Speis

{Express yourself!} .. from the heart
cause if you wanna start to move
up the chart then expression is a big part of it
You ain't efficient when you flow, you ain't swift
Movin like a tortoise, full of rigor mortis
There's a little bit more to show

That’s Dr. Dre from NWA singing about the importance of finding one’s own voice. As I understand his point, he’s saying that being yourself is the biggest part of having a style. If you’re copying what others have already accomplished and made their own, you’ve got all the grace and verve of a dead turtle.

I got into this journalism course because of the writing. That’s the part I really enjoy, when I have all the information in front of me and it’s time to put it all together and give it that spin that makes it my own, for good or bad. Mostly bad, I have to admit. Anyway, I have this idea that I’d like to write a book someday. What it would be about, I don’t know, but the idea won’t go away. This course seemed like a stepping stone to that goal, a way of scraping a living without having to wow book publishers. Writing things to make money, it always sounded too good to be true. Maybe someday it won’t.

I still write things for my own amusement, this blog, naturally, and other things, when the mood takes me and the words are just ready. When I finished my English degree I couldn’t read a book, any book, for months afterwards. I don’t want that to happen with this course.

If I finished this programme and I was a journalist (whatever that is), but I couldn’t write for pleasure, only profit, then everything I’ve sunk into this course - money, amibition, time and energy – would have been a massive, ironic, waste of it all.

Cause if I strike, it ain't for your good healthBut I won't strike if you just..

{Express yourself!} {Express yourself!}
{Go on and do it..}
{Express yourself!} {Express yourself!}
{Go on and do it..}
{Express yourself!}
{Go on and do it..} {Go on and do it..}
{*music fades*}

-N.W.A. 'Express Yourself'