The Process & Bios

Notes on "Potted"

(a copy&paste of e-mails between collaborateurs and editor)

---------- Original Message ----------
Von: Michael K. White
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 16. Februar 2011 04:51
An: doro
Betreff: collaborative works #27 submission
Files attached: Potted[1].doc, DSCF0336.jpg

hi hi dorothee!
 
here is a submission for the new issue, poem by my friend dianna stark. photo by me, your old friend and humble narrator. i hope you and ronnie are well and things are going good. what's new?
 
me, i am back to working on the Quarter stories. i'm averaging about one a week, but this week i did two. anythin to avoid the Februaryness of the present!
 
anyway hope this works. let me know. send word.
 
mike

Brooks
LOVE IT. SHOOT IT. LIVE IT.  Learn how!  

--------------------------

From: doro
To: Mike
Subject: AW: collaborative works #27 submission
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2011 18:26:08 +0100

hi hi mike ~

thanks for sending this submission (and here's a laugh: the first thing i saw about the submission was the doc-file-name: Potted. and i thought: whew, a smoking-weed submission. then clicked the image. :)

but really, this is good stuff! i definitely would like to include your collab in the synergy issue. one idea of the issue is to also include some notes on the process. it would be great if you could put some lines on that together, can be a short description of how you worked, or a part of your e-mail conversation. feel free to also throw in bios and links to previous collaborations.

and here's a little news, but don't tell anyone.
my sis was in court today. for a case of civil disobedience, connected to Stuttgart21, the mad mega railway project in this regio, which sparks ongoing protests. together with 50 others, she did a sit-in in an old building that will be blown up. well. the city now brings all to court because of "Hausfriedensbruch" - literally: "disturbance-of-the-peace-of-house". the irony of it...

have a beautiful day~
dorothee

---------- Original Message ----------
From: "Michael K. White"
To: doro
Subject: RE: AW: collaborative works #27 submission
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2011 10:32:34 -0700

very cool dorothee! civil disobedience is probably the most honorable way to get arrested. aside from urinating in public that is...
 
yeah i really liked dianna's poem too. you know how i am about describing my process so i will turn that over to dianna and get something to you soon.
 
here is is below zero one week and spring-like the next. things are unstable here economically. it's a scary time. i am writing good chapters for the Quarter stories. i'm up to about 120 pages of solid material. got any ideas?
 
sorry no weed smoking submission this time. maybe next one... 
smile
mike


------------

Von: Dianna Stark
Gesendet: Samstag, 19. Februar 2011 08:35
An: doro; Mike
Betreff: RE: AW: collaborative works #27 submission

Hello, Dorothee,

My name is Dianna Stark.  My very good friend, Mike White, invited me to collaborate with him for this submission.  He says he never writes on his process but told me I would need to send you some notes.  So here they are.  

Regards,
Dianna

____

When Mike sent me this picture, I was a little lost.  What could I possibly say about a plant on a window sill?  

After writing two truly abyssmal rough drafts having to do with turning limitations into aspirations, I decided I'd have to take another look at the picture.  What I saw were the barriers: the sill, the wall, the lock, the pot itself.  It's a little ironic that we bring in plants so we can have a little bit of nature in our very unnatural indoor environment. 

When I got into the sonic value of the words (sun, Sunday, Son), it occurred to me that church is also a rather unnatural environment, given all its various trappings--costumes, confession booths, pews--which I saw as another form of being "potted." 

But I have no guilt about the African violets sitting in a pot on my window sill... 

~

bios

Dianna Stark is a staunch supporter of guinea pig rights, participating in numerous piggie rescue missions across the U.S. since 1979.  The love child of Julia Child and Disco Fred McPherson, she inherited none of her mother's culinery skill nor her father's love for disco (which is now dead, anyway).  Ms. Stark leads an exciting double life, by day practicing her unorthodox technique of needle-free accupuncture, and by night playing lead zither in the heavy-metal/polka/punk fusion band The GeriatRx.  Like other artists, Ms. Stark is known for her eccentricities and wild mood swings, which she treats with a combination of iso-chamber sensory deprivation, competitive knitting, and scream therapy.

Michael K. White is one half of the semi-legendary playwriting team Broken Gopher Ink, authors of forty play productions, including fifteen off-Broadway runs that cloaked White with a bogus literary credibility he misuses to this day. His low cholesterol mega monologue play, "My Heart And the Real World" ran for almost two years in New York City, enabling the authors to eat at John's Pizzeria.

~

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