#magicpostcard

[sandybrownjensen]

“Do you want to be a snot all your life?”

STUDIO VISIT #2 WITH MARK MARINO AND ROB WITTIG

I have, as my father predicted, been a snot all my life. Snark, sarcasm and the witty comeback have been my first line of defense ever since I was old enough to want to tell somebody to back off, fuck off or get the hell out of my face. There has never been a time when I didn't think I was the sharpest knife in the drawer, the smartest one in the room and that somehow proving the stupidity of others was my personal mission.

Anything that smacked of the serious, the taking of moral high ground, the intellectual, or the politically correct was considered fair game for ridicule, snarkiness, the con, the tease, anything to bring the other down off their high horse and to prove my own clever superiority in some way.

Even now, as I write, I feel readers like me automatically pushing back, weaseling for a clever angle of objection, sneer at the ready, waiting and wanting to poke, prod, provoke.

I feel the howling winds of loneliness, the hurt child I’m trying to protect, the sincerity of spirit I am afraid to reveal to any but my horse, cat, dog, ferret or mini lop. A person like me will probably die snarking at Trump and the next few administrations. Please, Old Self, enjoy your self proclaimed superiority and continue to call out those of us who have long since thought your snarkiness passed over into pettiness.

You'll note I have removed myself from identifying with that character I started out by describing. Twenty five years of teaching beat it out of me. Twenty years in the least pious seminary on the planet beat it out of me. My own drive to live a wholehearted life where the source of laughter is joie d vivre has pruned me down to essences.

And that's why I rarely find humor at the expense of others funny, but the spontaneous quip or word play in the sparkle of a moment just busts me up.

So that's my line of thought following the second #netnarr Studio Visit with Mark Marino and Rob Wittig last week, although what I got to thinking about had nothing really to do with the fun and high jinxs they are up to with their students. I enjoyed their friendship, their playfulness and inventiveness.

TWITTER TALK: FOUR MAGICAL OBJECTS

Following that was some Twitter Talk highjinxs involving guessing at the uses of four magical objects that it seemed to me only the instructors were playing. The Kean students seemed mostly not to be present or were lurking. Probably they didn't play because they don't want to appear stupid in front of their professors, which I find to be the most annoying universal characteristic of students--that wolf pack mentality where they all fawn at the alpha wolf's feet. Or maybe I’m wrong and they were actually there, but, as with last week, I was following the wrong hashtag. It’s always best to assume the fault is mine.

But being able to call someone Professor is a weird class marker, part of American's fucked up relationship with intellectualism. We at once revere our educations and undercut anything that smacks of intellectualism or being above oneself (see "snark" above).

YANK THE THREAD

One of the highlights of last week was Kevin Hodgson getting a bunch of us on board to play a folding story--an Exquisite Corpse, software version. We all wrote 250 words seeing only the piece of story that immediately preceded our own. 

It was Kevin who then recorded the whole into a jazz poem and made it glorious. https://soundcloud.com/dogtrax/yank-the-thread-a-netnarr-folded-story.

 When I remember back on high moments of the @netnarr experience, this collaboration with strangers to make something beautiful will stand out.

ASSIGNMENT BANK CHALLENGES

I did two of the assignment bank challenges--the #magicpostcards and the #alternate book cover. 

This is me deep into the #magicpostcards project, which has grown into a larger project than I anticipated and will take a couple weeks to complete.

This was my #altbookcover--not excessively clever but what with tax day looming, an issue not far from my husband’s mind.

Well, I’ll Be Glitched!

And here’s another collaborative high point from these early days of @netnarr: I was glitchified! I could tell the story of how I posted an image to a Daily Digital Alchemy Feb 6, 2017, where the prompt was to make Glitch Art:

This is me, glitchified!

But then other Open Participants started riffing and glitching and reglitching and poemifying until it was a story in and of itself, which was well Storified by Wendy Taleo, who lives in Alice Springs, Australia.

Seven Daily Digital Alchemys

Write your weekly summary reflecting on the ideas of stories having shape, and what that might mean (or not) for things like E-Literature and netprov.

I believe that the human imagination is deeply wired for stories with certain shapes featuring a beginning, middle, and end. As media has evolved, we see the brain can handle braided story lines as long as there are clear markers to bring them in and out of the various story lines.

However, that was no small jump to interpreting multiple story lines, so there is more to be understood about the human brain and immersive story telling. 

I DO think the holy word “story�� is used in a pretty loosey-goosey way around the Interwebz theze dayz, but I am not so much worried about how other people are bastardizing the core concept as I am with continually exploring my own imagination and expanding digital tool set.

CODA

I bring this week of @netnarr to a conclusion here at the Oregon Coast. My older sister had a mastectomy for breast cancer yesterday, so my younger sister, who is our Mom’s caretaker and a nurse, has gone to Seattle to be with her today, especially, as she comes home from the hospital on Valentine’s Day.

Our Mom’s birthday is today, Valentine’s Day, so obviously, we didn’t want her to be alone. Hence, due to the billiard ball effect among siblings, I drew the long straw and am here at Yachats with Mom in a hotel room getting ready to tune in to Studio Visit #3 on Fan Fiction.

Dawn from my hotel room window this morning. Can Hawaii be far over the horizon?

Some of the best digital stories are the ones made spontaneously to commemorate a moment. Here is the visual story of our day at the beach as a simple slide show to end one week and to begin the next.

[ohiocountypubliclibrary-blog]

The building is familiar--just beyond the old stone bridge, it stands proudly on the corner of 20th and Main, painted mint green with maroon and cream accents. Saengerfest 1906, the card reads. But surely, this is a modern day photo, he thinks. He picks up the card curiously, and with a flicker something strange occurs. Sepia replaces green, buntings hang from windows, a horse and carriage wait patiently on Main street. It's 1906. Then with a tilt of the card, gone. 2016 again. How could this be? What magic was this? He tilts the card again. 1906. Again. 2016. Back and forth, back and forth, past to present, back and forth. In a perpetual loop, he flips, mesmerized by the transition happening right here in his hands. 1906. 2016... If he's not careful, he'll miss Sengerfest tomorrow at the Ohio County Public Library.

Come and see wait the hubbub is all about, Sunday, May 29th at 1:00pm. German singing, German food, Wheeling history, and magic souvenir postcards. Song, food, history are free. Magic souvenir postcards available to purchase with proceeds going to the Ohio County Public Library Archives. Pick up yours tomorrow at Saengerfest 1906 Revisited, OCPL, Wheeling, WV!

[annakathalina]