Some of you have read my story, "Touching Fire." Some of you in Seattle may even have heard me read from it. But I can guarantee you have never experienced it like this:
(Here's a direct link at better quality.)
It's a vid called Sun on Dragonfly, created by Karina. Just as the fictional Nadia's dancing does for the story's narrator, this vid makes me 'ache fiercely for...something'. Actually, no, it makes me ache fiercely for everything: right here, right now, and all I can get.
I've never met Karina though I've met her blog, and she's met my voice, written and spoken. And that has triggered this brilliant collision, this dense star born of me, and her, and Patricia Rozema, and the Wachowski brothers (and Susie Bright and Kathi Prosser & Caroline Richardson, and Edvin Marton, and, yes, even Madonna). Karina brought all those element together in this expression, this explosion of pure, visceral fission. It's mesmerising, ferocious, exciting. It has pull. All you writers, vidders, musicians, film makers, photographers, costumers, poets, designers: go find someone to collaborate with, to collide with, to orbit around and escalate and mutate with. It will wrench you open along every seam and hurl you into the unknown.
I believe art is the need to reach out and touch the wordlessness and then to share it. This vid does that. And it makes me feel as though my own reach is greater.
Sun on Dragonfly captures the kernel of "Touching Fire," which is a story of the erotic savagery of art and risk and self-belief. I hope you enjoy it. Go read the story (it's free--though if you like it, you might like my short collection, With Her Body, which isn't) then watch the vid again. Then tell Karina how much you liked it. Then, seriously, go find someone to collaborate with today, on anything--a recipe, a programme design, making a baby. Stretch. Take a risk.
Oh, and tomorrow, for Friday Audio, I'll be posting the original 9-minute reading the vid is based on. Meanwhile, go watch Karina's other vid, the wonderful Mad Rush, which is a response to Kelley's story, "Strings." I think Karina is building a brand new artform...
