Idea Generation - List & Discussion (24/07)
In Retrospect 2
This post is an extract of [CLASS] #2: Friday July 24th Intensive.
This is when I started to formulate my first draft. Touch starvation becomes a much more prominent theme in "Temptation". I considered changing my idea to specifically social contact to keep the emotional impact I wished to talk about in my piece, but I was still indecisive about what my piece was going to look like overall. I was wary of making this essay about my personal experience because I doesn't want to seem narcissistic.
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The final item on our to-do list was to flesh out an initial idea for our upcoming essay. I had several ideas planned, which were:
- Celebrity culture - Open and dismantled, in some ways. I wanted to talk about celebrity culture in lockdown, like the cringey 'Imagine' sing-a-long; hypocrite fashion gurus telling their fans to stay home and be safe, but going to a party without masks and making physical contact; and actors bored in their lavish mansions sparking the ire of working-class people.
- Advertisement campaigns - Dettol, Vaseline and the Victorian government. I aimed to examine company responses, how they've been affected regarding the bottom line and how they've appealed to Australians.
- Touch starvation - How lockdown has affected social contact between humans, the feelings of unsatisfaction with just a video call, temptation.
Our first step was to make a list of everything that came to mind that links to the idea. It could include experiences, memories, people and characters. I primarily wrote down words for touch starvation:
TOUCH STARVATION:
- Desperation
- Rule-breaking
- Unfulfilled
- Skin-crawl
- Substitute
- Isolation
- Unsatisfied
- Incurable
- Unnatural
- Temptation
- Abstinence
- Insufficient
- Separate
- Alone
- Loss
- Video
HUGS:
- Touch
- Smell / Scent
- Rub
- Pat
- Tight
- Short
- Gaze
- Quick
- Squeeze
- Warmth
- Granted
- Contact
- Memory
- Affection
- Occasion
FEELINGS:
- Loneliness
- Jealousy
- Yearning
- Rage
- Envy
- Love
- Want
- Comfort
- Security
- Scared
- Need
- Missing
- Longing
PEOPLE/INTIMACY:
- Relationship
- Togetherness
- Lovers
- Friends
- Others
CONTAGION:
- Contamination
- Community
- Infection
- Survival
- Home
I then joined a discussion with my editing team. I share an editor with Rhianna, while Juno and Joey share another. I wound up abandoning my celebrity culture idea as I offered it to Rhianna, who is discussing class through examining Edgar Allen Poe's The Mask of the Red Death. Juno is looking to write about how writing helps us cope in traumatic situations, and Joey is interested in writing about Christian influence in historic plagues.
As a result of my discussion, I decided to write about my observation of human behaviour in Covid-times, with three broad ideas including:
- Discipline - Quarantine; you've wasted it if you haven't done anything/learnt a new skill.
- Temptation - Resisting social contact, touch starvation. Jealousy of other states/suburbs?
- Impulse - Rule-breakers; Big parties and gatherings, secretly bringing people over to places, KFC party.
- And where do we end up again? Staring at another lockdown in Victoria.
As I write this up now (4th section on Sunday, July 26th), I'm a bit unsure about my topic. My idea so far seems well-planned, like a normal academic essay with a great progression. But I think it's too structured to be a creative essay.
I'm considering changing it to focus on specifically social contact again, not wanting to let go of the emotional feelings in touch starvation, exploring the emotional impact isolation has had on humanity. I'm not sure if this will be too difficult to research though. I'll ruminate on this idea further in the upcoming days.
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