Listener Lyric Essay
A lyrical essay is an essay written in the style of poetry. The assignment to create your own lyrical essay was assigned to us after reading Citizen. We were tasked with interviewing someone on their life experiences, and creating an essay based on them. I interviewed someone with OCD (I promised to keep their name anonymous) and this is the essay I created based off their experiences with their OCD.
There is no “we”
The water soothes
The water cleans
The water hydrates the voice
Our hands are contaminated
Wash them
Don’t listen to it
If we do not wash our hands we will kill our family
Anything we touch
Will die
Ignore the rising pit in your stomach.
Embrace the fear, it will be gone soon
Don’t listen…
Our jacket sleeve could’ve grazed the rat poison on our way out the garage
There is no “we”
We touched that part of the sleeve when we were taking our jacket off
There is no “we”
There is rat poison on our hands, on the walls, in the air. It’s suffocating
There is no “we”
We’ve have contaminated the world. We are a disease that will
kill them all
There is “we”
It’s latched itself to your brain and began digging its malicious claws into you
The brain stops working. Stopped churning and moving. And so do you.
The voice eats away at the very essence of you, and all that’s left is hand washing, picking, pulling, and cracking.
Cracking.
Cracking of the skin around your thumbs.
Cracking of the reality around you
Cracked holes that make you afraid to live
Afraid to touch anything
Afraid of contamination
Afraid of death
Your fear has consumed you.
Your sister is afraid of you, as she sees you screaming on the kitchen floor begging your parents to wash their hands, you think you’ve sentenced them to die
You deface an amateur family portrait she’s created. Your stick figure self is scribbled out with three letters looming across the top of your head, controlling you like a marionette.
O
C
D
This is who you are now – you are no longer yourself – you are your illness.
You scream into the abyss, and the abyss screams back
You need help.
Don’t talk to that therapist, there is nothing wrong with us.
She doesn’t understand. We are contaminated.
There is no “we”
We need to die
She tells you to split your brain from the voice
It’s the only way to protect your family
Pry its claws away from your mind.
We need to die
you are not the voice
We need to-
It’s a malignant shadow consuming you, your life. And you must break free from its grip.
We need-
Give it a name, it will help you defeat it faster
We…
There is no “we”
There is only “you”
And you will defeat this
There will be a day the voice won’t be there
Just make sure you’re there to see it.
Introduction to Podcast Unit
Podcasts are an accessible source of content that many people like. It integrates communication and technology, two core values of Freestyle Academy.
We chose to make our podcast about plants because of a podcast we listened to early on in this unit.
About this Podcast
Our podcast is about plants! Bella and I talk about our favorite plants, provide tips on how to grow plants, and educate listeners on the many health benefits from keeping plants
Podcaster Bios
Bella and Elen are seniors at Freestyle Academy. We are both film students, and enjoy plants. We made this podcast in hopes of encouraging our fellow students to grow and appreciate plants.
Process
Podcast
Here’s our podcast
Reflection
This podcast was very difficult. I don’t like hearing my voice, and I had to hear it a lot over the course of this project. I also am not very good at using Pro Tools and Reason. We had to make our own music for the intro and outro and I didn’t know how to begin. But there were a lot of positives that came out of this podcast too. I learned how to be patient with myself when I misspeak or stutter. I also learned how to be ok with the fact that it doesn’t sound professional. I’m a student, it’s a student production. We don’t have a massive budget which covers expensive microphones and writers. Mistakes are going to happen, and you have to deal with it.