Write, Write, Write

I love words. I love the way that words define and shift our understanding of the world, how we push back to change and invent new words and means of expression. I use a lot of words, and I use words often, sometimes for my own amusement or curiosity, sometimes professionally, sometimes for hire.

When I landed in Minneapolis in 2006, one of the questions I asked myself was, “How can I be useful in this community?” One of the responses came in writing, and for a long time that meant running CakeIn15, an arts & culture blog covering the Twin Cities and national issues. More recently, that has meant editorial duties on Springboard for the Arts’ national platform, Creative Exchange, freelancing to support artists’ communications needs, and providing cultural criticism for local outlets. My writing has also appeared in Spin, In Studio Magazine, AOL Spinner, The Line, City Pages, The Onion's A.V. Club, mnartists.org, the YNPN-TC blog, the University of St. Thomas MBA blog, and popped up in the form of bios, promotional materials and grant applications.

For personal writing, that has often come through poetry and theater. Many of the little notes and essays are on my Tumblr, which constitutes a sort of open notebook. I wrote a play, Care Enough, that was produced by Umbrella Collective in 2012. I have forthcoming poems in Trouble Child Magazine and Meal Magazine, and recently added several zines of my poems to this site’s shop.

Below is a selection of my own written works, and if you are really interested, here is a mostly complete rundown of writing from 2007 to the present. On the flip side, I am also sometimes interviewed as part of projects, for arts entrepreneurship, organizational culture, or for occasionally wearing bowties. You can find those mentions listed here.

I'm game for writing projects with a special interest in creative bios, press materials, strategic materials, and grant narratives. If you're interested in having me write something for you, shoot me an email.

Published Poems

Compass Rose Literary Journal

I would have stayed longer but I have to go back 
for your funeral. I wouldn’t miss it, I do miss you. 
There are things one must do. 

Two poems, Everyday Chapels and Manna, published by Compass Rose Literary Journal (pages 17 & 18). MORE

Thin Air Magazine

I grew up in cities that were not my cities. 
Not my language, not my mother culture, 
other’s cradles. A hermit crab, a cuckoo egg.

Two poems, Providence and Mississippi, published by Thin Air Magazine. MORE

Meal Magazine

His small, ever-growing hands pluck up the weedy grass, 
you know the one, it looks like a caterpillar on a single stilt, 

a green stalk of false wheat. I don't know its name but 
I should probably look it up to be ready for the inevitable question... 

Two poems, Focaccia (for Ophelia) and Small, Ever-Growing, published by Meal Magazine. MORE

Trouble Child Magazine

The questions do not come as questions
they are formed as absolutes,
the certainty of your body
betrays you.

A poem, POOL/FIRE, published in Trouble Child Magazine (page 39). MORE

Crooked Arrow Press

That title comes from a Game of Thrones name generator 
on Twitter. Plucked from thin air, sprung from the head,
surf made manifest –
                                           I'll look for meaning anywhere.

A poem, Sable Longwing, published in Crooked Arrow Press. MORE

The Life of Organizations

In Joy, On Purpose

I know that when we are at our darkest, the promise of a shared joy, of a hopeful joy, is critically necessary. And in these thoughts of joy, I wonder if for me – and maybe for you – there is a reversal of that framing. Through joy, we find purpose….MORE

On Fragility & the Work We Do Together

As artists we are so adept at doing more with less. We can find materials to create with, turn a chair into a whole theater set, write miracles with 26 characters and some punctuation. These skills serve us well as artists, but they do not always serve us so well in our organizations. In fact, the impulse as a working artist to stretch your resources turns into an organizational liability….MORE

The Heat

"Do you know what the secret of life is? It's people who change people."

I’ll tell you the truth, my favorite days are the ones where your internal body temperature and the air temperature are almost the same, a hundred degrees, a breeze, sweat blowing off you. They are the days when the barrier between you and the everything almost disappears, a feeling of having given over all of you to the air, and in that heat, anything can happen. This feeling will come back later...MORE

EVERYONE TOGETHER DIFFERENT

Several years ago, as part of the Artists In Storefronts project in Whittier, artists Sheila Regan and Anton Pearson created a striking image on the side of Rainbow Chinese Restaurant on Nicollet Avenue. Emblazoned across the side of the building in moss-growing gel were the words ‘EVERYONE TOGETHER DIFFERENT’. The collaborative process of creating the piece, the ephemeral and delicate nature of its materials, the work to maintain it, and the power of the phrase have stuck with me as fundamental characteristics of a civil society. It is inclusive – EVERYONE – equitable – TOGETHER – and diverse – DIFFERENT...MORE

Dan Deacon & the Culture of Innovation

He comes from a specific place and has inherited an ethos of that place. Baltimore isn’t just The Wire, but it is a post-industrial American city with lots of empty warehouses and scene with artists looking to fill those spaces. As Steven Johnson quotes urban writer Jane Jacobs in his book Where Good Ideas Come From, “New ideas must use old buildings.” Deacon’s hyperkinetic electronic dance music stems directly from that locally-developed, internationally-influenced scene in Baltimore, and Deacon has managed to take it around the world...MORE

Connecting Us to Art

Ten Thousand Things: Connecting with Communities Through Imaginative Theater

Founder and artistic director Michelle Hensley adds that the drive to perform for non-traditional audiences wasn’t “consciously a social justice thing. The real and immediate impulse was that I just wanted to find audiences that cared about the story; audiences for whom the story we were trying to tell really mattered to their lives.”...MORE

The Eternal Moment

Even to the uninitiated, it’s clear: here is a man at work in a specialized and strange way, creating opportunities for others on the field -- moving, waiting, timing everything. It’s in his eyes, as they squint and flicker from under the shadow of his heavy brow. Gordon and Parreno zoom in on those eyes over and over again, underlining Zidane’s constant search for understanding the totality of the game, for that infinite consciousness...MORE

red, black & GREEN: A Blues

If Charles Bukowski once said “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence,” Bamuthi and the Living Word Project are full of the most intelligent and confident people, wrestling with complexity and inviting us in. Not just in the theater or in the museum, but in life, in the communities that we are trying to build and understand...MORE

Opening Myself Up

Between Ragnarok and Yggdrasil

I recently re-read Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology. The first time, I read it because I’m a huge Neil Gaiman fan. He’s probably my favorite contemporary fiction author, and American Gods is easily one of my favorite novels, with all of its magic crackling under America’s inherent weirdness. The second time, though, I read it with a more particular frame, to think more specifically about a cultural heritage that I have, as the descendent of Swedish immigrants, but one that I had not been taught or deeply considered....MORE

The Dog-Headed Christopher, or, notes on February 7 2014

I wear a Saint Christopher medal, because the stories we tell ourselves are powerful, and because my family is spread across the world. In the western, Catholic tradition, Christopher is the patron saint of travelers, a giant of a man who served by carrying people across a river, including, as the story and image goes, the Christ child who had the weight of the world. I love that story, but there is also an eastern, Orthodox representation of Saint Christopher as a dog-headed man – a mythological beast, who gives up destructive ways to become a part of the Christian society. I love this Christopher too, both together the embodiment of my own shortcomings, my own potential, and the myths we shape and change together. It is a good day to be alive...MORE

Gait

I find myself thinking about walking a lot. Walking is key to a successful city, to coming out of winter. In Roger Ebert’s journal about his AA practice, his doctor tells him to go for a walk when he feels too elated, too jittery at the prospect of not drinking. Rhythm, human gait and limitation is good for the ups, as well as the downs. It sure beats the hell out of the advice Marilyn Monroe got, to go driving on the L.A. freeways...MORE

Promoting Other People's Work for Love & Money

The Ericksons Bio/Press Release

In February of 2006, Lee Erickson was dying. Erickson was an artist living in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, married to Bethany, a biologist with a love of music. Bethany’s sister Jenny, also a musician, came to join them, in the darkest hour. Erickson, an expansive artistic force, looked to the future even as his own end came. “Jenny,” he told her, “you gotta do your music.”...MORE

Joey Ryan & The Inks Press Release

For ordinary guys, Joey Ryan & The Inks have a habit of making extraordinary music. Over the past five years, Joey Ryan, brothers Matt and Chris Mitchell, Ryan Mach, and Tim Dickson have solidified their place on local airwaves and stages and as the go-to band for catchy pop tunes with 60s sunshine beats, with slivers of doo-wop on top of smart instrumental progression, topped by Ryan’s crystal-clear, bittersweet vocals...MORE

Chastity Brown Bio

She’ll put a spell on you. Sweet as molasses and woodsmoke, clear and burning as summer sun, Chastity Brown casts magic. Her voice brings you to the crossroads with every turn, warms, comforts and challenges you. She is the inheritor of Leadbelly, Nina Simone, Bonnie Raitt and Roberta Flack. She is past, present and future. She is fire, earth, air and water. She’s a natural...MORE