Onward
by the Editor
This month marks the end of this last phase of Exterminating Angel Press, and it’s probably appropriate that this is the Weird Communities issue. The beginning experiment was a success, and now’s the moment to think about what needs to happen –and how to make it happen.
What was the experiment? We wanted to see if a widely diverse group of people, always open to other points of view, could have a sort of dinner party every month where they said what they thought on a variety of topics…but always with the underlying subject being why the culture is the way it is, how it shows that, and what can practically be done to change it for the better.
That does sound a little NPR, as popular culture editor Mike Madrid once said. But the intent was – and will be, even more so, in the next phase – a practical one, not just a wistful hope for Pie in the Sky.
We do believe that there are objective things wrong with the world around us that can be changed by individual and group action. But we also believe that the individual and group action needed is not always political, or what we think of as socially activist. Sometimes it’s meditative. Sometimes it’s inward, rather than outward, looking. Sometimes it shows itself in fiction rather than essays, in film, in photos…and in poetry, of course. Always it’s creative – which is something that can’t be predicted or boxed in by a category.
Action that changes the stories that we tell ourselves without even knowing it – that’s what Exterminating Angel Press is about. We want work that changes those stories, sometimes playfully, sometimes seriously, from stories where there is always a winner and a loser, where certain traits are valued more highly than other, more modest, ones that maybe make those triumphalist traits possible, stories where there is an outsider that has to be vanquished in order for the insiders to be safe … to… well… different stories. Most of those stories have yet to be told.
That’s the fun part for me: watching those stories struggling to get out. I love watching it when people get creative with their stuff and get creative with analyzing the present stories taken for granted in the media, as well as with pushing out to make new stories…not to mention the chances to get creative myself. So now EAP wants to build on that, and explore a little more what a creative community, based around the idea that we can identify the present stories and then we can roll up our sleeves and gleefully get started working on new ones together…we want to explore what that means.
So. We’re going to take a month off to figure out a new format that will help us do that a little more easily, and still not be such a hassle that it takes too big a chunk out of the participants’ lives (especially mine, come to think of it). On the technical side, we’re looking at RSS feeds and comment capability…and, the most important change, we’re moving into publishing hard copy books. More about that later. (Boy, is that going to be a lot of work. Fun, too.)
To start with, EAP needs a new motto to put on the banner. Suggestions welcome. Winning entry receives…I don’t know what other than good karma, but if there is a winning entry, I’ll think of something.
The EAP dinner party went late into the summer evening, and really was the most fun party I’ve ever been at. Thanks to everyone who so generously participated. During it, we laid some plans, outlined some books, made new relationships that I’m hugely curious to explore. So I invite everybody back on October 15th, for a changed EAP…this time, it’s less of a dinner party and more of a dance. If you’re a GREENBEARD fan, or want to read more of Mike Madrid’s THE SUPERGIRLS , or Brian Griffith on Christianity, or David Budbill’s poetry , or Harvey Lillywhite’s essays…they’ll be back then…among others.
In the meantime, if there’s something you’ve always wanted to see in EAP, just email me…
Till October — See you then.