Lightning Flash Writing

This is going live while there are still five hours left in my March Sadness essay’s round 2, and instead of waiting to see if I win or lose, I thought it would be fun to send it while everything is still up in the air and anything can happen, ala Schrödinger’s cat. By the time you read this, we may already know how it played out. But for now, I can sit with the possibilities and just reflect on March Xness in general without getting caught up in my feelings (which, I know, is the entire purpose this year, but you know what I mean).

Reasons I love March Xness:

1. Immersed in writing community
2. Talking about writing
3. Talking about music
4. Voting and tracking brackets

Reasons I loved writing for March Sadness:

1. Listening to “Kiss the Rain” on repeat and feeling like I’m back in middle school
2. Thinking about 1997 and feeling like I’m back in middle school
3. Listening to the 90s Sadness playlist and feeling like I’m back in middle school
4. Letting myself live in my memories and feel like I’m back in middle school
5. Forgetting everything around me because I feel like I’m back in middle school

Notice a pattern?

For me, middle school was “the best [school] time of my life.” I didn’t peak and I was awkward as hell but I had dreams and felt the potential of the future stretched out before me. This was before anything bad happened, or at least anything bad on my radar.

Columbine hadn’t happened.

Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky hadn’t happened. (And when it did, we spent entire periods of Social Studies discussing it, and how wrong it was, and how the President should face consequences. Sigh. To bring back even a small portion of that outrage…)

I couldn’t think of anything scary or anything scandalous. Life was just… life. And perhaps I was in a bubble, but it was my bubble and I loved it.

I was tall enough that 8th graders couldn’t tell I was a 7th grader, so I didn’t get picked on like some of my friends. I was in band, and had started summer band after 6th grade specifically because my mom wanted me to make some friends, so I had a group of people I’d bonded with. I had people to sit with at lunch. The cafeteria wasn’t as scary as it was in high school, when I stepped through the doors and stared at the tables stretching out in all directions, unsure where I belonged, frantically searching for anyone I knew so I could sit with them instead of alone.

I knew I was a dork, I knew I wanted a boyfriend more than anything and was unlikely to achieve that goal any time soon, but I also found my place. I had a core group of friends with lockers close by so we could congregate in the hall and talk. And spending time this month with songs that carried me through that time has been such a wonderful way to get in touch with my feelings again, in a time when it’s safer to feel nothing.

I’ve been listening to a lot of new-to-me music because of March Sadness, but I’m also continuing on my goal to listen to at least three full albums a month.

Essays have inspired two of the albums I listened to this month: “Blender” by Collective Soul and “Gutterflower” by Goo Goo Dolls. Neither album includes the sad 90s song written about. In fact, both albums are from the early 2000s. However, in his book The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman argued that the 90s ended with September 11th, saying, “the nineties collapsed with the skyscrapers.”

This is a concept I agree with – that was definitely a major culture shift (calling back to what I wrote above about how relatively innocent society felt). “Blender” came out in October 2000, so it could still count as 90s by Klosterman’s argument. “Gutterflower” was released in April 2002, but since it was recorded from August to December 2001, I’d still push for 90s inclusion. If you’ve heard the album, I think you’d agree. Neither has a solid mid-90s sound like many of the essays competing in March Sadness, but these albums are pure 90s to me.

I can still remember going to Best Buy to get the CDs, which were on those ridiculous plastic holders, like a gas station taping their restroom key to a block of wood to prevent anyone from stealing it. You had to take the unwieldy plastic frame to the cashier so they could pop the CD free after you spent way too much on an album you were only purchasing for one single, hoping the rest was good enough to justify the cost.

I remember taking the CDs to the car, sloughing off the plastic wrap immediately, struggling with the sticker that bound the case closed at the top, then clicking into the Discman that fed into the tape player in my parents’ car. I’d drive around aimlessly all weekend, just to get out of the house and put a soundtrack to my life. It’s funny to look back on now, when I listen to music at home all the time but hate getting out, period, much less driving with no destination. The horrors!

That said, I still need to listen to another album this month to hit my goal of three full albums. I feel like it’s only appropriate to choose another artist competing. Since so much of my music comes from male artists, I want to listen to more women (especially since my essay is about a woman!). Janet sent over an Ani DiFranco primer, but I’m going to save that and pick a full album to listen to first.

If you have more women musician recs for me, 90s or not, please share them!

This month, my short story project focused on “The Death of Justina” by John Cheever (which inspired one of my tattos!). I also read “The Enormous Radio.” I enjoyed both stories but they seemed very different to me, and I wasn’t sure I’d know they were the same author if they weren’t in The Collected Works of John Cheever.

That said, the premise of “The Enormous Radio” inspired me, and I Wanted to share the prompt idea here:

Start with a realistic, everyday situation. Halfway through the story, introduce something slightly surreal. Treat the strange event as if it were perfectly ordinary.