Look Around

Patrick (USA)

[Writing experiment]

As I sit in the office, I am noticing several different shades of brown. There is the walnut of the desk. My coffee cup is mocha brown (#3C280D). As I look down at my hands typing, I observe that they could be described as a tawny shade of brown (#80471C). The drop of soy sauce resting on the white metallic packet evokes the color of maple syrup. The monitor in front of me is rectangular, as is the top to my Chinese food (although it also has rounded edges). The lenses in my Thelonious Monk-inspired glasses are concave and oval-shaped. My cylindrical, paper, coffee cup widens from top to bottom. The threads on my pink vintage gym shorts are vertical. The faint buzz of white noise consistently fills the background forcing other sounds to cut through it. My fingers tap the keys on my laptop intermittently, punctuated by the slap of the spacebar. My hand and the stubble on my need-to-be-shaved head produces a scratching sound, not that dissimilar to a DJ moving a record back and forth under a needle. The hard plastic keyboard keys brush up against my fingertips. I separate the soft strands of hair, that have formed coils in parts of my beard. The cloves and nutmeg that the barista mixed in my hazelnut-roasted coffee still lingers in my mouth, long-after I had my last sip.

(REFLECTION)

I am finding so much value in each of these workshops. I appreciate spending some time thinking about the relationship between the body and writing. This is something that I have been mindful about over the last few months. How can writing be pleasurable and how can one write about pleasure, when they are feeling lethargic? When I was in graduate school I used to love to lay out on the floor and write. There was something about being stretched out on the floor that helped me think (or so I thought). I tend to do my best writing when I am not writing in the same place. When I worked on my dissertation, I would often go to different nightclubs and write out ideas on bar napkins. This allowed me to get out of my house and get some “night air”. Between writing I would get up and dance. The physical sensations I experienced (the chill of the evening air on my skin, the staccato nod of my head to the drum beat, the sway of my hips to bass line) activated an ability to access the ideas that were deep inside. I have also long tried to implement movement and rhythm in my academic writing. My goal is to write so that the words bounce in way that is similar to the movement of some of favorite hip-hop instrumentals. This video reiterated that this is not only possible but desirable to my imagined readers.