Latest / The Entertainment Conversation: Pop Culture, Media & Ideas / Washing Machines & Verses: The Art of Spoken Word in Laundromats | The Entertainment Conversation
Transcript
- There is a specific kind of silence that only exists inside a laundromat at 11 PM, and it is the loudest place I have ever heard my own voice. You might think you are hiding from the world, but really, you are just waiting for the spin cycle to catch up to your thoughts. Let’s unpack that moment, shall we? Because if you’ve ever stood there, staring at the swirling water through the glass door, you know it’s not really about the clothes. It’s about the pause. The forced, mechanical pause in a life that demands constant motion. I want to talk about something that feels slightly absurd on paper but feels profoundly human in practice: recording spoken word poetry over the sound of washing machines. Yes, washing machines. Not grand concert halls with velvet seats and hushed anticipation. Not pristine home studios with acoustic foam lining the walls like expensive wallpaper. No. We’re talking about the hum of industrial agitators, the clunk of wet denim hitting the drum, the rhythmic slosh that sounds suspiciously like a heartbeat slowing down after a panic attack. It started for me last Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday, because time dissolves when you’re folding fitted sheets. I had this line in my head, a jagged little fragment about how grief doesn’t announce itself with sirens; it arrives quietly, like a sock disappearing into the dryer’s abyss. And suddenly, the room felt too quiet. My apartment was still, suffocatingly so, and I needed noise. I needed friction. So I walked three blocks to the 24-hour laundromat, plugged my phone into a small recorder, and let the machine do its work. I didn’t write a poem first. I let the rhythm of the wash dictate the meter. The thump-thump-hiss became my metronome. And what came out wasn’t polished. It wasn’t performative. It was raw, messy, and entirely real. You might be thinking, 'Celine, why would anyone choose such an imperfect backdrop?' It’s giving... counter-intuitive. But here’s the thing about perfection in art: it often creates distance. When we record in sterile environments, we try to eliminate every variable, every distraction. We want the voice to float in a void. But life isn’t a void. Life is cluttered. Life is noisy. Life is the drip-drip-drip of a leaky faucet and the distant wail of a siren and the low-frequency rumble of a motor spinning at high speed. When you record over the sound of a washing machine, you are acknowledging that your words exist within a context. They are not separate from the mundane machinery of daily survival. In fact, they are fueled by it. The white noise acts as a blanket, wrapping around your voice, softening the edges of vulnerability. It makes the confession feel less like a performance and more like a secret shared with the room itself. Think about it. Who has seen us more vulnerable than the person standing next to us while their underwear tumbles in a circle of hot water? There’s a camaraderie in that shared exposure. A silent agreement that we are all just trying to get clean, one load at a time. I remember sitting on that cracked plastic chair, watching the red light blink, and realizing how terrifying it is to speak truth into a space that doesn’t care if you’re lying. The washing machine doesn’t judge your tone. It doesn’t critique your diction. It simply absorbs the sound and adds it to its own chaotic chorus. This lack of judgment is perhaps the most liberating aspect of this practice. In traditional settings, we fear the audience. We fear the silence that follows a risky line. But here, the silence is filled by the churning water. It masks the tremor in your voice. It gives you permission to be shaky, to pause, to breathe heavily without feeling like you’re losing control. I recorded three pieces that night. One was angry. One was tender. One was just nonsense, repeating the word 'spin' until it lost all meaning and became a mantra. The angry one felt good, like throwing a tantrum against the glass. The tender one felt dangerous, like standing on a ledge. But the nonsense one? That was the healing part. It was the sound of letting go of the need for the words to make sense. Just listen to the rhythm. Let the machine carry the weight of the structure while you focus on the emotion. It’s a collaboration between your humanity and the appliance’s indifference. And honestly, isn’t that the best kind of partnership? I want to share a bit of my own history here, because I know many of you have stories about where you find your creativity. For years, I thought I needed a library carrel or a sunlit desk by the window. I bought expensive notebooks. I invested in pens that felt heavy in my hand, like tools of state. But those spaces felt staged. They felt like I was playing the role of 'Writer.' At the laundromat, I am not a writer. I am just a woman with cold hands and a lot of unresolved feelings about her ex-boyfriend’s terrible taste in music. And that matters more. Last month, during one of those weeks where the news cycle felt like a treadmill set to max speed, I went back. I needed to scream, but politely. I needed to process the exhaustion of being constantly online, constantly aware, constantly performing. The washing machine provided the perfect arena. I spoke about burnout. I spoke about the desire to just stop, to dissolve into the sudsy water and float away. And as I spoke, I watched the bubbles form and burst. Each pop was a period at the end of a sentence. Each swirl was a comma, keeping things moving. It was visceral. It was tactile. And when the cycle ended, and I pulled out my damp clothes, I felt lighter. Not metaphorically. Physically. Like I had offloaded some of the static from my brain into the fabric of the world. So, here is my invitation to you. You don’t need to be a poet. You don’t need to have a professional microphone. You just need a smartphone, a laundromat (or a dishwasher, or a blender—anywhere there is repetitive, grounding noise), and five minutes. Pick a topic that’s been nagging at you. Something small. Something you haven’t said out loud yet. Set up your recorder. Start the machine. Wait for the rhythm to establish itself. Then, start speaking. Don’t worry about rhyme. Don’t worry about meter. Just let the noise hold you up. If you stumble, let the motor cover it. If you cry, let the water drown the sob. I did this exercise last week, and I recorded a piece about forgiveness. Specifically, forgiving myself for not being productive enough on a Sunday afternoon. I expected it to be shallow. Instead, it became profound. The steady thrum of the spin cycle gave me the space to admit how much I actually wanted to rest. How much I resented the guilt that comes with stillness. By placing those words in that noisy, industrial space, they felt less like accusations and more like observations. They were just facts, suspended in air and water. And sometimes, hearing our own truths spoken in a neutral environment is the only way we can believe them. This brings us back to the idea of context. We live in an era where everything is curated. Our feeds are filtered. Our photos are color-corrected. Our voices are auto-tuned. We are terrified of imperfection because we’ve been taught that imperfection is failure. But art, true art, lives in the glitch. It lives in the unexpected noise. The washing machine is a symbol of domestic labor, of the invisible work that keeps our lives running. By bringing our creative expression into that space, we are reclaiming it. We are saying that poetry isn’t just for the elite in galleries. It’s for the tired parents, the night-shift workers, the insomniacs, the dreamers who find clarity in the chaos of chores. It’s also a reminder that creativity doesn’t require special conditions. It requires attention. It requires the willingness to listen to the world around you and translate it into language. The washing machine is teaching us rhythm. It’s teaching us patience. It’s teaching us that transformation takes time, heat, and agitation. Your words are no different. They need to be churned. They need to be soaked. They need to be spun until the dirt is gone and only the essence remains. And sometimes, the best vessel for that process is a second-hand detergent dispenser and a half-empty basket of towels. Go find your noise today. Listen closely. Stay curious.