new york Tag

There is a poem I wrote in the early spring that describes the moment of meeting, and attraction, as... cellular intelligence, as when my electrons got all jumpy-like from first you walked in the room recognized yours like an overdue reunion refugees from the counties of each other  and I bring that up now because, metaphorically, our Exit Strata electrons have been getting all jumpy-like a hell of a lot recently. Far beyond a one-to-one connection, this piece posits a theory of interpersonal co-evolution that I've been tossing around lately -- one that suggests that we instinctively recognize our creationary comrades: those who will make our world and life a better place, who will inspire us, challenge us, and help us evolve. This electromagnetic impulse, lets say - the biological inclination to draw this person or these people into your self or your environment - becomes/grows into "love" with WORK: because even chemical reactions require catalysts, and require the appropriate conditions for full realization. We come to love those people who bring this original impulse into being -- through the ultimately selfless act of commitment to another person or group of people. We appreciate and feel in our very bodies how awesome it is that these people stay with us, and give of themselves and their energy again and again. So we're going to start out with a big hearty THANK YOU. Oh man. We love you people. We love our contributors, the people who come to our events, the people who write us email, the people who chat with us at our tables -- and we get all jumpy for you. You know why? Because you make us believe in what we're doing, and you show us that YOU believe in what we're doing. You let us know that it supports and inspires you. That it is encouraging and enabling and growing your work and your connections and your community. And because altogether, we're feeling like we've, well, LEVELLED UP. To a new Strata. Let's hear it for 2012! Did you know it's the United Nations' Year of Cooperatives? I think that "country of eachother" those lines channel an understanding of is, in fact, the collaborative, cooperative future we are building here together.

[caption id="attachment_1780" align="alignleft" width="640"] Byrne's installation, the "Occupiable Sculpture" Digilog Futures, at 83 Gallery (Columbus, OH) http://www.architizer.com/en_us/projects/view/digilog-futures/40226/[/caption] Day # 5 (1.5)  Wake feeling strangely ok. This does not last. ___ ___ Where do poetics and the built environment overlap? What do we take in, what do we observe? Where are the boundaries where we end and our context begin? Or are these boundaries illusory? What of these questions when you engage with and build this environment? When the city, the block, the structure, the wall, all that recedes as existent, is your medium? In this mini-series of FIELDNOTES, architect and poet Martin Byrne lets us peek into his mind/journal.

The poetry landscape in New York City can be confusing to navigate, especially given its ever growing diaspora of splinter cells. Despite the density and scale of creative energy feeding this array, the experience of this fragmentation is often that of participation in one or a number of small groups, working in isolation. Sustaining these communities takes constant effort and commitment on the part of not only those who choose to plant the seed of reading series, magazine, or so on, but also from those who support and participate in these efforts -- and in many cases there is a fine line between success and utter exhaustion, the point at which sustenance seems too dear a price, and in which community feels like a utopian fantasy.

Sometimes, it takes a certain kind of vision -- one that steps back, out away from these stands of trees, to see the verdant, expansive forest -- to help empower a return to joy and belief in our work, and in the strength of our creative community.

If you're here, you know this is a mission near and dear to our hearts. That we exist primarily as a creators community, a network, and a platform for mutual expression, appreciation, collaboration, dialogue, interdisciplinary exploration. Our work is, ultimately, an exercise in the self-actualization of a viable cooperative for growing value. But we know we cannot do this alone, and so we are always searching for allies, comrades in the fight for viable abundance....

Enter The Poetry Society of New York.

[caption id="attachment_1555" align="alignleft" width="493" caption="Angela Vorsteg Norris Miss Subways March 1950"][/caption] If you're not from around here, you may not know that Meet Miss Subways is more than a Ferlinghetti poem. And, as such, you may not know that "Miss Subways was a title accorded to individual New York City women between 1941 and 1976. The woman who was "Miss Subways" at any one time appeared on posters placed on New York City Subway trains, along with a brief description of her. The program was run by the ad agency "New York Subways Advertising". To be eligible, a woman had to be a New York City resident and herself use the subway. Winners were usually chosen by telephone-based voting, from among a group of contenders whose photos were all placed on the subways; the nominees were chosen by John Robert Powers, a modelling agent." {thank you, Wikipedia!} I'm a sucker for New York memorabilia, and photographic projects examining identity, place, and culture, so when I happened upon Fiona Gardner's series -- in which she documents, via striking, technicolor-esque present day portraits and tells the stories of former "Miss Subways," alongside the now-dated newspaper clippings introducing these "girls" to an adoring city -- I immediately rang her (um, or, since it's not 1960, I messaged her on facebook, where I found her through our mutual friend, painter and herbalist Michael Viola).

[caption id="attachment_682" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Photo: Thomas Ahern & Misha Jenkins"][/caption]  

Who am I: David King

What am I: Educator. Writer. Songwriter. Performer. Artist. Where am I: New York, NY, USA         Kid tested, Exit Strata Approved Event:  4/20 at 10pm David King without the Confirmed Bachelors (solo acoustic set) Pete's Candy Store, Brooklyn, NY 

(Follow DK & the CB here for upcoming shows, digital media, and other updates)

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When I moved to New York nearly eight years ago, I became a determined flâneur—in Baudelaire’s formulation, one who walks the city in order to experience it—and although the New York I walked was not 1929 or 1938 or 1943, I heard everywhere, persistent, sardonic, and expansive, the voice of Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961) in the back of my mind. To read Fearing is to suddenly meet Walt Whitman not in a supermarket but in the neon shadows of a film noir. I can think of few other poets who capture the alienation and exultation of urban existence, at once cosmopolitan and proletariat, sophisticated and vulgar. To live in a city is to live at all times inside the human mind: Fearing’s best poems buzz in that hive of loneliness and longing:   X Minus X Even when your friend, the radio, is still; even when her dream, the magazine, is finished; even when his life, the ticker, is silent; even when their destiny, the boulevard, is bare; And after that paradise, the dance-hall, is closed; after that theater, the clinic, is dark,   Still there will be your desire, and hers, and his hopes and theirs, Your laughter, their laughter, Your curse and his curse, her reward and their reward, their dismay and his dismay and her dismay and yours—   Even when your enemy, the collector, is dead; even when your counselor, the salesman, is sleeping; even when your sweetheart, the movie queen, has spoken; even when your friend, the magnate, is gone.

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