Blog: Object Writing

I realized today that I never gave context to the “Object Writing” posts I’ve been making. I’m sure for a lot of you outside of the creative world & even for those within, their materialization has been bizarre. I’ve blindsided you with videos & blog posting that of course make no sense out of context, so please allow me to do some explaining!

This blog will once again contain a story about Leena Regan by the way!

Back in the summer with the soft launch of Leena & her husband Max’s Australian music school, The Songbird Society, Leena started doing artist & writer outreach. Part of that outreach included creating a group that would center around object writing. Object writing is a Berklee School of Music songwriting practice where you are given a random object & told to write a paragraph or so around it. This paragraph must include sensory details (sight, smell, taste, feel, sound) as well as somewhat of a short story it is all wrapped up in. This is a practice meant to be done daily to get the creative juices flowing. It forces you to give random objects context in your mind & create a narrative around them.

Fast forward six months to now. I’m a part of an artist accelerator at the moment that is forcing us to think of our brand & marketing efforts in new in interesting ways, this also translates, naturally, to content! I’d been sharing some of the object writing that I had been doing the last couple of months with Evan who suggested that some of them were good enough to share! I brought it up with my accelerator group & they loved the idea, especially since Instagram Reels & TikToks are such great discovery tools these days!

I thought & thought & thought about how I wanted to share these little snippets of writing I’d done; I thought about maybe just posting the script & reading over it, I thought about just making them blogs or even YouTube vids, but in the end I came back to a method one of my current favorite TikTok users utilizes!

The account in question, @ewistone, has a series of videos he calls “Beautiful Words that Describe Obscure Emotions.” In this series he posts a video that relates to the word in question, voice overs it, & has legible text scrolling along the way. I decided that was the format I wanted to take my inspiration from.

I picked the object writing prompt that I thought would be the easiest to film as my tester, Chapel, & set out to East Nashville to film my video. In hindsight I definitely should have done the voice over first so I knew how long to make the video, but I guess you live & learn.

It’s now been a month since I started the object writing videos & while they haven’t necessarily taken off in the manner I’d hoped they would, I’m still believing they’re going to be a vehicle for me to reach new fans & friends. I’ve now posted a total of four; Chapel, Biscuits, Track, & Teddy Bear. You can find them here, on this blog every Wednesday or on TikTok & Instagram Reels the same day!

As this is still a fairly fresh endeavor I’d love to know your thoughts! I’d love to know ways in which I can improve them, how you’d like them to show up, even any objects you want me to write about! I’d also love to know, honestly, how you feel about them! I apologize for the wonky friday blog schedule this past month as well, I’m still trying to figure out where the object writing fits into my weekly schedule & am still adapting!

Have the loveliest of weekends,

-C

Blog: Happy 2021!

Well we’re back!

I promised myself, as well as you all, that I was going to get back into blogging in the new year. It’s something I’ve sorely missed & based on the amount of you that I know have read them in the past, so have a lot of you! I’m going to do my best to be as consistent as possible going forward, not just in here but also with music releases, shows, videos, etc. because I’ve fallen behind.

I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it, because I am truly done living in 2020, but I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t address the damage that our lost year did on yours truly.

I’ve written a lot in the past, quite openly about my mental health struggles. There’s no doubt 2020 reaped havoc on my mental health plunging me head first back into depression & a brain fog that’s intolerable on its best days. It’s incredibly frustrating. This last year has been especially hard on those of us who perform for a living, who are out here chasing a dream that felt like it had to be put on hold indefinitely. I already felt as though I was slipping through the cracks of the music industry, this all just magnified that feeling.

In addition to my mental health, my physical health has drastically diminished over the last year. I was in fairly decent shape going into march; I was working out consistently, eating really well, but all of that went out the window after march when hardcore workouts became all but impossible.

You see, I’ve dipped into this lull that I’ve spent the latter part of last year trying to claw my way back out of. I try to make a change, to get back to being productive, to being better at self promotion but I slide right back into it. Objects in motion & all that, but I want to change that, nay, I need to change that. I need so desperately to move forward, to make progress, to feel like myself again because I am suffering. My mental health demands it, my physical health demands it, I must make the change & be better.

All of that being said, as I’ve stated before on this platform, I loathe new year’s resolutions, they aren’t practical or helpful, but I do emphasize the point of self growth quite often. If I were to categorize my growth I’ve shriveled quite a bit, I’ve stalled, I’m stagnant. I need to grow again, to flourish again & the only way to do that is with work. Growth takes work.

So here’s what I’m hoping to accomplish. Consistency.

Blogs. Every Friday.

Vlogs. Once A Month.

A return to tubesday?

…

We’ll see on that one haha.

Definitely more singing though!

More self promotion, more fan promotion, more fan interaction.

Finally launching the merch store!

Rediscovering my passion for solo writes.

More singles. More music.

More collabs.

I need you all to hold me to these things. I need you to message me on Friday evening if a blog hasn’t popped up yet to say “hey! get to writing!” I need you to ask about new music, let me know which things you loved & which you hate. I want to hear from you all as fans. I want to know what you’re looking for from me as an artist, what you wish I offered more of, what drew you to me as an artists, etc. I whole heartedly want to include you all more on this journey, because the truth is, without you all I’m just a sad boy with a guitar haha.

At any rate I want to wish you all the happiest of 2021s. I’m pretty sure it’ll be easy to beat last year but I’m really hoping we can knock this one out of the park!

Much love to you all, thank you for the support & happy new year!

-C