EPTHow does a ragtag volunteer army in need of a shower
Somehow defeat a global superpower?
How do we emerge victorious from the quagmire?
Leave the battlefield waving Betsy Ross’ flag higher?
Somehow defeat a global superpower?
How do we emerge victorious from the quagmire?
Leave the battlefield waving Betsy Ross’ flag higher?
Have me adoring the skill of the writer. The rhymes as the end "shower", "superpower", "quagmire", "flag higher" (yes you need the "flag" as part of that last rhyme) will literally tell you how those sentences are sung. But what's more important about this piece of writing is that it gave me some inner peace and made me realize that just because you take a break from something doesn't mean you've lost it.
Writing has defined me since a very young age. I've tried to find a point in my life where I started writing, only to realize that I always have. And we're not talking book reports for school, here. I used to keep this notebook of "poems", in which I'd just practice rhyming, just after I learned how to write. In 5th grade, me and two friends started a school newspaper. As I grew up I started to write recaps for sporting events I went to (and I went to a lot) in my private journal. When I was 15 I started writing for a national Swedish fan forum. I wrote about my, rather shitty, local team but I treated it as if I was writing for the NYT. I have a million stories more but just know that one of the few constants in my life has been writing. However, for the last 4 months, I haven't written a thing. And up until today that's weighed on me.
I did TSL5 from April to July and I've since then been involved in another, yet to be announced, project. To say that these have been intense experiences would be an understatement. And because of these two projects, I haven't had the time, or energy, to spend on my writing. When you don't do something that's become a part of who you are you start questioning yourself. Who you are. What your goals are. I even started asking myself if writing really was that important to me. Then I watched Hamilton. On my first watch, I didn't really focus on the lyrics. I focused on the overall story, just as you wouldn't listen sharply to every line in the movie. You're just trying to follow the plot. Today I watched Hamilton for the second time, with some friends, and that's when I came to the realization in the title: "You won't lose what defines you".
This time I knew what was happening so I focused more on the lyrics. And I allowed the writing side of me to peak out again. I was amazed by the cleverness of the lyrics. How they all managed to stay on theme and tell a story without ever feeling forced (which is amazingly hard). When we came to the song "Guns and Ships" the lyrics I pasted above came up and I audibly gasped. One of my friends asked if it was because he managed to rhyme "quagmire" and I went on this small rant about how complicated it is to do what the writer of the song just did. Four lines. Four rhymes. Five words. One story. And, again, just reading those four rhymes should tell you what the song sounds like. I won't carry on analyzing the song, because that's not what I want to write about, but you need to be an amazing writer to pull that off.
What's important to me is that I've not been able to shake these four lines of text out of my head all day. I keep coming back to them, over and over again. Finding new things I appreciate about them. And that's give me peace. The fact that I've been obsessing over a piece of text, even if it's not mine, means that I still have that in me. To me, it means that a hiatus doesn't mean the end. I'm still very busy but at least I know that I still want to write. I just can't right now.
