Army of Friends
As part of my push to start getting things done as a writer, I’ve been enlisting artist friends of mine to help illustrate the chapbook of poetry I’m putting out called “Army of Nursery Rhymes”. I think that crossing genres is important, and so is using one’s own art to promote others’ artistic talents, and I think it’s an idea that is working well for a lot of people here in the twin cities in music scenes- No Bird Sing and El Guante both have lots of guest musicians on their upcoming albums, I like to grab guest photographers and bloggers to do MN Mic work, all the cross-promotion at Fringe, doing photography for Caly and Katherine, etc.
So I’ve got a bunch of amazing artist friends, from Minneapolis, St. Paul, Oakland, New York City, and middle-of-nowhere Michigan signed up to interpret poems for the chapbook visually- mostly given free-range to do as they see fit. Among the artists is someone who works for Apple, a musician, a set designer, a sculptor/dj, my real-life nemesis, and a nemesis in street games.
A few of the pieces are seriously in-process; I decided that I dislike the brunt of writing in one of the poems, but still really like the sentiment and a few lines- so there’ll be a crazy re-write, among other things. Having people waiting on me should push me to get these things done sooner.
Things are looking up- I still need to find a day job, but time with friends has been good for me, and I feel like I’m making progress on a few things. Memorizing poems is an in process sort of thing, and my awkward stumblings with editing video for MN Mic is a learning process. Went out to see a comedy open mic last night, and had a good conversation afterwards, about where certain aspects of comedy come from, and their successes and failings, socially. There’s still a lot I don’t understand, but I feel like a lot is based on perspective- one’s “take” on things.
