Freewriting. The act of putting random thoughts onto paper (or in most cases these days, pixels onto screens) without stopping and without correcting… It’s harder than you think not to go back and edit, especially for an editor! See! I just did it!!! I missed the “shift” key, and my exclamation point came out as a “1” instead. And I’ve typed several of these words incorrectly—but I go back almost instantly, and without intending to, and I correct the errors… (Compulsive!) Freetyping is tough. I definitely prefer freeWRITING with a pen on paper… (So that’s what I’m going to do.)
Anyway, @jeanlucsr pointed me towards the @freewritehouse daily prompts for the five minute freewrites that Steem-folk have been doing (for a LONG time, apparently). I’m not positive that I’m going to participate every day (I already write and/or draw something and post it every day, which takes a bit of time), but this sounded like fun TODAY, so I thought I’d give it a go—AND, in addition, it’s an opportunity to try stepping into a new community—so here goes. Today’s prompt is “Halcyon Days.” I’ve got my timer set on my phone, my iPod is on random shuffle (currently playing “Hyper-ballad” by Bjork,) and my pen and notebook are all set! So—Here…we…GO!
[Time passes…]
Aaaaaand….now it’s done. Here’s what I wrote (apparently channeling Orwell’s 1984…)
“Halcyon Days”
Halcyon Days was the BEST nightclub. You remember!? Back when it was still legal to go dancing after dark.
Sure, you needed a permit, but it wasn’t blanket banned… yet.
Halcyon and on and on… We thought it would last forever… (And it was a song by Orbital… Remember…)
I shouldn’t be talking about this… If they hear me? They probably already did, but FUCK IT!
I know where I buried my music machine… I might as well go [dig] it up—I’ll grab my machine and flee into the woods…
Throw one more giant rave party… Go out dancing. I mean, I know they’ll find out. The bastards are already tailing me… But if I can’t listen to music—can’t DANCE—then what’s the point[?]
I’ll do it! I‘m going for the… What’s that noise[?]… Somebody at the door…
Fuck it. I’m ready… (Can you… you kn…)
And that’s what I got before the beeper went off. It’s a trite story, almost completely ripped off from Winston Smith’s first entries in his contraband journal in 1984, but this is what came to mind. I wish I’d gone more into a description of the Halcyon Days club… If I were to take this piece and rework it into a finished story, that’s what I’d most likely do—jump into a flashback describing what it was like at the club in the days before clubs were banned.
This theme, this whole mood, comes from two sources for me: 1. I live in a tiny logging town, Longview, WA, USA, and back in the early 1970s (I think it was either 1970 or ’71) there was a riot at a dance in town, and since then, it’s been ILLEGAL for kids under 21 years of ago (NO JOKE) to dance in public if the person or organization putting on the dance hasn’t filed for a city permit. In 1992, I worked at a coffee shop that would put on shows, and the police would stop by whenever we had a concert and make SURE that none of the kids were dancing! (This sounds ridiculous, but it’s all true. The coffee shop was called Café Forum, and it was owned by a friend of mine, Mike. The place only lasted about four months before closing down.)
And the other thing that inspired my theme was this garbage: 2. There was a club I liked to go to in Portland, Oregon, USA, back in the early 1990s, called The City. (It was on 13th and Burnside.) It was a gay club, with a primary dancefloor that was recycled from the old disco days, meaning the dancefloor was lit underneath and had these huge blocks of color that you danced on that flashed and changed hue… It was great! And upstairs was a gloomy little room, painted black of course, with a single strobe-light going for effect, most of the time, that played goth and industrial music. I’m not gay, but the club was open to anyone, and it was a friendly crowd and a lot of fun—but because the place was OPEN about being a gay club, a group called the Oregon Citizens Alliance targetted the place as a den of sin and debauchery. (I’m not trying to suggest that nothing shady ever happened there—but I’m sure the gayness was what bothered the OCA because there were DOZENS of clubs in Portland back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and any ONE of them was just as likely to be full drugs and salacious behavior as the others. Still the OCA HATED The City club, and hounded and harassed the place, eventually leading to the closure of the club.
Dancing is dangerous, apparently… Must be SOMETHING insidious about it for the clubs that offer dancing to suffer all this backlash from the authorities. Better dance while you still can!
And that’s my first 5 minute freewrite for the @freewritehouse.
(I probably did it wrong—but that’s how I do things!)
—Richard F. Yates
(Primitive Thoughtician and Holy Fool)
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