Writer's Commentary: Freedom

On Post: Freedom

Date: January 3

Find it here

I am not a poet. I mean, if you couldn’t tell from this entry, it bears pointing out. More to the point, not only am I not a poet, I am fairly terrible at writing poetry. I love it. I also love lyrics and particularly well written rap music. For whatever reason though, I’ve never had any ability to write that kind of thing myself. I just lack that kind of lyrical ability, I suppose. I don’t “hear” it, if you will.

Yet, I tried to write it anyway. Sorry about that, but this was as much about me challenging myself as it was about producing stuff worth reading. And, as mentioned last post, I wanted to mix up my approach as much as possible. So, I knew I had to do at least one poetry post. Ultimately, I did two and I’ll talk more later about how clearly it proved I pushed my luck on that.

This post though, I have some pride in. I still clearly cannot write poetry, but there is some fun stuff in the language here that I liked. Obviously, the point was different interpretations of freedom, which I initially was resistant to. I wanted to try to avoid doing posts that were inspired by the song’s title and little else. However, after listening to David Gray’s song a few times and reading the lyrics, I felt the meaning he intended was clear (the freedom of love), but the composition was vague enough that one could use it as a backdrop for other “freedoms”: the freedom of friendship, the freedom of escape, lack of real freedom, and so on.

I also deserve credit for not literally writing “Freedom isn’t free” at any point. Because believe me, I was damn tempted.

Just because the Project has ended doesn't mean I still don't value your feedback. Feel free to let me know on Twitter (@UnGajje) or drop me a note at tim[dot]g[dot]stevens[at]gmail[dot]com or on Facebook. If you see anything you like, I am all over the net too, so please check out my other works at Marvel, Complaint of the Week at the Living Room Times, and New Paris Press (which is now up and running) or my various 140 character missives on that Twitter account.