#ironically the one time in my life i could technically be classified as emo is when i switched out of the emo hair lmao

[starved-vyka]

✨CisHet, but-✨

Confession #4

I’m growing my hair out for no particular reason 👀

[mysticsparklewings]

NaPoWriMo 2020 Day 15: Music Inspiration

I'm not okay that book that's torn & frayed you read me when you need me just turn another page I'm not okay even when you fall there's a better ending after all ____ We officially halfway through NaPoWriMo! :D And I have to admit, I found today's prompt a bit ironic for a few reasons that I'll explain later. The prompt in question being, "write a poem inspired by your favorite kind of music," except napowrimo.net also goes on to say, "try to recreate the sounds and timing of" [insert types of music here]. This confused me a little because does this mean I'm required* to make my inspired piece sound something like the music that inspired it? Or is this part about sounds and timing a recommendation of what I could do with the prompt? Do you mean sounds and timing as in lyrics or as in the actual instruments/backing music? *Technically all the prompts are optional, but because I'm me I want to stick to them as closely as possible, otherwise, what's the point having the prompts? Naturally, it doesn't help that I start working on my NaPo's as soon as possible after the prompt is posted...Meaning as close to 12:01 a.m. that day as I can manage. I usually write the poem for the most part, then make the mandala, and then get up the next day to actually pull out all the mini magnets, put the poem together and post the final product. This means I pretty much never have others' NaPo's to use as a guide for formatting and instead have to look elsewhere if I want that. Looking at what's been posted now, after other people have actually posted their's, I was correct in my assumption that the prompt was trying to guide us to, essentially, writing a song or part of one in a similar style to whatever music we picked. In which case, I have to say...Why could the prompt not just say that? Why not just say, "write a poem as if you were writing a song inspired by your favorite kind of music." That's so much clearer! *Ahem* I digress, I'll simply add that to the list of my problems with NaPo's prompts and save my further grumblings for another day. Now, I found this prompt ironic because I very nearly almost tried to incorporate My Chemical Romance, my favorite band of all time (which you probably knew already if you pay attention to my posts ), in yesterday's NaPo because the prompt was to write about the poets/poems/people that inspire you to write poetry. MCR does inspire me a great deal, mostly just to live in general and sometimes to make art, but not necessarily to write poetry, which is why I ultimately didn't include them. And I figured I'd get another excuse to include them sometime before NaPoWriMo was over, anyway. Oh, how right that ended up being, the very next day should such an opportunity appear!   It was also a bit ironic to me because I ordered their biography, Not the Life it Seems by Tom Bryant a few days ago and it arrived to me yesterday. Just, very funny timing how that all worked out. So when I first read the prompt, I was almost cackling at it, because I thought it would be easy. Then the thing about sounds and timing settled in as I was listening to a few songs and trying to jot down a few ideas, and I realized that my poem writing style does not really suit the beat of an MCR song...and my confidence promptly (haha) fell apart. I did come up with something more in-depth and complicated than this that I thought was okay as a poem, though I was very convinced it wasn't something MCR would write and sing. But I still had a mandala to make, so I decided I'd move forward and make that because that part I knew really would be fairly simple--reds, black, silver/gray, just avoid extremely flowery motifs for the most part but otherwise really anything will work--and then I could come back to the poem part later. Before I went to bed, I still hadn't thought of anything that I could use to make a better poem, so I decided I'd once again move forward under the assumption I'd just use what I'd already come up with (which I'm not mentioning just in case it becomes useful for another NaPo later) and that maybe after some sleep I'd wake up with a new idea that worked better for me. Lucky for me, that's kinda what happened. I laid everything out to start working on the construction, and I looked at what I'd written last night and thought essentially the same thing; It's not a bad poem about MCR, but it's not a poem/song/whatever that sounds like something they'd write. It doesn't "fit" with their sound. I briefly started thinking about some of their lyrics again and decided to try a bit more brainstorming, just for a few minutes, one last time to see if I could turn things around. I came around to the first song I ever listened to by them, I'm Not Okay, and my mind has always hitched on one line towards the end: "You said you read me like a book, but the pages all are torn and frayed." Which I think explains quite a bit here. Two other things that came to mind while I was toying with that, "Go find another way," from their song Disenchanted, and the fact that before they broke up in 2013, there were plans for an MCR5, a fifth album, called The Paper Kingdom. And, of course, the whole overarching theme for me is that while their music is considered Alternative Rock, usually, and a lot of people classify it as "emo," both of which imply roughness and darkness. Which is definitely there, but most (most, not all) of their songs also have a positive message woven into them. To sum the music feeling up in one word: Bittersweet. To my surprise, I also realized they usually have fairly consistent rhyming in their lyrics. It was something I surely noticed before, but it never really sank in. So I took all of that, mixed it up, and this is where we landed. Just turn another page, in my head, would be to the same tune as, Go find another way, and the last two lines are a direct reference to what I just mentioned about their music being largely bittersweet. About being largely dark but often underlyingly positive. And, on a less direct level, it's kind of also a reference to the fact that they came back last year. So to speak, they "fell" in 2013, but there was a better ending--or continuation?--yet to come in the form of their 2019 Return. Beyond that, I really don't have much else in the way of an explanation. But this does sound at least more like something they'd write than what I had before, and that's mostly what I wanted. I tried to be a bit different and less conventional with the mandala shapes, which I think fits their image pretty well. ...That's really all I have to say. This one was a bit of a rollercoaster in terms of poem creation. I no longer know how scared or excited I should be for the forthcoming prompts, so! Tomorrow, what will be? Horror or a breeze? Only time will tell. ____ Artwork/Poem © me, MysticSparkleWings Inspired by FridgePoetProject ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram