Writing Prompt: Boil Your Urine
Honestly, who are we to fight the alchemy? Plus: another audiobook clip
This clip is from the audiobook sessions for Music, Lyrics, and Life, which will be released on October 8th. You can preorder it from several places already: check here, or go to your favorite streaming service. By release time, it’ll be everywhere. You’re just early!
Accidental Endings Are Endings, Too
I love the idea that someone might start a song and know that the finished product is going to be a song. The leap in logic there is surreal and not backed by history—experience teaches us a different lesson.
Example: Hennig Brand was a seventeenth-century German alchemist who went on a quest for the “philosopher’s stone,” the substance that would turn metal into gold. One of the ingredients he required for this transformation was human urine. Lots of it. Over one two-week period, he boiled down around 1,200 gallons of urine, distilled it, and guess what did not come out? Gold. Guess what did come out? A waxy, glowing lump that easily burst into flames. He combined the Greek “phos” (light) with “phorous” (bearer), and so phosphorous was named.
Disgusting? Yes.
The point? You never know what you’re going to find once you start looking.
Hennig Brand did not fail—he just succeeded at something else. There are so many stories like Hennig Brand’s; why should yours be any different? Half the things we use on a daily basis were discovered while looking for something else. A lot of things we write were intended to be something else, too.
Prompt: Again, with thanks to Taylor, I ask: Who are we to fight the alchemy? So…let’s not. Let’s do what our instinct asks of us, and let it take us where it leads. Good luck!
Music, Lyrics, and Life: The Audiobook, will be available at all retailers and streaming services on October 8th.
…or you could just buy me a coffee, if you like.