Keeping on with the Daily Create

The Daily Create with DS106 keeps me on my toes. Even on days when I don’t do the Daily Create, I find myself thinking about it during odd moments during the day, as if I were creating in my head. It’s strange. But that’s the power of a good idea, right?

Here are a few Daily Create assignments I’ve been tinkering with in the past few days:

This morning, the assignment was to create a persona poem. It could be real or fictional, and I went with a poem about Charlie Parker (see my blog tagline).

Bird
Musical, Inventive, Groundbreaking, Addicted
Pioneer of jazz saxophone soloing
Who loves riffing off a melody, making music on the stage in a dark bar and escaping from banality of the ho-hum
Who fears rejection of lovers, uninspired moments that lead to boredom, and lost notes played at midnight
Who wants to see all music transformed by creativity, an end to racial inequality, and the acceptance of Jazz as an authentic original American art form
Parker

Sometimes, I share out this old digital poem about Charlie “Bird” Parker.

Bird: a video poem from Mr. Hodgson on Vimeo.

One of the strangest Creates in some time was something known as the PetSwitch. We went into a site that allows you to superimpose your image on your pet’s image, to create … this odd thing. The assignment was to write the story, but I could not get past seeing my dog Duke with my mouth and eyes, and so I went with a simple six word story.

What was in that kibble anyway?

And here is the image:

Weird, eh?

And finally, the other day, we had a Prime Number Poetry assignment, where we had to use five different prime numbers as part of poem where the numbers were the rhyming words of couplets. That’s not as easy as it sounds (or maybe it doesn’t sound easy).

Here’s what I wrote:

At the ripe old age of 89,
I came to the realization of something left behind
in a house whose address was 643
on Main Street, near the post office, by the big ol' tree,
and so if you would like to earn a reward of 109
dollars, I would be most appreciative if you took the time
to gather my stuff, including my pets, all 5,
if they happen to still be living there, and if they happen to be alive.
Give me a call -- my area code is 367
unless I've gone away, then you can text me in Heaven.

And how could I forget? The other day, in honor of my fellow dawg’s birthday (Alan Levine, aka @cogdog), the Daily Create theme was creating a dog-themed photograph for Alan, one of the minds behind DS106. I went into webcomic mode, riffing on a periodic cat vs. dog idea.

Peace (in the creative spirit),
Kevin