Free associate to a song. Listen to the music and write the scene, the story that comes to mind. Stephanie Meyer is said to have listened to Muse as she wrote Twilight. I nudged the idea toward Jeff. He was game. He collaborated on our loose rules and chose the first song.
I'll post what I came up with here. The song is here too, above. You can listen to it while reading or not, but the words below were pulled out of me directly by the music above.
Here is a link to Jeff's mind space for the same song. (FYI, he also wrote this hilarious comic...)
Now this here is two beers worth of material! Take care with it!
Introducing, Wye Oak - "Sprial."
Swirling ripples flowing outward, I ponder if I will ever see the ropes clear a moment for me to jump into this double dutch tonight.
A foggy haze - not a deafening, dominant, blinding fog, but a sheer fog with muscle -
indistinctness moonlights as beer goggles...just enough to see all in this place as the perfect amount of sexy. We all strut like cougars, like big cats, shoulders pronounced and meaningful with each step
all on display.
Someone comes close to me, lightly touches my fingers and with a grasp so slight, I’m not sure they are even doing so (such as with a ouija board, are you pushing or am I imagining this ease of movement?). I am being lured onto the floor.
Slow hip rocking, up ....down, sinking small ships carrying port, maybe packed in styrofoam
maybe paper instead so that when wet, it breaks down as we all do …..emotions when wet are naked and vulnerable to any and all extremes you can think of -
- but for now this ….even, innately measured movement, left hip up, right hip pushing, switch
right hip sway up, left hip pushing, a pendulum of want, of ritual, of blessings to have the good experience of sensation.
Doesn’t matter that this body in front of me is male or female... they chose me to spend this kinetic transference of love and time with the sparse moments of their own lives, for we wish it would last longer than it does...
- and will this beckoning body before me remember me someday, remember this moment if it goes no further? Will they remember the quick snap of electricity that urgently whispered before lying down subservient to muteness immediately after our fingers first connected? Or is this the start to our lifelong dance? Are we going to face the glare of last call together, sweat drying, voices and words making everything awkwardly between the scenes? Will you, this new incomprehensible and enigmatic figure become more than a thief of a five minute tangle? Can we move in silent fluidity over lines that have been previously sloppily erased?
Will we ever need to speak or will gazes serve, finding its emphatic enhancements when needed? Will I see you cross a street, your eyes momentarily flashing to extract all available oxygen for a second past Too Much?
Closer, and your breath is 200 proof as the ship sinks, taking me under, logs, fish, pocket watches, coins, wedding rings, the lively colonies of a pier leg, submerged, full of life, full of undisciplined emotion. Pause. Yet there is still movement. Time hesitates and cranes its neck....for not even time knows what this ending is. It only keeps the beat, it can’t project the melody. Top hatted, bespectacled, sitting forward, I don’t envy any of it. Your deliberate and desirous infused exhalation touches my senses, ignites smoldering tiny fires, soon to join hands to become a circular undertow. And I won’t swim. I will drown before salvaging anything other than this current.
So long as the lights don’t dry us out, I give myself to this wet earth amongst rusty pocket watches. There are no other First Times to have.
Swirling ripples flowing outward, I ponder if I will ever see the ropes clear a moment for me to jump into this double dutch tonight.
A foggy haze - not a deafening, dominant, blinding fog, but a sheer fog with muscle -
indistinctness moonlights as beer goggles...just enough to see all in this place as the perfect amount of sexy. We all strut like cougars, like big cats, shoulders pronounced and meaningful with each step
all on display.
Someone comes close to me, lightly touches my fingers and with a grasp so slight, I’m not sure they are even doing so (such as with a ouija board, are you pushing or am I imagining this ease of movement?). I am being lured onto the floor.
Slow hip rocking, up ....down, sinking small ships carrying port, maybe packed in styrofoam
maybe paper instead so that when wet, it breaks down as we all do …..emotions when wet are naked and vulnerable to any and all extremes you can think of -
- but for now this ….even, innately measured movement, left hip up, right hip pushing, switch
right hip sway up, left hip pushing, a pendulum of want, of ritual, of blessings to have the good experience of sensation.
Doesn’t matter that this body in front of me is male or female... they chose me to spend this kinetic transference of love and time with the sparse moments of their own lives, for we wish it would last longer than it does...
- and will this beckoning body before me remember me someday, remember this moment if it goes no further? Will they remember the quick snap of electricity that urgently whispered before lying down subservient to muteness immediately after our fingers first connected? Or is this the start to our lifelong dance? Are we going to face the glare of last call together, sweat drying, voices and words making everything awkwardly between the scenes? Will you, this new incomprehensible and enigmatic figure become more than a thief of a five minute tangle? Can we move in silent fluidity over lines that have been previously sloppily erased?
Will we ever need to speak or will gazes serve, finding its emphatic enhancements when needed? Will I see you cross a street, your eyes momentarily flashing to extract all available oxygen for a second past Too Much?
Closer, and your breath is 200 proof as the ship sinks, taking me under, logs, fish, pocket watches, coins, wedding rings, the lively colonies of a pier leg, submerged, full of life, full of undisciplined emotion. Pause. Yet there is still movement. Time hesitates and cranes its neck....for not even time knows what this ending is. It only keeps the beat, it can’t project the melody. Top hatted, bespectacled, sitting forward, I don’t envy any of it. Your deliberate and desirous infused exhalation touches my senses, ignites smoldering tiny fires, soon to join hands to become a circular undertow. And I won’t swim. I will drown before salvaging anything other than this current.
So long as the lights don’t dry us out, I give myself to this wet earth amongst rusty pocket watches. There are no other First Times to have.
