Adventures in forced creativity
I never claimed to be a good writer. I’m overly verbose and hate editing my material; much preferring the spontaneity of the moment, even if that spontaneity is inferior. I also tend to have a wicked case of writer’s block with the occasional 10 pages-at-once exception to the rule. Generally writer’s block is a constant though.
Sometimes when I feel the need or desire to write but don’t have a topic, I just grab a song lyric from whatever’s playing at the time and make that my first line. It serves as a starting point and I just let my mind wander from there. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s passable, and sometimes it’s not even worth saving when I close MS Word.
This time, “The Day I Tried to Live” by Soundgarden was playing and I ended up with the following. I make no judgements about the quality, but it was enjoyable to imagine in my head:
“I said seize the day,” he spat through gritted teeth. Then he laughed the maniacal cackle of a madman living his fantasies. The wind was beating us down, the rain soaking as if Noah himself were aboard. We were miles from safety and yet despite my predilection towards…living, I found myself laughing along.
We were two madmen laughing together while the world itself tried to destroy us.
I can always count on Chris to get me into these sorts of situations, “why not” being not just a favorite question of his but an absolute maxim of life.
“Let’s go to Costa Rica” being the one that got us into this particular mess.
“Why?” I asked already fairly certain of the answer.
“Why not?” it came in return.
So miles from the Costa Rican shoreline, rain pelting our bodies, we sat atop a tiny sailboat that neither of us really knew how to operate. If worse came to worse it had an outboard motor – Chris’ one concession to my practical streak; however the use of the motor would come at the price of pride. So far, we’d not reached that point.
“Pull that one tight” Chris shouted in my direction.
“Which one?” I screamed back.”
“I dunno, the one that makes that other thingie tighter!”
Yeah, I know, we’re quite the pair. Bonnie and Clyde. Ozzie and Harriet. Jack and Tyler.
Chris the proud enabler; I the one who usually found a way out of the situation. Need to bribe a Mexican policeman? Been there. Find a flight across the border of an ex-soviet nation? Done that. The good news is that we both had jobs that could easily accommodate unplanned vacations for unspecified periods of time. The bad news is that due to our reputations, if we ever went missing no one would bat an eye for at least six months.
Jumping back to my side of the boat, Chris grabbed the rope in question and gave it a firm tug across his body. The sail pulled taught in accordance. This didn’t help us at all however, as the increased drag only increased the boat’s listing.
“Fly her loose!” I found myself saying, thinking I might have heard that in a pirate movie once.
“What in the hell does that mean?”
I pulled ropes at random until I found the one I was looking for. The knot came out easily and the rope shot from my hand like a bottle rocket. As we both hit the deck to avoid the now apparently sentient whip, the sails loosened and the boat instantly relaxed.
Crisis averted, for now at least. The rain still pelted out backs as Chris and I looked at each other from our prone positions; yeah this was pretty standard. We were wet, lost, cold, and alive.
“Hell of a way to start the day, huh?”
“Hell of a day Chris.”
“Consider it seized.”
