Last week, a retrospective, a look “backward, back, or behind.” This week, on the (admittedly arbitrarily-selected) first calendar day of the New Year, a look “before or in front” of the year you have ahead of you. We could call that an “anterospective” if we wanted to, sure, we have an artistic license and we know how to Google Latin prefixes.
We just don’t know what the future holds. Isn’t that a wonderful thing? Keeps us on our toes, reminds us to be ready for whatever the moment brings. But we do aspire, and we make plans to achieve those aspirations. In this season, you probably have thoughts about what the upcoming 12 months may have in store for you. Let’s sing about it.
Your Prompt: Sing looking forward to what our next trip around the sun may hold for you—your plans, your hopes, or perhaps just your openness to the continuously unfolding now. Express, as literally or as figuratively as you like, what these next 12 months may hold.
As always, more ideas in the Options…
Options
Here we offer ways that you can meet this prompt right where you are; or, alternatively, ways you can challenge yourself more deeply with it.
Option A: Hopes, Dreams, and Plans: Acknowledging the uncertainty of the future, sing what you know about it now. You have hopes for it, perhaps even dreams for it… perhaps you’re organized enough to actually have plans for it. Sing about that!
Option B: The Crystal Ball: Get predictive, get specific. Imagine that you’re some kind of Oracle and you know, actually, what will be happening this year. Sing about the events that will be happening to you, and how you will cope with them physically, mentally, and emotionally. As an option for this Option, sing next year’s retrospective now.
To Contribute
The steps are as follows:
- Step 0: Sign up for a free SoundCloud account here. Join the SSS group.
- Step 1: Record yourself singing for the future.
- Step 2: Upload to SoundCloud and post the track to the SSS group.
- Step 3: Listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow singers. (Play nice!)
Deadline: Your tracks should be uploaded by midnight wherever you are on Tuesday, January 5th, 20156.
Length: The length of your finished work should be about 2 to 5 minutes, or however long your anterospective song takes.
Description: It would be awesome to include a short description of where and when you sang your piece.
Title/Tag: When uploading to SoundCloud, put “[sss-forward]” in the title of your track. Also include the term “sss-forward” as a tag. This will help us find it.
Group: Once the track is uploaded, click on the “Add to group” button below the waveform and make sure to select the Society for Spontaneous Singing group. (This option will only appear if you have already joined the group! So do that now.)
Linking: You are welcome to include this info in your description:
This track is a reply to “SSS Prompt 49: Anterospective.” More on the Society for Spontaneous Singing at http://singthis.org .
Multiple Responses: If you find that this Prompt inspires you to make multiple recordings, great! More music in the world is good, and people should hear what you have to sing. At the same time, we don’t want anybody to feel like somebody else is being over-represented in the group. Here’s how we thread this needle: make a Playlist of all the sounds you record, pick the response you like most, add this favorite to the Group, and include a link to the Playlist in the description of that favorite.
Thank you, sweet singers!