Hearts & Things
- Creativity Hour -
Okay, so this is one of my favorite things to do. The rules go:
1) You have one hour to make something.
2) You have to start from scratch.
3) You have to end with a finished project.
4) No perfection-chasing. With the clock ticking fast, now is not the time.
5) Have fun!
I've only ever done these with friends, and it's a great social activity. (Seriously! Even though there's that hour where nobody talks to each other because they're working on their own thing :P But I really love seeing what other people make afterwards.) It's honestly so much fun! And you can do anything! You have an idea, you take it, and you RUN.
It's a nice kick to work on something you've been meaning to for a while, but never found the chance to. The time limit of a single hour is the perfect amount of pressure to cobble together something without thinking too much about it. It is a little stressful, admittedly, but I think deadlines are super helpful for getting things done.
Here's a list of some of the things my friends have done:
- Story-writing
- Essay-writing
- Video-making
- Playing with cardboard boxes
- Messing around with PowerPoints and emojis
- Designing T-shirts
- Making music
- Painting
- Drawing
- Coding
- Yoga
- Dance
- Rap
- Poetry
- Spoken word
I usually write a song, but I've also written poetry, tried rapping, made craft-y things, and pretended to DJ. Will upload more later, but below are a few examples of my creativity hour products:
"Less Than Three"
This was my first-ever (!) creativity hour product. My friends and I were hanging out, and one of them suggested a creative activity where we each create something that the rest could participate in, and we'd have an hour to do so. So I wrote this song thing (?), with the idea that each person would say one of the stanzas, and we could all clap on a pattern I came up with. When we regrouped I realized that I was the only one who came up with something that had group participation (they wrote a song and rapped, respectively), but the birth of Creativity Hour came from here.
My friends are not included in this version because there were a lot of pauses when we tried, so I re-recorded it with just me.
"Heart Song"
I wrote this song at a giant creativity hour (usually I do this with anywhere from 1-3 other people, but this group was 10+ people). I had to write it mostly in my head because there wasn't enough space to go elsewhere where I could sing out loud, and I didn't want to disturb the silence. In the last ten minutes though, I did end up locking myself in the bathroom just so I could hum it quietly out loud to hammer out details.
I incorporated some clapping/percussion and had people come in in different rounds. I was worried about the coordination, but it worked out well and was a lot of fun. :)
"Low"
No idea what this song is about. (Would love to hear your interpretation!) When you're working on a limited time scale, you have to basically just take the first words that come into your head, and then clean them up if you have the luxury of leftover time.
But if I had to guess, the message is along the lines of something sweet. :)
"Take Me, I'm Yours"
This was inspired by Jason Mraz. (Actually, a lot of my stuff is inspired by him!) I read somewhere that his hit "I'm Yours" was not written as a traditional love song in the sense of him singing to a lover - he was writing "to that great unknown, whatever it is that gives us ideas". That resonated with me, so out came this! This idea of opening myself for a higher creative energy to flow through and make something. But I also love that it sounds like a love song, because, well, it is.
He also wrote "I'm Yours" in like 20 minutes and said that it came out of joy ("It came out of this spirited, joyful hour") - this is EXACTLY the essence of creativity hour for me. So I love it all <3
"Cloaks And Roads"
I wrote this at a time where I was feeling very unrooted. This one is loosely based off of Jason Mraz's "93 Million Miles" and Ed Sheeran's rendition of "The Parting Glass". It's either from the point of view of a mother speaking to her son, or a wife speaking to her husband. In either case, someone is leaving for the road, and the narrator is asking them not to go, but knowing they will anyway. And loving them even so.