Re-immersing myself in creative writing

During this weeks tutorial we were asked to name six materials and to choose two of the six for our task. The six materials were glass, water, tree bark, aluminium, plastic

I chose bark and aluminium mainly due to them being the only materials not chosen by others. Though I fear the others my have been more savvy as to what lay in store, as next we found out that we had to write  short love story between the two, akin to the short story 'The Daylight and the Dust' by Janet Frame, which reminded me somewhat of the Pixar animation short 'Day and Night'

Credit: Walt Disney Pictures 2010

First, I will present my piece. Afterwards, I will go into more detail as to how it came to be.

Agrafe

I was alone and dark. Stripped bare and exposed.

It didn’t used to be this way. All naked and unclothed.

I used to be alive! To feel the gentle wind rustle in the leaves

Or hear the birds chirping in the branches of the trees.

Now all I hear is artificial, the incessant drone of the machines.

While we lie in wait of freedom, packed tight like tinned sardines.

The dim neon tubes offer little light, nor sustenance, nor fun.

A poor imitation of a wholesome vibrant sun.

Yet here I must lie, so dry, so brittle, so alone.

The machines whirred into action. I resigned myself to my fate.

My time was at an end. No more chance to contemplate.

And then she was there, all shimmering and bright,

Descending from the heavens amidst the humming neon light.

She told me not to worry, she had been through this before.

That we would be together, inseparable she swore.

She wrapped herself around me, held me close in a silver embrace.

Bound tightly to my features, we found a resting place.

And now we lie together, not so brittle, nor alone.

And there we remained for a lifetime, gathering dust as couples do.

Shared our intimate secrets, each day our kinship grew.

She told me of her travels, of airplanes, computers and cans.

Of rubbish dumps and landfills, all the follies made of man.

And how she’d always longed to leave it all behind

And return to Mother Nature to be with her own kind..

All this time, we grew closer, felt her touch upon every day.

The feelings grew stronger.  I knew what I must say.

The pressure, it was building. Felt it rising to the top.

 I couldn’t hold back my emotions, there was no way to stop.

*pop*

“I LOVE YOU! I know you feel the same.”

“I love you, too, honey. Happy anniversary. More champagne?”

Ronan Kelly, 4th February 2016

Train of thought 

Immediately after the tutorial I was kicking myself for not selecting a more obvious pairing from the group. My mind immediately wandered to water and glass, selected by two of my classmates. I envisioned the sea water dancing around a shard of glass and a little girl on the beach picking up a smooth heart-shaped piece of glass later.  For me, such implied love, has always proved easier to write. Open intimate emotion and words of love often seem forced, like a teen romance novel for me.

On the other hand, I was happy to have the challenge of something different and that taking a more obvious choice might lead me towards more cliched imagery. I liked the general theme from my original idea for water and glass, combining the two to create something. I thought of the properties of the two, wood and trees relating to nature, and aluminium with the modern world. I thought of recycling - how two old things could find themselves recycled into something new. Overall, I found it difficult to see where aluminium and bark  could combine in a meaningful way. The closest I got was a paper clip on recycled sheets of paper. Not very romantic.

As such, I tried to find inspiration in reverse. thinking of romantic items and how bark and aluminium could be attached to them - diamonds rings, chocolates etc. until at last I came to champagne. It was a near perfect fit, cork, not only being wood, but specifically the bark of a tree and while the corks may not be sealed with aluminium exactly, the foil wrapping almost certainly was.

Next, I had to form a relationship in which the two could fall in love. I was reminded of an old twix advertisement, where  the two chocolate bars were made in a factory  to the romantic tune of 'Happy Together' by The Turtles.

As such, I had to do some research into how corks were made.

Finally, I decided to change the format from short story to a poem. I found it fit the theme better overall, especially poetry's well-known association with romance,  and my short, rythmic writing style lend itself well to the poetry format. I only had to change a word here or there in order to make it rhyme. As a whole it was mostly unchanged from it's story format, which makes me wonder if, at least subconsciously, I knew I was writing a poem all along.

I had to do a bit of  research for the title, looking for various champagne related words that wouldn't give away  the ending. I settled on Agrafe, meaning a champagne bottle where the cork has been secured with a metal clip. I was also tempted to go with 'Triage' - the act of bottling, but I felt Agrafe gave a better understanding of the relationship specifically between the two materials.

Agrafe Champagne cork

Overall, I think it came out better than expected. I was worried how merging bark and aluminium into some sort of love story would feel very forced. It is perhaps lacking on a personal level, but being an assigned task based on obscure materials, it would be difficult and time consuming to make something more meaningful out of it.

The rhyming couplets of the poem seems a tad cliched but as stated before, it just seemed to naturally flow that way. This did, however, force me to utilise more basic descriptions and scrap more elegant adjectives and phrases which over-extended the lines.