Creative Prompt, 11.16.22
Hi everyone — if you do nothing else today, watch this ambient video I shared the other day of a ‘flying train’ in Germany in 1902.
If you do one more thing, I hope you’ll scroll down and take a crack at the new creative prompt. It’s one of my favorites.
As always, the prompt is entirely open to your interpretation — you can follow it as closely or as loosely as you want, using your creative medium of choice.
Scroll down for the prompt…
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I suggest waiting until you’re ready to create — the less time to overthink it, the better…
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It’s just below here, time to head into Airplane Mode…
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Share your response by leaving a comment:
Feel free to share links to your image, video and audio work.
If you’re feeling stuck, this short video about 'banging a hard left turn' might help.
Until next time,
Jasper
There is only one story in existence in which I fundamentally cannot exist, and it is the one you are asking me to tell. I could tell the story of an imagined World War III, and there is a nonzero chance that I'd live through it. But an alternate ending to my childhood, there is no living through this, for me, the person who sits here today, and types these words.
For that person to exist, I cannot.
You are asking me to hate myself. To steep in my regrets, to extract what good may linger there and use it to poison the well of life that gives me life today.
And so I will.
I was seventeen years, eleven months and twenty four days old. I had one week to rewrite my ending.
"But how do I rewrite an ending," I asked, "if I know not of the original?"
The old gypsy shot me a piercing glare. "For starters," she said. "There's no need to speak that way."
"What way?" I asked.
"'I know not.' I think you meant to say, 'I don't know.'"
"And what role do you play exactly" I asked, "in influencing my decisions?"
"The choices are yours."
"Well then," I said. "Speak not of my words."
The gypsy fiddled with the brass ornament in her hand.
"And, uh," I said. "Just answer my question."
"The ending that you must rewrite," she said, "is the one that you are on the path towards."
"And I'm unhappy with it?" I asked.
"That is for you to decide," she said. "But it is the one that will lead you here."
"Lead me where?"
"To this moment, of rewriting your history."
"I don't understand," I said.
"And you have failed," she said. "Into the void you go."
10
Mom was only a stay at home mom. She said that’s not very ladylike, well who said I wanted to be a lady. I hate pink, pink is for little girls. I want to wrestle with dad and brother. He got a chemistry set, but me … a Barbie. Dreaming someday I’ll be better than a girl.
28
Chemical engineering was a gateway to professional bliss. High heels clicking down the hall, only thing sharper than my pace was me in my blazer. Commanding the attention and respect of everyone in the conference room. Running circles around those boys, I had arrived.
30
The birth of a girl, my girl, threw me off course. The team I’ve spent my whole life trying to get off of, I now needed to champion. A softening sunk in. When she fell in love with sparkles, I pulled back her hair in pink glitter bows. When the baggage melted away I wanted nothing more than to be her everything, and be there for it all. I gave it all up, the misplaced ego. I had arrived, completely a stay at home mom.