Here’s the first recent exercise I submitted for a creative writing class I’m taking this summer.

The prompt: “Listen, alone and intently, to a piece of music you care about. After listening for five or fifteen minutes, write anything the music suggests to you. If it has lyrics, don’t use the words of the song, but the images in your own brain, the words that paint your feelings. Don’t try to make sense, or even sentences; let the music dictate your words.”

Music choice: Passacaglia for Violin and Viola by George Frideric Handel and Johann Halvorsen.

The music conveys sadness but also a sense of urgency. Anxiety is everywhere and sends pulses down my back. I feel I must be doing something, anything while listening to this song. Emotions are all over the place. No brightness, just darkness and bleak colors throughout the whole song. Families that are starving, men at war, children living in the streets, villages and cities that are being invaded and burned down. New cities are replacing the old, more and more statues erected of an unknown face. There is something that has to be done before an allotted time, and life itself is at risk. Everything is a ticking time bomb.

It makes me imagine a protagonist that follows the beats of the song, struggling with every second of the ride. Running. Hiding. Fighting. Pushing forward despite each obstacle. There is chaos. Even more fights. Death. Images that have a striking resemblance to WWII and especially The Holocaust. The protagonist is everyone’s only hope for the end of whatever war they are fighting. He continues to push forward, knocking down enemies and carrying the torch of the future.

At the climax, there is tragedy. Something is taken away from the protagonist unexpedidly. I saw a very cinematic moment where the camera pans down and then zooms into the bewildered face of the protagonist as he realizes what has happened. A wound. Lots of blood oozing from his hands. Evil laughs in his face and leaves him there to die. There is no hope and now the end is in sight. The destination and the goal itself continues to move further and further away. What will become of the future? And all the innocent people the protagonist is now responsible for? Death is closer. Darkness is creeping up at a faster pace. But no. There has to be movement. He must carry on, no matter what. The job must be finished. The darkness halts and death accepts but they continue to follow the protagonist as he attempts to carry on. Step by step.

At the conclusion of the song, with each note contradicting the other, the protagonist faces his future. A clash of the instruments, the slow descent into death, but the mission was completed. He can die without guilt. The seed has been planted. Though the music isn’t as sad as the beginning of the piece, there is now hope for the better future.