Musicians are storytellers. I don’t mean that in the abstract; musicians have some great stories. Just ask one about their strangest gig, worst hotel room, longest airport layover, or a particularly rough ordeal through customs and security.
They have props for their stories too. My husband is a percussionist which means that kitchen items like mixing bowls, wooden spoons, can openers, and wine glasses often find themselves integrated with studio drums. Sometimes holes are drilled at the bottom of metal bowls to be hung by strings and hit with mallets. It also happens in reverse. Drums often end up seated like dinner guests on our dining room chairs.
Travel can be a challenge when you’re married to a percussionist. Why would anyone transport such a thing in carry-on? A thing like what? Like this, for example:
It’s a bell for a John Cage piece. It sounds like an old fashioned phone. I have no idea what piece of music it comes from. All I know is that I went to eat breakfast one morning and it was on the kitchen table next to the fruit bowl.
I do know that I have seen performances and scores that are written in a whole other language. Not music, not Italian, but something else in the dialect of improvisation. I’m always fascinated by composers who leave instrumentation up to the performer. Is there such a thing in poetry? I’d say yes. Some poets keep editing and editing long after the book is in print. Each time they read their signature poem it’s different. And then there are the musical poets, abstract, experimental poets. Wait — wasn’t John Cage a poet too?
Happy 100th year of your birth, Mr. Cage.
WRITING PROMPT # 41:
- Borrow from the musician’s playbook. Write about your strangest gig (or work experience), worst hotel room, longest airport layover, or ordeals through customs and security. If you’re not big on air travel, tell about the worst bus ride, subway experience or traffic jam.
- Use props. Grab items from your kitchen at random and lay them out on the table. Spend a few minutes studying the bowls, plates, coffee filters, dishtowels, can openers and bongos. (If your not married to a drummer you probably will leave the last item out.) Close your eyes. What story did these items want you to write?
- Listen to some John Cage when you write this week. The guy was born a hundred years ago, but the music is super fresh.
WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED WRITING:
- Come on back and post your story, poem or a small excerpt of what you wrote using these prompts. Or just talk about the process. Encourage us!
- Visit the John Cage Trust’s website for concert and event information: http://www.johncage.org/
- If you like these free prompts, please “like” my new Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/StefanieLipsey.Writer. Stay in touch by email at www.stefanielipsey.com or through Writing Yoga®. I look forward to hearing from you and thank you very much for visiting.
© Stefanie Lipsey 2012
Speaking of musicians being storytellers. No question. It’s true, Stef. And Jackie, thank you for sharing your process. From my vantage point, your writing has always possessed a “quality of light” in it. It seems to come naturally from the core of who you are. I don’t mean lighting fixtures; I’m talking about a quality of enlightenment that’s authentic…just saying. Getting back to musicians, I’m reminded of these Peter Gabriel lyrics: “Don’t give up/ you still have us/ don’t give up/ we don’t need much of anything/ don’t give up ’cause somewhere there’s a place where we belong.” To be continued…
Thank you so much, LaForrest! I look forward to reading more of your music, because that is what your writing sounds like in my ears, music.
After staring at these prompts for two days, I realized it wasn’t going to happen, but determined to use at least one prompt from this page, I tried anyway. I was unsuccessful and ended up writing nothing. Here is my process of not writing. Writing about the strangest work experience was not as fun as I thought it would be. Too many strange jobs with too many strange experiences; I just couldn’t make up my mind. The same thing happens to me when I go to a diner, you know, the ones that have menus that are longer than anything I ever wrote. So many options that my brain freezes up and I end up ordering either the blandest thing on the menu like grilled chicken, or nothing at all and just guzzle coffee the whole time.
I gave up a few times and attempted my hand at the other prompts. I felt pretty foolish with the whole kitchen utensils thing. I never got Alice in Wonderland when I was a kid. And the customs/security thing—I had already done that to death. Kitchen utensils? Seriously? I had no idea they were used as musical instruments or as anything else for that matter except for, well, the kitchen. But these prompts were making me hungry. Menus from diners, kitchen utensils, and the bar where I worked had some pretty decent food. I had to get my mind off of food since I had just finished eating two breakfasts when I began “writing.” I decided to stay away from personifying kitchen utensils, talking about customs and security, which for some strange reason reminded me of fish n chips, or bringing the bar I had worked in back to life, which made me want to smoke again like something terrible.
Instead, I decided to take a few scenes from each of these stories and practice the “quality light” in each of them. I did alright with the strangest work experience one since it was in a bar that I had worked in for over ten years and that was easy to remember. But the customs/security one, the one I really wanted to write about, I couldn’t remember the quality of light. I know there were fluorescent lights at the airport, and that there were bars that were a little darker, but I couldn’t remember the effect the lights had on other objects, the people, whether there was smoke at the entrances of the bars. I couldn’t remember gestures people made, languages they spoke or at least what they sounded like, so I couldn’t even add dialogue to the thing.
With no setting, no characters, no gestures, no dialogue, no descriptions, and no language, I decided to give up. I refused to look back at my notes from previous writings since I swore to myself that I wouldn’t “cheat”. So I wrote a few sentences for each one and then just gave up when nothing seemed to flow. I was just too lazy to do the John Cage thing. Great prompts, though. They made me write this page (insert smiley face—too depressed now to actually put it in myself).
What a wonderfully wild ride through the process of writing and not writing. But look what you did write –something so real, funny and descriptive. No need to be depressed, Jackie!! All you have to do is write and not judge. We love you.