Creative Writing Workshop: integrating the Digital with Autofiction

 

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A letter YOU will not read

By Sara Baloum

 

I arrived at the public library after a long day of lectures, attempting to catch a Jenga tower consisting of coursework, and as I was on my tenth page of a novel called 10:04, I found myself being another witness to a man’s ‘philosophical’ revelations, or in other words identity crisis. Was it my dyslexia that made me stumble through my words or Ben Lerner’s indecisiveness? This is something I tried to comprehend— I buried my face in my hands on the table, and I only managed to think of you.

The atmosphere of this cold night resurfaced the image of your lifeless eyes as they locked into mine for the first time, it was a lonely night, in Tel Aviv at a bus station where we met. I was there “throwing myself into a world of new opportunities” in the sharp coldness waiting for bus 113… I was taken in by the brutal seemingly dystopian architecture, it evoked from within a sense of utopia, and it made me want to hold onto the place a little longer—there was no judgment, only darkness, just like tears in rain nothing felt different, nothing stood out. I was engulfed by the thought of how we long to feel special to only be consumed with melancholy. This was what I can think of as human-like figurines passed by me at the bus station in a meticulously superficial sped-up motion.

Amongst the crowds you were halting the speed of it all, your raven black hair glimpsed the reflection of the lights around you. And with a black leather jacket, you carried yourself with elegance that shielded your vulnerability, and nonchalance that protected your inner worlds— the act of depriving the world of who you are, has intrigued me to you. Why would someone go through the hurdle to hide themselves in a world of people who sought out their truths?

…

In this moment, I shook off the weight that had forced my head to sink down, and just decided to give up on becoming an “academic Jesus”— a role my for you page on TikTok motivated me to fill, it was an attempt to feel like I had accomplished something in the timeless façade of what became my life. Along with my thoughts of the night where we met and my alarmingly heavy laptop, I packed it all and put my headphones on to drown the sounds that roamed around me. I and others who saw me occasionally, adjoined me to be a music fanatic—an audiophile— to the point, where my parents used to force the headphones off my head in fear for my hearing, and would orchestrate meetings with my favorite elementary teacher in an attempt to put an end to this fixation. And for my music, I was an Apple music user something you used to wholeheartedly pick me for, and where also I stood firm judging you for being a Spotify one. I scrolled through my music library and decided it was appropriate to listen to the album Kiss Land by The Weeknd.

Kiss Land was one of the albums that I religiously consumed, because to me it was not about the mere act of listening to the music, but to understand the musical craft that went in and to build up the bricks of a story with each listen. The third track on the album was called “Adaptation,” a song in which The Weeknd is navigating the absence of someone he unrequitedly loved, and the company of someone he abandoned an opportunity “to settle down” for. Throughout the song, he is convincing himself to adapt to the loss of his lover who knew never belonged to him to begin with, and the swallowing void that she left behind. Something about the sample he used from “Bring On the Night” by The Police embodied my current state without you.

 

The afternoon

has gently passed me by

The evening spreads its

 sail against the sky

Waiting for tomorrow

Just another day

God bid yesterday

goodbye

 

This night to me was another night that passed before my eyes without your presence, I accepted that you are gone and became a variation or merely an imitation of a reality in my mind— the remanence you left me with was a parasite that consumed of what remained of me. The fourth track called “Love in the sky” started to play with its thrilling and haunting bass that drowned the space between the rims of the earpads and the speaker inside the headphone. And now I had a choice to make —something you knew I was bad at doing —should I take the shuttle bus or continue my walk to the dorm? Just like the night we met, my feet became glued still to the ground and it expected to meet you again, and for a moment part of me had hoped that you would appear, but your absence remained. I glanced at the falling yellowing leaves, carelessly falling, naive about the world that burns them. Is this what songwriters in the likes of The Weeknd, Lana del Rey, and Madison beer envied? People who had all what was desired? Is it true that our love is found only in the skies, or just finding you?

…

I saw the light shine through my pocket, it wasn’t you, again, but it was a reminder to pick a carton of bottled water from the grocery store nearby; unexpectedly it was a crowded night with many students who attended the same university I did, carefully searching the aisles. I avoided the possibility of a social interaction creeping up by swiftly picking the water and walking directly to the cashier. There was a relatively small line, and as I searched my pocket for my cardholder, my brother had given me when I first moved, I looked up and was caught by surprise to realize— it was you— raven black hair that reflected the horrid lights in the store to crescent-like white silvery highlights between each strand of your hair. You lifted your head from the six aligned blue bottles, and our tired eyes locked.

For a split second, to what felt like an awfully painful hour long of me blinking in awe, a voice crept up to my ear around the headphone earcup I had moved away, saying “that would be 12 shekels” in Hebrew, I realized “you” were a stranger. Whenever someone spoke to me in Hebrew or I anticipated someone will, the semantics ground me back into the “reality” where I start to name my surroundings, an exercise you recommended me to relieve my anxiety, something we talked about as we shared our language skills upon moving to Tel Aviv— somehow we both agreed that Hebrew was a difficult language to speak casually, contradicting the common belief among Arabs of how smoothly Hebrew inserts itself to your daily vocabulary as An Arab. Shortly after the grocery store’s awkward transaction, I walked out of the store wondering and questioning my sanity, was it you? A stranger? Did I lose my mind?

At this moment, I had no music playing and my thoughts started to creep up on me, so I scrolled through my music library again, and “Bad Religion” by Frank Ocean was on my recommended plays. This song is not new to me, but something I defeatedly admitted to you was the horrible AI playlisting Apple Music had, a category about streaming apps where Spotify excelled. The song played and reached the chorus:

If it brings me to my

 knees

It's a bad religion

Ah-ah, oh, unrequited love

To me, it's nothin' but

 a one-man cult

 

I was confronted with the realization that The Weeknd was not adapted to his lover’s absence, or I was not adapting to the loss of you, but that loving you consumed me, loving you was just like that Netflix documentary you recommended me to watch about the infamous “Sons of Sam”, this love was a cult— I had to unlearn your touch to break free, you are just a bird, and I was deceived to see the feathers that were meant to leave once the season passed us by.