You must have a few projects half started, a few vows made with friends on windy hilltops at two in the morning, a few adventure brochures stashed under your pillow. Maybe this is the summer you follow them through. What do your dangling projects mean to you?
There is always another way out. Your same imagination that has you in its trap can have you anywhere else. Have you ever known someone who came to the brink, believed in the trap, then found a way free?
How long do you listen to this kind of broadcast before you change the station?
If they ever do figure out once and for all what makes us exist and experience that existence uniquely, and if we read that explanation and nod and shrug and it makes total sense and we can even grasp it intuitively, it’s still going to be mind-blowing when that mysterious sensation of it chases everything [...]
Have you ever been on the verge of both the opposite extremes?
What would you do today if you knew it would all be forgotten tomorrow?
If you think a poet might be in it for the love of their own voice, you might be right. Which borrowed “causes” do you find the most offensive for bad writers, politicians, and other public figures to take up?
Have you ever had a moment you wanted to hold on to, keep feeling longer than it could last? What have you tried to do to sustain it?
The text for this installment is taken from a poem in a series I am writing about (or from) pets. What do you think about the relationship between creation and death? Does an awareness of death drive artists to create more urgent, more honest work?
Have you ever felt like nothing was allowed to be new or fresh or wonderful? Like any attempt at sincerity or originality is seen through the post-modern glasses of irony, reference, and so on?