by LORIN DREXLER
Welcome to the Spring edition of Genesis Journals. It's been a magical season of change and growth. Between tramping all over Western Europe earlier this year to digging deeper into myself high up in the red rocks in Sedona, I'm moving into the next season of my life with more determination. Finally, after years and years of toiling and internalizing and battling with myself about what I should be focusing on (for no good reason at all), I've settled onto my path... poetry.
This was not a decision made by abandoning or discarding my other creative pursuits, but more asserting a concentration and practicing a narrow discipline every day (yes, every day!). All my other endeavors shall adhere to this nucleus, and persist so long as they don't interfere. The image below, which contains a Confucius quote, sat on my iMac for over a year. I would open it time and again, enchanted yet dumbfounded. The metaphor was heeded, I just didn't know what it meant for me. I assumed, out of the plethora of images that consume the internet, I chose this particular one to sit on my desktop for a reason:
My answer was sitting in the photo all along: thanks, poets01! Nonetheless, I continued to chase my two rabbits: Music and Writing. The irony was that I'd hardly been chasing either in the past few years. I was too busy avoiding myself to know what was screaming inside me. So I reached out and asked God or the universe or whathaveyou to present me with more of a challenge in my professional life... and that shit was delivered with appeasement. And you know what, I love it. Poetry (and writing in general) is my one true love. It has been and always will be my path; I'm just now giving it the acknowledgment it deserves. And for as weird as I translate it into existence and beyond the beauty of how it's enabled me to see between what I've known as immediate and boring answers to irrelevant and understated questions, I've fallen deeper into it, into the essence of my beyond, and what I've discovered is that the act of poetry, silently and secretly, designs life from subconscious energy into actual matter and living, all from this imperceptive ether delegated from depths of the unknown. It is Truth of existence—at the very least, mine. It's the harshest, most cryptic & abstract, most highly indiscernible but impeccably relevant gospel one could undertake, or subject themselves to... yet, just as easy to compose as it is intrinsic to your magnificence as a being in this human thing, is it equally difficult to capture in fullness and clarity, tangibly & comprehensively, from its pithy vehicle as it trolls by in a whisper. It is the voice of God I'm after, and if I can retrieve it, only for a brief moment in the expanse of my lifetime, this pursuit will have been worth it.
Yes! Challenge accepted. This is my path, and I am, for the first time in my life, content with my decision. Poetry was my first and will be my final lover. With all its successes and assurances, failures and doubts—past, present, future. With what I've grown to know, respect, and hunt with my silent & cunning wolf, it has always been the greatest part of the greater part of me. And it's just been sitting there waiting for me to devour my stagnancy and hesitancy in life, and reevaluate what I've been telling myself all along: Be who you are at all costs... well, fuck it, this is who I am, for better and for worse. And for the first time in my life, and perhaps the only, I'm listening... heading into the unknown by the will and voice of God. But one thing I do know, from this point on, wherever that voice takes me, like a fish that finds a current, I shall go with it.
"Very little grows on jagged rock.
Be ground. Be crumbled.
So wildflowers will come up where you are.
You have been stony for too many years.
Try something different. Surrender."
- Rumi
I want to thank Bert van Zetten of Villa del Arte Galleries, and the artists they represent, for this collaboration and inclusion in Genesis Journals and on the Gen Society blog. Walking through various neighborhoods in Barcelona, Spain, I stumbled across all three of their galleries. Coincidentally, one of the artists they represent, Françoise Nielly, was an artist I featured years ago. So after a pleasant exchange with Bert, the Co-founder & Gallery Director of VdA, we decided on a feature. To learn more about the fabulous artists represented by the Villa del Arte Galleries, check out their biography below and visit their links.
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What are Gen Society and Genesis Journals? In addition to being the LLC umbrella for creative services and music artist services performed by lorindrexler.com and loryn.net, Gen Society is a gallery blog for visual art and creative writing collaborations, and other randomizations. Genesis Journals is the seasonal newsletter of the blog.
In Genesis Journals, the season's featured artist's work (or artists) will be scattered throughout the sections. Other elements included, that may or may not be included on the blog, are book releases, music releases, and novel excerpts created by writer and musician Lorin Drexler (and potential collaborators). All of these project updates are located in the following section. |
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**Novel Excerpt**
My hybrid novel, Genesis, has yet again undergone another metamorphosis. After returning from Europe, something changed inside me. I was trying too hard to write a novel I felt was restricted and boring. Paragraph after paragraph, page after page, it wasn't the book I wanted to write, let alone read. And it wasn't because of the words on the page and how they were written but because of how they were presented.
I'd already broken apart Genesis years ago so that each chapter would read as its own flash fiction piece (a complete story under 1500 words) and in succession for an entire novel. Still, something felt off. Once I started restructuring the chapters to resemble more experimental poetry than standard prose, it began falling into place. So, what was already a hybrid novel just got a little more strange, thus making Genesis an experimental poetry book, a flash fiction compilation, and a novel series that will span numerous books.
In addition to this formatting alteration, I decided to embed artwork throughout the chapters. I'm illustrating Genesis with a software program called Midjourney, an excellent little AI art generator. Included below in the short sample of chapter II is artwork generated with Midjourney that I'll likely use in the book.
CHAPTER II
RE-EMERGE
I climbed from
the sunken blue
fortress of my
former self and
made my way
onto dry land
As I trekked
aimlessly through forest terrain
on a winding dirt path, I reached
f or what might have just
been my imagination.
That voice inside me.
That ape that appeared from
the ether in my vision,
and pulled me toward it.
That penetration that kept my feet activated, SEARCHING...
I could have been walking for days,
months,hunting and forging, following that echo. The timeline was vague, and the gaps in my memory persisted after emerging from the stream. The terrain began to change as I moved up in altitude. The vibrant greens and browns of the forest blended with purples and reds of a mountainous landscape.  by LORIN DREXLER |
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on an infinite tilt, or until it all passes — Chapter II
Chapter I: https://gensociety.com/2023/05/12/hom-nguyen-moondancers-love/
Inspired by an original manuscript from: https://www.instagram.com/poetic.wolf__/
i have yet to know the sound of her voice
her scent as we lie in bed together
as we let the world spin around us
one arm over her belly
the other under her neck
folded over her breast
i can't stop thinking about her
in my arms pressed against me
all the ways in which we tangle
two spools to a black cat
stretching the universe
as she looks at me
for the first time in her life
i sing for her
from shades of a virulent past
our dangling broken ornaments that tug
but that is now beside us
for the past does not exist
i howl for her
for you!
for everything we've wished
so long as it's love
but beyond this
beyond our moondanced melody
this here is my discourse
in our native language
these paper words
are for you
and you alone
words you can put ink to
and howl with at the world
behind the poetess wolf you hide
shooting them at your vacant lovers
to show them what real love is
and through the mask
of what we know each to be
we are cautious because we also know
the ways love can kill...
we need to reclaim ours
calm the waters
stop gallivanting at the sight of
another broken promise
for there is no greater pain in the universe
than that of a blood moon
bleeding back to gray
but not us
the world has re-collected our stars
oh no
death will not become us
for here
you have my heart
and here
between the most desolate of surfaces
we see an alien planet where
we both enter the waters
nude
submerged
dripping
scribbled in love
like children
floating the amniotic sea
we hold it as it holds us back
in our one remaining promise
with one everlasting wish
for our one final lover
by LORIN DREXLER |
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Bert van Zetten, Marcel and Jutta Huisman founded Villa del Arte Galleries in Barcelona in 1999. Their combined commitment and passion for art, together with a unique approach and willingness to exhibit emerging alongside established artists, has contributed to an ever-changing, exceptional contemporary collection of fine art, photography, and sculpture. Villa del Arte represents over 40 national and international artists exhibited between four emblematic galleries in Barcelona and Amsterdam. Further to organizing solo and collective shows, Villa del Arte also collaborates with other cultural institutions and museums, and regularly participates at renowned international art fairs.
U n t i l N e x t T i m e ;) |
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