Today’s blogging prompt for the Ultimate Blogging Challenge was the offer a piece of advice. What sort of advice do I offer during such a scary time? I’d suggest using your imagination, without letting it run amuck. It is easy to let your imagination run away with you. Sometimes your imagination is your friend. When you are painting something abstract, that is your interpretation of the world. That is a way to harness your imagination to create something original. But when you allow your fears to rule your imagination, it’s not very helpful.
But it’s going to happen. I don’t know how to control the negative part of my imagination. It doesn’t seem to have an off button. And the same may be true for you. What I’ve tried to do is to put the terror and the imaginings of the worst case scenario to work for me. Many artists and writers and musicians have done that. They create operas and novels and horror movies that vividly depict the fear that we all face. And the fear that we all face is generally of the unknown.
The experience that we are sharing is something new, something different, and we don’t understand it. It doesn’t have a set end date. We can’t relax social distancing for any religious holiday, and that includes Easter. The pandemic doesn’t take holidays.
So why not harness that fear and unleash your creative energy? Draw a picture, made a video, write a poem. Or do something else that expresses who you are. You might be surprised that the medium that calls to you is not the creative medium that you would normally choose.
I chose to write a poem. And, no, poetry is not the creative medium that I would normally choose to express myself. I would choose to draw or paint or to write a story or an article. None of those styles were happening for me today. I needed to express feelings, not describe my world. And poetry felt right. The form that I chose was a sonnet, and the style of sonnet is called terza rima. It is an Italian poetic form. It has fourteen lines, with ten syllables per line. The rhyme pattern is ABA, BCB, DCD, DAD, AA.
Today is E day in the A to Z blogging challenge, so I titled my poem “Endless Hours.”
Love your poetry! You are really talented. And thanks for the encouragement about avoiding the negative thinking.
Beautiful poem and this morning in our Homeschooling Class which we was doing before this happened I am going to have my son do a Free Day and share his feelings on what is happening anyway he feels lead to. Drawing,or painting, writing or a Poem. Doesn't matter as long as it shows how he is feeling and he talks to me about it.
You are multi-talented indeed!! Love your poem and have heard of this form before but not sure if I attempted it (need to check…)
And adding this to my list of things Alice inspires me to do ….