In early August I attended a creative writer's workshop at Book Club, probably the most superior institution in East Village. The goal was to create a gathering space for both lapsed and active writers to practice their craft in an intentional way. My favourite part was the premise: the host flashes up a random assortment of eccentric photos on the screen, and we're tasked to write as much as we can, in any genre, for 5-10 minutes a piece. I chuckled and chortled to myself because this version of improv storytelling is such a fun free-writing technique where there is no “right” way. Today's post covers my atomic creations from that day, with a bit of artist commentary to prime each piece. Each artifact is flawed in its own special way, but I feel 0 anxiety by exposing these raw words to the winds of the Internet — everything is work-in-progress.
If you read until the end, you'll find my first attempt at publishing poetry. I call it peanut poetry because I literally had 5 minutes to draft something still legible and at least somewhat "poetic". In other words, it's truly peanut quality. But doing this quick exercise taught me a key lesson when it comes to both poetry and creativity in general: you just need to let go and start writing to, over and over again, past the shitty first (nth) drafts, before you strike gold. I was honestly super surprised at what I was able to come up with in such a short sprint, but maybe I shouldn't be.
. . .
Picture 1: African kids leaping into murky waters
I decided to go with a memoir-style approach since the shot of East Africa directly ties back to one of the most formative experiences in my early 20s — Tanzania 2017.
When I think of my time in East Africa, I see a few images that hold and freeze my mind in time. The eager smiles of the local Tanzanians permeate and cut through the air like a sharp yet soothing needle, pinning you down with immutable force. You scan the streets and you see two different scenes. One, of modern commerce, the typical hustle and bustle that we associate with the high-rise metropolises of New York, London, Hong Kong, but with a unique African flair. Suited-up workers whizz in and out, with a quick yet controlled pace. These are the so-called elites who embody Dar es Salaam‘s culture, searching for progress and prosperity. Second is the more sobering sight and one that is shown often in our media black boxes. An adjacent street filled with dilapidated buildings, unkempt nature, and worst of all, sickly children who teeter on the edge of stability and safety.
Then something funny happens. You look up and the same bold smiles — the ones that filled you with glowing joy earlier — re-enter your senses. You recoil in surprise. You can’t believe the laughs that you're hearing, the cheerful footsteps palpable on the tough concrete, the energetic action animating the teenagers to action.
How is this possible, you wonder. How can people living in such horrid conditions still persist in a state of continued happiness? At that moment, you realize an important, ill-represented truth of the world. The resource game is a flawed one: having geographical and societal advantages doesn‘t guarantee a high quality of life. That a poor family in Tanzania can derive huge amounts of joy in their every day, diving into a dirty lake for the sake of it, swimming freely with the soft tendrils of growing algae, and wading away from the shackles and burdens of a classic capitalistic society, is utterly a beautiful thing. This feeling is more than just a silver lining to an otherwise dystopian horror story, No, this phenomenon points to finding resilience in the rough, the delight in the mundane, the spontaneity in the absence of normality.
That's the heart of Tanzania.
. . .
Picture 2: Eerie house with one large window, shadowy person sitting
The host challenged us to take a bolder, more uncomfortable angle for this piece. He acknowledged that the easy route would be to describe the picture at face value and write with a style that you're used to. So I decided to experiment with a form that I really want to pursue eventually: dialogue-based fiction.
Sheryl looks around the barren desert that characterizes her old house. 812 Rodeo Street — and what a rodeo it's been over the past three years. She recently left her partner of 8 years because in her exact words, “she wasn't feeling it”. She pivoted and fluttered from career path to career path, feeling like her passion would be baked in somewhere strange, and that she'd just have to keep trying. Keep looking, she tells herself. Keep grinding, she whispers.
But these words mean nothing in this house anymore, stripped away from its former sturdy glory. The walls wilt with an empty sadness, just like the mini threads of Sheryl's heartstrings. What a shame.
Sheryl snaps out of her daze. She looks at the antique lamp in front of her. Porcelain, 1929 fashion. She had picked this up at her neighbour's yard sale exactly three years ago. She flickers the light switch on and off, and a feeble glimmer appears and disappears like a wisp of smoke. The lamp is still largely intact though, which may have been the most miraculous outcome. "Useless", she mutters with an air of exasperation and finality. Looking around, everything seemed to be broken to some degree: the mahogany vinyl player stand, the second-hand grandfather clock with a missing cuckoo bird, the at-once valuable China tea cups that her partner obsessively collected, and the Azerbaijani carpets that once acted as grounding foundation for the place she felt the most belonging, the deep cuts of fabric enveloping the winding floor plan.
All of these objects: now soaked with torrents of dust, terrorized by cobwebs, banished to the graveyard of unviability, never to feel a proper human caress.
“Why am I giving so much weight to this stupid stuff? I need to Marie Kondo the shit out of this place", Sheryl muses to herself, annoyed.
Then, she hears a cacophony of sinister sounds all at once: a giant glass shattering, a steam whistle, and an inanimate shuddering.
Three seconds later, a knock on the door comes.
. . .
Picture 3: A cream-coloured drapey curtain, abstract form with folds & pleats
This picture was baffling to me when I first saw it because my mind went nowhere: no inspiration, no association at all. Just a random curtain? What style of writing can I deploy? Then I thought back to my “Appreciating Art for Non-Artists” Substack post, and realized this was the perfect opportunity to recycle my three-pronged artistic analysis framework.
Investigation: This art piece embodies the idea of aesthetic layering. What I see is a satin curtain, one that crosses over in diagonal folds until it extends its fit onto the ground. The art piece is devoid of any major colours, textures, and shapes, purposefully drawing the viewer into a trance state in a soothing and inquisitive way.
Interpretation: I think there's a broader message of emptiness and solitude in this piece. These qualities take on a different form, however, because unlike just showing a blank sheet to the viewer, the layering effect evokes a mystery, an overarching phantom of feeling that causes disorientation. The contrast of both perceived colourlessness and subtle shades of cream forces us to consider the semi-sterile parts of our lives. Being disoriented in these colour-contrasting curtains calls on a paradox: it's not quite the scary vivid darkness that one would fear, but it's the eerie absence of typical everyday life ("vanilla") that accelerates the uncertainty we feel.
Introspection: What's behind the curtain? I ask myself this ironically but also metaphorically. This picture speaks to my soul in a unique way, representing my eagerness to peer beyond the regularity, to lift the Rawlsian veil of ignorance that governs our interest and involvement in ourselves and others. It echoes my increasing curiosity in the realm of the "other-worldly", aka faith & spirituality, reminding me to not lose sight of a bigger life mission to connect and create.
. . .
Picture 4: Two Arab women in wheelchairs chilling above shallow beach water
My mind went straight to unpacking my extensive repository of thoughts on the Middle East. But the facilitator challenged us again to think about the sensory experience: to incorporate taste, touch, sound, smell, and sight into a piece. I wanted to try fiction again, but this time extrapolating the “wheelchair” and “salt water” to draw parallels to blood and nature.
Salty, mechanical, full of life. That's the stream of blood I catch myself spitting up as the hunter prowls closer. My left calf is split open, and that critical life nectar is pouring out of me like a bartender letting loose a bottle of Malbec.
How did I end up like this, you ask? Well, I didn't choose to enter the Forbidden Forest — I was forced to. By them. The Establishment. They banished us, relegated us to an absurd life of brutal survival. Those of us who fell below an intellectual threshhold was not safe, deemed to be unviable for society. We're outliers in the grandest sense, and not in the good way. They've made a sport out of hunting our kind, and they've justified it in the name of a purge, a great reset. Sickening stuff, I know.
Drip, drip, drip.
"Fuck. At this rate, I'm gonna get intercepted for sure", I sputter. The iron-rich liquid continues to leak out of my system. It's restricting my movements. I crawl to a concealed part of the forest to find something to patch my wound.
Sunset slowly looms in the distance. I've heard there's a safe haven somewhere in the middle of this damn mythical environment, a setting where the hunters dare not venture to and The Establishment's technology can't trace. It doesn't really make sense to me, but my continued existence on this planet is linked to my faith in this theory. Hell, this might even be a path to the Sublime that The Establishment has raved so much about.
But damn, if I don't get killed by the hunter, there sure is a damn good chance that I lose myself in this labyrinth of scary shrubbery. But I still have the power to choose, to fight. I'm taking my blood as far as it can pump. What seems like hours of eternity tick by, as a sort of ironic countdown to my demise.
Suddenly, I hear footsteps pounding the grass 30 meters to my left. Shit, I don't have much time. Scanning the canopy, I eye a small ditch that looks to lead to another downward-sloping path. Normally, this would be the sketchiest route ever. But I don't really have a choice here, do I? The problem is that my trail of blood gives my position away immediately. The taste of despair, the embodiment of anxiety. I steel myself to wrap my wound quickly with a makeshift patch of leaves. I need to take the leap of faith now.
Bolt. Zoom. Grunt. Lunge.
I tumble down the muddy track like Alice and the looking glass. I eat sand and shit, the raw texture of nature bombarding my senses.
I finally crash into some trough in the valley, bruised and battered from the beating. But as I opened my eyes, I saw something completely unimaginable that would be the catalyst to alter my life path forever.
"Whoa", I gasp.
. . .
Picture 5: Abstract cubism, kaleidoscopic colour, blur of many shapes/sizes
I saved the last picture for my most daring writing attempt: from prose to poetry. I just wanted to have fun with this one, so there's not really too much complexity of emotion, but I'm happy with how the 5-minute draft turned out!
--
the child looks
staring
at the sea of shapes
gorgeous geometry
the textures and colours
contort, distort, retort
like a shapeshifting ghost
screaming boldly
unnamed but full of
old life
life sprouting at every corner
every edge
every shade
until everything bleeds together
the child blinks
and the shapes dance
all with liveliness
and gaiety
and lightness
is this a playground
he wonders
as the toys animate
as the blocks levitate
as the pictures obliterate
onto themselves
their objects
the link to the abstract
is not difficult
just look
just notice
life is at every corner
of our world's geometry
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