The body and writing

I was intrigued by Diane Ackerman's depictions of artists, and especially writers, in her chapter Courting the Muse, plunging their synaptic buckets deep into their word wells with the help of the outside world. Describing the search for inspiration through our senses  was a terrific way to tie up the book, since this quest pushes us to discover the limits and subtleties of all our senses. I was a little confused why she included a few lines, like the Edith Sitwell bit about how she'd chill in a coffin before writing.

While Edith absolutely looks like somebody who would emerge from a coffin to write poetry, was it the touch of the padding inside that she craved? Is there a fresh coffin smell? Or perhaps, she was reaching out into the void- towards the unknown, a sixth sensation? Was there ever a dead body in it? Coffins are more of a mood, to me at least, than sensual experiences. They have too much emotional and cultural baggage.  I haven't been in a coffin though, so I might just be missing out.
However, I am not missing out on the practices of Victor Hugo and Benjamin Franklin, writing in their birthday suits. I might not be as brazenly nude as they are, but like a normal person, I have many of my best ideas in the shower.

The internet, in its great archives of human experiences, of course, has a hub for these cogitations from cleaning - r/ShowerThoughts - a subreddit, a sort of forum, with 13 million subscribers. Just for talking about soapy ideas. I submitted one, while writing this essay, but I am not linking to preserve my anonymity online. Because there is a lack of meta discussions about shower thoughts on there, I don't know how the posters there jot their thoughts, or their shower habits and methods. But if I know that my head is a shampooing away from an epiphany, or more likely, if I'm taking a shower in desperate need of one, I'll leave my phone recording, and shout everything that comes to me over the falling water's drone. I feel pity for my Father who puts up with his twenty year old yelling about wizards in the bathroom, but it's too much fun to stop.

I am in love with showering. I shower more than seven times a week on average. I'm sure I'll eventually adapt to other bathrooms, but there's nothing like my shower at home. I mean, the only other showers I've had the displeasure of having to get used to were in Clark, Chapin, and Meadows. At home, I always run either the heat or the vent, and if I'm not recording, I'll put on some music too. I don't care that it'll be muted from inside the shower, because I'm seeking the cacophony of concurrent sounds. The acoustics in a shower are actually proven by science to be appealing to the ear. I might put on some noise, like Lightning Bolt,  or some lowercase music usually. The next ten minutes to a half hour are my most carefree minutes of the day, as I relish lathering my skin and hair. For a few nooks and crannies in my form, showering is the only stimuli they'll experience besides my clothes. The temperature of the water is also of grave importance to me, not that I particularly care for any one or two degrees, but take great heed to my body's whims, twisting the temperature control seeking a shifting Goldilocks zone of maximum comfort. I need a bar of soap too. The act of twisting it in my hands, and the way it leaves your skin feeling as opposed to body wash? I love those. And I stretch in the shower. I know it's not the smartest idea, but sometimes I shower in total darkness so like I nearly have proprioception of my entire bathroom. I never fall.
When I get out of the shower, I sit and reflect for even greater lengths of time. Sometimes I listen to whatever I've recorded, sometimes I risk waterlogging my phone to type up anything I've missed. It might be Pavlovian- I may have conditioned myself to associate the sensations of David Laferriere's water closet running on full blast with my stories, or that part of my brain they tend to come from. And as I write this essay, nude, wet, and a little cold in this small room, I get mad at whoever installed the electric outlets in this house, because there isn't one in here and my laptop is running low on battery.