Portfolio 1 Column

They never should’ve been an Elvis Presley. It’s unlikely he was ever even born as his twin brother Jesse died at birth. Elvis was the backwoods son of a poverty stricken, uneducated family and was only a middle of the road student all the way through high school. Sure he was good looking, but that got him into trouble with the other boys and the girls, despite his finely sculpted features, found the teen Elvis somewhat shy and awkward. But then one day, while working an odd job, he stopped by a now iconic recording studio and cut a demo for his mother as a present and the Elvis we all know, love and will never forget came into being.

Noted internationally known Self-help advocate and teacher of devotional yoga Prana Govinda Das was born in Liverpool, England in 1968 admittedly a pretty good year for all things bright and beautiful. He says, ‘From as early as I can remember I had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and a desire to understand the true nature of man and this world we live in. I was also always seeking out people who could answer all the questions I had about life, the universe, and everything.’ After studying film production in the early nineties Prana was able to fulfill his lifelong desire to travel to India. admittedly his first trip changed his life completely and forever. ‘At that point,’ He recalls, ‘my thirst for material knowledge turned to desire to understand the spiritual side of life. For the next six years, I returned frequently to, where I studied many different paths of Hinduism, Buddhism, and other forms of yoga and meditation. However, even after learning and experiencing so much I was still left incomplete.’ in 2001 during the young man’s sixth trip to India, he traveled to Vrindavan, a holy town associated with Lord Krishna south of Delhi.

Leo Tolstoy’s “A Confession,” written in 1882 shortly after a life-altering spiritual crisis, is a brutally sincere reflection on life, morality, and the nature of faith. Tolstoy describes in great detail the process by which he lost his faith in established Christian churches, the meaninglessness of wealth and fame, the agony of acute depression, and how he overcame misery and dread through personal study of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Along the way, he contrasts the artificial faith and arrogance of educated people with the genuine faith and humility of the Russian peasant. This work, and others of its ilk, were aggressively censored by the Tsarist regime and directly led to Tolstoy being excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church.

George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterized by lucid prose, biting social criticism, total opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism.

Orwell produced literary criticism and poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics and literature, language and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked George Orwell second among “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945”.

Orwell’s work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective “Orwellian”—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as “Big Brother”, “Thought Police”, “Two Minutes Hate”, “Room 101”, “memory hole”, “Newspeak”, “doublethink”, “unperson”, and “thoughtcrime”, as well as providing direct inspiration for the neologism “groupthink”.