July 2012

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.

In which we reach out to our community to engage in the making of Collaborative Content beyond our Topic (place-bound) limitations, to invite you to participate Rhizomatically in the conversation/dialogue that happens here on site. Responses will be catalogued and posted in a follow up feature, and potentially (if you are speedy) read from at the event itself. Please email all responses to editors@exitstrata.com or respond in the comment section below. Thanks for playing! What makes human communication different from that of animals? Where does music fit in? How can our poetic or other verbal creation be representative of a more essential form of human communication, reminding us of our linguistic origins? 

Every now and again, as I walk around these not-so-pristine streets, my eye will catch something small, some strange forgotten detail on a building facade and it will tell me to record it in some way, sketch or otherwise, in order for it not to be forgotten entirely.  Other times, my forehead opens up and things fall out and I'll need a place to catch them.Most often though, the idle thoughts that pass through typically revolve around or revolve in some kind of environment, not necessarily a building, maybe a set of buildings, or a wilderness, none of which exist in the proper sense, and therefore need to find space on a notebook page.  The design process that has sort of formed itself within me over the years took a narrative turn while I was working on my master's degree.  The sense that buildings and environments needed to be created through the positivist flow seemed to be too limited and cold for my tastes and the only way to find new opportunities in design would be to come at it from the other side. Or from underneath, as the case may be.  This lead me towards intuition, accident, error, and then eventually to poetry, though I far from consider myself to be any kind of poet.

Editor's update: our man in Alaska is in the midst of tonnes of tuna...er, sockeye salmon... you get the drift: a lot of fish. He reports fatigue of the almost unbelievably backbreaking variety, the type that relies on dogged perseverance alone. As has happened to all of us in these simultaneously frustrating and invigorating times, writing falls by the wayside... but in the service of satisfying, seemingly "real" work, wherein the mind enters a nearly zen state and stops getting in the way. Somehow, to spend a few moments looking, depicting in film or pen and ink doesn't require the same effort as words so a few drawings pepper the spaces between. We congratulate Jacob, his dad, and their team on a banner harvest. He writes:  I can hardly move right now. It is a record breaking year so far. We've been open for the last eight days straight and will probably not close until the first of August. I can't really relate to you how tired I am at this point but we're almost half way through the season and we are destroying past seasons. I won't sleep for the next two weeks probably. It's been about as many preceding today. If I could write I would, but I can't. One thing on my mind right now: working through it.

Other than that I am extremely high on adrenaline right now and excited as hell to continue working. We are doing quite well as far as the price is concerned. Holding at 1.45/lb. We'll have 100,000 lbs by the end of this show.
 
ED: Every time you eat a sandwich, or sushi, of sea-caught fish of any kind, there are humans on a boat working grueling hours to provide you with that privilege. Stay abreast of the illusions of too-easy consumption.
 

  Exit Strata is VERY excited to invite you along on a new (ad)venture, as we team up with the Avant-Classical/Experimental concert series Home Audio to co-curate these monthly evenings of sound and music collaboration. For our first evening together, we tackle Infinite Combinatoriality vs. Animal Language, or simply, HUMANS VS ANIMALS which will take place on July 26th, at 141 Spencer Street, #203, Brooklyn NY. (Doors at 7) Your hosts for the evening will be Mara Mayer, founder of Home Audio, and Lynne DeSilva-Johnson, Exit Strata Editor.   What can I expect? Well: A concert-contest between words and music, in which the lines between instrument, voice, word, sound, animal, and human are blurred. A collaborative, experimental space in which the lines between performer and audience may blur, as well.

1
and sometimes, when no one is watching I pick up sticks and place them in my pocket so they can feel like they belong to something again.
2
But let's stay grounded ... At plains and prairies' end, sharp mountains loom, obscured by residueof fire. Many dim gray columns of smoke rise, slanted like sunbeams, reversing, it seems, the old image of radiant grace, a sign to score the acrid skies.
3 as I cut, the pane of glass was simple until I came across a second hand I cannot say for sure why I found it repulsive longing and apathy became synonymous- but still like an angel without a synthesizer 4 like lips whistling with more wind than melody the note held in fingers blurring fresh ink with sweat stained shirts my old roommate’s collar colored yellow yolks run down the sandwich, down my hand shaking trying to light a match to light a cigarette ashes and coffee grounds augured over mornings spent trying to find the right word, to say what I want to hear glaciers falling down mountains 5 the air is aggressive not to be moved within but to rub against, to slide skin on skin on humid skin until these damp curtains all zippered buttoned tied show themselves remnants of an obsolete notion: solitude and summer are dissimilar to the point of mutual exclusivity   (1: Tishon, from Sometimes; 2: Bill Considine, from Continent of Fire; 3: Lancelot Runge, from The Hell Out; 4: Ben Wiessner, from Slow Dancing Answers, Banter; 5. Lynne DeSilva-Johnson, from Kinsey Report)

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