I’ve been writing a lot more lately, and submitting pieces to different places. One of the places I’ve started submitting to is the Rattle “Poets Respond” – a weekly call to write something topical, inspired by the news. Since these are going to go out of date very quickly, I’ve decided that, when they’re rejected, they’ll get posted on my Patreon (and, a few days later, here).
I once took a short course in music therapy – if I hadn’t left Cardiff, I was planning on going into it as a career – and this news article really struck me, both as a musician, and someone who studied neuroscience as part of my first degree. (We can debate the merits of such a small subject pool another time.) The response piece is a Liwuli, a short, south-east Asian literary form that lends itself to cryptic/ mystical/ philosophical approaches, with its insistence on both giving directions and asking questions.
Stare into each other’s eyes; blind yourself to the possibility of loss; connection is everything, and you are still here.
The beat goes on;
synapses hold hands;
and we are taken.
Now you know,
can it ever sound the same?
If you fancy having a go at writing one of these liwulis yourself, why not try my handy-dandy tool here? Let me know how you get on!
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| Spectrogram of me singing in harmony |
