Seven instructional compositions, by Gabe Cayer

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Pick up a pen.
Write down what it was thinking.
Immediately forget what you wrote.
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Pinch yourself.
If any part of you enjoyed it, pinch yourself again.
If no part of you enjoyed it, drink a glass of water.
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Take off your shoes and socks.
Put your bare feet against each other.
Meditate for 13 minutes about what you’re standing on.
Forbid someone you know from ever doing this.
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Hide 3 rhyming objects.
Become a different person.
Look for the objects in the way that this different person looks for things.
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Sing at the moon until you see it change.
Wait two minutes.
Sing at the moon until it changes back.
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Find a very tall ladder.
Put it on top of another ladder to make it even taller.
Climb until you can see every kind of head.
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Crane your neck to look back at all the moments in your life where things could have gone differently.
Keep craning until head unscrews entirely and out of the hole pour jewels & mysteries.
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I had a good deal of fun creating these instructional compositions. About halfway through, I realized that this was essentially an exercise in writing concise and directive absurdist poetry. As a long-time Twitter addict, it recalled the tone of “weird Twitter.” In fact, the last composition is a direct reference to my favourite tweet of all time: https://twitter.com/utilitylimb/status/118716303740641281?lang=en

I decided to start with instructional composition #1, which is far less abstract and more achievable than some of the others. In a sense, it only took me about a minute to complete. I simply tried to write from the perspective of my pen without over-analyzing what it is I was writing. In another sense I am still trying to complete it, because I am still in the process of repressing the memory of what I wrote on the page. I know that if I relax my concentration, my mind will wander back to memory of writing down the pen’s thoughts and I will be able to remember everything. Because of this, I would say that this instruction is an exercise in letting go of higher-order thinking.

Next, I tried instructional composition #2. At the very beginning of the exercise, I found it difficult to ascertain whether some part of me actually liked the pinch. There were some moments where I nearly reached for the glass of water before, in a moment of honesty, I admitted to myself that at someplace I did enjoy that pinch. I finally found just the right part of the part of my hand between my thumb and forefinger that was completely unsatisfying to pinch. The exercise left me feeling refreshed.

Finally, I took a stab at instructional composition #4. I hid my keys, some peas, and some teas. I then pretended that I was a hung-over scruffy weekend warrior who’d just woken up, at 7:50pm. I staggered out of bed into the kitchen, fumbled for the light, and looked for the Christmas teas. When I opened the tea drawer, I stood there for a little while blinking in confusion wondering where the tea could be. I decided I could do the easier part first and just get the teapot and, hey presto, the tea was sitting next to the teapot. Finding the keys and peas was a similar process of looking in the place I’d expected them to be, acting confused, then finding them in the second most likely place they’d be. If I were to repeat the experiment, I’d pretend to be someone even more different from who I am today.