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: The Rolodex of Resentment

I had this week’s blog idea come to me in a dream, no literally it came to me in a dream & much like the owner of the music industry herself, Ms. Taylor Swift, I wrote it down for all of you to read today! Congrats! In said dream I was presented with a rolodex style presentation of a lot of my memories since I had moved to Nashville except for they all had one thing in common; they were all memories that I had come to resent for one reason or another. All of these resurgences were very vivid & I got to witness each of them one by one, over & over again until I understood the message I was being given at which point I awoke.

In the still early light of the then 5 AM morning I was overcome with a great sadness. It wasn’t a “poor, poor me” type of sadness but more of a sadness from the realization that I’d been carrying all of these memories around aimlessly for the last ten years I’ve worked in this industry. I had held on to so much resentment for so many different people because I felt lied to by them, cheated by them, forgotten by them & it had grown to the point where it was beginning to affect my self esteem & creativity.

The music industry is a hard business, it truly is. It’s all about who you know & who knows you; it is truly a business built on relationships. That’s why I think a lot of these memories had dug their claws so deeply into my psyche & had such an influence on me over the years. I’d had people of influence promise to pass along projects or give things a listen just to be left in the dark. I’ve had friends go on to great success that then turn “too good for you” & leave you in the tracks before getting on a stage or getting a write up in a magazine all about how we have to “help the next person in line.” I’ve had people I looked up to, who I saw as mentors disappear out of the blue, or friends in industry positions more willing to help others than those they call their close friends & I’m certain I’ve done this unintentionally to people as well.

What’s my point in all of this? Why dedicate a whole blog to a dream & a realization? Because resentment & the emotions associated with it are heavy. Jealousy & envy are heavy, bitterness is heavy, grudges & ill will are heavy & I struggle with them. I struggle with leaving behind the weight of envy in the face of other people’s success, especially those I’m close to & if I’m being honest, I hate that. I want to be so openly & honestly proud of my friends, because they work so damn hard & are so talented & worthy of accolades & success in their own right but I always have the shadow of “why not me” lurking.

I’m trying to get over these things, I really am. I’m trying to let the past go. I’m trying to meet the success of my friends with genuine, unbothered happiness for them because they deserve that. I think this dream was alluding to all the work I thought I’d done & telling me “oh, no, no, you still have so far to go!”

I hadn’t realized I was carrying around all of this unpacked baggage, that I was letting the past or the perceived views of others no longer directly in my life have such an influence on my life, but it had. I’d gotten to the point where I started to believe crazy things about myself. I started to believe that I must not be a good artist if not even my friends are willing to help me, I began to believe that I was a bad songwriter or a bad singer & you know what, those things manifested themselves physically. I developed vocal chord dysfunction, I completely forgot how to write songs because I put way too much pressure on each thing I wrote being a masterpiece & I began to fall into the cracks of the music industry after I’d worked so hard & for so long to hoist myself up.

I know now these are lies that I told myself over the years. I am worthy of success, I am worthy of a thriving career in this business. I am talented both as a performer & as a writer. I am marketable as a brand, I am desirable as an artist. Dark, low vibration emotions & parasites do wonders on the body & mind, terrible wonders, but impressive none the less & I’m done letting them have an influence on me.

I want to leave this one final line for any friends of mine that may happen to read this. I am so, so incredibly proud of each of you & all of the things you’ve accomplished in your lives. I am overjoyed to see you soar & hope you know I will always be there to support you. If I have ever done any of the above listed things to you, please reach out to me & let me know.

Much love to you all,

-C