The Sound Questioned:

A didgeridoo hum

Initial Response:
-Seven circles circling time’s orifice.
-A dream humming, the deep humming breath of the desert as she dreams.
-Tremelo tremolo tremolo. The voice that seeks to make way through narrow splinters of dark, trembling with planetary rings, turning slowly.
-A repeating droning, burping, water sound of new life and opportunity.

What color does it correspond to?

• Red
• Black
• Black
• Teal

What is its astrological sign?

• Capricorn
• Capricorn
• Scorpio
• Pisces

What part of the universe is it associated with?

• The singularity
• The shallows just under the ice of that moon of Jupiter with water.
• Black hole
• Jupiter

What year was it discovered?

• 1927
• 1
• one year before the Big Bang
• 7000 BC, forgotten 5000 BC, remembered again 700 AD

What could it do?

• Sprout a lily pad
• Tell you peacefully how you will die
• Roll down a hill, laughing
• Make the movers move

What does its future hold?

• Black hole
• Will crack the surface of the ice to make way for the space pilgrims to colonize mars.
• A state of unchangingness, caught in the amber of the present
• Lands inside a wall of ice, transforms it into dirt

Is it male, female, neither?

• Male, it is the seed of a new civilization
• Male
• Male
• Both

Why did it find us?

• It birthed us
• It made itself known when it thought we were ready. And we were.
• To teach us a new language
• To tell us a story

What does it taste like?

• Salt water
• Unsalted vacuum
• Liquorish
• Jagermeister

-Players: T, AM, SC, HC

Directions: Take a concept. Collectively decide its tactile traits, color, feel, smell, etc. and write them down. Once you have collected a list of traits, decide what physical object the concept corresponds to

Concept: independence

Independence tactile trails: Moist, Beezy, Silky, Furry, Metallic

Therefore, Independence is either;

A) A robot dog giving birth.

B) A buzzard

C) A colander full of angel hair pasta

D) An automated carwash

E) An alcoholic seltzer inside of a furry koozie

D) An airplane covered in moss, abandoned in a forest

Players: JF, SC, HC, AM, T

Directions: Write the first section of a southernism, fold paper over, and pass. Next person writes the second half blind. Fold again, pass. Third person writes the meaning of the saying.

If the mayflies land in the puddin’, then the gators of Savannah will crash yer wedding.
Meaning: Don’t change Travis’ radio station when he’s listening to his stories on NPR.

If the moonshine tastes like candy canes too close to Christmas, then it’s time to come on home for supper.
Meaning: Too much money is bad for a fungi’s health.

My daddy says “call once if it’s falling off…call twice if you fall ON it.”
Meaning: She was scared as a one legged water bug at the hydrangea festival.

If the gravy starts to curdle, wash the barking dog.
Meaning: Hasten not the demise of the well-built concert hall, it has its place…

If the pickled pig puckers big and leans in for a kiss, then even the reddest barn in the world is still just a fresh cut stump.
Meaning: Don’t bathe in mustard if you really want blue veins.

Like a Georgia swamp in mid-January!
Meaning: Change your underwear twice daily to be as a god.

If yer gunna paint yer barnacles, ya better wet yer fleas, or the millstone’ll grind neighbor’s biscuit.
Meaning: Maybe don’t put a loose chicken in the washing machine.

If the sky is bleeding sweat, then the doormats’ll go flyin’.
Meaning: Speak softly to your elders or they will abandon you in a tall tree.

He has a cricket chirping on his pee paws’ channel changer!
Meaning: This expression is used to describe the imminent arrival of the apocalypse.

If ya give china dolls to baptized gizzards, then a million little devils might come screaming Sunday out a Baton Rouge.
Meaning: It’ll be here before you know it.

Players: JF, SC, HC, AM, T

REVERSALS

Write a line, pass. The next person writes a reversal of your line, and then folds over your answer. The third person writes a reversal of the immediately preceding line, but cannot see any other lines. Repeat as long as desired.

Hi, hello, and how are you, oh dimply simply doo!
Goodbye forever or when do I, ho smooth undo!
Hello sweet second! Redo time’s hardest silence!
Goodbye bitter eternity. Stop the apocalypse’s easy song.
Hello, oh lively now — Begin universe’s difficult noise.
Goodbye oh deathly future — unendingly continued nowhere’s easy deafness.
Hello apocalypse-baby! A tiny fragment ceased the Everywhere’s difficult noise.
Goodbye, singularity-mother! The big everything begins the nowhere’s simple song.

Every time I go to the party I have a good time.
Never once have I enjoyed myself in good company.
Only forever will you suffer yourself to live alone.
I never feel good when I’m with the people.
I often think poorly when you’re with robots.
I never sense rightly after encountering flesh.
You always forget wrongs before escaping souls.
I never remember good deeds when I’m trapped.

Little garden filled with fire.
Big desert empty of air.
Tiny river full of liquid.
Expansive lake devoid of gaseous matter.
Retracted dirt, pregnant with solid soot.
Caught wind, barren in liquid ink.
A freed stillness, fertile with gaseous eraser.
An enslaved frenzy, barren with formless pencil’s edge.

REVERSAL POEM ASSEMBLAGE

We wrote five exquisite corpse poems collectively, and then wrote reversals of each line. Afterwards, SC assembled one super-poem collecting a few lines from all the various reversals.

Red, red, red, the shameless hue of morning.
Is the sun’s blinding glow still not enough?
And who has severed my elongated mole?
To become void is to collapse electricity’s murmur.
Nothing but an disenchanted narcissus.
Unnerve your own vein!
Long ago, that undertaker took my vegetables.
Semiotic, highjacking flow meticulously from other shores.
You will both run far apart and in opposite directions.
For a house of liquid prairie stills all herbs.
And arriving here was a one-toed dolphin sponge-tent,
gallivanting my gravitational centers.
Fascinating lectures of tarantula?
Solitude…is always the same.

• JF, SC, HC, AM, T

A Hippo’s Wish

Portents

ENIGMA

Dog Star

Directions: Write a word. Fold over paper, and pass to next person, who writes the definition without knowing the word.

Chipmunk – Pertaining to long nose hairs.

Coffee Mug – Covered in Dandelion seeds.

Bargin – Finality. An obviously conclusive, terminal point.

Porcupine – A mass of sticky black substance found in the corners of dungeons.

Dog – Something found in the belly of an earthworm.

Shrubbery – A scientific method for determining joviality.

Elf – Gradations of floral fragrance, all varieties.

Marmalade – A warm feeling, constantly reminding one of the hue of early morning.

Orchid – A decorative object for covering the face on formal occasions. Impractical, but impresses the company with the wearer’s dexterity.

Arborial – Two eggs, stacked on a pancake.

Cicada – A sea sponge, writing secret journals.

Downtrodden – A wall of white bricks, containing merely seven cracks.

Part 2 – Nonsense words

Mushyport – A bottom dweller in the Chattahoochee.

Hydraglobulus – A basket full of ribbons.

Quitquat – A metal wire which one may pull from one’s ear.

Belbrariness – A cranberry-eating ovoid with scales. Native to the peaks of Pluto.

Shmutunenk – A delicious food when dehydrated and crumbled in ice cream.

Falloden – A type of foot fungus that lives symbiotically with open-minded and culturally advanced felines.

Humcat – Calming presence, likely due to friendly sounds or straw hats.

Delirimuff – Remorse of the kind that calls for a lifetime of atonement that still seems to fall short.

Fowfow – A graph of known reality, filtered through cheese cloth.

• Players: SC, HC, JF, AM

Players: SC, HC, AM, BL, JF

THEME POEMS

Directions: Each player is assigned a theme by chance. (Example: Eggs, Pigs, etc.) Poems are passed in a circle, and each player must respond to the above lines with a new line written in the constraint of their theme.

(1)
A cavern of dusty memories and winds
A yolk sprouting underarms
Infecting the timeline
Hippos with heavy eye-lids
Piggos with Chevy side-kicks

(2)
Slumbering clouds awake and look down on the misty town
The big pig nibbles on the twig of figs
Wandering in its hasty feast into the dark place under the cliff
Beyond a wall of feather flesh
The terror of the flesh tips the will to oblivion.

(3)
Nothing can stop them at this point… it seems…
To what far off lands shall they explore in dreams?
The pigs in wigs travel in their trusty ship
But all the waters go down, in time, in the earth
Towards the origin, the wheel, and the birth

(4)
Round, wet, hole-y
They’re deathly afraid of it…
Perchance they shall think on it, as they slumber
Their flickering snorts betray their presence in the dark
There is no-one to hear, then, but the stony walls

(5)
Pigs do not know where they will go
But always, inevitably, down below
Within the bird, a
Black hole asserts itself
Like spongy dreams soaking up the watering hole

FOLDOVER POEMS

Directions: Write a line of poem, fold over. The next person writes a line without seeing the rest of the poem.

(1)
Veins swimming eye in a laugh
And then there was a rending as of flapping wings
The tired typist had this to say:
My inner self leaks onto the floorboards
Release…

(2)
I spill forth and tickle as I trickle
It’s quite the uncomfortable feeling
Hair swallowing, running electron miles
And when at last the first eon had past
Close the book. Burn the scrolls.

(3)
The cursive of monks gives way to letter blocks
Trickling down, a red salty stream
God… not… it’s uncomfortable…
Microscopic elves dust my vomit
Having been born, it couldn’t return… just yet

(4)
Before time, there was something
I wish I were the letter “a,” or perhaps “j”
Will I ever truly heal? Oh Lordy!
The sun emits fumes
Intestinal dice as my own illuminating hum…

(5)
It’s been pent-up in there for a good day now…
Toe thumbing nose in a prank
When the singularity split, loneliness was abated and born
Socrates can only wish that he was literate
The pigs lick up the droppings. yum. yum.

• HC, SC, JF, AM, T

Directions:

1. Draw some superficial facial features. Glasses, mustache, etc.
2. Turn the face drawing upside down and doodle automatically. Let your hand do the thinking.
3. Stand back and let the drawing become a face again. The doodle, mapped to the original facial geography, should be read as physiognomy and/or facial expression.
4. Get to know this unfamiliar face by interacting with it, writing a short biography or having a conversation with it or as it, etc.

Players: SC, HC, AM, BL, JF

THE FACES SPEAK

• Megan Leach, Steven Cline, Hazel Cline

[bandcamp width=350 height=786 album=1906637742 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5]

Steven Cline – Analog Synthesizer, Rattles, Voice

Hazel Cline – Voice, Bowed Zither, Circuit Sniffer, Piezo Combs, Rattles

James Robert Foster – Voice & Computer (Max/MSP), Double Bass, Bass Guitar, Dictaphone, Piezo Combs, Rattles, Wooden Flute

Mike Stasny – Drums, Voice with Electonics

Players: AK, SC, HC, AM, JF

Directions: Played in the usual blind folding manner, with one exception. Each player must first pull a tarot card, and then write their their haiku line as an intuitive response to this card. The third player then draws a visual synthesis of the lines. Players: AK, SC, HC, AM, RC

Directions: Played in the usual blind folding manner, with one exception. Each player must first pull a tarot card, or choose a chance sentence from a book, and then draw their panel as an intuitive response to this card or sentence. Players: AK, SC, HC, AM, RC

AHHHHHH

BOG IRON

DRUMMER BOY

ARIZONA

Directions: Each player is one part in a huge machine, and decide silently what noise their own particular machine part makes. When everyone is ready, all begin making their noise at the same time. Afterwards, discuss collectively what shape, function, and origin this machine might have. Once the discussion has ended, draw your idea of the machine’s form.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1285620565″ params=”color=#ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

CHARACTERISTICS

• Large and round, lots of long arms and things that reach out
• Steam Powered
• Hydraulic processes that occur sometimes, but not always
• Some kind of snipping action
• Small round orbs come out and spin fast, like a weather vane
• Trudging along on long legs
• Is a mechanical animal moves through environment and interacts with things, processes things
• Autonomous machine running under its own will
• Gigantic robotic bug with pincers
• Takes things from environment and presses them into golden bricks, makes the famous yellow brick road behind it.
• Antagonistic to surroundings, imposing its order onto the world
• Attitude of “Just doing a thing”
• Turns life into something pretty, as opposed to truly beautiful
• Giant flea?

ORIGIN

• It seemed like a good idea at the time
• Crawling out of the center of the sun
• Organism began acquiring sticks and rocks and adding to itself, making metal parts and attaching them.
• Worked for so long that it evolved away its intelligence and fused with machine, became mindless
• Has mind but all that’s left for it to think is “I’m doing a good job!”
• Hyper focused
• Too efficient
• Programmed itself in response to an initial impulse

Players: HC, SC, AK, AM, RC

04/28/2022 Dream: I had a dream of a new surrealist game we were playing in Atlanta last night. Small squares were cut out of colored construction paper (bright reds, blues, yellows) and at the center of each color square a chance word or image was also attached. I think we were supposed to write a poem or something that was a synthesis of the feel of the color, and the essence of the word or image? Though the details are somewhat vague now. – SC

03/18/2022 Dream: Someone new had shown up to our Atlanta Wednesday meetings, and had the idea for us to all do improvised noise while also playing Dixie Chicks CDs at high volume. Everyone was like, are you sure…? Also, someone had ordered subs for the group, but the bread was old and soggy. So yeah, everyone was just sitting around the circle, holding soggy subs, looking somewhat perplexed. – SC

https://soundcloud.com/ephemeralityart/wideopenfaces

Players: Aaron Dylan Kearns, James Robert Foster, Hazel Cline, and Steven Cline