for Jason Dodge
We poets have been the ugly cousins of the arts for years,
painters asking us to write poems serenading their paintings. Collaboration
can mean creating together, but it can also mean being a traitor and working
with the enemy. Let us honor the first
of these definitions.
(Soma)tic Rituals can fuse with any artistic discipline. For instance, the poet creates half the
ritual, the painter the other half. The
two halves are then combined to make one ritual we both perform together to write
and paint. I have created (Soma)tic
rituals to collaborate with such artists as Candice Lin, Yuh-Shioh Wong, Jonas
Slonacker, and others.
Here is an example.
The poet and the painter deposit letters for one another inside
newspaper boxes on opposite sides of a street.
We wave to one another then begin reading the letters, which explain the
ways we would like to die. Found in the
morning on the floor of a boat after being impaled in the chest by a swordfish
while night fishing. Or fragment of my bloody
shirt found after having sex with lions.
We read our letters then begin writing or painting in view of each
other.
An hour later we meet in the middle of the street to embrace
and dance the Foxtrot with the painter leading, then switching with the poet
leading. We return to write and paint
within view of one another. The
experiential collaboration of (Soma)tic Rituals has infinite possibilities and
there is no reason for poets to ever again subjugate ourselves to other artists.
