From the artist No Land:

Rain of Gems in Eye’s Illusory mosaic: Rumination on two years

“Seek a tincture of distilled sound,
a jeweled tongue & be still
of yr shadow mouth
Distinction lies in reverence to high order.”

Navigation of the street Interior. Mornings of snow light, coffee, window meditations revealing the ship’s mast in the distance. Directions arrow as spaciousness in & out side. The day wears charcoal, glow dusts, emotion robes. The poet seeks communication with night. For compassionate understanding of all out there, slip away. close door. Quietly watch the smoke spiral upwards by the glass. Feel into spirit’s fire paintings.

World moves inside. Outside grows empty w/ vast possibility. All the little worlds we knew- unspiral. New ones rise. Sit still- cat-like, awaiting message. A tincture of imagination, sculpting, receiving, sows the new world, ascended. One foot into black hole. All spinning. Hold all sacred confidantes close. No drivers leaders ladders in sight! Times square desolate. blinkling ecstatic flower notions rise in the emptiness. explosions of space & light.

The people drape Stage curtains ‘cross the nation’s parks, amphitheaters, beaches. We have traded in other kinds of hallowed ground– where we had planned to meet– for momentary gardens of love.
Gardens of electricity amps. Poetry returned to the street corner. Children, starfish, union electricians, nymphs, all join in. Many gatekeepers have abandoned posts. Art siphoned into night stars & lily pads.

Costume list for new york city pandemic ice winters: Big black coat with the satin insides ripped. A tiny necklace chalice– worn to catch a miniature reliquary of tears. gold liquid ignorance elixir, drinking it, starting over and over! Warm things for when you go out art teaching in the snow, scrubbing walls, working in the darkroom. The images held psychically: a sword vomited, the cross blue and glowing, spoon ring, gold thread, pennies. Sitting up at night decoding the phrase “double twilight.” Time spent in books. Blake’s Thel read over & over. Moving the past two years between a southern farm, an uncharted flower field, the southwestern desert, and New York City, I feel I’ve sat still.

Most grateful for the ability to create poem-sonic work with some of the musicians I admire and respect. Have worked of late in different formations. A spirit-entangle of: Bentley Anderson, Joanna Mattrey, Daniel Carter, Luke Stewart, myself. They are travelers in many senses. Was very honored to play with Bentley & Daniel at Pioneer Works for the occasion of downtown-artist Alex Harsley’s photography exhibit: First Light from Darkness. We offered poem, noise, wind, into the emulsion waves of Harsley’s historic NYC photographs & cinema.

(L to R: Carter, No Land, Anderson – Photo by Kendra Krueger, Pioneer Works, August 2021)

(Carter, No Land, Anderson – Photo by Oliver Ray, Pioneer Works, August 2021)

The daily work is: in service to paintings, photographs, poems, images, books in progress, upcoming
performances, beyond. These each are fields of seeking, different with their own tone and language. As I write I am simultaneously at work on the delivery of a small photographic archive of my street
photography to Village Preservation, an organization devoted to the lineages of downtown NYC history. I try to honor my visions as they arrive. The poem arrives in the gut or above the halo area. From this cavernous space laced with illuminated rods also arrives intuition, reverence for mystery, & trust in the unknown path.

(Photo by No Land)

Past little while, I’ve sculpted many small cinema pieces: combining visuals with poem & sound. One is called “Traveling Seeress / Heart Jewel” for “Thrum” — a multi-dimensional installation cinema piece with Joanna Mattrey, for Issue Project Room. This work involved conducting man on the street-interviews, inquiring about various citizen-people’s beliefs on magic. Joanna’s vision involved set-design creations in empty downtown theaters & cinema layering on translucent veil fabrics. For an Arts For Art broadcast with Luke Stewart, fused some of my paintings with our bass-poem performance: his sound giving electricity to the symbols in my paintings. Sent a cinema piece to Tucson featuring tight-rope-train-track walkers encircled by flames. This played in the open desert air alongside the beautiful music of a group called Son Ray.

(Photo by No Land)

(Photo by No Land)

Grateful to currently be at work on some books, one co-authored with Anne Waldman, called “The Velvet Wire” for release in Fall 2022. This was an inter-generational linage vision, graciously spearheaded by Mary Catherine Kinniburgh for her press, Tibetan Kite Society, a sister publisher of Granary Books. Another small book of my work called “Putting On Minds” is underway for a visionary art press in Boulder Colorado. Very grateful to those individuals who help me move the artwork out of the treasure-chest lockbox. I felt very blessed to meet poet & musician Oliver Ray of: Saint Maybe, the Patti Smith Group, and his own astounding solo projects. We have since gotten to work on an array of music & poem recordings. One being a poem-piece sculpted of ash & radio fragment for the Ginsberg Estate. My singing lives on a few other pieces in progress. Luke Stewart & I worked fastidious in the darkroom last winter on a publication called “The All” which is forthcoming. Worked a lot on some photographic work & design for the release of my late friend Zack Rosen’s archive, whose work is forthcoming & awe inspiring. Grateful to sit in slow time at home with a typewriter. Grateful for many tea pots with friends who have come to visit.

Have learned many deep wisdoms from my guide & sister Lucia Hinojosa– shared meditations,
ceremonies, dream talks. We are at work on an album called “Seeking the Gemstone Diplomat.”
Received generous collaborative energies from artists Gabriel Gall and Laura Duval. I traveled to a
sacred adobe desert house where I wrote & read & painted & learned everything one could need to know from a clairvoyant dog. I came back to NYC and sat back at my window. Saw jewels falling from the sky. Watched clouds rattle inside flowers. I listen for the bell, suss out my blindspots! From the crown a teal rain cleans the inside daily, I light a white light in the womb. Will just be here, sussing out the current, erasing some sign posts, keeping my head down and above water, allowing the cranial harp to sing, or eyes wishing for everyone to have heaven, watching all so beautifully aglow & elevating.