#object writing

Hey again everybody,  I know it’s been quite a while since I last posted a new update on here. I’ve been focussing on writing and some pretty awesome techniques I stumbled across. I have read so many great books on songwriting techniques that I cannot wait to share them all with you. But haste makes waste so I will handpick them in the upcoming posts and carefully curate them appropriately. One of my favourite books on my endeavour was Pat Pattison’s Writing Better Lyrics, which from my perspective is by far the most in-depth book on lyric writing. He also made a Coursera course on songwriting which is rather funny and well-prepared. One of the powerful tricks I came across in his book is object writing. Haven’t heard of it yet? Don’t worry, I will have several posts on this topic coming up within the next weeks and months.  So long all the best wishes on your songwriting🎶

With each slight bend, your back screams with agony; each vertebrae a part of the collective union of the spine striking due to unsafe workplace conditions. As you transcribe a phone number on the greasy, worn keys cash register for a rewards account, you hear your wrist crack and squelch with each movement—these bones, too, take up arms against their oppressor. The same song grinds against your eardrums for the 46th time this week until it feels like blood will come bubbling out like volcanic mud. Floor cleaner singes the hair on the inside of your nostrils like pepper spray mixed with tear gas. You work 39 hours this week. An hour away from healthcare, from sick leave, from any sense of basic decency. This isn't a real job, they say, but without you there is no grocery store, no hardware store,  no number 1 combo with a milkshake on the side. You put the salt on the greasy, cardboard-tasting fries. The low-quality, sour, bitter strawberries in the blender. As you fold over at your hips and bend your aching knees to grab the receipt paper, you think about your general manager and his lifted truck. His full beard and glowing, beady eyes. His red cheeks and ironed shirt. You think about when he cut your pay and hours again. Did that pay for his truck? Because it sure as hell could’ve made your car payment a little easier.

From across the house you hear the dryer singing an excerpt from Franz Schubert’s “Die Forelle”. It goes on for far too long, but it provides a soundtrack to your otherwise unceremonious peeling of your tired back from the bed. You grasp at the ceiling, pulling your vertebrae apart like taffy before returning to a slouch as you start your trek to the laundry room. You open the door to the dryer and drag the warm clothes into a basket, static electricity popping and crackling with each heap of fabric. The clothes smell like lavender and soap. Like your mother. It reminds you of a time when you didn't have to do the laundry.

You stuff your slobbering mouth with a greasy, salty hamburger, hurriedly silencing your stomach’s grumbled protestations. The tomato pops like a blister in your mouth, coating your mouth with its fetid, acidic pus. What remains of your meal is a smattering of crumbs on the paper wrapper it came in. Back to work. You brush your hands on your stained linen shirt and type some numbers and letters on your laptop’s smooth, tired keys. You used to know what they meant, now it’s just a jumble of data on an OLED screen. Every night you watch the news and listen in horror as the hot TV anchor you like tells you about bombs in other countries. Crunching yourself into a ball you scream and cry and squeeze your arms tighter and tighter around your knees as you try and convince yourself that the words waging war on your delicate eardrums tell you about the screaming, burning bodies across the world. The jumbled data you input might be the code for the computers that dropped that bomb on the school, on the hospital, but it’s not your fault, right? You’re just doing your job. Just following orders.

You dance across the room with the grace of a blackout drunk horse, bumping every possible obstacle, but the box is now before you. You fold at the hips and wrap your arms around the tub and lift it unceremoniously. As you turn around your blood runs cold. Where once there was a narrow path, lie only rusty nails and family photos.

Rivers carry their deep red waters back to the reservoir from whence they came. Microscopic capillaries lead to small streams which feed into the pulsing, hot torrent of deoxygenated blood yearning to regain its brilliant red hue. You wash your hands in those waters—thick red ichor oozing through the gaps between your fingers, staining your skin scarlet. Cupping your hands, you bring the blood to your mouth and drink it as if it were the most thirst-quenching, delicious liquid you’ve ever consumed. A new stream runs down your chest, then abdomen, then legs, back into the rushing waters of the northward flowing river.

Old polaroids scatter in every direction as I drop the fragile wooden box that used to hold them. Overwhelmed by the thousands of  snapshots of a life I can’t recall, I sit down cross-legged in the middle of the hurricane of PVA plastic squares bordered with rough edges of paper. The air now smells like the dust and cobwebs of a room left sealed for a decade. One of the photos catches my eye and I extend an arm to grab it. The air feels thick like water, resisting my attempt to move it. At last,  cold, trembling fingers wrap around the photo and bring it far closer to my face than I should need to. A boy sits in a mess of toys, a memory distinctly not mine.