Emotional Research

Research.
Gather what you need.

The job really called for an emotion I knew. I have had that emotion, and I know summoning that demon is the way to go, to conjure The Words. To really do this assignment right.

So I backtrack, I go back to that well, deep in the earth of me. Deeply dug, tightly sealed. I have owned this emotion. I've bottled and kept it, never fully working it through. I break the seal.

Chocolate covered raisins. Seashells from Mexico. Old photos and cards. His old leather jacket. I buy a bottle of his aftershave, and I sleep with it, wearing nothing else. I watch his favorite movie. I cook and eat linguini with clam sauce, I drink gin and tonic. Many gin and tonics.

I call him.
"Jesus, Veronica. It's two in the fucking morning. What are you doing?"
"What do you think I'm doing?" I sob.
He sighs. I remember that sigh.
And he whispers, "What are you writing?"

I walk the park at night. I sink. All over again. I eat, breath and sleep him. I remember. I re-live it. I re-feel it.

Until I am immersed.

And then, I separate it. I separate the feeling from the event where it Became. The event is not coming on this trip.

Only a few days later and I am living this perfect raw emotion. Overwhelming. Hard. Painful. Terrifying. I let it take me, focused forward, not backward. And then I use it to create The Words. The new work.

It is not the emotion that is toxic, it's the association.

Rescued.
Lent.



"Veronica, this is exactly what I wanted. God, it sounds so personal. I'd almost swear this happened to you, instead of the character. How do you do this?"

Emotional research.

He's handing me my pay. And I am taking it. I'm having one of those whore moments, so I pick up the check for our dinner, seeking redemption.

He's trying to see how much I'm tipping. Hey, I'm feeling uneven, and I read Waiterrant ... I leave a fifty on a $100 dinner bill. The service was excellent. But, that has nothing to do with it sometimes.

He raises his eyebrow when he sees, but shrugs. "Where have you been, anyway? I've been trying to reach you for weeks."


Sometimes it's hard to get the emotion back into the well.


"Pale runs the ghost swollen on the shore every night in every pore. The scales that do slither, deliver me from."
-The Mars Volta