Freewrite 26th August. #Greenbelt

A ‘Freewrite’ is a writing exercise designed to see what the subconscious throws up: to write freely without editing, planning, punctuation, paragraph etc. There are many variations. I use this one when I lead writing workshops, I ask participants to give 10 random words (which we add in roughly one-minute intervals) and a half sentence formed using the last word. The half sentence is the starting point for the freewrite. This freewrite was held at the Greenbelt Festival.

Words: Expedition. Pissed. Banana. Origami. Injury. Space. Reality. Cyborg. Fluffy. Carpet.

There was a carpet, a fake persian. It lay half in shadow and half in the light streaming through the windows in the old mosque. Dust clung to the air like old prayers, a withered expedition to God that failed halfway out the mouths of the penitent. The air was pisses off that it held these dead dreams. A burst banana lay in one corner, a moshpit of fruit-flies dancing above it, their tiny wings like origami paper fluttering the dusty prayers. An old woman nursing an ankle injury limped into the space and knelt down on the carpet. The dust gathered around her mouth as she bent over praying, pleading for some other reality, that the cyborgs her grandson talked about might help alleviate her pain. Her prayers were steadfast, honest, fluffy as they soared upwards towards the ceiling where the star and moon watched over the silent waiting city.

Freewrite // 1st of May

A ‘Freewrite’ is a writing exercise designed to see what the subconscious throws up: to write freely without editing, planning etc. There are many variations. I use this one when I lead writing workshops, I ask participants to give 10 random words (which we add in roughly one-minute intervals) and also a half-sentence to begin with. Words: Chocolate, Yellow, sky, cardboard, door, scent, blue tack, gravel, dog, bowl.

For a moment, I forgot what the wind feels like, what it is to run with something infinitely faster, lighter and barely of this world. There are parts of earth that are liminal, things we only see in the briefest glimpse, and are gone, a blink's worth of words: the faint faded taste of chocolate on a lover's tongue and you wish you were there before. Or finding an old book book yellowed at the edges and wanting to have held it white and just pressed. The sky is filled with this liminal energy, clouds, those gatherings of water hold faint traces of all who have drank before. When it falls, rain on open mouths, hard faces, cardboard in alleys, roof tops, reservoirs, its the dead falling all around us. The rain drops on windows are warnings, the door is splattered with screams. The after rain scent is of wounded soldiers, blue, tacked to the living, they are clinging, sinking through our skin, through gravel to the soil of us. A dog barks, lonely and knowing into the heavy dusk and the curved bowl of earth waits to drink again.