Ladies and gentleman, I apologise for my disturbing delay in this post, but it is here now and I hope it reaches you in good spirits :) Especialy those in the Canterbury region. We are all thinking of you.
Now, to the blog.
Over the last couple of weeks I re-stumbled upon a song that I loved for the song, but now has come to mean much more than a tune and a catchy chorus.
The song? Climb Every Mountain? You Raise Me Up? Pfft. Not close.
The song is in actual fact a Guy Sebastian song - Angels Brought Me Here.
Now, the flatmates will be barking mad by about now because it has been played a fair bit over the last two weeks as I lipsynched my way to perfection, but aside from the underlying message of love in the song, it's come to mean a lot more than that.
"It's been a long and winy journey,
But i'm finally here tonight,
Picking up the pieces,
And walking back into the light"
Oh Matiu, it's a love song. It's talking about how he's in a relationship with someone. Yeah fair enough, I understand that. Point noted. Well done. But at least let me attempt to explain my recent re-infatuation with this now infamous anthem.
I've just come back from a noho marae with my journalism comrades as part of our course. A noho marae, for those who don't know, is about encountering another culture. It's about experiencing things we often don't know exist - life without Twitter, without social media at all for that matter, where the only tweeting done is by the local birds on a sunny day. It's about understanding culture and understanding the need to become un-eurocentric. It's rad.
Some people went on the noho marae for the first time and, justfiably, were a little nervous about the whole ordeal. With fair reasoning too - the whole formal procedure (powhiri) is in an entirely different language, you're surrounded by people you only semi-know, and the meeting house has no Macintosh computers in it.
But they came out of the experience full, and satisfied. Full of food, full of culture, full of unity, full of awareness and, subsequently, full of life experience.
But how can one 27-hour event transform what we know as journalism students about the artform itself and the other pieces of art, that is, ourselves?
The night session was eye opening and eye watering. Emotion flooded the marae as stories were told about peoples' determination to battle everything from alcoholism to sexual abuse, to incidents that, while seemingly less insignificant, contain as much of a mental an emotional impact. Things such as adoption that aren't talked about much in the media.
These were journalists' own stories. And it was them who wrote them. It was them who ensured the piece had an ending. It was them who moved the story onward, whether it be by disproving doubters or battling through emotional scarring. This was truly beautifully intense.
The tears shed throughout the room, at both happy and sad stories, really do prove my underlying point for the blog: That journalists do indeed have hearts.
Most journalists throughout the country get a bit of stick for some of their stories - but the crop of AUT Journalism students from 2010 proved that they can understand a situation completely and offer that empathy and rapport.
That's something special, and should be treated with respect and dignity.
No reira, ki te roopu AUT Journalism 2010, ko tenei te mihi kia koutou.
So, to the AUT Journalism 2010 group, this is the acknowledgement to you.
Haere ki roto i te ao. haere ki te tuwhera nga kuaha ki nga hinengaro o Aotearoa me te ao.
Go in to the world. Go and open the doors to the minds of Aotearoa and the world.
Kua katakata, kua tangihia, me inaeanei, he kotahi tatou,
We have laughed, we have cried, and now, we are one.
No reira tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.
So thank you, thank you, thank you.
