Songwriting Without Boundaries Page 11

  CHALLENGE #3

  OBJECT WRITING

  WITH METAPHOR

  I would hurl words into this darkness and

  wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded,

  no matter how faintly, I would send other words

  to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense

  of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.

  —RICHARD WRIGHT, AMERICAN HUNGER

  This challenge is an extension and continuation of the metaphor challenge. You’ve accomplished quite a bit so far, writing from your senses and learning to use your images—the stuff of your senses—to be seen as something more: William Faulkner’s crowded cans of sardines on the country store shelf become the crowd of people in the general store watching the trial of Abner Snopes, accused of burning a barn.

  Now for the next step.

  What quality does a can of sardines have? Crowded. What else is crowded? The shelf, crowded with crowded things. The courtroom, crowded with the townsfolk.

  The courtroom = can of sardines

  In what respect?

  They’re both crowded.

  So now I get to use nouns, verbs, and adjectives that really belong with, say, can of sardines and apply them to the courtroom.

  The courtroom felt packed in oil

  The courtroom felt dead and gray

  The courtroom, layered in townsfolk

  The oily courtroom

  Something fishy …

  Faulkner chose to put cans of sardines on the shelf for a reason: It was ultimately a metaphor for Abner’s quest to break free of any kind of restriction. Pretty cool.

  Essentially, to find a metaphor you find some quality that two separate ideas share in common. The best way is to ask these two questions:

  1. What interesting quality does my idea have?

  2. What else has that quality?

  Answering the second question usually releases a flood of possible metaphors.

  In this fourteen-day challenge you’re going to exercise your ability to extend metaphors—to find more and more common links between the two ideas of the metaphor (the courtroom = can of sardines), and to be able to transpose the qualities of one onto the other: to talk about the courtroom in fishy, oily, packed language.

  You’ll be asked to respond each day with object writing that stays deep in the senses, but the object writing in this section, unlike the writing you’ve done up to this point, can be focused on a more unified narrative thread.

  For the first seven days, I’ll supply the linking qualities—the qualities that will serve as links to a new idea, which I’ll call the target idea. Starting on day eight, you’ll be asked to find your own linking qualities, from which you’ll find your target idea (what else has that quality?). You’ll be asked each day to do ten-minute pieces of object writing for each pairing.

  Fear not. As usual, each day will include two example responses from other writers, including poets, songwriters, and prose writers.Go get ’em.

  DAY #1

  LINKING QUALITIES

  TO TARGET IDEAS

  Prompt: Snowstorm

  You see a snowstorm and wonder what it could be a metaphor for. Usually, you see something about it—a quality—that reminds you of something else, like how the flakes float to the ground. Your mind makes the leap to other things that float to the ground, and you might think of autumn leaves. You start to think of how snowstorms are like falling leaves, or how falling leaves are like snowstorms. Wow, you think, a blizzard of leaves, or, the sky shedding snow. You can think of either one in terms of the other. And what made it possible was linking from snowstorm, through its quality, floating to the ground, to leaves. That’s usually how it happens.

  But, rather than waiting for inspiration and for those “aha” moments to occur, you can make a habit of seeing one thing through the lens of something else; it can become a way of looking at the world. That’s what writers do—see the world on several levels. They’re always combing snowstorms and crashing waves for metaphors.

  You start by asking: What interesting qualities does snowstorm have? Here are a few:

  Cold

  Covering the ground

  Hot cider by the fireplace

  Slippery roads

  Low visibility

  I’ll call these qualities of snowstorm the linking qualities. They’ll provide the link from snowstorm to a new idea, which I’ll call the target idea—the idea that snowstorm can be a metaphor for.

  Start with cold.

  A snowstorm is cold. You can now look for what snowstorm can be a metaphor for by asking: What else is cold?

  You’re searching for your target idea.

  How about your sneer? It’s pretty cold.

  Snowstorm → Linking quality: Cold → Target idea: Your sneer

  And now, after linking the quality cold to the target idea, your sneer, you’ll take ten minutes to explore your sneer through the lens of snowstorm, describing the sneer in snowy qualities. Like this:

  Your sneer is a snowstorm.

  I stiffen up, muscles tensing as I watch your face contort into a cold sneer. Frigid blast, pushing me back on my heels, your words pelting me, my eyes tearing against the chill. I feel your contempt piling up around me, a shiver running down my back in goose bumps, while you lean in, immobilizing me in your icy landscape; I’m frozen, unable to move my legs. My heart, racing, begins to slow, blood thickening, dimming into silence.

  So I’ve moved from snowstorm to cold to your sneer, which led to a description of our fight and its effect on me. You weren’t very nice …

  Now try the second linking quality, covering the ground:

  Snowstorm → Linking quality: Covering the ground → Target idea: Wildflowers

  And now, after linking the quality covering the ground to the target idea, wildflowers, you’ll take ten minutes to explore wildflowers through the lens of snowstorm, describing the wildflowers in snowy qualities. Like this:

  A storm of wildflowers

  A meadow of reds, purples, golds, and yellows, blanketing the earth, a storm of perfumed color, making you blink and breathe deep. Pollen swirling, like snowflakes dancing in the air, melting into petals that will soon float onto the thick grass, nourishing the hungry soil. A riot of chirping and crickets, snow white clouds sailing overhead …

  So I’ve moved from snowstorm to covering the ground to wildflowers, leading to a description of a meadow covered by flowers. Pretty. A positive look at the snowstorm for a change.

  How about hot cider by the fireplace?

  Snowstorm → Linking quality: Hot cider by the fireplace → Target idea: Seeking comfort

  A snowstorm seeking comfort

  Take ten minutes to explore seeking comfort through the lens of snowstorm. Like this:

  Surge forward in your dress of white, loose and flowing, moan and push on, muscles coiled, straining. Breathe deep, great gulps opening your throat, feeling the howl rise from your toes, screaming up through your chest and through your cracked lips. Taste the doors clamped tight against you, fearing you—cold, bitter. Push hard in your dress of white until your pulse hammers and you sag, melting finally to the ground.

  So I’ve moved from snowstorm to hot cider by the fireplace to seeking comfort, which led to the description, perhaps, of a pretty scary woman rampaging through a town. Or not. You could be talking right to the storm as though it were a woman crying out for comfort. Either way works great! Fun, eh?

  Try this out. Following the examples above, supply the target idea for each of the linking qualities below:

  Snowstorm → Linking quality: Slippery roads → Target idea: _____________

  What else has slippery roads? A high school? A relationship? Take ten minutes to explore your own target idea through the lens of snowstorm. Remember to stay as locked into sense-bound language as you can. First, here are a couple of examples.

  ROB GILES

  Snowstorm → Linking quality: Slippery roads → Target idea: A
rgument

  An argument is a snowstorm.

  Your cold shoulder and my heated anger smashed together in midair over the kitchen table. Like ice cracking beneath our feet, we heard too late to escape what was coming. We’d rather die than escape it seemed, so we stomped our feet against our fate, desperate to be heard, as each pressing point piled up, silently, but in a wall of cold hard snow around our hearts. We could not see each other in the flurry of our insistence. We would never find our way back to where we came from—back into the warmth of our hearth, the comfort of our home where we used to see eye to eye, hear each other’s perspectives, love each other even when we disagreed. And the pressure built, thicker clouds rolled in, and before we knew it we were self-abandoned in the darkening woods, losing feeling in our fingers and toes, our cheeks and noses; we had too little on and were too far from safety, and worse of all we were not helping each other to stay safe. No bread crumbs were to be found under these drifts, no echo to give us bearings, our screams were swallowed up by the slow white blanket that dangerously drifted in to bury us. Together or apart, we were lost, both helplessly holding pieces of a map that lead in different directions. The sun setting on us and the temperature dropping, we were doomed by our pride as our argument buried us alive.

  Rob holds open house for snowstorm’s family members, seeing his target idea, argument through the lens of snowstorm. In doing so, he extends the metaphor, digging deep into snowstorm’s family tree. Take a little time and underline as many as you can.

  MICHAEL SHORR

  Snowstorm → Linking quality: Slippery roads → Target idea: Marriage

  Marriage is a snowstorm.

  I can see the blizzard coming. The clouds of growing anger begin to darken your lovely face. My stomach fills with icy dread. You speak and in your trying-to-stay-calm voice I hear the building storm, a distant howling, frozen flakes of love begin to fall in the air between us. The wide-open, clear blue sky of our happiness grows pale, then gray, then the storm unleashes and explodes, warm love disintegrates into stabbing horizontal sheets of stinging curses and hurled accusations, like a frozen sandstorm, pelting my skin, freezing my tenderness. I wince and bend and curl my body into a ball—backing away—like I’m huddling into a thick, warm coat trying to protect myself from the frozen assault, the machine gun of icy attack.

  Michael uses the second version of expressed identity here with “clear blue sky of our happiness grows pale.” Note also his use of verbal metaphor and adjective/noun in “warm love disintegrates” and his final simile, “curl my body into a ball—backing away—like I’m huddling into a thick, warm coat trying to protect myself.”

  Your turn. What else has slippery roads? Take ten minutes to explore your target idea through the lens of snowstorm. Again, remember to stay as locked into sense-bound language as you can.

  Snowstorm → Linking quality: Slippery roads → Target idea:_____________

  Okay, here’s your next linking quality to work with:

  Snowstorm → Linking quality: Low visibility → Target idea: ______________

  What else has low visibility? Take ten minutes to explore your target idea through the lens of snowstorm. Again, remember to stay as locked into sense-bound language as you can.

  TAMI NEILSEN

  Snowstorm → Linking quality: Low visibility → Target idea: Prejudice

  Prejudice is a snowstorm.

  You’ve already made up your mind about who I am and nothing I say or do can make you see me. Your flurry of cold opinions swirl furiously, blinding your eyes and snowing me under with white, oppressive silence. There’s an episode of Little House on the Prairie, the one with the big snowstorm, where Pa Ingalls ties a rope to the barn to try and feel his way back home, but the blizzard is so dense, he can’t find his bearings—those things he knows are true and real. I always wondered how he could have gotten so terribly lost in such a short distance. With teeth chattering, chilled to the bone by your ignorance, now I know.

  A wonderful, fresh look at the abstract concept, prejudice. This process of using a linking quality to find a target idea yields almost instant dividends. Note how the Pa Ingalls passage sets up “I always wondered how he could have gotten so terribly lost in such a short distance.” Note also the verbal metaphor “ignorance chills me to the bone.”

  SYLVIE LEWIS

  Snowstorm → Linking quality: Low visibility → Target idea: The past

  The past is a snowstorm.

  Countless crystal white days float upwards, backwards and every which way, muddling my mind with how similar they all become. Stiff, cold fingers of memory reach backwards trying to catch those snowflake days which promptly melt leaving that damp feeling that there was once something more there. Jutting up through the swirling of things past, shadowy fuzzy forms of branches, people, houses I’ve known and touched and held onto in warmer days. Traveling deeper into the storm, the cumbersome boots known as “How I Wish It had Been” squeak and slush, occasionally I stumble on something frozen solid. Brushing aside the gathering whiteness, there it is: a moment held firm by the ice, fossil of a feeling, colours caught, voices suspended in the circular chorus of what we said: Love’s not red, it’s amber and it melts all the other stuff away.

  “Stiff, cold fingers of memory reach backwards trying to catch those snowflake days” uses both the expressed identity and adjective/noun versions of metaphor you’ve come to know and love. See how effectively they can be combined to create a startling picture of memory’s struggle to reach back into the past.

  Your turn. What else has low visibility? Find your target idea and take ten minutes to explore it through the lens of snowstorm. Again, remember to stay as locked into sense-bound language as you can.

  Snowstorm → Linking quality: Low visibility → Target idea:_____________

  Pretty interesting, this lens thing. By the end of this challenge you’ll be an expert. Brand-new glasses. Powerful magnification. Inspiring. Fun.

  DAY #2

  LINKING QUALITIES

  TO TARGET IDEAS

  Prompt: Deep-Sea Diver

  Here we go again. First, list three interesting qualities of a deep-sea diver to use as linking qualities. When you’re asked to find your own linking qualities (soon), make sure they are a close relation to, e.g., deep-sea diver’s family, that they capture an essential quality. That’s the key to finding an effective target idea. Here they are:

  Totally immersed

  Supported by a lifeline

  Surrounded by an unfamiliar landscape

  Now, link each to a target idea—the ideas that deep-sea diver can be a metaphor for, by asking:

  What else has that quality? What else is totally immersed?

  As you did yesterday, take ten minutes to explore your target idea through the lens of deep-sea diver. Remember to stay as locked into sense-bound language as you can (e.g., a bookworm is deep-sea diving into a fantasy world).

  CHARLIE WORSHAM

  Deep-sea diver → Linking quality: Totally immersed → Target idea: Cyclist

  A cyclist is a deep-sea diver.

  His legs burn as he paddles, pushing forward with all his might. He breathes in the hard air as the world ahead of him zooms into focus from the blurry distance. The rhythmic noise of his tires spinning keeps him lost in a daydream, only this is no dream. Every twitching muscle, every ounce of energy, every brain cell, nerve, tendon, thought—it all spirals down into the abyss of the next valley. He soars upward toward the light as the world around him hangs all around, suspended almost in water. There’s a coolness of wind rushing by. The whirring, stirring sounds of air fill his ears and numb his sense of the world outside. Sweat bubbles and drips from his forehead down his chest and onto the ocean bed of pavement. He is completely alone here on this road, no more above ground than a diver drifting through his world of discovery. He knows his time will run out, almost as if the air would be cut off from his lungs if he doesn’t win the race. The wilderness around him is his a
quarium. He is the focus, the one out of place, the pioneer in a world of sand and stone and plant and wild animal. Concentration, sharp as coral, deep in his brain as a sunken ship. The waving trees suspend time as if he swims underwater. He will not come up for air until he crosses that threshold, until the task is done. The sunlight is dampened beneath this surface of branches and leaves. His eyes do not stray, his heart beats with the deliberate intensity of a war drum. He takes in each breath like a machine. His equipment is an extension of his body. He feels the pressure pushing at him from all sides, like the kid at the bottom of the deep end seeing how long he can hold his breath. There is no outside world—there is only beating heart and smooth, liquid momentum. The nerves tingle with excitement and danger. The horizon rolls forward with him, pushed to its own edge. The winding roads dip and duck and rise and fall like the waves of clouds overhead.

  What an interesting way to look at cycling. Charlie uses a nice mix of metaphor and simile to paint the picture. Take a few minutes to underline the places he submerges you.

  SUSAN CATTANEO

  Deep-sea diver → Linking quality: Totally immersed → Target idea: In conversation

  Conversation is deep-sea diving.

  Tethered to our convictions, we float out one idea after another, words dart out of our open mouths, swallowed up by the moment. Hope treads water between us, coming to rest gently on the sandy bottom, the bubble of connection, a world full of noise beyond ours, swaying, heads close …

  Tethered is a close relation to deep-sea diver. It makes a fresh, interesting statement when applied to convictions.

  Your turn. What else is totally immersed? Find your target idea and take ten minutes to explore it through the lens of deep-sea diver. Again, remember to stay as locked into sense-bound language as you can.

  Deep-sea diver → Linking quality: Totally immersed → Target idea:_____

  Here’s our second linking quality:

  Deep-sea diver → Linking quality: Supported by a lifeline → Target idea: ___________

  Now take ten minutes to explore your new target idea through the lens of deep-sea diver.