What Are Your First Memories?

One of my memories is sitting on a beach, thinking it was too hot and I didn’t like sand!

How can you write about that?

One way is to just pick out those two words, ‘hot’ and ‘sand’ and repeat them. Like this:

Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot.
Sand, sand, sand, sand, sand.
Hot sand, hot sand, hot sand, hot sand.
Sand hot, sand hot, sand hot, sand hot.
Hot hot sand.
Hot hot sand.
Hot hot sand.

This is like a rhythmic sound picture.

I could do some drumming behind it.

Or play a chord over and over again.

That way it make it sound a bit as if I was in some kind of trance, sitting on the beach. And that as I was very young, I couldn’t think of other words to use. It’s good fun to think of the simple and single words we used when we were very young.

Here’s another very early memory. It comes from when I was at Nursery School. We were supposed to sleep in the afternoons and I didn’t like that. What really annoyed me was that they gave us a hairy blanket.

So here’s my little hairy blanket protest poem. Perhaps you can imagine me chanting it. And stamping my feet!

I can’t sleep
– hairy blanket
– hairy blanket
I can’t sleep
– hairy blanket
– hairy blanket
I hate the blanket
hairy-hairy blanket

So here’s my suggestion for you: daydream about your very earliest memories.

As you daydream, let a few words rise to the surface. It can be just 2 or 3 or 4 words.

Now see if you can make those words into rhythms by repeating them.

It doesn’t have to be long.

Then see if you can do some drumming or playing some chords to go with what you’ve written.

If you’re with some other people, then you can each do your chant, one after the other, so it becomes a concert of early memories.