The Interview Project

The Interview Project is a series of interviews with average everyday Americans in their home space. David Lynch and team took a road trip around America to meet people, to simply talk and get to know new faces.   The next writing project for the club requires you to choose one of the interviews, one of the people, and create a character sketch. Write about who they are, how they came to be there, where they are going. Try to be creative, create a scene, other supporting characters who observe the subject, and interesting objects in the space. I am excited to see which interview draws each of you in.


http://interviewproject.davidlynch.com/www/#/all-episodes

Prince Akim Robert Johnson

Prince Akim: Robert

I have been trying to sleep for several hours now. After a hellish night of waitressing I know that I should be exhausted but I can't seem to shake my thoughts. I got up and started cleaning the house, thus awakening my particularly groggy and cute mother, so I decided I should figure out another way to tire myself out.

For those of you who write extensively during the school year you may feel overwhelmed by the semester and begin the summer holiday feeling that all you have to write with, or about, is vapid. But maybe that lack of writing creeps up on you, and all those things left unexplored, unexpressed throw themselves in a tumult around your mind, like mine did tonight, and scream "It's time!" As soon as I started to write tonight, at 1:00 in the morning, I felt tranquility again in a way that only writing can induce.

If anyone of you would like to write during the summer but are unsure what to write about, I am going to make a weekly summer writing prompt (if not more frequent) and post it to this blog. Tonight's prompt is about Prince Akim Robert Johnson. I have been making a documentary this summer about homelessness in Denver, Colorado. I met Prince Akim outside a coffeehouse called The Network in Denver. It is a place where homeless men and women can come and sit down and have a free cup of coffee. When one is homeless, you are kicked out of the shelters at 7:00 in the morning and cannot return for twelve hours. For many, there are few places to just sit. To be. The network is a place where, if one is not doing drugs, and not disturbing the peace, one can simply sit down and remain undisturbed.

I didn't realize how much our interview with Prince Akim had disturbed me until I began writing tonight.  It was the combination of his insanity and his evident clarity that shook me. He spoke about the law, Moses and geometry in a single sentence leaving his speech disjointed and impossible to understand. However, even though nothing he said was in order, none of his ideas were complete, and he often stopped mid-sentence as if he had forgotten everything he had said before, you could sense his intelligence. I could tell that he had once been a very, very smart man. And as he unfolded several bandanas to reveal court documents and several feathers, tenderly, with the look of a man handling a small and fragile animal, I realized how unsteady life is. Things can change in a day. This man was as lonely and crazy as a person can be, introducing himself as a U.N Crown Dynasty official, but he kept everything he used to be in carefully folded fabric. He carries those pristine handkerchiefs in his backpack every where he goes. I have absolutely no idea how Robert, or Prince as he calls himself, came to be at the Network Tuesday morning, but his person confirmed what I have been thinking for a while. Life is not stagnant. There is no "grown up," or established or finished, no completion. Things can change in a day.

For today, tonight, or this week, I think it would be great if you could write either about the reality of  Prince Akim sitting on the porch of the network on Tuesday morning with coffee in his hands, or the reality of U.N Crown Dynasty official Prince Akim fighting to return the land stolen from the Native Americans. You could simply write a scene at the coffeehouse, or if Prince Akim doesn't inspire you, the  following picture/man named Kent (pictured on his bicycle) might do the trick. Last but not least, you could write a piece that illustrates that "Things can change in a day." (Things can change in a day is a phrase often repeated in the book God of Small Things.)

If you would like to share what you write please send me an email at cliffsm@lakeforest.edu.
If you need some musical inspiration, here is what was working for me tonight:

Meat Eating Furniture

Last week our group journeyed into the land of the surreal, the science fiction, the absurd, and oddly enough, possibly the future. We wrote F.E's to the following video. Lets see where this video of watching a clocks devouring flies takes you.

Meat Eating Furniture: NPR


Lana's Piece:


My pet dog, Rob, is my best friend.  He always has my back and is usually at my feet.  We like to play catch. He's faster than the speed of light and never misses the ball.  We go wandering in the woods and find little nooks that we declare as our home for the afternoon.  He's the best hiking buddy because he has a built in GPS.  We never get lost.  Another great thing about Rob is he is not picky, he'll eat just about anything, so I only have to pack a snack for myself.  He runs on bugs, wood, tree bark, but his favorite food is plastic water bottles.  Rob is better than any other dog breed because his waste is compact, doesn't smell, and can be either composted or recycled.  Since he is made out of quality materials, he will outlast my life.  He will be my children's companion one day, snuggling under the blankets with them at night while they read.  He will hike in these woods with my grandchildren.

Writing to Music

In Writing Club we have been working on how our senses can stimulate our writing. For example, when one closes their eyes and immerses themselves in music many things can be illuminated, memories, images, vivid and visceral settings, moments in time. So, for this past week in Writing Club we wrote to several music videos hoping that either the tone of the music, or the images on the screen would provoke thought and writing. This video in particular is stimulating for both the ear and the eye, I think members of the group were inspired by both.

The following is one example of writing by the group:

To begin
in the late 1800s the United States built the railroad to connect the north of America to the south
these refrigerated cars brought cold cattle from southern Mexico
to the tip of the United States' fat face
transportation of resources was the business
leaving the south of Mexico like a swollen tongue into an engorged dark mouth

and these children ride the trains
the beast
they slide notes under their parents doors
at twelve, thirteen
grab hold of giant smoking metal snakes
that derail feet off legs
torsos from heads

to ride on the top of a train is to ride a cold river on your bare back
the world splits open for you.

The MacGuffin

Spices

Today for Writing Club we wrote to smells. I brought two different spices to the Skybox, one brown, one red, and we were all challenged to come up with four words to describe each spice. Then, we were to write three places, people or things the spice reminded us of. All the while attempting to stray way from "traditional" cooking and baking words. Once the descriptors were all complied we shared them. Brittany reminded us all that smell is the sense most evocative of memories. I think we all found that our pieces were ripe with many different types of memory, both personal and cultural, as well conscious and subconscious. Here are a few samples. The first is by Sumara, Sammi Baig, a freshman at Lake Forest College and the second by myself. More to come.

Sammi's  Spice Piece:

The two women spoke in harsh Arabic.
 “Yalla! Yalla!”
 She tugged my hair, the other tugged harder. One had my fingers; smoothing them, roughing them, buffing them. Clipping out the parts unliked.
 The ceiling light emanated a dusty brown hue from which a ray of light thickened by dirt danced; limited by its thin ballroom. 
 “La, la, khamsa” spits out the one whose hands are cleverly entwined in my hair. Her accomplice picks out the fifth bottle of polish from the shelf; a smoky red, as if the sun was set on fire and all that was left was ash.
 I look over at my sister, who flips through a magazine as her mouth sloshes around gum that has been drained of all its candy sweet taste.

Kaisa Cumming's Spice Piece:

Remember feet held close to the fireplace and how the skin tingles as 
it creeps back to the bone as you creep up the cold stairs to bed.

Remember the quilt made with two hands twenty years ago by a little 
old lady with winter hands or maybe it was a little old lover with
dainty, fairy hands who pricked her winter fingers so many times you 
think you might be able to smell blood in the
fibers--but that's romantic, right?

Remember the warmth of Novemeber sun. You can see ghosts come out 
your mouth in clouds that never last.

And remember the Indian medicine woman holding her crooked bones in 
the crooked door way and the crooked-legged dog  with cloudy eyes and 
the way the song she sang when you had the fever of a fire-warmed 
cabin inside you cracked around the     
edges of her mouth.

Alex Andorfer's Piece

traveled south every summer 
    - ironically, to the state I live in now -
looming over the Sound
a mile's walk above the ocean
our collective society stood seven days of june.
i stayed in the middle room,
in the middle of the house,
the very middle of the Sound.

a ladder took you up there
           to my room (the middle one)
           to my bed
that's when bunks weren't associated with
dorm rooms
cramped living
the inability to get you laid.

the breeze carried my innocence and
Sound
sand
through the society
      the innocence and Sound to everyone's pleasure
      the sand less so

Caravanning neighbors
enthralled with the Sound.

My spice piece (oddly similar to Urrea's talk later that night)

They called our mothers

when we didn’t have a water bottle at school--

rung through telephone wires

the way this clay

feels when the sky refuses to open
we fall

after the water jug they told us to carry

drained eighteen hours ago

and the urine stopped running too

fell into a cyan green

plant our faces in the colony, 
like an animal god that smells after rain.

we ask in the city 
didn’t anyone ever tell us how much
water to bring on a desert walk?

because our bottles hang in holsters on our hips.

we may think we are the suncrowned rooster

but the flint of our every step

ignites and mummifies the cold cut pollo we are:

found

like an newborn artifact

one lime green shoe

still left on 

Walking Backwards in the Dark: Luis Alberto Urrea

Luis Alberto Urrea, the author of  The Devil's Highway, and The Hummingbird's Daughter, along with many other books, told an audience at Lake Forest College tonight that his mother used to read him Dickens before bed as a child in order to give him a sense of culture. Although he didn't understand the words or the stories she was recounting to him, as he was still a young child and primarily versed in Spanish, he said the beauty of the words overwhelmed him. As he fell asleep he could picture a stream of words flowing through his mind like a trail. Tonight, at a discussion aimed to illuminate the issues of the Mexican-American Border. He said, "Do you want to know why I can write about the border? Because it is right here," he gestured towards his chest drawing a line down the middle of his button up shirt, "I have a border fence right here in my heart." Not only did Urrea experience first hand the cruelty and the beauty of the physical border between the United States and Mexico, but as a child he learned intimately about the borders between people. Between his mother and father, the city and barrios of his youth, even the Mexicanism and Americanism of his own self. Urrea said, "I don't like fences, I like bridges."

What Urrea intimately reminded us of tonight is the fact that writing can be used as a tool of self discovery, a crisscrossed map of bridge building within one's own self, and to raise the community up. Urrea's books are poignant examples of walking the line between striving for a personal resolution within one's own life, and promoting education and understanding within the community. What a better way to be a writer but to define the gap of ones self-understanding as well as the communities and attempt to bring each closer together. Here is one of his poems for you to enjoy.

Response to Deja Vu

This is the first official piece we have gotten in response to one of the prompts for the blog. This one is anonymous and from someone who does not go to Lake Forest College. Hope you all respond with thoughts!

Rainbow Cupcakes: Andrea Gibson Event

Tonight was a successful event for the Lake Forest Coffee House Club, now known as Cafe Calypso. We served fair trade coffee and cookies and cupcakes for PRIDE's Andrea Gibson event. Andrea Gibson is a slam poet from Maine, who currently lives in Boulder, Colorado. Her words tonight were inspiring, and  I think all in attendance can agree that we left with our arms covered in goosebumps. I think slam poetry is an intriguing avenue for writing as it blends performance and words. I would encourage you all to experiment with this style of poetry. See if this might fit your voice.  Here is a link to what I found to be one of her most arresting poems.

"I Do" by Andrea Gibson

Write to This:

Today, writers wrote to this image. The idea was that this image was so close up that the object itself was almost unidentifiable. Writers could describe what they believed this object to be, use elements from the picture to aid, challenge or inspire their writing. This is a piece, by one of toda's writers, that resulted from the 7 minutes of writing:

As a man accustomed to sunsets, raising children in Flora, Indiana is hard. Sunsets over the water fill one up like a bay: whole of water swollen color until you can't breath with looking at so much red. Sunsets over the cornfields and trees are non-existent. Days simply end. They don't fade, dissipate, release with a gust. It was simply day and now it is not. So I take my children to see the sunrise. Where the transparent ghost of the earth rises to meet the sky in a light-fog. We drive out of Flora, the boys bundled up in ther bootie pajamas, holding their blankets to their chins. I love to watch how they look out the window as the sun eases into the sky and the fog absorbs our car like we are nothing but this. How they hold their brothers hands the way I clung to my mothers elbow when I saw the sunset bleed into the Atlantic for the first time.

Meeting February 17th, 2011: The Reluctant i

Today's meeting went along swimmingly. Thanks to all who showed up, wrote, shared their work and ideas! The first prompte we wrote to was,"The Reluctant I," which is where you must write for 7 to 10 minutes from the first-person narrative without using the words, I, My, Me, or Myself. The idea is to create the feeling of narration, personality, and intimacy, but without the emphasis on the self. Writers could use any thing, person, or animal as their narrator as long as they refrained from using typical "self" words. I encourage you all to try this type of writing.

First Creative Exercise: Deja Vu

For those of you already bored with the blizzard and spending so much time in your room, here is a writing prompt to chew on for the next couple of days. I would suggest writing this prompt like an F.E. What is an F.E you might ask? It is a finger exercise. The goal is to write for 15 minutes to a prompt without letting your pen stop, keep your fingers moving and the words flowing. If you get stuck, write the last line over and over again, but never ever stop writing. So here is the first F.E of the new year!

Write a sketch of a scene in which a character has an experience that causes them to recall a startlingly similar past experience. Juxtapose the two scenes, the present one and the past one, on top of each other, writing for instance, two or three sentences of the present moment, then alternating back and forth between present and past. Show the reader the remembered scene by use of Italics. Why would a character be haunted like this? Think of a convincing reason for the Deja Vu experience. Or don't worry too much about a convincing reason--just let some strange set of events impinge on the present moment of your character. Be playful with the relationship.

There is something about being trapped in one place due to outside forces that forces one to consider past experiences. Utilize this snow and the quiet to think about this relationship!

The Inauguration of the Lake Forest College Writing Club

Hello All,

This is the blog for all the writers at Lake Forest College who would like to share their work with their fellow students, simply write creatively outside of class once a week, or be inspired by the works of other students on campus. We will meet every Thursday at 12:00pm in the skybox.


The purpose of this blog is so that students can share their work anonymously, or otherwise with the members of this group, and receive constructive criticism. Like any literary forum, there must be rules for this group. Primarily, it takes courage to share ones work with others, even if it is anonymously, and thus this page must be respectful and kind. That is not to say you must beat around the bush, or sugar coat your responses to someones piece, however you must provide both praise and constructive criticism when they are due. 


Beginning on February 10th, the Writing Club will meet for an hour at the least. Bring pencils, pens, papers, journals etc... and be prepared to free write. If, throughout the week, you have a piece you would like to share, whether for class or for fun, and would like to recieve comments, you may post it on this blog. If you have a piece you would like to share first email cliffsm@lakeforest.edu with the writing as an attachment. I will then post it to the blog. If you would like your name included, tell me in the email, otherwise the posting will remain anonymous.  Hopefully this will become a safe place for creative growth and inspiration.


Also, at points throughout the week I will post writing prompts. For those of you procrastinating on classwork, check out the blog for interesting prompts and inspiration.

Sincerely,
The Lake Forest College Coffeehouse