FURTHER
1st Quarterly Introduction Issue January 2012
/ FURTHER / Further is about sharing and supporting the creative process. It is about maintaining lasting connections with peers through encouragement and mutual inspiration. It is about pushing everything further.
Cover Design: Leah Schreiber; Photo Credit: Alex Boley
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Contributors (in order of appearance) Matt Baker Molly Chlebana Kelsey Robinson David Caplan Fredrick Gunther Andrew Fleck Jacob Bullard Jacob Townely Leah Schreiber Michael Sit Rylee Hartung Orland Dami
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Matt Baker
Form 4.B.11, Inventory of Prisoner’s Belongings Sign your full name and list any belongings upon your person that you will be leaving in the custody of Yao Liwu Prison while imprisoned. These items will be returned to you upon your release. PLEASE LIST ALL ITEMS. YAO LIWU PRISON IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ITEMS NOT LISTED ON THIS FORM. Name: M. Choi Belongings: When taken from the abandoned operator’s booth above Kupang Bridge where I make my home, I had upon my person 1. a charcoal pencil which the arresting officers broke in half and 2. broke in half again (the halves), and seventeen banknotes which the arresting officers split 3. between themselves, and a box of mochi which the arresting officers split 4. in half and flung from the bridge, and my many drawings which they would not let me 5. take with me and the letters from those who have read the various tracts in which my songs and drawings 6. have been published and my great-grandmother’s bones and ashes in a jar which I kept hidden 7. from the arresting officers and a knife which is not meant for arresting officers but rather the rats, 8. and also my friend and comrade R. Loveless who was taken from me by the arresting officers and shoved into a separate car— 9. and where is he now, if not here?—and I had a home,
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that other belonging that I could not take with me, and so I come to you with nothing, only the cigarettes I stole from the arresting officers which I will smoke before you read this, and I should also note that I have brought with me zero bruises or swollen lips or bleeding gums or split fingernails or burned nipples or cracked ribs and if, as when I was released from this prison once before, I find myself carrying out bruises or swollen lips or bleeding gums or anything of the sort, I shall have to insist that I would like to give them back.
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/ Matt Baker / In one word, what is inspiring you lately? MB: Vigilantes. What ideas do you find most exciting to address in your work? MB: Lately: fractals, light mills, and Maximiliano Gustav Richard Albrecht Agustin von Götzen-Iturbide. If your work could exist as another medium what would it be? MB: An SNES-era videogame. Desbribe your work patterns. MB: I drink a pot of green tea and then write until my brain breaks. What does “further” mean to you? MB: I like further best when further is a verb. Like: “drug traffickers are furthering the collapse of the Mexican empire.” Or: “corporate lobbyists are furthering the collapse of the American empire.” What was the last thing you read? MB: 2666 What is the most fun you ever had? MB: We stole a boat. What’s next? MB: We steal a train.
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the line Molly Chlebana
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/ Molly Chlebana / What was the last thing you read? MC: Be Here Now by Ram Dass In one word, what is inspiring you lately? MC: Earth What’s next? MC: So many things!
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How Socialism Works In 2017 Kelsey Robinson I kept hearing your voice, distantly, telling me about the future. You said it was like standing on a beach at midnight in the middle of the Pacific or biting into a ripe plum quiet and important and new. I fell asleep that night playing old folk songs but woke up with your rock and roll in my ears; your smoke still swirling around the waves of my hair. I waited for the sound of your breathing, the rise and fall of your chest. I heard only myself, and then opened my eyes. In the future people don’t walk, they just float. It’s more convenient this way – Easier. Now, everyone is just a straight line away from one another. There are no sidewalks, no shoes, no differences in height. Without looking up, saying at the very same time, we agree, “I couldn’t imagine.”
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/ Kelsey Robinson / What is the most fun you’ve ever had? KR: I don’t kiss and tell. In one word, what is inspiring you lately? KR: Fall. What ideas do you find most exciting to address in your work? KR: General cycles and emotions of life; separation and togetherness, life and death. Describe your work patterns. KR: My inspiration comes in random bursts, for a few days I’ll be writing down everything I see or come across and other days I can’t find anything to say. I wait for it. What does “further” mean to you? KR:This is really exciting to me. I was surrounded by inspiring people during my college years and I was so lucky. An idea like this is exactly what we all needed and will definitely be awesome and successful. What’s next? KR: Everything
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/ music / Further Your Ears Listen to the first quarterly Further Your Ears playlist which contains all the tracks featured in this issue or enjoy the tracks individually by clicking the track name in the artist’s feature.
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/ music /
David Caplan Track: Willow Wild Describe your work patterns. DC: I collect sounds from a variety of sources---fragments of sound from old records, video game sounds, field recordings. When I arrange these disparate sounds together, I group them by the colors I see when I hear them. I think of sound as something to be cut like sculptures out of stone, and I use computer software tools to chisel and sculpt each sound into something meaningful. If your work could exist as- or alongside- another medium what would it be? DC: Probably film, though I very much prefer music's ability to leave things open to the listener's imagination. I like the ambiguity of sound--how sometimes you can't tell a voice's gender or how long ago it was recorded. What was the last thing you read? DC: “The Collector of Hearts” by Joyce Carol Oates. What does “further” mean to you? DC: “Further” is about pushing past boundaries and preconceptions, to go where others haven’t before. In making music I try to take the listener to a place that other kinds of music don’t, and as a process for myself I’m always trying to go further than I’ve gone in the past. What ideas do you find most exciting to address in your work? DC: When I sit down to work on a track, the most important thing is the visual I put in the listener’s mind. I try to create this kind of headspace where the disparate sounds reframe each other into a theme. The kinds of sounds that draw my attention are ones that have color in their aesthetic, or sounds that seem highly symbolic to me. What’s next? DC: Working on new songs with Fleck.
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Fredrick Gunther Track: The Dayz What ideas do you find most exciting to address in your work? FG: Many of the songs I’ve written address specific experiences or emotions I feel about certain things. I wouldn’t call myself a poet, but when you really want to say something, eventually you'll make it work. It's also exciting to find different ways to sing over chords and flow them together. Ways that feel natural. Taking a lesson from Panda Bear, I try and keep things simple. Describe your work patterns. FG: I like to start off with an interesting chord progression. Something that feels interesting to me and unique. The hard part is taking that somewhere, writing transitions into more chords that feel like they belong and work. Sometimes things come naturally, sometimes you really have to work at it. It’s a balance. What is the most fun you have ever had? FG: Longboarding down a slightly sloped mountain road. What is the last thing you read? FG: Siddhartha. In one word, what is inspiring you lately? FG: Cells. What does “further” mean to you? FG: Further to me, means taking friendships and creativity past college and into adulthood. People sometimes forget they are artists and should be creating. People also don’t keep in touch very well nowadays. What’s next? FG: A doobie, hopefully.
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/ music /
Jonbar Hinge
Jonbar Hinge is Andrew Fleck and Paul Markus
Track: Me and My... What is the last thing you read? AF: A comic this guy at work gave me that he made. What was the most fun you ever had? AF: 306. In one word, what is inspiring you lately? AF: SNES What ideas do you find most exciting to address in your work? AF: Taking traditional instruments, such as the guitar or banjo and doing something new and different with them. This is exciting but also a challenge because I often don't have a sound in my head that I can reference. I can't really say "I want my guitar to sound like this guitarist or that guitarist." It's more like "I need my guitar to sound like a Moog or sitar or something completely different." It started with Khex but I've taken that approach to other projects I have done since then. If your work could exist as or along side another medium what would it be? AF: I would like to pair music and visuals together. Creating a visual experience without actually having visuals was a big part of Khex. Sort of get the ideas out of our heads and project them for others, you know. A more complete experience than just something auditory. What does “further” mean to you? AF: Trying to find a way to take it to the next level, whatever that may be. Also, getting out of my comfort zone more when it comes to creativity and life itself. Trying new things and what-not. Making a conscious effort to push yourself. What’s next? AF: Going international. I also want to start making beats.
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Body
Poem by Jacob Bullard
What ideas do you find most exciting to address in your work? JB: This project was really interested in exploring the relationship between a poem, a song, and video imagery. We wanted to see if there was another way that we could present poetry apart from to the traditional way it is usually presented on a page to uncover another dimension in the words through the addition of video and creative text and music. Generally though, I’m really interested in connotation, memory, emotion and the subconscious. Describe your work patterns. JB: Relationships, experiences, memories, love, emotion, yearning, refinement, creation, analysis, growth, refinement, creation, themes, refinement- repeat. In one word, what is inspiring you lately? JB: Transition. What is the most fun you ever had? JB: Bro-ad trip out west. What is the last thing you read? JB: The Things They Carried. What does “further” mean to you? JB: Being able to share and support are very essential aspects to anybody’s creative process. Further facilitates both! What’s next? JB: Hopefully, getting internet at my new apartment soon so I can stop sitting outside coffee shops in my car and leeching wifi.
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Coney Island Jacob Townely
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/ Jacob Townely / What ideas do you find most exciting to address in your work? JT: As of late, I’ve been addressing ideas of depicting unmonumental objects with a certain amount of monumentality. Describe your work patterns. JT: Unrefined. What does “further” mean to you? JT: Further away from Holland. What was the last thing you read? JT: Job 1-10. What was the most fun you ever had? JT: Probably a road trip to Bemidji, MN with Matt Fowler, Scott and Jordan Skinner. In one word, what is inspiring you lately? JT: Grace. What’s next? JT: Two more semesters of Hope College.
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how i should feel Leah Schreiber
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/ Leah Schreiber / In one word, what is inspiring you lately? LS: Subtlety. What is the most fun you ever had? LS: Growing up with Joe as my brother. Describe your work patterns. LS: Many ideas right before sleep, -so I scribble them down on paper only to wake up the next morning and not understand myself. If your work could exist as- or alongside- another medium what would it be? LS: Bodies of murky water. They would range in size and gentle shape, but would float or somehow suspend in the air. I see them being compliments of each other, but would stay a good distance apart. They are connected in feeling but still very separate. What’s next? LS: Texas.
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Ferocious Lives Ethan Milner
Like mitosis I divide into who I was and who I will one day be as if I had lived two very different, yet equally ferocious lives. When I came down from the Mt I ad-libbed what God should have said. I have seen crimson skies open before me and stood by and like some sad kid, cowered from that might. Did, on a whim, some plot emerge from His omniscient head?
And have we been done wrong?
I see a soul, body, and mind become one beast. continued on next page
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It enters the ring with the true God, played by me, and the Son, also by me, the least paid tinpan handler in this epic street show. And though the coup fraud goes unpunished, the beast goes down, POW right in the kisser. After KO’ing the unholy trinity-beast, two broads lift God’s fists heavenward, our Champion. Bliss blurs my vision. And blisters burn heaven. Two beautiful, precocious wives ask if I’m alright, but they could not understand the atrocious lies.
And when I look up God smiles on all those missed tries.
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/ Ethan Milner / What is the last thing you read? EM: The Sun Also Rises. What is the most fun you ever had? EM: Sigsbee Summer. What’s Next? EM: Hopefully getting with the plan and getting back to my friends. In one word, what is inspiring you lately? EM: HBO. What ideas do you find most exciting to address in your work? EM: Relationships with family and friends, especially the things that go unsaid, sex, mental illness, religion, obsession, depression, love and all that stuff. If your work could exisist as- or alongside- another medium what would it be? EM: Film probably, I'd love to write and make movies. But lately I'm in love with good, simple songwriting and wish very much that I had developed in whatever part of a person's brain makes them able to do that. Describe your work patterns. EM: Non-existant. But when I am writing it is exactly that, work. I mean it is really hard for me. I feel very anxious like everything I write has to be masterful and then it turns out so terrible but at some point, when I'm lucky, I do write something that triggers something real and I forget I'm writing and then I stop and it's gotten dark outside and I realize I've been writing for hours. Those are the times I write things I can be vaguely proud of. What does “further” mean to you? EM: In regards to Now, Further seems very beautiful and very scary and very far away and very different and very much the same. If I find Further I'll let you know for sure.
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Beat Women // A Tribute in Spontaneous Prose // Ethan Milner Diane/Joanne: souls seeking, souls sought; Zen embodied, they think. They wish, or think they wish to be, enlightened. They seek. They seek always. They seek East or West. They meld with seekers, mold into them: seeking together only to find the same. In the Village, in Haight/ Ashbury. They teach seeking to seekers, teach to seek and to be sought, to seek together, only find more seeking and more to be sought.//This man, that queer. Divorce means nothing. I'm a strong woman, a new breed, fuck the man (literally), fuck America’s roles. I will raise them myself. Timothy Leery: their godfather; the road: their father; the beat: their Heavenly Father. To you, my children: it wasn't your fault, I fell in love with a sociopath, I raised you alone because I had to, because it's better for you.//Thank you Allen. Thank you Jack. Where would we be without you? Let us teach the masses to be wandering and unfulfilled too. They won't be alone. We were junkies already. We were lost. They know how. Now.//Let us burn the house down, we need wood, we need fire, we need no home.//No I will not lie down and take it, and no I will not let you be first. I am me. I am a woman, and I must be heard. I don't deserve to be heard, I must. It is not you, queer men, who decide this, who make this. You are not beat. Not alone. And so let us be heard. Let our findings be known. Let us share the epiphanies we have found in San Fran, NY, Boulder, India, Japan. Let us teach Buddha and Tarot, anarchy and sexual freedom. Dope and booze and dope and babies.// / 28 /
To you too I say, My vision is a large golden room/ where your ancestors dwell. And together with Diane we will decipher my vision to find truth. My truth. For I am beat. I am beat. I raised my children. Where were you? Who were you fucking then? Who was I?//Though our children may bear your names, they are not yours. They are ours. For we were their mothers and their fathers. While you realized who you were (gay men too afraid to be that) we were us, we raised our kids, we wrote, we changed the world too.// Oh! She’s a poet. Joanne Kyger Who was that woman? -Joanne Kyger & we move toward the Good like the stars, like young rams, like a god who yearns to be himself & frighten no one. -Diane di Prima
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Michael Sit
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/ Micheal Sit / What is the last thing you read? MS: Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. What is the most fun you ever had? MS: Making home movies with friends in high school. In one word, what is inspiring you lately? MS: Honesty. What ideas do you find most exciting to address in your work? MS: It’s all about that grain. And people. People and grain. Describe your work patterns. MS: Live it, be it. What does “further” mean to you? MS: Further could mean believing in the process. A lot of what i’ve been working on lately, in photography, music, and even cooking, i’ve shifted the emphasis from the result to the process. Believing in the process and loving it can lead to results that are true and honest. What’s next? MS: Continuing to the love the process.
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Rylee Hartung
du
forehead noise, the twitching. invasive harper in motion like the ocean, tossing, turning commotion; thrusting brains to match the sky dynamite. tell me that story about how we sat under the folly. spawning cheeky—played with the fingertips— fluorescent brimming knocks, like the USS park. at several times the strength of the current necessitated the stretching of the necks. voyageurs, pull us through the racing ripping rapids by rope from shore. undulating sea gulps swelling on elemental parts, s o mer sault ing rendering my beating instrument, alive ! fluent, momentarily, by the collection of isles— where you go, i go too dark blue bodies on expedition infectious knees, the rhombazoid ry s of lips doused in pale ale.
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/ Rylee Hartung / What is the last thing you read? RH: Politico/Anais Nin’s published journals. In one word, what is inspiring ou lately? RH: Sharks. What ideas do you find most exciting to address in your work? RH: Dreams. Kissing. Kissing in dreams. Wearing one’s hair on the top of one’s head. If your work could exist as- or alongside- another medium what would it be? RH: 3 minutes of soft string instruments OR a video of a woman eating in the rain. Describe your work patterns. RH: First I go scuba diving for a little bit then I think about what happens to humans when they fall asleep. When I wake up I make tea and write about darlings. What does “further” mean to you? RH: Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.
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bunnyhart Rylee Hartung
right now, you do not have to brush your hair. you do not have to muse and be mused or slap conversation for pirates. You are wild. only let the ones who hold your inner thigh and ask you to be nothing else come near your skin. whatever exists in the space of your mind is not anything you have to cultivate or reason with. It is not anything you have to take to dinner. you may drift if it feels good. or right. or if it feels like anything at all. And all other fish will know. because somewhere in the distance, in the pools and sheets of everywhere else, there are lips more soft and sleepy than yours. and those lips are loved too. because somewhere over hills are the fish that seep into your brain at night and swim in your veins, in the vein of the woman who right now isn’t anything more than you do not have to brush your hair.
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/ food / Lobster tails are a simple way to add some elegance to any “night-in.� Orland Dami gives us the basics to take your lobster tails from pot to plate. Preparation Lobster Tails (thawed) Mince 1-2 cloves of Garlic 1/2 stick of butter Crack open a bottle of white wine Setup speakers in the kitchen so you can jam to Two Door Cinema Club or Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
Let the tails thaw for at least 12 hours in the refrigerator, 6 hours on the counter, or 1 hour in cold water as a last resort. Boil some salted water in a big pot, next to the pot have a large bowl of ice water. Dump those tails in the boiling water for 2-3 minutes. Immediately place the tails in the ice water after boiling. This will stop the tails from cooking. At this point, swap the pot with a cast iron frying pan (8-10 inches) and heat to medium-high. While this is happening dump your garlic and butter into a bowl, heat in the microwave/melt in a small pot on the stove. Take your lobster tails, belly side up, and cut them in half (you better have a very sharp knife). You may need to use some hardcore scissors to cut the shell down the middle, then cut the tail in half. At this point you've got about 15 minutes to go for every 2 tail halves. Preheat the oven to 200 F. This is where you are really going to have to just trust me. You need a flat bottom frying pan, larger than the cast iron, and some kind of weight. I used a four pack of 'ginger beer' soda that ended up making the worst Dark and Stormy's ever. The idea here is we are going to make a mini oven on top of your stove while we put a brown crispy surface to the tail.
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Put olive oil in the cast iron pan. Do not be shy here, but don’t go crazy either. Coat the bottom and then some. Put 2 tail halves, flesh side down, on the oil. Compress with frying pan and weigh it down. 5 minutes later, flip the tails up, slather the meat in butter+garlic mix, back down for 5 minutes. Flip the tails meat side up, cook for another five minutes. Then throw them into the oven. (The oven is going to keep them warm, not cook them.) Now, intro course to plating. Pull that lobster meat out from the head end, and rotate it about 10 degrees towards the belly. The idea is to make a weird V with the meat still attached at the tail. Pour the rest of the butter on the tail. Open a second bottle of wine. Ideally you’ve already finished the first. Serve with wilted spinach leaves by frying in light olive oil and rice.
Photo Credit: Orland Dami
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Many thanks go to those who contributed to this inaugural issue of FURTHER. If you have any questions or comments click inside this box and you’ll be directed to the comments form. I would love to hear from you!