:) some notes (:
welcome!
to the ones here and the ones not yet arrived. here are some words from us that will remain true so long as this vessel we call a mind, makes truth possible. we hope you stay a whistle or a while.
: a note on portraiture; or what is the blog all about?
this blog is a ghostly portrait spelled by murmurs and vapors, rhymes and rituals, hearsay and heresy, sound and sorrow. these words are the irrepressible impulses that float up the sea of our mind demanding attention and the rendered traces of a life swinging between wonder and failure. like all portraits, it is not meant to stand in the place of life. rather, it is traced with filaments of fancy and stained by simmering discontent. it is a blog we made to survive this brilliant and bothersome world.
we will update as spirit, energy, flesh & whimsy allow!
: a note on personhood; or who are we?
we have no words of ours yet to answer this question so we borrow the squirming words below from the mouth and hands of the long-breath singer, would-be dancer, meditative poet amiri baraka:
I can't say who I am
unless you agree I'm real
.
I can't be anything I'm not
except these words pretend
to life not yet explained,
so here's some feeling for you
see how you like it, what it
reveals, and that's Me.
.
Unless you agree I'm real
that I can feel
whatever beats hardest
a our black souls
I am real, and I can't say who
I am. Ask me if I know, I'll say
yes, I might say no. Still, ask.
: a note on impermanence; or how long will this blog exist?
a fish swims in the marrow of my spine. it thinks it will die if it stops moving so it will continue to swim through the currents of change. because everything is always changing, it will continue to move. someday, it will swim beyond this black sea, away from the borders of my mind, into the screen of your eyes, down to the marrow of your spine, out again into another black sea. and when it can no longer move again, it will die. until that day comes, i am here. you are near. we are here, together.
: a note on (in)visibility; or when we gather, who do we see?
friends are gathered here; and yet we remain wary of fictitious intimacies. a barrier of anonymity, flimsy as this pen name may be, is an attempt to prevent the distinction(s) between us from ever fully dissolving. these portraitures, precious as they are to me, should be taken as sheer invention with a trace of truth. readers will understand, that to read this blog, is not the same as to know the spirits behind it.
we do not know how far these words will go once we release them. it may happen that by the time they return back to us, they will seem like words uttered by a stranger far removed from where we are becoming. we have made our peas with our glosses running amok in the world. we live alongside all our ghosts after all, what's a few more of mine in the world? we are a constellation of contradictions. i hold no counsel with logic.
: a note on grammer-devices; why do we write like how we do?
we believe grammar should bend to the curve of the mind and not the other way around. after all, it is the seam of language, made to take the strain of heavy mouth and hand use. we like roving tenses, wayward pronouns, unstandard spellings, symmetrical typography, headless verbs, verbal nouns, giddy rhymes, lopsided phrases, absurd tone and direction turns, metallic metaphors and serpentine gerunds.
we don't like the look of capitalizing only the first letter of a word because it thows off the the symmetry of the whole line. (only acceptable if if the font is ornate or handwritten.) an astrologer is teaching us how to carefully pick the words that shine and matter to us so we default to small letters while we learn. we don't understand why proper nouns need to be capitalized to show a distinction between proper and common nouns. (aren't proper nouns just nouns that have been given names? why should only non-named nouns be in small letters?) i use the lowercase "i" even in the middle of a sentence because it makes me think of a child with an ice cream cone. i love ellipses because it sounds like moon with a lisp. i love the shape of ampers& because it looks like a monk sitting crosslegged. i don't understand semicolons yet-
we love all kinds of speaking: plain-speak, child-speak, fancy-speak, country-speak, slang-speak, rhyme-speak, quilt-speak, code-speak, hand-speak, cloud-speak, picture-speak, cat-speak, bird trills, whale-song &&&... we like soundwords, madeup words, folk words, babble words, dash-words, creolized words, forgotten words. we are a sucker for strutting alliterations and the consonance of echoes. repetition is how to know what moves us. we repeat all the "so many" words we know until meaning falls for our tall tales. how is that for echolalia? we like to break meaning and sound apart and then put it back together in wonkier and funnnier shapes. we like meaning that spins round and round like a web. until you forget where you began. we think in spirals so it is hard to close a loop. everything we make is forever geruding.
: a note on medium-method; or what sorta of things do we plan to keep on here?
all and any creative act of experimentation as they spring from within and without are likely to find their way on here. the medium they find their shape within will likely meander. the riff is the point and the point is the riff. playlists, liner notes, essays, poems, short stories, pictures, zines, melodies, needle-work, artifact &&&. here, there is no fixed voice, form, purpose or medium. everything is made and liberated for the use of play and the delight for the spirits that need and will them to exist.
: a note on survival; or what is the cost of choosing to write?
spellin' the edge of surrender will always be free to read. if you like the work, consider a monthly subscription to our KO-FI. your generosity keeps our many ailments and survival anxiety under control allowing us to free up energy and space to write. sharing te blog in lieu of donations is deeply appreciated as well. Thank you!
