sometimes, and I find myself loving run on sentences. I find myself knowing less and less about the world each day and also find myself okay with that. I’ve been skydiving, and think relationships with other people are one of the most important things in this world that we have. I like movies that make you think, and believe books are only thought to be good depending on what mood we are in when we read them. I think we should spend life accumulating knowledge and fun rather than money. All these things make up my identity. I am a product of life.

I would write a conclusion for this paper, summing up my identity and putting a cap on the paper. But I feel like if I did that I would be saying that that was my identity. That I could put everything about myself in a page paper that summed up me, that I would be defined as “1500 words or more.” Along with this feeling of an essay summing up that I am, I also do not think that I can be summed up by the 3375 songs in my itunes library. However I do think that each of these words have given myself and the reader an idea of my identity, just as all 3375 songs in my music library give some clue to my identity. So hopefully as I grow as a human being there will be many more corrections, and additions to this paper of “what my identity is,” as well as many more additions to my music library that make up whom I am. So I will leave it to Sublime to give the best conclusion or closing to my paper on what sums up my identity and it is simply stated as “One good thing about music, /when it hits you, you feel no pain. /So hit me with music. /Hit me with music, now, yeah.” --Thebriandonnelly 20:32, 2 October 2006 (EDT)