'Author' Note:

My remix of Elizabeth's work stems from her description of her hesitance to engage with the wiki for fear of losing control over her prose and her wariness of technology in general. Unable to manipulate the prose on her pages out of respect for her views, I contented myself with adding links. For the remix, I respond with a series of images about that concept of author/ownership/sharing one's work. I don't think that writing occurs in a vacuum, or even a perfect room where one is free from the influences of others. That influence can be interpreted in many ways, like Allen Ginsberg's image of Walt Whitman flirting with grocery store clerks. Walt had no say in that image. Just as Anthony Burgess has no say in my appropriation of his language to express the voyeurism of writers as they peek into each other's worlds. Heidi's exploration of the senses figures in, as does my preoccupation with the role of reading in the writing process. Basically, I'm talking about cross-pollination and how it's really out of our hands.

Acknowledging that what I write necessarily comes from a place that is both within and without me, I sat down and scribbled this remix:

The question: what to write? A response. To anything and everything, leaving nothing out. Fingers pressing keys, feverish pens scrawling ink. For what? For whom? And why? Ahh, those are the questions of the reader, the crippled writer's anxiety. Always with the questions! A reader reads so that the world seems less or more lonely. To write is to want dialogue, community. To read is to want dialogue, community. It was a Sunday afternoon when Ginsy saw Walt in the grocery store, sniffing the fruits. Who is the reader? Who is the writer?

Maybe it's fornication: the synesthesia of arts and senses mixing with each other. Closing eyes to the branded walls of products, wide open to the poet who sees past China, NAFTA and the BOGO deals of the week into the organic soul of Publix: the fresh-faced bag boy of plastic or paper origins.

I viddy you, Walt of the whole soul best with your homemade prose. Do you viddy me?

Clop, clop, droog! I viddy you here, jammiwammin' on ye wiki. I like that dictionary; there are some polenzy slovos on there! ;-)

-ES

Writer write period

reader read question