"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art - write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself." ~Neil Gaiman

The Challenge:
Create one new thing every day in 2011.
The Rules: 10 "freebie" days are allowed, but not encouraged.
The Proof: Weekly updates accounting for each day.
LET'S MAKE SOME ART!

Monday, May 16, 2011

Days One Hundred Twenty Four to One Hundred Thirty One: Roasting Marshmallows With Martians

Day 124: Today's creation was what I sometimes wish they all could be. It was nearly midnight. I grabbed a notebook and thought "I haven't created anything today." I started writing and didn't stop until four lines of text had bloomed on the page (It seemed instantaneous. I don't really remember actually writing them.) I looked at the four lines and started to read them aloud, but before I had even gotten through the first line I was singing it. And as I kept singing, another stanza appeared, then two more. And that was it. I had a song. I raced to the computer and recorded it before I could forget.

It's really strange. It tells a story, but I don't really know what the story is about. I guess you could interpret it as you wanted. Part of me thinks that this is strongly influenced by having just finished Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin, because the main family in that comes from a stronghold known as Winterfell, and much of the book could be summed up in the line "blood kin with bloodlust all seek the same throne." But other than that, they don't have anything in common. The names (Andorall, Endower) don't show up in the book, and there was no mention of storms. But interpret it as you will. I'm also coupling this entry with Day 131, because that's when I finally got around to adding sound effects at the end and turning it into a video:



Day 125: I made signs for the yard sale I had with Mandy.



Day 126: Borrowing the idea from Melissa, I found a jar and decorated it to give to Mom for Mother's Day. Inside are a bunch of post-it notes with short messages from me, Zach, Laura, and Wes. Here's a (sideways) picture...



Day 127: I wrote a very silly poem...

I would ride a praying mantis
to the city of Atlantis
if it meant I'd get to spend some time with you.
I would go and eat spaghetti
with a very hairy yeti
'cause that's just the sort of thing a friend would do.

Roasting marshmallows with martians,
hunting giant rubber ducks,
learning karate kicks from kangaroos...
These things would be as boring
as a robot's programmed snoring
if I couldn't share them all with you.

So I'll act out famous dramas
with a herd of purple llamas
and I know you'll be there clapping at the end.
Even if those other meanies
squawk like toucans in tankinis,
it won't matter, 'cause I have
you as a friend.

Day 128: I wrote something that included this scene...

They found her once on the floor of a bookstore surrounded by discarded books - heaps and stacks of them, some fallen open with pages fluttering, some with covers bent under, huge lopsided piles and towers leaning under the weight of paper and words. She was crying, which had been part of what attracted the crowd around her in the first place. Coffee drinkers and browsing shoppers pointed and whispered and tried not to look like they were leaning in for a better view.

"What the matter?" one wary bookseller asked, obviously at a loss as to what to do.

What was most terrible of all was that she didn't know. She had been looking for something important, something she couldn't quite name, and it was nowhere to be found.


Day 129: There was a thunderstorm tonight, so I sat down and wrote this:

Once upon a time we dreamed of another world. On nights like this, when lightning lit the whole sky brighter than daylight, with the rain pouring down, a soft rustle in the stuttering dark. We dreamed of another world knowing that surely it must be better than this one. And whether it was magic or the gods or some other force beyond reckoning, our dreams were heard. Those secret hopes we had harbored so long were made real.

We were shown a Door and offered the chance to open it, to step through into another place.

Tell me, and be honest: what else could we have done? What would you have done?

No, don't answer that. I already know. It's the same reason you're still reading these words.

You long as much as we once did to know what will happen next, to discover what awaits in that place just beyond.


Day 130: Rebekah was in town, and we got together and had fun with makeup. Not the fifth-grade slumber party kind of makeup (or if so, then your fifth grade slumber parties were way cooler than mine were!), but haunted house makeup. I became a zombie under her skilled hands. I'm counting this as my Good Madness, though, because I helped the teensiest bit. I added some blood to my nose, forehead, and a little to the peeling parts on my cheeks. Other than that, all of this is Rebekah's Good Madness. :)



Day 131: I made the Endower Castle video... (see above)

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