The image of the COVID-19 pandemic that endures for me is this adorable hamster clutching a “Free Kisses” sign in its tiny and clever forepaws while staring soulfully into the camera. I got it from my WhatsApp chat during the first days of lockdown. Could even be some sort of fake.
The image is an incantation of the ongoing affective explosion and earthquake inspired by what my neighbor called le moment bizarre. It also calls up pretty much what I’m feeling today as The Best American Poetry‘s Typepad server fades into the addressless interstices of the world-wide web.
I need a partner, a publisher.
I’ve come to love writing, especially the Beyond Words essays around dance performance and material creation. It turns out that I am one among a very few old-style “critics” for dance and performance – I like to think Charles Lamb and Sam Johnson with a dash of Ruskin (I love throwing around my store of general knowledge!) – as opposed to a reviewer.
So, my writing, like everything else about me, is about me. But, then, I believe the things a body does are always about them. The mechanics of how insular “me” translates to continental “us” may be a mystery to science and philosophy, but it unfailingly does.
Look at it this way. Beyond Words is about me experiencing creators and creation just before landing on the vast continent of us, where, I hope, it ripens into more space for Imagination as it goes through customs. In other words, I can get way, way off assignment.
“Words Available”.
Over time, I’ve come to report on and around the work of a constantly growing number of creators and creative facilitators. For many, I am the only voice that they have other than their own.
They need a partner, a publisher.
I have made it the mission of Beyond Words to keep an eye on the creative edges of movement and material arts. That’s actually a rainbow of perspectives: Creators still more engaged in winkling out the interest of a thing than in making an economic success of it; recondite matters; emerging creation; less-known entertainment; the impact of entertainment and creation; woman invisibility…
And, O! I’ve got projects!
Contact me through Facebook.