Literary Critique Thread

Melancholy percussion seems off. How about strings instead? Or do you insist on life's ensemble being a brass band rather than a full orchestra? Is this a military thing, like life is war?

Next, dotted with ... brass might be more effective if you move the punch of the drums here. Something like 'punctuated by cymbals' if you want to maintain the copper/brass coloring.

Then, lives tend to fade to a single note then pause, trailing off rather than rupturing in applause, so I'm not sure about this bit.

But the idea is there, and it's good, so keep it up. Is this the first sentence of a story or a mediation on music/life, or is it a standalone maxim?

>>9880794
Goddamn, that bitch got some fuckin arms
Does she do Starting S?
Wht program does she do?
Does she curl?
Fucking massive pythons.

>>9881568
Thanks for replying; I was asleep, hence my late response.

Admittedly the instrument types were selected due to me not having much knowledge of music. I figured that to pace a life, percussion would be optimal, due to it involving drums and the like. I chose brass for the "dotted fantastic" moments because I love the amount of emotion that brass can add to a piece.

The "end with applause" portion was to represent a funeral, because applauses tend to be short, just like a funeral is. The movement onto the next piece is to showcase how quickly people move on, and possibly even forget you.

It's just a standalone maxim.

Thank you for your comments and suggestions!

>>9883049
a shit

Jarred from sleep, Shearer tastes metal and smells brandy.

It takes him a moment to realize that this is the hotel. He is not at home.

He was dreaming of a college girlfriend who he knows he abused- though never physically- whose name was Samantha or Prescilla, whose natural beauty was squandered by makeup, enormous sunglasses, marijuana, premature pregnancies.

Samantha or Priscilla had these big hazel eyes whose irises’ depths, in the cold shuddering of their moments of intense spiritual pain, could still make Shearer want her. And made the younger version of himself want to possess her. If he knew where she lived he would go and anonymously leave a stack of her favorite candies on her doorstep, though he knew her tastes has almost certainly changed. And that by now she almost certainly had children, a life, a family. Her husband was probably the antichrist. She would love him no matter what. She was just like that naturally. Shearer had probably made her more so.

She would never forgive him no matter what he did.

He remembers her shade of lipstick (It was a rose like the salmon pink of a fabric flower) and the thinness of her fingers (they were spindly and well-practiced), the feel of her waist (toned) and the smell of her hair (L’oreal), but not a word of whatever she ever told him.

They were not insignificant things.

He can smell flowers wilting in the corner and hear the leaking of helium.

Where had he gotten three dozen large balloons?

Awakening, to Shearer, is coming to through a layer of fog. He imagines that he sits straight up, like they do in movies from a nightmare, in extreme closeup. His first thought is water. He grabs for the nightstand and finds nothing, and then realizes he isn’t home.

Coming to in strange places should be nothing new to him. How is it still, after all these years?

After a minutes’ worth of brandy-hampered fumbling, he finds the switch to the bedside lamp.

Skull lands against the headboard. Shearer whines and curses, wonders whatever happened to her. Did she get rid of the baby like she said she was going to? Did she move away? Was she still living in the brownstone at 808...what was that? Carpathian?

Catherine?

...what?

And now, thinking about it--

how many happy people had had meaningful sex in the very bed he had been asleep in? How many people in love who wanted futures and security with the person that they were with?

Did they know they were mocking him?