imagination bones
by Theo Edmonds
Reflections on the first Cross Atlantic Creativity Congress, April 2022, Salzburg, Austria
we were once a boat somewhere
seeking cosmic water symbols
a wave of embodied otherness
ripped us all apart
bombed elation fell on a lonely planet
as mycelium ghosts
ciphering beneath belonging notions
creativity raised us through mountain sand
reaching to touch each other again
small green explosions
wrenching toward a fringe
fringes always remind my heart
of places where people learn
to sing curiosity songs
have you noticed that people sing
(from deep in their bones)
when forbidden to speak
(of hope, audacity, or memory)
i saw an annie leibovitz photo one time
mickhail baryshnikov’s feet and keith richard’s hands
occupying the liminal space of a page together
binding past and future to freedom
in that moment, i fell in love
with the gnarled and knotted evidence of experience
of artmaking
visualized as data in human form
(so beautiful the question was to me, i cried)
at our best, art and science distort smoke
to bring that which is dead home again to live
distorted smoke sounds vaguely like a heard of cats
it smells of dirt and melons just beyond peak ripeness
it feels joy in the tension between being and becoming
we are not black coated priests
reminiscing of anticipated apples
we are not elected voices
politicizing elitist atmospheres
we artists, scientists and experience makers
excite the conceptual errors
(hidden in estimations of transcendence)
we climb up
to see sky with our own eyes
what did you speak of
with the wind steepled peoples?
did they remind you that we are stardust?
is that how you will take flight?
when our umbilical cords untether
we curious creatures learn to lift again
rootless fingers pressing and vibing
relocating muscle memories
with infinite possibilities
restored,
our instinct to know the unknowable
tending to the secret sound of wind
we pause to listen again
(like we did when ancient electricity spoke
unreconciled imagination into bone)
in that memory
we become a boat somewhere
floating in those invisible spaces between earth and noise
where freedom with unsnatched joy
remembers how to climb mountains
and why it once set sail
“touch my spine” one says to the others
“my belly remembers the way to go home”
