I have been thinking back to some of the poems of the chapbook, about identity, about community found on line, about how currently sm is mostly set up so it’s hard to find community, about how many of us crave community right now, particularly. Also listening to a lot of field recordings of Sacred Harp sings, perhaps more on that later. The recording features the voices of me, Kristy, Kaitlyn, Odette, and Kira, friends from the woods.

(Reposted from my substack)

This isn’t so much of a poem as it is a record of what the conversations in The Chat were like.

This was the evening after the first Bonfire. The black square was put into place and they set up lights, one behind the square to backlight it, one in front.

We had our friendly neighborhood impersonator telling us to all meet in the evening and maybe 10 or so of us did. (He must have known something, was on the inside? but people accused me of the same, shit people accused me of being Justin Vernon which is both horrifying and laughable, so maybe our impersonator was just some random dude having fun? ) And the lights went on, filmed in black and white IR, and lit up the woods in a beautiful way. And bc we were wondering what would happen we almost missed the moment.

And we chatted like we did. People from all over the place having a real time conversation in the woods.

It was a subversion of the internet order. It felt like a throw back to the very early days of the internet of chatrooms and AOL. Very primitive but real as hell. No algorithm. Just people talking. and Sharing a moment. Pure.

It was truly a beautiful thing.

Love all the Woods people.

I don’t know how much “they” payed attention to us in the Chat. I would like to think “they” knew it was something special, but “they” had their own aims with this project. And it is possible “they” missed something quite special that was going on in the chat. “They” may have missed their own livestream! We had formed a little community. Some of us still chat using an Insta group.

I don’t know how we were perceived. I will probably never know. It is a black box.

We are hoping to meet up in person in the summer of 2026. Hopefully, in Eaux Claires, at the party “they” are throwing. But with the way things are it might have to move to Canada. Several of the community are across the border. Right now it is unsafe for them to come. Hell, it might be unsafe for the Americans too.

But maybe by July, things will as they say “ come round right.”

“January ain’t the whole world”