a collaborative (Soma)tic by CAConrad & Matthew Zapruder
Put a piece of fruit on a plate, sit it near speakers, cover the fruit and speakers with pillows, then blankets, then towels, then more pillows, then more blankets, then play the recording of Anne Waldman reading I REMEMBER BEING ARRESTED as LOUD as you CAN!! (about 4 minutes long) After the
recording is finished uncover the fruit and eat it immediately while playing the recording again!! Do not hesitate for the water molecules of the fruit have fully absorbed her reading!! Her mantra in the reading!! Eat it, eat it, eat it!! As soon as the recording is finished and the Anne Waldman-infused food is inside you, pick up your pad and pen and begin writing as fast as you can about the uses of nuclear weapons after they have been disarmed. Write about the love you feel for ALL that can survive if we put an end to this madness!!Find a piece of metal, or some functional object made entirely of metal, from your home. It can be a household implement you use all the time, or jewelry, or anything, as long as it is small enough to hold in one hand. That night, take the paper you wrote
on earlier, and carefully, lovingly, wrap the metal in it. Sleep. The next morning, wait for a little while. Think about the metal safe in the paper, near all your words. Sometime during the day, when you are ready and alone, take the metal out of the paper. Put it in your writing hand and hold it for a few minutes. Think about how old the metal, like all metal, is, and how young you are. Then put the metal in your non-writing hand. Write down all the ways you want to thank the metal for being dug out of the earth, put in a furnace, pounded, torn, combined, and shaped into something humans can use. Or any other feelings you have about the metal. And all the things you think or imagine (or suddenly truly know!) about the metal, what else it was used for. If there is anything else you want to say to the metal, or to anyone who might have touched or known it all these thousands of years along the way, this is the time and place to do that too.
