Prologue
You may or may not be aware that I wrote a book of poems and that the fine folks at Black Lawrence Press have seen fit to put a couple of covers on it and help me hawk it to the world. It’s called In Order to Form a More Perfect Union and, if you’re so kind/inclined, you can buy it on-line here (among other places).
This is a fun thing to cross off the bucket list: “#343-B. Publish the strange little book you wrote with lots of white space in it and also in which you tell all your secrets (mostly in the white space).” Check! Or anyway: soon. (Checkmate: IT’S OUT NOW!)
So: fun, yes — but it’s also kind of weird because it turns out that you then have to take this Thing you’ve pieced together (with spit and gum and rubber bands) and figure out how other people can, I don’t know, access it or somehow maybe even inhabit it. Or something.
And that’s especially weird in this case because a lot of these poems (and a lot of these secrets) were conceived almost ten years ago, a long-gone time and place. To help other folks inhabit it, I’d first have to crawl back in there myself.
I didn’t really know how I was going to do that (or even if I wanted to: NEWSFLASH: I didn’t; they’re secrets; I crawled out of there for a reason; yes, I know, I should’ve thought of that before I made my bucket list (so-called); live and learn!).
That was until I realized I had already been doing it, just with different tools and tactics. Namely: a cheap camera + a cheap audio recorder + some not-so-cheap galavanting all across This Great Land of Ours.
What We Have Here
Up above, then, I’ve embedded a YouTube playlist of 19 companionate clips that document said galavanting. It’s a stitched-together collection of sounds, images, and words that, taken together, serve to make a Greater Whole — at any rate: to form a (somewhat) more perfect union — not just in relation to each other but in conjunction with this strange little book I wrote, as well.
I had originally thought these clips (and the tools and tactics: various recording devices, restless galavanting) were something different from the book, different from anything else I’d been doing, but they’re not. They are the book. At any rate: like Siamese twins, they share the same DNA, as well as one or more vital organs.
Some of the clips are accompanied by poems from the collection. Some (most) aren’t.
There is liberal lifting, sampling, syncopation; there is homage.
Which is to say: they are full of ambient noise, but I deny the accident.
I also admit: there are times when what seems ambient, random, tangential is really quite intentional and connected (though I’m fairly certain I can’t claim credit for all intents, connections, and/or purposes; only the blame is mine alone).
They are peopled by, well, all of us. Heroes and avatars. Historical figures. The huddled masses. Homeless buskers in a cold, wet river city nestled in lower Cascadia. Burly construction workers in muggy Gotham. Bleary-eyed Folk-rock Troubadours in the South’s bright, shining City Too Busy to Hate. Along the asphalt spine of Appalachia, a disembodied Greek Chorus chants up and down the AM radio dial. (Then, of course and always, on screen and off, there’s little old Transcendental me…) Et al & Etc.
Most of all, the clips are [inhabited? animated? haunted? yes: all of the above] by the same preoccupations that [inhabit? animate? haunt? yes: all of the above] the book.
Love, yes, and America. The many sounds, colors, forms those things can take.
Also: a singular life (mine) — if such a thing is even possible in the loosely federated republics we make for ourselves — encoded, abstracted, recontextualized.
Also: Music. Voice(s). Myth.
Finally: in the Playlist as well as in the book, you get a glimpse of that which lasts forever (very little) and a good long look at what we are not so much meant to discard but to recycle (almost everything).
You certainly don’t have to watch the clips to read the book or vice versa. But I’ll submit it’s a decidedly more awesome experience if you do.
They’re better together. Like chocolate and peanut butter. Or something.
At any rate: taken together, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, this is what I meant to say and how I meant to say it. Thanks for reading this much, and I hope you’ll consider diving down the mixed-media rabbit hole I’ve made. If you like it, tell your friends. If you don’t, tell your enemies. Etc. Etc.
