When I was in high school, I used to spend hours with my headphones on, or in front of my boom box, starting and stopping songs so I could scrawl out the lyrics. Not surprisingly, the songs I’d choose to write out were ones I’d designated as particularly meaningful–they were songs I wanted to possess in another way, I think, so I brought them from ears to eyes; I turned my interaction with the music into a dual-sensory experience. I haven’t written out song lyrics longhand in a long time–something like a decade–so I decided to make my off-blog experience the moving of a 2014 favorite of mine, 1957 by Milo Greene, into a notebook.
I know you’re probably wondering why I don’t just print pages off the internet, or, if I insist on copying them out for the purpose of reliving this experience or, heck, just fulfilling this ‘assignment,’ just go to a lyrics website and copy from there. But I wanted to relive what it was like NOT to be able to do that–relieve what it’s like to go manual if you want to have something.
Is this a text that’s useful on its own? I think if I find this notebook in a month or year or more, I’ll be charmed remembering the evening I took it down, and I’ll probably go listen to the song again, too–which is really what this is about, the song.
Have a listen. Read the lyrics while you’re at it.
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ThinkKit, Day 13: Put down your blog…and pick up a pen! Or pencil. Heck – we’d settle for a crayon. You don’t have to stay in-between ruled lines, but we do want you to write something by hand. Sure, a letter comes to mind. But so does a recipe you discovered this year. A poem. A series of tweets that is a poem. A contract with yourself – or someone else. Whatever you get on paper – write it, then photograph & blog it. Cursive or manuscript, we promise not to grade on penmanship.
Jackie Lutzke 