Editorial: LEVEL UP! Gratitude, Growth and Other Goings On in the Exit Strata-sphere
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.
FIELD NOTES: WHAT WE ECHO::Animating in Mississippi: Danny Madden and Benjamin Wiessner
Travel often makes me aware of the many roles that I continually fulfill without realizing them. There are moments in any successful trip that cause the traveler to come face to face with his/her own intentions, hopefully causing the traveler
PRINT!: McNally Jackson Bookstore in NYC – Douglas Wright
If you're strolling around New York looking for a place to pick up a copy of the magazine, we're happy to announce that a growing list of independent bookstores in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn are now stocking Exit Strata: Print!
Community CoCo / U-Topian Rhizome PARTICIPATORY PROMPT: on the co-evolution of language/music
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?
FIELD NOTES : Architectural Uncanny, PART 2 :: Martin Byrne's Moments of Environmental Opportunity
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.FIELD NOTES: JACOB PERKINS :: From the Cannery : Part 5, The Long Haul :: Exhaustion, Mistress Mine
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.
FILM : A PLACE TO STAND :: Help Support the Completion of this Beautiful Documentary on Chicano Poet Jimmy Santiago Baca
I am learning to look at myself differently, to see the scattered remnants of hope and dreams and collect them again, return to my old house after the war, pick through debris for old photos of mind and soul, glue together my
Announcing: CO-CO IN CONCERT:: Exit Strata and Home Audio present : Infinite Combinatoriality vs. Animal Language:: July 26th, 2012, Brooklyn NY
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.
SOUND: on "Transmission, a radio play" – Douglas Wright
Exit Strata presents
IT'S a FAMILY AFFAIR: Get to Know Exit Strata's Poetry Festival Team
