Abstract ideas and concrete images sometimes merge in “Piano and Drums” by I think piano being Africa and the drums being other nations. I understood the concrete images as the riverside and the abstract ideas being that the riverside is calm, peaceful, serine, and just how Africa has been for decades. The jungle drums are abstract and the other nations coming with their mystic rhythms, their more advanced than Africa that is what makes them mystic. Bleeding flesh to me is like Africa’s struggle, urgent and raw. Speaking of primal youth is like uncertainty of the beginning of some new changes in Africa.
The Panther ready to pounce could be the new nations wanting to take over and the leopard snarling and about to leap could be Africa refusing the change. Hunters crouch could mean their desperate and they have much heartache with their spears poised trying to be in control. When it states my blood ripples turns torrent, toppler I see hatred and outrage. Then when he goes back years and is on his mother’s lap it’s like going to the beginning and feeling safe, warmth and love. It then says walking a simple path with no innovations, to me that’s like something easy with no ambition wanting to keep things the same. Not wanting to change, but knowing it has to be done.
Then through this path their being hurried with hurrying feet, and naked warmth and a groping heart pulsing. This is Africa procrastinating but the nations rushing them to change.
Then comes the piano to me other nations wailing, solo speaking; that’s the new complex technologies that Africa does not contain but needs desperately. New horizons is going into the unknown and feeling lost. When it ends in the middle of the dagger point is when the cultures mix. The morning mist cleared and again there at the riverside with the rhythm of the mystic jungle drums and this again comes new nations coming again and again with new changes. So I’m taking the poem as no matter what Africa does other nations will always keep coming with new changes, they can’t get comfortable because with time comes change. Even though they don’t like it at first and they feel uncomfortable from which they came, in the end the change and the mixing of the nations is good.
The Essay on Nation Changed One September
September eleventh, 2001 was a nightmare. September twelfth was a rude awakening to reality. Even now, there has not been a day that has gone by where someone hasn't stopped whatever they were doing and thought deeply about the nation's situation. It's simply amazing that a nation can endure such horror. Certainly no one, single, solitary person could withstand something of this extreme. And how ...
Some of the abstract ideas and concrete images are equal and I do think you need one to rely on the other because if you have a concrete image it’s always going to give you some kind of an abstract idea if not more than one. When I get the image of going back to my mother’s lap a suckling, I automatically think of my beginning, safety, warmth, and love. Another example is when they say walking a simple path, I think of something easy and a destiny that was made for me to take.
