WP3 — Understanding Romanticism and Why We Need It

For the longest time, I subjected myself to the oppressive lifestyle of a banking education. I was merely a lifeless, loveless vessel of knowledge and skills that were being used for nothing but pride. I dehumanized myself to the point where I was a heartless and dark void of carelessness that meaningful information got tossed into and forgotten. As Freire describes the banking education system, “it turns [the students] into ‘containers,’ into ‘receptacles’ to be ‘filled’ by the teacher… The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are” (Freire 72). All I was and all I wanted to be was a good “receptacle,” an obedient little dog doing what it was told. Seeing as how all I cared about was being a good student for the sake of being a good student, I allowed myself to be filled with useless, loveless information. I saw no problem with this lifestyle at the time, thinking that I was doing everything right. After all, I was a high achiever in everything that I did, and from the outside there is no issue with that. On the inside, however, there was no substance, no love, and no meaning; that’s where the issue lies.

Love and passion are at the core of humanity, and when combined they create romanticism. Romanticism is what humanizes the life of an individual and gives meaning, drive, and purpose. My intimate knowledge of this is a result of my ever changing and evolving life as a violinist and empowered learner. Over the years of my life I have gone through phases of dedicating my entire existence to romanticism and phases of denying that romanticism had any importance at all. These ups and downs of valuing romanticism mapped directly to ups and downs in education and all other areas of life because being romantic is my motivation. Over time, I have come to understand the role romanticism plays in my life, allowing me to value my education and musical abilities more than anything. Yet, as depicted earlier, my mind was not always in the right space.

At the start of my journey as a violinist and an intellectual, I had such little appreciation for being romantic that I was hardly human. I had no understanding of love or passion in any sense, and I had no desire to understand them. My life was centered around being the best: the best student, the best violinist, the best athlete, and all because I simply wanted to be the best. This lifestyle is easily identified as one of an oppressor, living a mechanical and calculated life driven only by success. Freire furthers this explanation, referring to oppressors and people who live life without love as “necrophilous.” He goes on to say, “the necrophilous person loves all that does not grow, all that is mechanical. The necrophilous person is driven by the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic, to approach life mechanically…” (Freire 77). My idea of a life worth living at this point was a necrophilous and mechanical existence. I valued my life as an individual solely by how I performed on tests and in recitals. Love, passion, music, and being romantic were all out of the picture. As a result, my learning and violin playing at that point could barely even be considered real learning or playing. My idea of being smart was memorizing useless pieces of information for middle school exams, and my idea of playing was impressing my teacher so I could have a good seat in the orchestra. I was lost.

To make matters worse, my views on education and music were both incredibly judgmental and unsympathetic. Those who cared about love, romanticism, and passion in the way that I would later care about these topics were viewed as wrong and incapable. I, sitting on my throne of self-oppression and useless information, saw others’ lack of will to absorb information as a lack of capability, and I viewed such lack of capability with high judgement. As stated in WP2: My Intellectual Time Machine, “My view of music was one-sided and incredibly pretentious… I considered hip hop and modern rap to not even be real music” (Stoddart 1). The contents of the playlist this statement is centered around, who i was, clearly contains one specific genre of music, rock and roll. This was because this version of myself considered other, more modern forms of music, like rap and hip hop, “to not even be real music.” As with my education, love, romanticism, and passion were not a part of the picture. Enjoying new types of music and claiming an education were a waste of time: all that mattered was success. If people weren’t learning the way I could learn or appreciating “real” music the way I was, then they were wrong.

This is the type of existence that a life without romanticism breeds. Without a sense of love and passion to drive people through their education, talents, and life as a whole, it is only natural that they assume a role of oppressing themselves. Without love and a reason to claim what you do, your motivation to do anything boils down to a mechanical and systematic desire for success. There is no substance or meaning in this existence, only sadness. In the words of Freire, to an oppressor, “Memory, rather than experience; having, rather than being, is what counts” (Freire 77). A life without romanticism that is lived mechanically and inorganically values memories and possessions. In this life, there is no “experience,” no “being.” Pursuing a life where you claim your education and love what you do is how you can overcome this life and have real experiences and truly be human. Romanticism is the key to stepping beyond the systematic and loveless life of an oppressor.

Thankfully, my life as a self-oppressor was relatively short lived, as one tragic event forced the romantic side out of me. When I was 15, my 23 year old cousin Maggie had her life taken in an unnatural and unexplainable event. For the funeral, it was requested that I play my violin at the end of the service. Being my same mechanical self, I accepted, but with that came the end of my oppressive lifestyle. Even throughout my preparation for this event, I knew something had changed inside of me.

For the first time in my life, music meant more than just practice. Music meant emotions, feelings, and passion; music meant being romantic. Ignited by the storm of emotions brewing inside of me from the loss of my cousin, playing the violin was no longer a conscious and calculated act of pride. My first step into being a romantic player was putting all of this to the side, forgetting about pride and skill and success and focusing on what I felt. I spent my days playing for hours without even realizing, wanting more from myself in my practice sessions and looking inside myself for motivation. When I played, I didn’t care who was listening, how I sounded, or how I would sound in the future; all I cared about was playing from the soul, playing with the love in my heart at the forefront.

This type of loving, soulful playing is how I was able to overcome my oppressive lifestyle. The way to overcome the average life that lacks romanticism is to pay attention to your emotions. Playing violin with the motivation of trying to express myself compared to playing with the motivation of getting a good seat in the orchestra was like day and night. It was a much more fulfilling experience to play romantically, so much so that my care for success in these heartfelt practice sessions was barely present. By being emotional and romantic, I had begun to transcend the oppressive life that I subjected myself to. When it came time to bring my newfound knowledge to the people at Maggie’s funeral, I was more than ready to make an impact.

After performing in front of a crowd of 400 damaged souls, the effect of my romantic playing was almost tangible. The curse of sadness placed on the church that day almost completely vanished, all because of one piece that I played on my violin; one piece that I played romantically. After the service came to a conclusion, countless people came up to me to tell me how my playing had lifted their spirits and changed their view of the day. By playing from the heart and with passion, my music had the power to bring solace to damaged souls in the most somber of times. This realization would come to be the biggest awakening for me in my entire life. I learned that music was by no means just an activity for grinding or an activity for pride and fame. It was an activity meant for love, a lifestyle designed for people to be romantic. When done romantically, music of any kind has the ability to change lives, both of those who listen and those who play.

In fact, this revelation was not just a subtle realization by a random 15 year old boy; several acclaimed authors have written countless articles on the profound impact of music on the human soul and emotional complex. One such article, written by PLoS ONE, analyzes the effect of listening to music in a more scientific context. The article states, “Given that music listening can trigger activity in brain regions linked to the experience of intense emotions [8,34–36], listening to music might also modulate anxiety levels induced by the experience of stress” (PLoS ONE). Listening to music of any kind and in any context triggers activity “in brain regions linked to the experience of intense emotions,” meaning that playing and listening to others play has the potential to change lives. By playing at the funeral that day, it was as if I had gone into the brains of the listeners like a surgeon and rewired the region that dealt with intense emotions to make them find hope in humanity and provide solace. Music is a gateway to providing passion and joy, a gateway to being romantic in all areas of life.

Having learned this for myself through experience, I became an unstoppable force. I had the same drive to be great as before, but now there was a real motivation behind it. Learning to play with purpose by romantically pouring my heart into my music was as if I had spent my entire life confined to a dark room and finally found the door to the light. Playing the way I played in preparation for the funeral and at the funeral itself was an experience where I looked into myself and used my pure emotions to produce something beautiful; that’s what being romantic means. I would close my eyes, turn my conscious brain off, and look into my heart, where I discovered my real emotions. It felt like I looked inside myself and discovered a beautiful waterfall of feelings that flowed through my fingertips into the real world. What this meant for me was that I had evolved. After having a taste of what real romanticism was like, there was no going back. My previous, oppressed, and lifeless self was officially no more; all because of how I learned to be romantic.

Once I understood both ends of the spectrum, knowing what it’s like to play as a lifeless puppet and as a fully romantic human, I was fully equipped to bring my knowledge of romanticism into all other areas of my life. Because I knew how I was able to make that transition into a romantic lifestyle with music, it was only natural to try and create this transition with other topics, like education and athletics. I started experimenting to get a feel for what it was like to truly claim my education by letting that waterfall of emotions take over with my academics. This sensation is further depicted through WP1, which states, “More importantly, I was able to transfer my knowledge of passion and my own emotions to my studies… I no longer groaned when I was given a hard math problem but I instead viewed it with the same joy that I viewed playing” (Stoddart 3). Through trying my best to be romantic in my pursuit of education, I was able to enjoy learning for what learning actually was: gaining knowledge. It was no longer about grinding for pride and “groaning” at every math problem I mindlessly completed. It was about learning, and enjoying learning. In other words, it was about pursuing knowledge and intellect with love, passion, and meaning: pursuing a problem-posing education.

A problem-posing education is the key to fully humanizing education and oneself along with it, and a romantic approach to life is the key to obtaining a problem-posing education. At its core, pursuing a problem-posing education means pursuing an education where one actively asks questions and desires to learn more for the joy of learning. As Freire states it,

“Whereas banking education anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling of reality. The former attempts to maintain the submersion of consciousness; the latter strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality” (Freire 81).

This style of education is the pure definition of pursuing life romantically. To let the geyser of emotion inside you take the wheel is what it means to have an emergence of consciousness, because the only way to truly be conscious and truly pursue something is to be passionate and emotional about it. An “emergence of consciousness and critical intervention” is synonymous with being romantic, as the only way to truly get the most out of any activity, whether it be the pursuit of knowledge or the pursuit of anything else, is to tackle it with an emotional and humanized approach. After all, there is no way to fully and constantly unveil reality without pursuing education and life with passion.

Romanticism is the one true key to achieving a fulfilling career, education, and life. Being passionate and loving in all areas of life is the only way to unlock one’s humanity and claim a meaningful life. Before I realized the emotional capabilities of music, I was without love, passion, or meaning. I was living an empty, meaningless, forced life; nothing I did made sense, and I felt no desire to be anything other than what I thought I should be. After discovering the impact of music and the impact of being romantic with playing music, I saw meaning in everything that I did and felt empowered to be my best self for the love of music, education, and happiness. What this all boils down to is finding a sense of love in life. Truly loving yourself, everything that you do, and the effects of what you do on other people is the key to unlocking real humanity. As Freire puts it, the revolution, which is the act of rising from dehumanization to being fully humanized, is “not irreconcilable with love.” He states, “true revolutionaries must perceive the revolution, because of its creative and liberating nature, as an act of love” (Freire 89). Love is a quality which binds people together and leads people to greatness. It brings us joy, motivation, and courage to be ourselves. It is only natural that the act of becoming fully human is defined through love, defined through being romantic. Without romanticism, there is not humanity; with romanticism, we achieve true greatness.

Works Cited

Freire, Paulo, et al. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 1993.

Stoddart, Miles. “The Importance of Passion — WP1.” Medium, 6 Sept. 2020, medium.com/writing-150-fall-2020/the-importance-of-passion-wp1–6f106fb00a33.

Stoddart, Miles. “WP2: My Intellectual Time Machine.” Medium, 6 Oct. 2020, medium.com/writing-150-fall-2020/wp2-my-intellectual-time-machine-5a37705f2d16.

“The Effect of Music on the Human Stress Response.” PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 8, 2013, p. e70156. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A478419510/AONE?u=usocal_main&sid=AONE&xid=faaec6e4. Accessed 30 Oct. 2020.