For a Minute There

I thought I was at the end of my rope on completing my first album, a collection of songs I toiled over during the most tumultuous year of my young life, a collection whose lyrics were so inextricably entwined with my personal experiences as to sound grossly confessional, and hardly musical. Owing to this self-importance of the whole thing, my writing came easily, powerfully, and I entered some flow state every time I took up the pen. All of the most difficult feelings of my life were cathartically dispelled in the pleasure of writing, and my mind was better for it: rather than this constant self-confrontation depressing me, somehow, after long nights spent recording music, I’d feel immense relief. There was something oddly therapeutic about these moments that I grew as a person; I grew as much for the good of myself as for the most cherished people in my world. 

“For a minute there, I lost myself,” says Thom Yorke on one of his band’s most haunting recordings, Karma Police. And for a minute there, or perhaps over a certain number of months, I had lost myself. Dedicating that period of my life to creative ambitions, in the fallout of an archetypal and boring, beaten-to-death tale of a twenty-something-year-old’s heartbreak, it was only natural that my writing came almost unconsciously for being exposed to such intense feelings that I hadn’t known before. But a deeper heartbreak awaited me, and on finalizing that process, so would vanish the inspiration of my life, and I doubted myself to ever write so freely again and with such purpose. 

ENGL 110 changed that for me. Particularly, our times freewriting were the most rewarding. Over the course of the semester, I devoted that time mainly to reconciling my ongoing difficulties with the creative process. And this was in many ways cathartic, much like my days of composing music had been the year before. Only now, instead of merely confronting the ideas that haunted me, I was finally making some sense of how they’d shaped me. 

Besides benefitting me in so many ways that are personally fulfilling, ENGL 110, as the first college English course I’ve taken in a year, taught me a lot in the way of style and convention. I can’t remember the last time I went to JSTOR or cited a source in MLA format before working on this spring’s assignments. But doing these things again, for the first time in a while, I flexed a muscle I’d forgotten was there. 

Neither did I have an idea of what the writing process even looked like for me, prior to my extensive writings of the past semester. But now I understand what works best for me, and that usually entails copious rewrites, letting my pen run until I find myself starting over; and though I’m sure that sounds awfully inefficient and obnoxious—not that it isn’t—I find this method does a lot to clarify my arguments. Whether that’s in practical application, as with a research paper, or out of personal expression, like when I’m responding to our journal prompts, I feel renewed confidence as a writer.

Works Cited 

Yorke, Thom. Lyrics to “Karma Police.” Performed by Radiohead, Parlophone Capitol Records, 1971. Genius, https://genius.com/Radiohead-karma-police-lyrics.