by Carson A. Metzger

Exercise #1: Practice writing a song where you avoid telling entirely

How do you do this?

Be descriptive.

Avoid universal statements by grounding or dramatizing your song in the details of a particular scene, character, or relationship between characters.

Avoid using “to be” verbs.

Forgo clichés and truisms by translating things you have heard before into your own words.

If you find yourself writing about the effects of television, consider these two divergent ways of approaching the subject matter.

Example 1:
1A. Telling

Turn off your TV
it only makes you stupid.

1B. Showing

Dad talked at the TV
more than he heard me.

In example 1A, the songwriter adopts the telling mode to let us know what he thinks of television. The resulting statement is universalizing, didactic, clichéd, and ungrounded in any particulars (see the forthcoming theory section for more explanation).

In example 1B, the songwriter communicates a similar notion—that the TV can have a stupefying effect on people—by describing how television is experienced through a relationship between two particular people.

Example 2:
2A. Telling

Isn’t it strange
The way the world works?
Isn’t it odd
How fate moves us?

2B. Showing

As the tarot cards told
She got rounder with season
Sucking in her bulging belly
“By whose magic am I pregnant?”

In example 2A, the songwriter uses vague words—“strange” and “odd”—to express a cliché: fate is inexplicable. Part of the burden of the songwriter is to put the inexplicable into words—not simply to mimic the truism. Often, when we tell, we are making an argumentative claim of some sort. Here the author claims that the world is strange because of the manner in which fate works. Yet in telling, she provides no evidence to support this claim. Why should I believe this songwriter? Such a telling approach leaves me asking the question: why is the world strange? How does fate move us?

In example 2B, the songwriter approaches a similar claim—fate shapes the world—by giving fate a character—in the forms of “tarot cards” and “magic”—and by dramatizing the strangeness through a particular woman. Here, the fate is not some abstract force; rather the pregnant woman embodies fate—we see the effects of fate as she struggles with the strangeness of “her bulging belly.”

In practicing a showing mode in my songwriting, I have learned that we are capable of telling through showing. This leads to much richer, more dramatic, less didactic songwriting.

I want to end with a few lines from Iron & Wine’s song Passing Afternoon:

There are things that drift away
Like our endless numbered days
Autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she made

Here, songwriter Sam Beam of Iron & Wine mixes telling with showing. In the first two lines, he tells us about change in a universal fashion. Both the use of the verb to be—“There are”—and the invocation of a collective subject—“our”—suggest the universal reach of Beams words. In these first two lines, we are not privy to a particular scene or narrative.

Yet Beam shifts in the next line to a more particular mode of showing; in fact, he uses this line to show what he has told us in the first two lines: “Autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she made.” What was universal and objective—the vague “things [that] drift away”— becomes embodied in a particular quilt blown off by the winds accompanying a specific change of season (The first stanza of the song describes summer so we witness the movement of “endless numbered days” from summer to autumn).

I will continue this rough read of the Iron & Wine lyric and further flesh out these thoughts with an additional theory section to better explain how to decide when to show and when to tell in your songs.

Cheers,
Carson

Carson Metzger is an alt-folk singer-songwriter working on a PhD and performing in Albuquerque, NM. He is wrapping up the production of a new album, A Nova Anatomia of Gods and Bodies. His music and lyrics can be found at carsonmetzger.net.
He can be contacted at carsonametzger@gmail.com.
See another of Carson’s contributions to The PCQ:
Garage Sale Retrospective

This is National Novel Writing Month.

I like to put in a plug for it every year, but at over 90,000 participants (it started in 1999 with around 25 people), maybe that’s the last thing they need. That, at least, is how I’m justifying not mentioning it until past the middle of the month.

If you’re interested, you can still sign up but you might consider just lurking around the highly entertaining forums to get your feet wet before jumping in next year. On the other hand, if you need inspiration and a fast approaching deadline, go for it!

In case you don’t know, the idea is to write 50,000 words of a brand new novel in the month of November.

My first year was 2002 which makes this—doing fast math—my sixth nano year. I have considered not doing it some years, but I think I’m past that. This year even with absolutely no time to plan, there was no question that I’d be back, doing my very best to come up with another story worthy of at least 30 days of my life.

I love it because doing NaNoWriMo has taught me, more than any other class or teacher or mentor ever did, how to write a novel. It taught me how to write through the dry periods, the uninspired days, the drivel that sometimes comes out when we sit down to make up a story. It showed me the vast amount of words you have to put down before finding the right ones in the right order. It not only taught me, but also it illustrated for me, the reasons behind turning off your internal censor and suppressing at every opportunity the doubts that are always there.

A daily word count goal (sometimes even an hourly one!) goes a very long way indeed toward overcoming the mechanical (I don’t have any good ideas), emotional (I am not good enough) and practical (no time!) reasons most people never write a novel.

If writing a novel isn’t something you aspire to here’s another option. This year I’ve joined a very active social networking group called NaBloPoMo that promotes blogging everyday in the month of November (reason No. 2 why this little site o’ mine has received less attention from me than usual). I’ve been blogging most days about my NaNoWriMo writing process, as I’ve been going through it, as well as posting a few tips along the way. You can see these posts in the NaNoWriMo category on my blog. As well, I’m going to be posting the Graphic Reminders I’ve done, here on The PCQ.

I haven’t been totally neglecting The PCQ, however. There’s work-in-progress to have a new social networking branch of The PCQ. This will be a place where you can easily post and share your own works of art or writing, start your own discussions and groups on whatever kind of creativity you’re into, and decorate your own profile page with whatever you like! Hopefully an email will be going out to all registered members soon, inviting you to see it (but I have to get through November first!). Either way, look for a link to it on The PCQ home page and please do click over and see what it’s all about.

[warm-up, creative parenting]

Did you play this game as a child? It bears repeating and is a great thing to do with your own kids. It’s non-competitive, free, interactive and instructive, for adults as well as children. Plus, if you bring a creative slant to it, it can be an experience that teaches about the close relationship between smell, memory and creativity.

THE GAME:

Place a series of smells under the noses of blindfolded people and ask them to name them.

Best played in the kitchen.

That’s it.

However, it’s not as easy as it would seem to be. Sometimes the smell is as familiar as your own name but the word for it will not come. This is probably because in order to do this we have to utilize two separate parts of the brain. The part that identifies smells as familiar and known—and the part that puts a word to that familiar and known smell, ordinarily with the assistance of sight.

It would be a great game to play at a Halloween party since this holiday is already so much about masks and the senses. Make it part of your “Haunted House” and have the kids identify a few ‘bad’ smells along with the good or neutral.

If you’re just playing this at home, talk to your kids about the brain and memory. Sit down with them and do a quick free-writing exercise just to see what the non-verbal sense of smell has aroused in your c-minds. If your children are too young to write, let them dictate their stories.

You can also use some of your game smells as the basis for art work. After you’ve played the Smell Game, tell your kids they can make art with the ingredients. Explain that this art work may not be as lasting as if you were using paint. It might be a good time to teach them words like “transient,” “ephemeral,” and “fleeting” and to talk about art and artists who make art that is intentionally so.

Smell Art Ideas:

Sprinkle jello on a paper and let them use their fingers to make art (this is a great sensory-rich way to help them learn to write their letters and numbers, but save that for another more structured time ) Enhance the smell factor by letting them dip their fingers in lemon juice first!

Dip paper in strong tea, coffee, fruit juice.

Use berries to make dyes, paint with them!

Finger paint with (a little) peanut butter. (Maybe even jelly, too?)

Put glue on the paper and use aromatic spices as you would glitter.

Take one item—how about a lemon?—and do a whole picture out using all parts of the lemon.

And, this is a whole other article, but don’t forget: edible art! Pancakes with food colouring, popcorn ball people, rice cake worlds.

LINKS

Here’s a lovely website
http://library.thinkquest.org/C0110299/html/index.php made by three young people about the brain and the mind, including pages on creativity (take the How Creative are you? quiz), the senses and memory.

The Ephemeral Arts – check this one out. it’s all about ephemeral arts on the Indian sub-continent; here’s another link to the same site, one that gives examples of these kinds of art. Use them with your kids!

Stayed tuned for my own Ephemeral Arts article. Coming soon!

Have fun and never forget that anything you can do with kids and creativity, you should be doing for yourself anyway. Tapping into our childhood well, keeps creativity flowing strong!

[-quick tip, practice-]

A Quick Creative Practice
~simple habits can have profound impacts~

“The smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us…..” Marcel Proust, French writer.

Whether you’re on a high energy creative roll or in a loggy slump, paying attention to your senses always makes good sense.

The kind of creativity you’re engaged in will tend to dictate the sense organ that you primarily use—though sight wins hands down. Music – hearing, Photography – sight, Cooking – taste, Pottery/Sculpting – touch and what about that OTHER one? Ah, yes, smell!

Since that’s the sense that tends to be used least, try going on a smell adventure for a way to inspire, to perk up your creative juices. As I have detailed recently, cooking that is done with intention, can be a great creative catalyst for this very reason.

Cook something that has smells you really love—or hate! Even if you don’t, cook you can make lemonade, cocoa, peppermint tea. Or just bite into and eat one perfect peach, making sure that you are aware of the smell as you do it. There are smells all around us all the time, right? Paying attention to them is the key.

Smells can be a switch, a direct neurological link to a memory, a feeling, a moment in time. It’s simple and effective. Researchers believe that this feeling of directness to a smell or taste induced memory has to do with the fact that these senses are our only chemical ones.

Sense memories are most often associated with the art of acting, but they are also intimately tied with writing, music and art as well. We create out of who we are, so what could be better than to use this primitive, chemical-sense to heighten our abilities in order to create our own truth?

After exposing yourself to the smells of your choice, try doing a ten-minute writing exercise or quick sketches. Use the mental stimulation to create something just from the sense of smell. Have fun!

Here’s an excellent article on the science behind the sense of smell and memory.

Cooking is one of the few creative activities that I engage in pretty much everyday. However, I realized recently that somewhere along the line I stopped giving cooking the respect it deserves.

I have always enjoyed cooking but I guess my children—over time—with their penchant for the bland and the familiar, ate away at ( )the amount of creativity that I generally poured into daily meals. I remember my younger son exclaiming that a quickie “Sloppy Joe” dinner was “The best meal you’ve ever made, Mom!” That’s okay. As a busy mom, I’d take any compliment I could get.

But for years now, it’s ordinarily just my husband and myself and since we’re both adventurous eaters, I have free reign over what to cook. I’m not much of a planner. I work until my tummy tells me it’s time to eat, go downstairs, think about what I’m hungry for, see what’s available— sometimes pulling out three times as much as I’ll use—and start cooking. I rarely use a recipe for evening meals. The results are usually good and often delicious (my rule of thumb is Would I be happy if I’d paid for this at a restaurant? and often I can answer “Yes!” to that question)

However, I don’t usually think of it as part of my creative day.

Recently, I had a different kind of cooking that needed to be done. We—like many people this time of year—have a surplus of zucchini from our little garden. I don’t even particularly LIKE zucchini so I knew that I needed some creative ways of using up these mass quantities. I looked on the internet for zucchini breads and ran across a beautiful cooking blog called 101 Cookbooks by Heidi Swanson. There, I found a recipe for a zucchini bread with an ‘Indian’ twist. This looked perfect as I was having my book club over that weekend. Our book club does a pot luck dinner with food suggested by the book we’ve read and this time it was Indian.

I set to work making this and what I ended up with was not only a yummy dessert and a little less zucchini to deal with but also a renewed appreciation for cooking as both a creative outlet and catalyst.

Right from the start this zucchini bread recipe offered me two things: 1) the opportunity to bake—which I love but don’t allow myself the time to do and 2) a recipe to follow. Nothing earth-shattering there, but it dawned on me as I got into it that following a recipe was allowing me a mental escape. Follow the directions. Do this, then do this, then do that.

Relaxation was the first thing I noticed. I scooped and measured the dry ingredients, enjoying the gentle mess of flour as it sifted across the counter. I used my food processor with childlike glee to shred that huge zucchini in the photo in a just few seconds.

Then I noticed that the relaxation was overlaid with something else: stimulation. My sense of smell became activated in a major way by the ingredients. Lemon zest! Wow, what a virtual explosion of associations: summer and heat and childhood and so many others—all good! Then there were the more familiar but homey smells of pecans (being from Texas where pecans grow, I used them instead of walnuts), cinnamon and vanilla. My senses were further delighted by surprising ingredients such as crystallized ginger and curry powder. What yummy smells and sooo delicious.

By the time I popped the two pans in the oven, I was as relaxed, happy and energized as if I’d had a late-afternoon walk on the beach or a great yoga class. I felt raring to go! Ready to take on more baking (I used up more, though not all, of the zucchini on Heidi’s gorgeous chocolate zucchini cupcakes! which we are still enjoying around here) and more of anything creative I could get my hands on.

I would have come upstairs and written this post right then if I hadn’t had Book Club coming the next night!

What I realized—remembered—is that cooking, when we can relax into it involves the senses as few other activities do. Not only smell and—of course, taste—but touch and sometimes even hearing. And it’s one of those activities such as walking or riding a bike, driving or taking a shower that can put us into a C-mindful state. I’ve often worked through plot knots while cooking. The activity is absorbing enough that it distracts but it doesn’t require a great deal of concentration—sometimes none at all. Perfect for c-mind problem solving!

So here’s the reminder: We have to eat, so why not approach the occasional cooking *chore* as an opportunity to delight our senses, relax our minds and catalyze whatever we want to do with our excess creative energy.

bon appétit

“Mount Desert Dragons” acrylic on canvas 16″ x 20″ © 2007 Tyler Darvintyne; all rights reserved

It’s wonderful to think that The PCQ has enough history and pure BULK to it that I can be distracted for so many weeks and still have new and renewable readers drop by everyday. Welcome to you all!

Over the summer, I didn’t post as much as I expected but I knew that I was doing well and good by taking a break from what had been a months-long task of putting this zine and its archives into the new format. I needed to get outside, enjoy the too-short summer months, do some physical work and complete other tasks that had been put off too long. It was a great summer.

However, I didn’t expect September to be such a bust as far as posting! I was so inspired and had great ideas for several new articles and posts, but guess what? I didn’t have time.

“dark matter telescopic” 12 x 9 acrylic on canvas © 2007 Tyler Darvintyne; all rights reserved

A trip to see my son and granddaughter came up unexpectedly. My son had the opportunity to show his art work last weekend in Bar Harbor, Maine and he needed help—babysitting and otherwise. I’ve included in this post some samples of his art. I think of it as pure energy with a large dollop of joy. I love it!

“Skies of Van Gogh” acrylic on canvas; 11″ x 14″
by Tyler Darvintyne © 2007 all rights reserved

His first outing was exhausting work for all of us, but a big success. He not only sold quite a bit of art, he learned a massive amount about how to show and sell his work.

I also got to spend almost 10 days with my granddaughter, Acadia, also known as “Cadi.” She’s 27 months old. What an age! I kept thinking, No wonder Tyler is so creative these days, he’s got Cadi around to inspire him everyday. But of course, we all know that it’s not that simple. Children are exhausting and Tyler is raising her all by himself with no family nearby to give him any relief. I think the explosion of creativity is as much about needing to do something other than parenting as much as anything else.

“Land Ho” acrylic on canvas 9″x12″ © 2007 Tyler Darvintyne all rights reserved

Whatever the reason, it’s certainly working for him. Here’s the artist, Darvintyne with a few of his paintings:

And finally, though I don’t post too many purely personal items here, I can’t resist another image, this one of Cadi. Long-time readers will remember her newborn to infant photos from the original PCQ subscriber’s page. She’s still the best!

aka “GRANCY”

For more of Darvintyne’s work go to: quintessential abstractions- http://tylermetzger.wordpress.com