Initial post shenanigans. Initial...caveat? There will be some NSFW stuffs appearing from time to time, so don't be alarmed by that. Also, I'll try to make this as hypertextual as I can--that way, if clarification is needed, it can be gotten. Other than that--I'm a pretty mediated fellow, so I'll do my best to put...something up each day. For today, it will be (and by it, I mean this blog post will be) about part of my "10 Rules for Writing Like Me (Glenn)," and specifically, my first rule
I need to have music going. I know some people like peace/quiet/waking up at extremely odd hours of the day/night to write, but I need to hear something aside from thoughts or breathing. I tend to write in the Ekphrastic mode often(I did just use wikipedia--don't kill me), although my medium tends more to be auditory art versus visual. A lot of times, I will know a certain "feel" I want a poem to have, and use a song/genre to get me in a good head space for it. Connecting this a bit back to my mastertape (which I will try to refine soon, very soon), I'm a big fan of emotional connections in poems, and more specifically, the intimate/sensual that a poem can elicit. This does not mean every work of mine has to be "sexual" (although it happens frequently), but I do like the notion that life, as a whole, is a series of collisions, and there is something...well, intimate about these collisions. I also tend to obsess greatly about things--a song, a person (oops), anything that I don't know--I feel I need to know things at times. These obsessions often times fuels a poems content. For example, I am very much obsessed with this song, currently: .
In general, I would label this under my "guilty pleasure r&b," where the bravado is on some insane level but there is some sick groove that underlies it. Anyway, I'll probably use this song to compose to soon--with music, I don't necessarily go for key words within the songs, but again, a feel. In this songs case, there is just something...pulsing in it. I think in a way music for me is a sort of synesthesia--I don't see colors or necessarily taste anything when I hear a song, but I do get a sense of "what" should happen.
I have a feeling I'm rambling now, so I'll try to encapsulate: I must have music. I have tons of obsessions. Music tends to be a constant obsession. I filter the "rhythm" of a poem out through music. Clear enough?
-Glenn
Hmm...maybe synesthesia should be part of your master tape, so that music/relationships/religion don't have to be separate categories but can be expressed as somehow mushed into one sensual, overlapping experience?
ReplyDeleteI really like that idea--I guess that's why you get paid the big bucks™!
ReplyDeleteIf I slightly change my lens to something like "relationships as expressed through the synesthesia of music," would you still expect each music/religion/science to appear simultaneously in the poem, or would it turn more towards the actual song being impetus and those sorts of delineation being second (or even third) wave?
I am seriously digging how the concept of synesthesia could reconcile these seemingly divergent impulses, as literally one sort of "scene" would trigger these other associations. Strictly speaking, I guess the "sound" here would result in the visual (I guess imagery in the text), but maybe this is something I need to work through? I think the way the mind work is fascinating, and it's surprising what sort of ideas are triggered by doing something that seems completely unrelated.