Scribble Doodle Bleed: Formaldehyde
This week on Scribble Doodle Bleed, our word was formaldehyde, which led us into conversations about preservation, memory, taxidermy, art-show nerves, and the strange emotional territory inside ordinary materials. We found ourselves circling the uneasy relationship between care, decay, and permanence, and the ways creativity often begins in small observations.
Michelle shared a poem that begins with embalmed rooms and pressed wood and moves into ghosts, cabinets, and “good intentions committing light murder,” which feels like exactly the kind of sentence this project exists to discover. We also talked about the difficulty of editing creative work, how cutting language can feel like removing pieces you still remember writing, and how childhood memories and creative rituals continue to surface in unexpected ways.
As always, Scribble Doodle Bleed is less about arriving somewhere and more about paying attention to what appears while we’re talking. The conversation wandered, circled back, and landed somewhere unexpected, which is kind of the point.
Next week’s word: Screwdriver.
If you created something inspired by formaldehyde — writing, drawing, collage, anything — we’d love to see it.
