Brooklyn Accent- Becky Torres

My fingers are powerful tools. My fingers, partnered with my brain, know how to work together. They make things happen, they create art, they tell stories. My seventh grade teacher taught me that no matter what, keep writing words. If I draw a blank, continue to type and continue to move my fingers because ideas will continue to flow, as long as my fingers flow. Sometimes I start with one word and that will lead me to writing, to storytelling. I started here talking about my fingers and it led me to think about that time that I sliced my finger open with a potato peeler, and that time that my brother slammed the door on my fingers, and that time I watched the angry man in the big red truck stick up his middle finger. It’s fascinating how our minds race to so many thoughts, ideas, and stories with one simple word to start. These words, partnered with images and videos, create a tangible story. They paint the image, allowing the audience to visualize the story, to lay back and enjoy. Videos and images may sometimes limit the story’s ability for open interpretation, but they also develop the story to reach new levels of development. Without images, the audience must picture the story themselves. This is beneficial at times, but as an author, I often have distinct images set in my mind. I often have images of my stories that I want to project to my audience; videos and images help my audience visualize the story from my perspective. My perspective may be through my eyes, a bird’s eye view, or sometimes from an anonymous source. My perspective may show the audience what is going on inside my head or from a third person viewer. Regardless, videos and images help the story grow and become alive. Writing and creating live stories is an amazing thing. It’s amazing how we have created this language, these tools, and techniques, and this way to project our thoughts and ideas, yet somehow we don’t appreciate it nearly enough. Not everyone uses their stories and their tools. Imagine if everyone wrote to release his or her creativity, to become an artist, a writer, a storyteller. Let it out on the page and don’t think about writing for someone else, think about writing for yourself, think about telling your stories. If we each don't tell our stories, then no one will. Writing is an honor, a gift; we must appreciate the magic of words, of language, of storytelling. My video consists of both archival and unique footage. The archival footage videos are the two opening clips of my video project. The remaining videos and images in my project are from my own first hand capturing.