Yet Untitled 059 - Storying
An answer to a whispered question
Dearest Yet Untitler,
I often ask myself a question - in Yet Untitled, can I do with stories what I have done with…
…whatever I have done so far?
It’s one of those whispered questions. It isn’t even obvious to me what it is that I have done. Perhaps it’s this - making sure to publish a reflective, autobiographical photo-essay each week. Given that it’s been around for 60 consequetive weeks and I still haven’t run out of steam, I guess that whatever I’ve done, I’ve done it sustainably. I’m happy. I’m surprised. I’m very grateful. I’m sharing this because a lot of you who read this newsletter have spoken to me about similarly wanting established, sustained, creative practices in your lives.
Hence, I feel it’s important to try and answer the whispered question. What next?
I can feel a gravity pulling at me now, as if I’ve arrived in the far orbit of a large planet that my eyes cannot see but my navigation insists is there, looming before me in the darkness, pulling me in its direction.
Is it this, or am I getting greedy? A part of me looks at this stack of instalments and wonders - hmmm, raw material? Another part of me says - “Stop it! Stop doing that!” Don’t you see what makes it special, possible even - is that Yet Untitled is purposeless in a way. That it’s refusal to be appropriated for anything other than remaining part of an unbroken continuum of output is what gives me the freedom to think differently than I would in my day job - which is writing stories.
Which makes me realises- I want to feel in my day job how I feel when I write Yet Untitled! Relatable, dear Yet Untitler? Tell me!
But my day job involves other people’s agendas, sometime more so than usual. Sometimes there’s a confluence between those agendas and my own. It happens, which is great, but often, it does not. So, my idea of writing stories during my day job, I’m detecting, is coloured with something that is completely absent in this sacred space - where I write Yet Untitled.
Perhaps this is where I have arrived. I’m in a solar system where the central star is asking me to reclaim the sense of freedom I had when I wrote stories at the time it all started. Back then, whenever it was, there too was a sense of arrival, not so different than what I feel now - like an arrival into a new celestial place, where, late into the night, I would write things things that still move me when I read them today. My skills were less polished back then, but perhaps my heart was braver. Perhaps - because of ‘beginners’ mind’, my eyes and heart worked better together.
Listening to me now, I think my heart and my eyes recognise what I’ve been doing with Yet Untitled. Back in those days, my eyes had seen less - and I mean this literally, because I hadn’t yet discovered photography as that amazing window through which I would one day start seeing the world. In those days, I just had words. Only words.
We make do with what we have, right, dear Yet Untitler?
Today, I have images and words, both of which I create in shovel loads as I live. Yet Untitled is the sand pit where I descend at the end of days and weeks and simply play. This sounds about correct.
Play is never forced. But every once in awhile, it’s good to try a new game. I remember picking up a camera with the deliberate decision to “take good photographs” and floundering for a time after that until I started understanding what I want to do with the medium.
So I don’t know yet if I’m going to make any big changes to our existing format of Yet Untitled, but, just as play, I’m going to try something new today. This is after listening to an interview of the Canadian singer Feist on the Song Exploder podcast. She talks about her process of writing songs which she calls Songing. It’s basically this:
Write a song as a stream of consciousness as it you had already written it 5 years ago and now were trying to remember it.
The moment I heard this, I sat up. I had found a new game I wanted to try. It didn’t feel as scary as before.
Let’s do this, I thought. Indulge me.
There I am I made it Past the river I never thought I could wade it But the one thought That one thought That pervades this Is that I still can’t believe That I made it GS could crank out 20 pull-ups in his sleep, he Could run a 200 under 20 There was that guy who’d Crack math with his eyes closed Not to mention the dude who Aced everything and made it to Harvard I smelled the grass when I collapsed In the middle of the tryouts I got out of the way when they all Banged plates for the champions I started seriously thinking I was slow on the uptake All this time I’d wonder how I’d make it I still can’t believe that I got out And I made it. I’ll tell you how I made it Let me tell you how I made it 25 years later when I cranked pull-ups Like GS, I made sure that I thought about My old self The other day, I ran feeling great that I could run a lot more I reached back and lifted me up from that Old floor I made sure that I reach back and Tell that old self The one who never believed that He’d make it I keep telling him I keep telling him I keep telling him to brave it I keep telling him I keep telling him Without him I’d be nothing I keep telling him I keep telling him That he and I are going to make it.
Some interesting stuff happened while generating that song above. I’ll list it all below:
I started writing it first as a story in the third person. I got bored and stopped.
Then I started writing it as a story in the first person. I stopped when I found that I wasn’t following Feist’s rule. But I was also bored.
Then I tried verse. This time, I was interested. But I could tell why. I think the genus of this entire instalment has to do with my watching Tick Tick Boom, Lin Manuel Miranda’s first film. It’s portrait of the writers everywhere, a telling account of the hustle they go through. In the film, Andrew Garfield’s character writes a song about Sugar, saying when asked why - “I want to prove to myself that I can write about anything”. This struck a chord. I would love to be able to write a story about anything, just as I have proven 60+ times that I can write a YU instalment about anything.
In verse, I could follow Feist’s rules better. One thing I tried, which helped me immensely, was to have the quick beat from one of Tick Tick Boom’s songs. The song played in my head as I wrote. I applied Feist’s method, not lingering too much in the sentences. And it flowed. And it was fun.
Essentially using two things I have found interesting in the course of the week - Miranda’s music and Feist’s method, it was fun to play.
When it comes to Yet Untitled, I always want to play. And I know from being a parent that watching someone play - being playful - is fun! So if I’m truly playing before you - I won’t worry. I know you’ll be entertained.
Maybe, instead of Songing, I’ll be trying Stroying soon.
Happy Storying to you all!
Lots of love
V
PS. What would come up if you tried Feist’s Songing strategy? Try it and tell me. I want to know!
A lot of what you've expressed here jumped off the page and sat with me all day. A screenwriter's conundrum was articulated brilliantly in this one sentence: But my day job involves other people’s agendas. And this—My skills were less polished back then, but perhaps my heart was braver—I (and I'm sure every long-term writer) feel acutely.
❤️