I establish as part of the “setting” of my “set and setting” the Visible Cloaks mix, A Young Person’s Guide to Unseen Worlds.
The mix forms a semi-stable backdrop as I sit with Eroding Witness, an early collection of poems by Nathaniel Mackey. He’s performing with the Our True Day Begun Soon Come Qu’ahttet on campus this semester, and I hope to read and discuss some of his work with students in advance of that performance. Horns echo and cascade across space. This work is challenging. One has to lift up one’s arms and breathe, like the colophons for Verso and City Lights. Sarah arranges for us an online baby registry containing beautiful friendly objects, many of them with faces. I read about the Ghede, a family of Haitian Loa said to embody the powers of death and fertility. Those who are “mounted” by these deities launch stinging critiques of bosses and elites. I note down Mackey’s “Song of the Andoumboulou: 6” as a work I might include in my course.
Trance-Scripts 