Collaboration

My relationship with technology has always been precarious (all the more interesting that I married a computer programmer). Things technological break down or function oddly around me. I’ve often speculated that nefarious powers were behind it.

When my Kyle Cassidy Collaboration partner Ember and I put our heads together, we created the Snafoo mythos to reveal the technomagical gremlins behind most of the world’s technological woes.

However, ever since we started this collaboration project and website, the tech-pranks have been increasing in frequency around me.

Last week my computer began playing a song I had never heard before. I shut all my browsers and programs, and the song kept playing. Just as I was going to shut down my Mac, the song stopped and vanished without a trace.

This past weekend, every atm machine that I visited was broken and gave me odd messages like: check health, notify attendant. This week my batteries are dying, even the new ones I just installed.

I think that the Snafoo are a wee bit upset that we’re calling them out! I’m a bit nervous of what they may have in store (so I’m backing up my files and printing out manuscripts, just in case).

I’ve always been fascinated with literary and artistic groups and movements, individual writers and artists who come together to make art, united by their vision.

Magic can happen when creative people join their energy and intention. Groups such as the Bloomsbury Group, the “Beat Generation” poets, the writers of the Harlem Renaissance, the Dadaists and Surrealists challenged expectations and made ripples felt to this day. Like them or not, they created something new, made possible only by their collaboration.

No longer limited by the constraints of physical space, writers and artists are coming together via the internet to exchange ideas, to write and create. I experienced this with my involvement in the first Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. The online community that was forged in the forum maintains contact to this day. It was that ABNA community that made Conclave: A Journal of Character possible, most of the editors were writers I met through the contest. We continue to work on the journal primarily via email, evaluating submission through our online submission manager. It allows writers, photographers, and editors from around the world to work together to produce our international literary magazine.

I’m also a part of other groups virtually connected: some made up of friends and family, others creative or literary. During the years I’ve spent in Germany, I was nourished and inspired by them.

When I read about the collaboration proposed by photographer Kyle Cassidy, I was immediately interested. Yes, it’s a chaotic time in my life, with the move back to the States, my own writing projects, and Conclave submissions. However I agree with Nietzsche that “you need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.”

So this morning Kyle Cassidy posted the list of partnered creatives. Our only guideline is to make something together. I’ve been partnered with mutantenemy. I’ll keep you posted.

Retaliation?

Collaboration–The Cassidy Experiments