Last month i caught up with a friend of mine who also fancies himself a writer (and with good reason). We caught up to discuss various projects that we’d like to get off the ground and such as well as to record a pilot podcast where we discuss movies for 90 minute or so. On my way to meet with him he sent me a text message telling me to bring along 5 song titles. It seemed an odd request but I wrote down the names of 5 songs I’d been listening to recently and  spent the rest of the time trying to figure out what he had planned. The only thing that came to mind was that he was going to use the song titles as segment titles for our podcast. That wasn’t it.

We sat down for a late breakfast and a peppermint tea for me and he revealed that the reason he asked for 5 song titles was he thought we could do a little writing exercise to kick start the day. I thought this was a great idea.

The basic idea was to pick one of our titles and right a story based solely around the first thing that came to mind when we heard that distinctive collection of words. I suggested that, because we are somewhat likely to influenced by our knowledge of the songs we ourselves had chosen, we actually swap lists and write about songs we hadn’t heard or knew little about (I had heard 1 if his songs, he had heard none of mine).  He agreed with this idea and we got down to writing.

The point of this brief anecdote is that the story I wrote in that session is the one I’m posting here write now. As you can see I chose a song titled ‘Electric Bloom’ by, I believe, the Foals. Here is the story, I hope you enjoy it.

Electric Bloom

P.S. My friend chose the song ‘Mathematics’ by Mos Def and his piece was really, really good.