Songwriting Without Boundaries (31 page)

“Stiff, cold fingers of memory reach backwards trying to catch those snowflake days” uses both the expressed identity and adjective/noun versions of metaphor you’ve come to know and love. See how effectively they can be combined to create a startling picture of memory’s struggle to reach back into the past.

Your turn. What else has
low visibility
? Find your target idea and take ten minutes to explore it through the lens of
snowstorm.
Again, remember to stay as locked into sense-bound language as you can.

Snowstorm → Linking quality:
Low visibility
→ Target idea:_____________

Pretty interesting, this lens thing. By the end of this challenge you’ll be an expert. Brand-new glasses. Powerful magnification. Inspiring. Fun.

DAY #2

LINKING QUALITIES
TO TARGET IDEAS

Prompt: Deep-Sea Diver

Here we go again. First, list three interesting qualities of a
deep-sea diver
to use as linking qualities
.
When you’re asked to find your own linking qualities (soon), make sure they are a close relation to, e.g.,
deep-sea diver’s
family, that they capture an essential quality. That’s the key to finding an effective
target idea.
Here they are:

Totally immersed

Supported by a lifeline

Surrounded by an unfamiliar landscape

Now, link each to a target idea—the ideas that
deep-sea diver
can be a metaphor for, by asking:

What else has that quality? What else is
totally immersed
?

As you did yesterday, take ten minutes to explore your target idea through the lens of
deep-sea diver.
Remember to stay as locked into sense-bound language as you can (e.g., a bookworm is deep-sea diving into a fantasy world).

CHARLIE WORSHAM

Deep-sea diver → Linking quality:
Totally immersed
→ Target idea:
Cyclist

A cyclist is a deep-sea diver.

His legs burn as he paddles, pushing forward with all his might. He breathes in the hard air as the world ahead of him zooms into focus from the blurry distance. The rhythmic noise of his tires spinning keeps him lost in a daydream, only this is no dream. Every twitching muscle, every ounce of energy, every brain cell, nerve, tendon, thought—it all spirals down into the abyss of the next valley. He soars upward toward the light as the world around him hangs all around, suspended almost in water. There’s a coolness of wind rushing by. The whirring, stirring sounds of air fill his ears and numb his sense of the world outside. Sweat bubbles and drips from his forehead down his chest and onto the ocean bed of pavement. He is completely alone here on this road, no more above ground than a diver drifting through his world of discovery. He knows his time will run out, almost as if the air would be cut off from his lungs if he doesn’t win the race. The wilderness around him is his aquarium. He is the focus, the one out of place, the pioneer in a world of sand and stone and plant and wild animal. Concentration, sharp as coral, deep in his brain as a sunken ship. The waving trees suspend time as if he swims underwater. He will not come up for air until he crosses that threshold, until the task is done. The sunlight is dampened beneath this surface of branches and leaves. His eyes do not stray, his heart beats with the deliberate intensity of a war drum. He takes in each breath like a machine. His equipment is an extension of his body. He feels the pressure pushing at him from all sides, like the kid at the bottom of the deep end seeing how long he can hold his breath. There is no outside world—there is only beating heart and smooth, liquid momentum. The nerves tingle with excitement and danger. The horizon rolls forward with him, pushed to its own edge. The winding roads dip and duck and rise and fall like the waves of clouds overhead.

What an interesting way to look at cycling. Charlie uses a nice mix of metaphor and simile to paint the picture. Take a few minutes to underline the places he submerges you.

SUSAN CATTANEO

Deep-sea diver → Linking quality:
Totally immersed
→ Target idea:
In conversation

Conversation is deep-sea diving.

Tethered to our convictions, we float out one idea after another, words dart out of our open mouths, swallowed up by the moment. Hope treads water between us, coming to rest gently on the sandy bottom, the bubble of connection, a world full of noise beyond ours, swaying, heads close …

Tethered
is a close relation to
deep-sea diver
. It makes a fresh, interesting statement when applied to
convictions
.

Your turn. What else is
totally immersed
? Find your target idea and take ten minutes to explore it through the lens of
deep-sea diver.
Again, remember to stay as locked into sense-bound language as you can.

Deep-sea diver → Linking quality:
Totally immersed
→ Target idea:_____

Here’s our second linking quality:

Deep-sea diver → Linking quality:
Supported by a lifeline
→ Target idea: ___________

Now take ten minutes to explore your new target idea through the lens of
deep-sea diver.

TAMI NEILSEN

Deep-sea diver → Linking quality:
Supported by a lifeline
→
Target idea:
Dying patient

The silence is loud and heavy, broken only by the distant blip of the heart-rate monitor. I am sinking under this sea of sheets and blankets, nurses and doctors circle me like sharks, watching me with cold, flat eyes, capable of giving or taking life in an instant. Surrounded by life, yet I am isolated in leagues of darkness, immersed in an ocean of hopelessness so deep, I will not return. Life is trying to escape me, trying to be done with it, but I am being force-fed life through a tube. It’s not natural. Let me rip away this lifeline, this weakness. Let me instead be an anchor and sink with proud dignity.

Tami’s use of first person is effective, creating a world from inside her diving suit rather than observing from the outside. Notice all the members of the diver’s family she invites into the key of
dying patient.
I especially like
leagues
…

CHARLIE WORSHAM

Deep-sea diver → Linking quality:
Supported by a lifeline
→
Target idea:
Frontline soldier

A frontline soldier is a deep-sea diver.

All is quiet on the frontline. The oncoming darkness is liquid in texture, not unlike the cool, murky bottom of his hometown pond, which he daydreams about when the action dies down. He listens to his watch tick away the seconds that turn to minutes that turn to hours, days, marking time till he can return to the fresh air of home. Food, water, medicine, information, all piped down to him from headquarters via a narrow, high-pressure red line on a map. One rip, one tear, and he’d be alone, surrounded by a world of enemies that know and breathe the land and air that is so strange to him. He cannot see far ahead. His helmet is hot and sticky and heavy on his head, but he mustn’t remove it. His life hangs suspended in this tiny foxhole at the end of a long, narrow finger of soldiers. They are pushing into the depths. The darkness ahead holds a world of secret predators waiting to bolt from beneath a rock or dive from the blue above. He feels sluggish from exhaustion as he tries to wade through the thick air and mud that pull at his boots, his rifle, his uniform. He is drenched in sweat and filth, but immune to the smells and the sounds. Everything is soft. Softened by the long hours in battle. The supply truck comes rumbling towards him, stops. The whiting cloth of a soldier bringing his meal and ammo for the night. The silent exchange of worried glances and fingers pointing to maps that tell him what to do next. No words. Only moving parts and silent thinking. Only a thin red line keeping him connected to the outside world and survival.

See what interesting connections can be made using linking qualities? I never would have seen a soldier as a diver except for the linking phrase
supported by a lifeline.
Once you explore the question “What else has that quality?” the ideas trouble out by the wheelbarrow.

Your turn. What else is
supported by a lifeline
? Find your target idea and take ten minutes exploring it through the lens of
deep-sea diver.
Again, remember to stay as locked into sense-bound language as you can.

Deep-sea diver → Linking quality:
Totally immersed
→ Target idea:_________

Finally, try the linking phrase,
surrounded by an unfamiliar landscape
:

Deep-sea diver → Linking quality:
Surrounded by an unfamiliar landscape
→
Target idea: _____________:

SUSAN CATTANEO