Life Through One Eye

The Hard Way Home By Brandi Carlile

I sometimes lose my faith in luck 

I don't know what I want to be when I grow up

I just count the rain

Wearing the floor through the boards again

I wish I could find a soul to steal

I could be the engine, you could be the wheel

When we're driving home, I never have to worry about being alone

Follow my tracks

See all the times I should have turned back

I wept alone

I know what it means to be on my own

The things I have known

Looks like I'm taking the hard way home

The seeds I've sown

Taking the hard way home

Taking the hard way home

I never did learn how to follow the rules

I never was good at sleeping while the moon was full

I just lie and burn

Wreck my mind while the planet turns

I sometimes wish I could start again

I'd try and do the right things every now and then

I'd step in line

That's what I would do if I could turn back time

Follow my tracks

See all the times I should have turned back

I wept alone

I know what it means to be on my own

The things I have known

Looks like I'm taking the hard way home

The seeds I've sown

Taking the hard way home

Taking the hard way home

I tell you how I want to live

Forget about the take

Forget about the give

I want to leave this town

Fake my death and never be found

Follow my tracks

See all the times I should have turned back

I wept alone

I know what it means to be on my own

The things I have known

Looks like I'm taking the hard way home

The seeds I've sown

Taking the hard way home

Taking the hard way home

Looks like I’m taking the hard way home.

 ________________________________________________________________

Artist Statement

Alyssa Karnes

Statement of Purpose This authoring project was done for my DTC101 class. I decided on the hypertext option because, after hearing other classmates give it as their reasons and I agreed with them, I really like words. It happens very often that I fall in love with a song, simply because I love one line in it or, in this case, multiple lines. That's why I decided to have song lyrics be the text I was working with for this project, because they mean a lot to me. Also, there were several different words/phrases that I really wanted to use because I had specific links I knew I wanted to share.

Influences Most of my influences for this project can be found in the links. I really wanted to only put in hyperlinks for things I really cared about and/or came from a specific aspect of my life. One example is the link for "moon." The author is Karen Karbo, who visited one of my classes as a guest speaker. What she had to say that night was very influential for me, so I was happy to be able to make a connection to her work. Another good example is the "Let it Grow" video (from The Lorax) because it is seriously one of my favorite movies. I could sit down and watch anytime of day, then when it finished, start it over and be completely happy with that decision. Which, now I  really want to because the song has been stuck in my head all weekend from adding it to this project. 

Fit within Larger Notion of Aesthetics Since I didn't choose to create this document using a short story or essay, it came out a little different. I ended up having to set a couple different hyperlinks for "Hard Way Home" as it appeared several times. The first one is actually just a hyperlink to the official YouTube video for it (because it's important to hear how incredible Brandi Carlile's voice is), but the others contain content that I believed were relevant stories of "hard way homes" for other people. Doing this helped paint a better picture for what is trying to be told in the song, and I believe it ended up working out really well for the overall message. 

Materials No special programs were used to create this document, with the exception of Pages-- which I used to originally create the document and then copy and pasted here. I did want to have a variety of different links, so their sources range from YouTube to home pages for websites to poems posted on webs forums. 

Methodology To begin this project, I first read through the lyrics and made note of what words I wanted to hyperlink. I then went and found the links for whatever first came to mind for those words. Any of the words leftover, I simply just searched it on Google and browsed through the results until I found the right one (sometimes adding "poem" or "artwork" to find more interesting/artsy content). 

Desired/Actual Results When this project was first assigned, I actually wanted to do the video game remix. Unfortunately, I found out it was a little to far out of my experience and I couldn't figure it out enough to create something (I believed would be) good. But after I got over that disappointment, I was able to get really excited about doing this option. One thing I would've liked to see in my finished results was to have more of clear story throughout my links. I would've also liked to have been able to upload my word document here, because I had different font sizes/color which I thought made it more visually appealing. Instead I had to copy and paste it on here and lose all that. But, the document doesn't necessarily need to be visually appealing, so I don't believe it takes too make away. In the end though, I do believe this was the best I could do with what I was able to find and with what resources I had. I was also very happy with the variety of different links I was able to find-- for awhile I thought I was only going to find videos because they were the only thing to come to mind!