Dynamic control exercises with Dr. Wan-Chin Chang, Blue Lake’s Piano Department Chair. Please join her as she explains this important tool for performing.
For this week’s Writing Wednesday, Dr. Caitlin Cowan explains how to use recordings to let your voice be your guide.
When we write, we often allow the sounds that words make to echo only in our head. Sometimes we labor over which word is the “right” word solely based on what we think or feel rather than what we hear. But sometimes our hearts, lungs, mouths, and tongues know the right word before we do. By the same turn, sometimes we write bland, boring poems, but when asked to describe the situation of the poem or its inspiration, we are able to recount dazzling details and narratives. Allowing your breath and voice to be your guides can be an incredible drafting strategy, and that’s what I’d like to share with you today.
Poetry doesn’t necessarily have to sound “poetic,” a word that you might associate with old-timey language, rhyme, or full of abstract nouns like “love” and “dreams” and “loneliness.” Sometimes poetry is simply full of the music of the way people actually speak or contains a strange and unique music all its own. Recording yourself can help you learn about what music your words naturally have.
For this exercise, find a quiet spot in your home or outside: anywhere you feel comfortable talking aloud in privacy. Then, use your phone’s built-in voice memos, a tape recorder, or a computer to capture your words. What should you talk about? That’s up to you! Here are some ideas that are based on Blue Lake experiences. Even if you haven’t yet spent a summer at BLFAC, the final idea will be a great place to start!
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- Write a story from the perspective of a building or practice site on Blue Lake’s campus. What does the building see, hear, feel? Then, halfway through the story, switch to writing the story from the perspective from a tree, an instrument, a deer, or a fictional Blue Lake camper!
- Start a list of sensory details for a poem: smells, tastes, and other sensations that accompany your favorite summer memories at camp or on an International tour. Once you record the details, try to connect them into lines half-a-page long when you transcribe.
- Work toward a personal essay about what being a Blue Laker has meant to you. Right now, all over the world, people are turning to art to help pass the time, comfort themselves, and entertain. Why do you think this is? Why is art important to you? Do you think it is important for all people to experience? Why or why not?
- Never been to Blue Lake but hope to spend a summer here soon? Try writing a haibun about what you hope to experience at camp. A haibun is a paragraph of writing in essay-like sentences. Then, at the end of the paragraph, compose a haiku (a poem of three lines containing 5, then 7, then 5 lines) that accompanies the sentences you just wrote. This can be a summary of what you’ve just written or a new thought entirely. Record your stream-of-consciousness thoughts for the prose part, then try to write the haiku later on after you’ve transcribed your thoughts.
Then, after you record yourself, let some time pass, then try to accurately transcribe what you hear using a pen or a computer, being as faithful as possible to your own natural pauses and breath. Don’t worry too much about aestheticizing your work (which means making it “sound” like art) until later on, after you’ve transcribed everything and are ready to revise.
If you’re interested in further reading about writing that has a unique voice, check out Patrick Rosal’s poem, “B-Boy Infinitives”; e.e. cummings’ poem, “next to of course god America I”; Hart Crane’s poem, “Chaplinesque”; and Elizabeth Acevedo’s poem, “Spear.”
Feel free to post your experiments and results in the comments or on social media with the hashtags #WritingWednesdays, #BlueLakeFineArtsCamp, and #VirtualArts
Thanks for reading this VirtualArts post brought to you by Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp!