"An owl is an only bird of poetry"
-Robert Duncan
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The
3:15 Experiment |
Introduction
What's this humming in my skull, this diffuse crackling numbing the hour? What's this thought continuum loping around in my brain pooling forth in florid dream? I hear four women, pens outstretched in spontaneous gowns of song, sculpting my drowsy head afresh, writing and singing time to a pulp. Ahh yes, beauty--arise then, and listen! I came across "The 3:15 Experiment" in June of 1999 in Boulder, Colorado under the tent at Naropa University, a thunderstorm keeping time to this panel of four women (or was it three? Jen I think was in Mexico)--Danika Dinsmore, Lee Ann Brown, Bernadette Mayer, and Jen Hofer (in spirit). The topics of their panel included time, consciousness (altered), collaboration, community, and ritual. I wanted to know, hear, read, more.As it turned out they were planning to open the experiment up to whoever wanted to participate, and were passing around a sign-up sheet. I excitedly signed my name away for the following August when the experiment would begin again.
That year they changed the writing times to 12:00 noon and 12:00 midnight to accomodate the numbers of new participants. I wrote twice a day for almost the whole month. Discipline as always was an issue, and yet time, in a constant with its claws in my back, kept reminding. By the end of August that year twenty some-odd people had participated--a web site was made, history changed, time was humbled in our wake, and we with it. I knew then a book needed to be made with the four original and most consistent participants. And when I finally received the manuscripts spanning seven years and several time zones, I was irresistibly delighted by the impassioned reverence for that middle hour of 3:15--how it so wonderfully bloomed forward the raw truth no matter how groggy the writer--all in the form of no form, all in the form of dream drenched poem, in the form of eclectic song, of emotional "journaling" (you'll forgive the expression), of prosaic pop commentary. Each entry equally capable of reconfiguring your poetic clock, and bringing you back to the wide-eyed instant, the irrepressible moment, the divine urgency of the "here and now" in all its raw beauty. Throughout the text it is never a question of "if I have time", but rather when I make time for the "eternal present" all foreseen limitations dissolve. So wake up folks, and read! Wake up and write! Wake up and live!
--Albert Flynn DeSilver
May 20, 2001 3:15 A.M. Forest Knolls, California
"The four-part synchronous 3:15 experiment is a work to set your clocks by. As multi-toned & timed tome, it alters the lone-voice-in-the-dark-night-of-void mode by being a group assault on time, a break of time, a writing for time, a writing outside time, a writing in time, writing above or below time, and to the north, south, east, & west of time. The book is full of marvelous 'good times' as well--with language, zones, emotions & political conventions (on TV where you can talk back)--the stuff & dross & excitement of existing experimentally in the minds of four exceptional writers. Now when I'm up (agonized) in the middle of the night with the rest of man & woman I'm a little less lonely."
--Anne Waldman
For more on the 3:15 experiment, please visit: www.315experiment.com.
From The 3:15 Experiment:
August 2nd
They say timing is
a gift.
Like turquoise Sky should
pull over & share the
duet
moving people A rock & roll
star. like
picking 900 leaves
I
waver
hint
soak you like
a trouble shooter small day
in the middle of a page
Jazz operations
skid kid trumpet
& the high sax. Stay awake
let it work its recognition
wail wail
--D.D.
familiar, but late
if we are the labor
of poetry, then who is management
what laws govern it
show just cause you
have good luck with gum
or rather, congradulations
or the gum.
Not cheating, but
late. Not Up at
the house by the lake
by the sky by
sutures by the
snares
we are jocelyn's
elders
someone's kept
me in the
dark on this.
--B.M.
being more more
important than (melodic
songs in memory or
stereo) noon having
tried--to try it having
being enough--making
moves so moving more--more
importantly--the sound on
the neck--of the finger
on the neck--i won't name-
drop--the president drove
by--so returning to the
original--thanks anyway--love, jen
--J.H.
forming changes
funicular
eye spans
pain--f
garlic heart
Don't Go
Moon is
rising
a prickly
pear
flagellation
a ee i o u
first union
thelonious is looking
over
--L.A.B.
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