I recently participated in a local event called Ignite Bloomington, where my co-presenter, Christian Briggs, and I performed a poem we called “the social beat.”
The design of the background images, the development of the poem, and the planning of the performance were all completed collaboratively; this was by far the most collaborative creative project I’ve ever been involved in. I say that as a graduate of an MFA program who spent three years doing almost nothing but creative work. I say that as someone who intentionally moved away from what I’m coming to see as the antiquated approach to writing that pervades creative writing programs around the country.
I write more now, and more creatively, and with more enthusiasm, than I ever did during my days as a ‘poet.’ In part, this is because the primary type of writing I do these days is far more public and persistent, and more closely linked to issues that matter deeply to me, than was the writing I did as a creative writing major. But the writing I do nowadays is also more aligned with my ethos: These days, I embrace openness, collaboration, and collective knowledge-building; and producing, circulating, and building upon others’ ideas online meets these interests nicely. In fact, this “writing publicly for a networked public” thing meets my needs like gangbusters.
Creative writing, at least in the MFA-program sense of the term, never did meet my needs or interests. It felt too far out of my control. We more or less buy the idea of the “muse”–call it flow if you want, call it the zone, call it whatever you want, but what it means is that we embrace this strange idea that the greatest works emerge when you can set your conscious mind a little bit to the side and let your unconscious break through to the surface. It had to happen in silence. It had to happen alone. And you couldn’t control it. You could only control the circumstances that make it more likely to happen.
Sure, fine. We need people to make those great brilliant works by betting on the muse. But that way of thinking about writing is just not for me–it never has been. I’m more into the “how do you get to Carnegie Hall” approach to writing, which is why blogging, and the attendant potential readership, appeals so much to me.
And when it comes to creative writing, I’m kinda into this “collaboration” thing. Coordinating the partnership is tricky and time-consuming, but if you find the right partner you end up standing on each other’s shoulders, finishing with something better than any one of you could have written on their own. One thing I know for sure is that the work that came out of my collaboration with Christian is better, stronger, more powerful than anything I could have come up with on my own. I’m proud of this work, maybe prouder than I was of any poem I wrote on my own, and I’m proud to include the poem and a video of our performance of it below.
the social beat {implosion::explosion} Jenna McWilliams & Christian Briggs
let’s walk it backwards: when a girl in a field face shielded from the sun looks out at you and smiles you think something has begun but that’s not a smile it’s a grimace it’s a sneer you’ve got that camera around your face and a 21st century leer
but it’s a circle, a cycle, a snake that eats its tail explosion, says mcluhan, split the instrument from the wail and now we’re walking that split backwards to where the hammer meets the nail to where the language meets its speaker and the face removes its veil
is this a flat world? a kind world? a world framed as a game? what’s the win state? who’s losing? should we send it all up in flames? and with every change we fight for does it all just stay the same?
explosion: in 1984 papert blew up the school or said computers would {they didn’t or if they did, they hid it} it’s a long revolution a slow evolution characterized by dilution and diffusion and confusion sometimes, but joy too, and profusion, collusion and elocution and hope, and motion, and implosion of space and time and multiple uses we lifted our tech and it calmly spoke through us.
implosion: the same plane with the same name moves us and rushes us and smooshes us together that long walkway is us walking away from the everyday pulleys and gears of our years we climb onto the tech we climb into the sky we can collaborate now we can elaborate now we can fly
it’s gonna crash the school becomes a skull its planks and its floorboards and its chalkboards and its front doors flash past us like shrapnel as we dash past with laptops the floor’s falling in and we have them building backdrops and stage props in woodshop.
they’re gonna fall explode in on themselves, the freight and the chaos beams buckling, roof knuckling under the weight as crowds spill like kindling into the street meeting each other again flinting and squinting again in the sun {ignite}
it’s all going under it’s all yellow light slanting sideways across shining faces it’s thunder it’s traces of ozone it’s acres of blight as we push back the night as it grinds to a crawl as the old ladies watch and wonder they’re gonna go under
but the story’s not finished they’re gonna defend they’ll never give in. they learned how to stand in an age of their father’s machine. they’re clean. so they defend. and they default. and they defer to the icon and its policies and its politics and its poetry we automate the manual. now our hands are clean on the path to hell
cue eye roll. we know how to build, we can do it again. so we build. and we machinate. and we slap down machines to palliate the children we fill them as if they were containers. it’s heinous. it took two days for those green machines to fill up with guess what? porn.
we’ve had millennia now of dissemination, maybe it’s time to change the story to disovulation: one perfect idea at a time, sent out into the world then we’ll let you guys fight over who gets to claim it. or blame it. millennia now of the Churchills the Hitlers the Gateses the Jobses the Spitfires and Messerschmittses and Habermas and Hobbeses
like a girl in a field face shielded from the sun is still inside the lines where something has begun
it’s the circle, the cycle, the snake has caught its tail the explosion’s moving backward though the timid first will fail
the tots will test it, resisting with a poke, a prod, a post the slightest and the smallest seem the most benign of rabble filling up the tubes with what will mostly seem a babble to defenders of the past
now they’re teens on the street the lines are giving way babble turned to business as the structures start to sway but still defenders are within this scene, clutching for the days…. that will no longer be..
you see…
the teens have grown and jumped the lines we’re not walled in and not walled out nor confined by any doubt instead we clamber for the time when all that’s in will all be out a coalescing of the minds whose synaptastics speed the time
technology will take its place a toy a tool connecting us aiding a collective us crushing in both time and space freeing up the play in us
we are those girls in our fields faces turned toward every one collectively reflecting on the thing that has begun or is it ending as it rends us? the scream igniting as it mends us? unbends us and upends us: a lick of flame, a bonfire, night brought shrieking to the sun a slow sermon whispered softly: there is much that must be done.
Is it possible that spring could be once more approaching? We forget each time what a mindless business it is, porous like sleep, adrift on the horizon, refusing to take sides, “mugwump of the final hour,” lest an agenda—horrors!—be imputed to it, and the whole point of its being spring collapse like a hole dug in sand. It’s breathy, though, you have to say that for it.
And should further seasons coagulate into years, like spilled, dried paint, why, who’s to say we weren’t provident? We indeed looked out for others as though they mattered, and they, catching the spirit, came home with us, spent the night in an alcove from which their breathing could be heard clearly. But it’s not over yet. Terrible incidents happen daily. That’s how we get around obstacles.
file under: world’s most awesome 16-hour vlog project
This link to pure awesomeness comes to you courtesy of my buddies, Jeffrey Kaplan and David Phelps. If you care about literacy or the learning sciences, you will die of joy.
There he goes consistently stoic and lean, unsinging there he goes stricken and fluid and strung so tight each line springs from his face and down to the floor sings gently down his face to the floor. Now he’s protecting beauty like it’s thighs spread taut against the wall, now the wall dissolves into thighs. He respects sidewalks and copyright law, he leans like a chimney. Now he runs for mayor of some town that has no need: Our man in dungarees. Our spinning fool. Our man ill at ease below gray suits. Now he’ll press in his hat a long daisy, green tip just brushes the edge of one ear. Our man of every hour, waiting for applause– There were flowers once but it wasn’t real, it was to prove a point and flowers? he thought, and still does. Our man of cheerful despair leaves marks on every page, they meant something once but it’s lost. It’s all yellow light. The town succumbs or fails, there’s increase or loss, taxes get paid, what matters. It did not begin there, nothing began, our man of scribbled disaster wiggles through his window, bobs over the rise and is gone.
The snow whipped around so fast last night it outashed ash. A dry stew shuttled over rough-edged brick and rattled the window until this morning dark rain tamped it and all the riot down to the ground.
There were long grassy evenings but the light slants blue lately and my only strategy entails sleeping alone and starting out early. My hands are red nested birds for now and preliminary tests indicate only that I may be fine. Soon noses will tumble out on rumpled leashes and then and then and then.
They will never find their task completed. They will never name it.
They have pressed too hard on the hood and then paced indifferently away. They have stepped wrong against someone’s ankle,
snapping it twice. (The eaves lean gracelessly toward the road, revealing too much.) They want to learn the meaning of each gesture.
They live elevated lives. They live elevated lives. They adhere to a list.
In the park, a legion of ancient women sprint shouting and splashing for the slide. They screech and crumple across a hidden swath of ice, thin hair ribboning across gray snow and mud, primary mittens clutching for branch or hand. A tinny wail lifts across the surface and slides over the rise.
Someone has volunteered to recall every bird and try again. What happens next does not depend.
