How Do You Stay So Hopeful?

I started this project wanting to create a sort of telephone of little sayings that the people around me quote most often. That idea was not really resinating with me, and while I was recording my cousin, we got side tracked with politics. One thing to know about me is that the news is on 24/7 in my house and I’m constantly researching and learning about what is going on in the world. So I was giving her my weekly updates on Gaza, Sudan, Congo, and the US and she hits me with “How do you stay so hopeful knowing all of this?” Which, valid I sound insane sometimes with all of this knowledge, like some old news anchor that has seen it all and nothing phases them. But the only thing I could come up with in that moment was “any action is better than nothing”. My hope comes from the people around me, they show me that there is always a reason to keep going. Because in this political climate and with everything going on, hope is a form of resistance.

Word Count:184

Explanation for some of the choice of audio

Stanley Townsend (Nakmor Drac): Parents aren’t meant to be a goal or a finish line, we’re the starting line. Where you go from there is all up to you.

• This is from one of my silly little video games that I play, the context behind this is old man (the one who is speaking) went through a genocide and since he’s an alien he has a long life span (like 1000 years type of deal) so he’s lived through the birth of almost two generations after the genocide. He has this speech about how he gave up after years of fighting since he didn’t see any future for his people. Then, he was given this baby girl to take care of and through raising her he found hope again. The first time I heard the conversation I was maybe 14, just starting to unpack all of the misogyny around me, and some switch just flipped in my head about having this goal for the future. That being, to make life easier for future generation, to look back at us and see how far they have come.

Bisan Owda: Hello Everyone, it is Bisan from Gaza and I am still alive.

• When I think of strength and courage Bisan is the first person I think of, along with every journalist and civilian in Gaza right now. I’ve been following what has been going on in Palestine a few years before October 7 but the moment people like Bisan, Motaz, Plestia, Omar, and countless other journalists, photographers, health care worker, etc started posting and forcing the world to watch was incredible. The amount of courage to do that is something I can’t fathom. It is people Like Bisan that I must keep fighting for, I refused to let her down. 

Jennifer Hale and Mark Meer (Commander Shepard): I won’t let fear compromise who I am, You can’t predict how people will respond but you can control how you respond.

• This is from another silly space game I play (we have a theme of nerdyness here). I watched my father play this game when I was like 8 and it was the first time I ever saw a woman in media not be told she couldn’t do something because she was a woman. The people around her respected her and took her advice, it was a concept I never thought was possible. I think about these quotes whenever I’m afraid to do something or I’m overthinking about something I did. Forcing myself to chose to do good even though it could back fire in how my family sees me. For example I started to post on Instagram about social issues I knew that some people in my family would not be pleased, but those are the people that needed to hear it most.

Craig Smith: Sometimes you have to allow yourself to wallow in self pity for 15, 20 minutes maybe even an hour, as long as you need. Then you ask yourself if you can do anything about it. If no, you let it go. If yes, you get back up and do it

• This was a something that my dad told me when I was going into the 12th grade. I was so overwhelmed and thought that I would never be good enough to make it to university. My dad basically told me that I was more than capable to get a higher education and that I needed to figure out a way to deal with these thoughts. He told me his way of dealing with them and it just stick with me all these years, every time I get overwhelmed his voice plays in my head telling me what to do.

Bibliography For OutSourced Sounds

David Lake. 2019. “Red Dead Redemption 2 (Take a Gamble That Love Exists…).” YouTube. August 10, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2CuuYcXCm0.

DrMick . n.d. “You Can’t Predict How People Will Act.” Www.youtube.com. Accessed November 4, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5u_749N3e_s.

Dutch. 2025. “I Love You I Love You I Love You.”

Fleming, David. 2025. Last Son. Youtube: Warner Bros. Entertainment INC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkeLGnAr36A&list=RDQkeLGnAr36A&start_radio=1.

HeadlessGamer79. 2021. “I Won’t Let Fear Compromise Who I Am” Www.youtube.com. 2021. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-9uIYP7NwoI.

LaKenzo. 2025. “Dandelion Crayon Part 127.”

LastWeekTonight. 2025. “Immigration Enforcement: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO).” YouTube. August 10, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfTBhrkae74.

Nerd Clips HD. 2021. “Arcane | vi vs. Sevika (Bar Fight).” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUNMucznycE.

Owda, Bisan. 2025. “The Ceasefire.”.

RabidRetrospectGames. 2017. “Parents Are The Goal or The Finish Line, We’re The Starting Line.” YouTube. March 25, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqseY2KE2H4.

Bibliography For Sound I Recorded

Morrissey, Anneliese. 2025a. “Hey Buddy.” October 30.

———. 2025b. “I Forgot How This Works.” October 30.

———. 2025c. “You Got ThIs.” October 30.

Smith, Alexandria . 2025a. “Get Up.” October 29.

———. 2025b. “You Want to Get Shawarma.” October 29.

Smith, Alexandria, Veronica, and Samantha. 2019. “How Did You Know It Would Do That.” August 12.

Smith, Craig. 2025a. “Some Times You Have to Wallow in Self Pity.” October 29.

———. 2025b. “Do It.” October 30.

———. 2025c. “The Important Part Is You Get Back Up.” October 30.

Smith, Samantha . 2025. “Get Up.” November 3.

Smith, Veronica . 2025. “Get Up.” October 30.

Uy, Alyssa. 2016. “I’m Gone Now, back to the Trash.” April 26.

———. 2025. “Get Up.” October 30.

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Reflection Question for Blog Post – Pauline Oliveros

Reflection Question:
Reflect on your own experiences of listening — to sound, to others, to your environment, or to yourself. How does Oliveros’s idea of deep listening challenge the way you typically give attention? In what ways might listening through your whole body, or approaching sound as a form of play and research, change your understanding of connection, communication, or creativity?

Oliveros’s work is very inspiring and something that I will definitely be incorporating in my everyday life. Her goal to try and understand the world better is something that her and I both share. Her deep listening has emphasis on collaboration, communication, and community. All things that make art fun, collaborating with other artists and seeing how their work affects yours and vice versa, is an incredible feeling. Through her work whether or not it was purposeful, an inclusivity is achieved. Her work being sounds that you can just create with the help of devices that locate body movement or are felt is something I’ve never seen before. Audio art seems so closed off to a portion of the population that being deaf or hard of hearing folks. But through her art she made it accessible to them. That accessibility is something I strive to do, I try to make art accessible through knowledge. I’ve created multiple “how to” books for the people around me. My aunt got into watercolour but didn’t have any background in it, so I put all of my knowledge from school, and some from my many deep dives on the internet into a book for her. It has what kinds of paper you want to use, the different brushes and the uses, the brush stroke types and has little test strips with the top being how I did it and a blank one for her to try. I did this for my friend’s mom with pastels and for my friend with how to create an art portfolio. Those don’t really have anything to do with sound but I think the accessibility of Oliveros is what I find most compelling about her work.

Focusing on the sound part of Oliveros’s work, sound has also been an integrated part of my every day life, with the music that I listen to or the sounds that I focus on in any room that I’m in. I remember when I was younger I would do this, I guess meditation exercise, whenever I was nervous, usually right after I spoke in class. I would sit and listen to the teacher but also try and list every other sound I heard. It would be like, I hear my teacher speak, I hear the person next to me fidget, I hear the creak in the vents etc. Then, once I had my big list I would then rank the sounds based on, how much I liked them, how loud they were, and what they made me think of. How I managed to take notes and do this is beyond me. This is similar to what Olivero does with her active listening, though she seems to put more focus on what the body feels when listening, I was just focused on distracting myself.

Now a days I tend to listen to sounds more through my feelings and how that affects the way I move through the world. When I was in dance and we finished the full choreography we would turn off the lights and wear blindfolds. The goal was to preform the dance and focus on how the music made you feel. So you would have the music blasting, and the almost silent movements of your fellow dancers to try a listen to so you didn’t run into each other. The first few times I did this, I would be so tense, not really focused on how the music and environment made me feel. The more I did it, the more aware of my surroundings and more confident I became. I would hear the breathing of the people around me which made it feel like we were one being moving in one motion, all listening to each other. I think that I use this in my practice when I’m trying to get a better understanding of something. I close my eyes and just listen to what I hear or how I feel. For visual pieces, I will close my eyes and picture it in my mind and then pin point what emotion I feel when looking at thinking about it.