Creative Exercises for Nonfiction: Sense Memory
I had the pleasure of hearing writer Rachel Kushner and musician Kevin Morby in conversation recently at the Southern Festival of Books. Morby was in the midst of his tour for his new album, This Is a Photograph, while Kushner was there to speak about her essay collection, The Hard Crowd, a collection of a wide array of essays that cover politics and culture.
Their conversation was nothing short of amazing, especially both of their outfits: Kevin Morby in a sequined butterfly suit and Rachel Kusher donning zipper-clad tight pants. But beyond the on-point aesthetics, the two discussed the problem of retreating from the world in order to make art versus partaking in daily life in order to experience the world.
Kushner mentioned that for her, these dichotomies occur in waves and wavelettes. Sometimes she is more in the world; sometimes she is more in her art. And although there’s no competition between the two, they are both necessary.
Kusher also spoke about places in her work, places that she can no longer return to because they don’t exist anymore or because maybe they are too painful to revisit. She spoke of returning to a city she once lived in where all the restaurants had turned into chains and the mom and pop shops had disappeared over time. But still, she was able to capture the nostalgia and the sense memory of the place because she had held it in her mind all the while.
“The vividness of a place does not diminish just because it’s gone,” she told the audience.
This idea of sense memory and place inspires today’s prompt:
Write about a place you can no longer visit.
