Agitprop Reading Series Saturday 11/1/2008

Dear Friends,

We hope you can join us this Saturday, November 1 for the next reading
in the Agitprop reading series at Agitprop Gallery (2837 University
Ave in North Park, entrance on Utah, a few blocks west of 30th
Street), featuring STAN APPS and MATHEW TIMMONS. Wine and snacks will
be served. Donations to the gallery are always appreciated.

Stan Apps is a poet and essayist living in Los Angeles. His books of
poems include soft hands (Ugly Duckling Presse), Princess of the World
in Love (Cy Press), Info Ration (Make Now Press) and God's Livestock
Policy (Les Figues Press). A collection of essays is underway from
Combo Books. Recent work has appeared in Joyland: a hub for short
fiction (http://www.joyland.ca/home/los_angeles), Try Magazine,
Abraham Lincoln, Ecopoetics, and the Icelandic webzine Tregawott.
Stan ekes out a living as an adjunct college instructor, teaching the
poor to write short persuasive essays.

Mathew Timmons co-edits/curates Insert Press (w/ Stan Apps), LA-Lit (
w/ Stephanie Rioux) and Late Night Snack (w/ Harold Abramowitz). His
collaboration with visual artist Marcus Civin, a particular vocabulary
(P S Books), is forthcoming, and his work may be found in various
journals, including: Sleepingfish, P-Queue, Holy Beep!, Flim Forum,
The Physical Poets, NōD, PRECIPICe, Or, Moonlit, aslongasittakes,
eohippus labs and The Encyclopedia Project. He teaches
interdisciplinary arts and writing workshops for CalArts School of
Critical Studies.

We hope to see you there and for all festivities afterwards!

AGITPROP POETRY SERIES
Saturday, June 7th
7:00pm
AGITPROP Gallery
2837 University Ave in North Park. Entrance on Utah.

five things

Here are five things:
number one
number two
number three
number four
number five

Free Free Free

FREE PDF of FOLD APPROPRIATE TEXT
for a limited time only

Read the last issue of Fold Magazine together with your friends!
Then write the next issue of Fold Magazine together with your friends!

FOLD COLLABORATE NARRATE
CALL FOR WORK:

The People work together and we like to see The People doing stuff. We look forward to reading! Reading works written by people writing together!

The editors of Insert Press are soliciting manuscripts for the second issue of Fold magazine.

Fold Collaborate Narrate will provide a venue for collaborative works of narrative and autobiographical prose, mixed genre works, collaboratively written reviews, and collaborative critical analyses of collaboratively written works. In this moment we feel the relevance of collaboration, and the togetherness promoted by people writing as a group, is central. We are interested in storytelling that does more than reiterate constructions of the subject; instead we value collaborative works that enter terrains where the individual would find it difficult to go. We believe collaboration opens new possibilities in genre manipulation. We will favor works that exemplify the difference between group writing and individual subjective manifestations.

Find a partner! Build a team! Gather round a gang and write together: it is friendly! We look forward to receiving submissions from partners, teams and gangs. The works of Wu Ming, the Bernadette Corporation, the President of the United Hearts, the Grand Piano project, and the Pines are examples of the type of writing the editors wish to print.

All writing in Fold Collaborate Narrate will be done by groups.

Please submit works of around 3500 words or less. Send your submissions to insertpress@gmail.com as .doc or .rtf by December 1st.

sound noise

As the angels reminded the apostles on that hill outside Jerusalem, the ending only comes when Jesus returns as judge to close the age, and exaltation into glory, a victorious ascent plays an important role. The theory is most often attributed to a Scottish physicist who proposed about 40 years ago that the vacuum between the stars is not empty but made of a fabric that extends infinitely in all directions. If anything I toned this idea down to make it actually believable. Every opinion I wrote was based on fact and first hand observation. I guess the saying "the truth hurts" is spot on accurate because I got many responses both for and against. I shrugged it all off, and a while later, crossed my arms again over my chest and the same thing happened, but even more pronounced. There was no pain just this weird "moving" vibrating sensation. It almost felt like liquid squishing around. It’s certainly a possible trend, but it’s doubtful that we’ll move from “all free time being devoted to TV” to “all free time being devoted to creating.” After all, one must consume things in order to create things created in a vacuum.

sound noise

Inside the dome of my mind’s eye I can create a vacuum, with absolutely no atmosphere. Instead of repelling dangers, I simply form a dome around them. The requirements of this effort on my mind are disorientating, as I simultaneously performed the job of sitting down with our patients and explaining how these treatments were going to affect quality of life. Only around five percent of the patients in each group chose “watchful waiting,” or “active surveillance,” a small percentage advocated for scaling down workload. We were able to assist your valuable employees in scaling down work overloads by employing sufficient staff, improving systems and workflow, and by creating partnerships with other companies. You created a balance. You provided yourself with a good news team and affirmed that the exit interviews would not create any vacuum in leadership. Then, you rushed forward to take me into custody. When it was all over and done with, you escorted me outside and threw me in the back of your car, so you could drive me to mental health. The threat is now over, but my body has yet to recover.

sound noise

Your campaign has always been a tricky exercise, especially as you found yourself stuck with an unpopular president. I have to say it was refreshing to see police cars and not automatically worry about getting pulled over. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes the evening rush hour traffic was a bitch. Remember when you and I were stuck between those two mountains and we saw a Flash on the horizon? You sat outside the mental hospital before driving home and woke me up to ask what time it was and if I was going to work. I told you I had to stop to get something and it just took awhile. Then I asked if something was wrong. You seemed upset. You could easily have picked up some noise-canceling headphones, which use internal microphones to generate another set of white noise sounds that drown out the ambient noise around you. You then reminded me that white noise isn't quite loud enough to cancel out our really noisy society.

sound noise

Personal Wealth Advice, let’s put a lens on exactly that, Personal Wealth Advice. I have two points I’d like to make. Whenever I saw you around during the day, you would say hi to me, and make sure I had gone to see which sororities and fraternities asked me back for the next night of Rush, and you generally helped me make the right decision to stick with Rush. Secondly, you taught me that sound is produced by a fan revolving at high speed. While for some it wouldn’t be much of a bother, and some may even like the white noise produced, there would be individuals who hate listening to a constant voice. I fought to hold onto that lifeline, suddenly certain that voice was important beyond measure. It had been so long since I'd heard it. Other voices had come and gone, but never once had this voice spoken to me. Until now. In fact, you have been a voice for the silent majority on many occasions over the past eight years.

sound noise

I sigh at the thought of not seeing you again until Wednesday. Tuesday was your day for home visits, so there wasn’t even the prospect of lunch to look forward to. We met last Wednesday evening outside that charming old pub, then returned to the job site and finished a long eight-hour rush to get done. I was sooooo tired. I hadn't worked like that in a long time. My feet hurt, my back hurt, I was mentally tired but LOVED IT. Just sitting with you at the Middlesbrough bus station wounded me. I tried to get a picture of the sign that said Middlesbrough but we stopped a little too far forward. I don't like Middlesbrough. Everyone has a place they don't like being and that's mine. You told me to go sit somewhere else with my mouth, and so with skill I rushed onto the court, dragging you and the bus driver away before you got hurt. My mouth sat on the sideline, continuing to film as you and I watched the fight, shocked by what we saw in front of us. Unfortunately, the microphone caught the sound of its own internal mechanism (I think it was the screen) and the video we produced had an annoying ringing noise.

sound noise

Yes, the whole idea is that the only people in the game are other players, but this can create a vacuum. Well, in my experience, one of my biggest problems is this very same fact. The stable auditory high turns into an auditory nightmare. I then develop a multitude of minor issues such as eye twitching, sensitivity to high frequency sounds, white noise, static, and distortion. I’m usually the last to admit my own failure, but will this note change with road conditions or be one continuous single pitched noise? What we have sounds like the old furniture noises but higher pitched. It's hard to describe but rather like a very high voiced version of our National Anthem sung by five children (ages 6-8). I don’t think I’ve ever heard the National Anthem performed better than this! An entire arena remained completely silent throughout the entire performance.

sound noise

Martin Luther King Jr. said that “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” As loyal Canadians and Americans, we are compelled to work toward improving our communities, and that means refusing to be ourselves. Conceiving of one other than one’s self at right angles of impetus and freeness, and self devoted caring, one is able to affect a rush of support. Hence, one’s self becomes an oedipal prismoid, the Superego approves of the inner self in broad terms and with that comes a focus and depth granted by resolution. Tears jumped into the corners of your eyes at just that moment, but I could see you were fighting them away hard, so I didn't say anything. "Yes," you said, gratefully. "Yes, I would love to." "Great!" I said, a rush of relief and exhilaration pounding in my chest. Now we have special sensors to keep us from falling down the stairs. The system comes with invisible walls, which sends a signal to keep us from passing through the wall. And, we can be programmed to vacuum on a set schedule every week.