For my P4 Audio Project, I did a reading of a poem i wrote back in the earlier days of high school, simply titled “Depression.” As you may have guessed, that is exactly what it is about; the feeling of bleak monotony, boredom and ennui that is depression. I had written it to try to describe to people what the feeling was, since talking to people face-to-face, especially as a kid, they try to write it off as just being sad, or worse, medicate it out of you. All anyone I showed it to got from it was that I stayed out too late and was too lazy to clean. But i digress. I did not want to use my own voice for this project; I feel that my voice is far too warm for the tone and message I was trying to convey in my writing.

And as a footnote, vaguely related to the class, I have owned the copyright to this poem for some time, and in no way, in turning this in for the class, hand over those rights. I do not mind this work’s use, and give full permission to show it, BUT I OWN THIS. I will fight for this in court if I have to. Nobody, NOBODY is going to get ownership or credit for this when they had nothing to do with it. PERIOD.

-Riley Clayton-Sanders