if you were, what would you be
during the pandemic, R and I spent so much time together. we noticed that the question “how are you?” didn’t often produce interesting responses - we just default quickly to “good” without considering a response because emotion words feel so limited. we started asking each other “if you were a weather system, what weather system would you be?”, “if you were a plant, what plant would you be?” and it eventually evolved into the simplified form “if you were, what would you be?”. it’s an invitation to describe a vibe with a visual metaphor, and it doesn’t have to make any sense. you can elaborate and go deeper, or you can leave it unexplained.
here are some from the past few years, whenever i had the presence of mind to actually write them down:
- the cat or the old man with the beard
- a pack of crows in a middle school auditorium
- a set of yellow Ticonderoga pencils, with two removed, one sharpened well, one sharpened roughly
- five marbles in a pillow case
- clean chicken bones in a shoebox
- the hydraulic press or the objects being crushed
- a paper airplane - can fly surprisingly far, but often goes in unexpected directions
- an accordion - expands, contracts, produces joyful music