WRITER'S CLUB MARCH 25
This week Writer’s Club is hosted by Tenielle Stoltenkamp. In this session you will be doing “right-brain writing” which is all about freeing the imagination.
Tenielle's obsession with great storytelling has led to a career as a children's book author, scriptwriter, television producer, performer, songwriter, and brand strategist.
Born, raised and grown in three different continents - Tenielle’s heart can be found somewhere between Durban, Nashville and the Gold Coast. She is now based in Amsterdam - but who knows which country she’ll be streaming from on Wednesday!
Join her on Wednesday 25 March at 19:30 Central European Time for Writer’s Club. She will be going live on our Instagram www.instagram.com/sydenhamclub.
Details: You will be welcomed and briefed at 19:30 on Instagram and given a theme for your “right-brain writing” session. Tenielle will share 3 tips and tricks that will help your process. From there you will have 2 hours to write your short work. When completed share it via email (info@sydenham.club) and let us see you in action, tag @sydenhamclub.
We will put the full collection of creative writing sessions together digitally as well as in audio format after 4 weeks. You may either submit your own audio or we can record it for you. A guest judge will choose their favourite and the winner will receive the ALONE TOGETHER sweatshirt!
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Asher recorded a voice version of his! :
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Looking Out by Michael B (@borovvviec on Instagram)
I’m looking out through my digital window. It’s sunny. There are beautiful dogs speaking to me in babyfied English. Sometimes they are comically angry. Another time they are elated because their owners are coming back from war or the supermarket. Their fur is pristine, their ugliness is often equally compelling. Cough, cough, cough. The sounds of coughing in my hallway juxtaposes the dance alongs and DJ streams coming out of my speakers. Mind numbing fun doubling as therapeutic content for all the anxious souls trapped within the confines of their apartment buildings. Trapped souls awaiting the better news of tomorrow, frantically refreshing their phones for the sign of its arrival. Cough, cough, cough. I scroll on, seeing all types of people dealing with their self imposed quarantines. The introverts are celebrating. This is their time to shine. For the others, the story is quite different. While the social hermits are temporarily branded with medals of honor for promoting the solitary lifestyle, the extroverts are slowly losing their sanity. Instagram stories and livestreams offer a makeshift way to connect to the world around you. What good is a person to me if I can’t observe their three dimensionality, if I can’t smell their scent? Cough, cough, cough. Maybe if I add a cool song, or a filter, the experience will be more compelling? But what else do we have? It’s only mid-March, it’s too cold to sing from our balconies in temporary solidarity with those around us. And even if it was warm, what beloved songs do I share with my Turkish neighbor? Cough, cough, cough. I close the app with a violent swipe of the thumb and throw the phone on my bed. I frantically tap my fingers against my thigs to the sound of an imaginary death metal song. I look around my room and catch a glimpse of the blue sky silently mocking me in the corner of my window. In many ways, I think I deserve it. For so long all I searched for in life is solitude and shelter, only to crave the opposite as soon as it is denied me. Cough, cough, cough. I miss people. I miss their scent, I miss their laughter. I miss the sounds. The only sounds I hear now are birds in my courtyard, carelessly carrying on with their chirping. The birds do not care about global crises, as long as their mating rituals are not disturbed. Are we really so much different? Cough, cough, cough. I stand up and walk towards the bed, frantically eyeing the location of my smart phone. It fell in the little crevasse between my bed and the wall. I reach for it and emerge with a dust covered device, my bridge to humanity, to connection, to life. Elated and dopamine-hungry, I plug into the Matrix. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Bumble, Facebook, Instagram, WhatApp, Bumble, Facebook, Guardian, Uber, Calendar, Weather? Cough, cough, cough. Prince Charles has got it. What’s the point of an online rave? What’s it all worth without the feeling of a stranger accidentally brushing up against you and saying sorry while they give you a big, drugged up smile of pure ecstasy? Is it too early to have a drink? I’m done. Cough, cough, cough. My neighbor is in the kitchen again, what is she doing there all the time? We briefly lock eyes but I quickly look away. Let’s have a glass, its 4:59. Cough, cough, cough. A friend writes me a message on one platform and sends me a meme on the other. Where should I respond? What will we speak of later on our call? A fluffy Samoyed dog is giving me a pep talk. A rapper is freaking out. Photos of my mother in a protective mask, smiling ear to ear. Cough, cough, cough. Someone didn’t turn off their microphone at this online yoga class. Their heavy breathing is distracting. Cough. I turn the webcam off and pick my phone back up. Cough.
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Looking out by Christian N (@iamvolta on Instagram)
25.03.2020
Looking out from my balcony onto the lifeless street below, I want to hold your body as though it were the only thing to keep me from falling. It looks even emptier than when I had walked along the cobblestones just a few minutes ago. Never had I been so alone while walking down my street at this hour. Every parking spot is taken. No one is going anywhere for a while. There is a bar which flashes a green light to signal good times inside. Like the green light which shines across the bay from the Great Gatsby. Tonight there is only darkness. I jump when I hear the sound of the buzzer to get into my building. It cuts so loudly through the piercing silence.
I don’t bother to turn on the lights when I walk into my apartment. I light the candles in the living room. The second thing I do is I wash my hands. Then I take off my shoes. I’ve yet to participate in the feel-good reflection I read so much about. Sure, I think about adjustments and outcomes and consequences and want to commiserate with someone, anyone, who feels increasingly like a lifeline, but clarity is hard to come by. I’ve never so ardently believed in a cliche as I do in the truth that ignorance is bliss. Death, taxes, and ignorance is bliss. Earlier today I observed a child marvelling at a grotesque face wearing a hygiene mask which was spraypainted onto the side of a building. “The sun!” she beamed, lacking context. “Yes, the sun,” said her mother. “With eyes, nose, and a mouth. How beautiful.”
I should be doing a better job of social distancing. And while I know self-isolation is not the same as the fate of a prisoner, I am reminded of a wonderful law in Germany which prohibits punishment for those who attempt to escape jail. It’s human nature to seek freedom. It’s nice that people stress less over trivial matters now. But then I saw a man completely lose his mind over a parking dispute. Verbal abuse of the other party. I thought, how can someone care so much about something that will be entirely forgotten in an hour. Still, it was refreshing to see that the pandemic had not affected his ability to be a dick.
I’m starting to feel the weight of things at a time I was supposed to be shedding some of my heavier burdens. I was just beginning therapy. I had an appointment – the first of many – to have my tattoo removed. Whatever. If I’ve waited this long, what’s a few more months? Patience: another burden. That’s what they’re saying, right? Months? How dreadful the prospect would have appeared just a few weeks ago, when all of this felt like it was happening on another planet. Of course that concept doesn’t exist anymore; that space, that distance, protects us. Anything that happens anywhere has direct access to our lives. We are all connected, as they say. As though it should be objectively accepted as a good thing.
We are increasingly aware of what is happening everywhere at all times. Insofar as that has been true for a decade now, the control that we have in shutting out the lives of others is lessening. It’s not enough to log off. The digital trail follows you. We are no longer challenged by how much information confronts us every second of our lives, but rather how we manage our relationship with this intrusion. It is becoming increasingly important to gatekeep our attention. The greatest plague of our generation is that we are never content with what is in front of us. There’s a Jerry Seinfeld bit in which he says women care about what’s on TV while men only care about what else is on TV. That is a deeply unsatisfying way to live. We are burdened by too much choice; too much awareness. At any time we can find out what else is going on. Namely, what’s happening that isn’t the thing I’m currently doing. We have such a difficult time being present. Perhaps now we are forced to interact with the here and now. There is great anxiety in facing an uncertain future, but I think there is greater anxiety in never being quite certain of the present.
The real essence of writing is observation. The ability to notice. To look out. What do we notice right now? And how profoundly do we register these observations? I want to pause and consider the ways in which we live our lives are broken and yet I can’t help but to get the sense that we are rushing to return to the same head-down manner of living. I guess it’s better than treating everyone like a walking biohazard.
You know what would be really great? If everyone just told themselves, “you know what, I’m going to sit this one out.” The worst thing is knowing what everyone thinks about anything. It’s completely fine and even great to not have an opinion. Never before have we had the tools to broadcast our message in real-time, no matter how inconsequential, to the entire world. I think the printing press was progress enough.
Jerry, good buddy, if I remember correctly we were supposed to have some drinks tonight for your birthday. Maybe that’s still happening. Independently, all of us, together. Just as you had planned. This next glass is for you.
Almost two hours have passed. I feel like there should be more ink on these pages. I’ll take it as confirmation that my mind takes some time to be happy with what it has put together. It’s as though the left side of my brain isn’t giving the right side permission to be free. Maybe I’m struggling with this exercise because I’m trying to be more deliberate in the manner with which I approach things. And therein lies the greatest benefit of quarantine: no one is expecting a reaction. If let my thoughts breathe, protected from the bad air, then they maybe I can for once express them in full, as I like them, once the world is ready to look out again.
