Throughout the course, you will be expected to read and respond to our supplemental text: Songbook by Nick Hornby. Each week, after reading the assigned Hornby chapters, you are to complete an initial discussion post as well as respond to posts by two of your classmates. Your initial post should be substantive (between 200-300 words in length) and should refer directly to the assigned chapters from Hornby’s text as you address the provided prompts.
Your two response posts should directly refer to the comments made by your classmates in their posts. As you create your response posts, imagine yourself engaged in a conversation that you want to keep going. What new ideas/questions/complications can you bring to the discussions that are already underway? Do not simply reiterate the content of your initial post or just praise your classmates for a post well done. You’re trying to advance a conversation, so think in terms of what you can add that’s new.
Week 5-Hornby’s Songbook
This week, Hornby discusses specifically how music can function as a form of self expression of who we are, whether as individuals (Hornby’s son and “Puff the Magic Dragon”) or as a nation (Britain and the songs by Ian Dury & the Blockheads and Richard and Linda Thompson). In some ways, his description of Van Morrison’s “Caravan” as a funeral song expresses the same sentiment; it’s a fitting soundtrack for reflection of a life well-lived.
In your discussion posts this week, address the first prompt and at least one of the remaining prompts:
What elements or passages of Hornby’s chapters did you find most compelling (in either a positive or negative way) and which sections of his writing stood out to you as the most interesting and why?
What contemporary pop song do you find to be particularly American? In what ways does the song capture our national identity? Try to avoid low-hanging fruit like Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American.”
Similarly, if you were asked to introduce yourself with a song, what would it be? What song best summarizes you for someone who doesn’t know you?
What song do you want played at your funeral? Why? What about the song makes it fitting for such an occasion?
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