Storytellers of different ilks different beats different leaks of internal graffiti yet the word always at the heart of it barrowing out into light what comes from shadowlands within. Stories within earshot as eavesdropped whispers Stories like moonshots catapulted with cosmic pop and intent Stories as trespasses keeping roadside crosses warm Stories mnemonic in their wanderings to find out where they are Stories honey blonde and licorice dark in their creeping spread upon the world at dusk. I remember one of us once said I tell myself stories in the dark. From out of the dark things emerged things that assumed shapes forms it was birth and cryogeny all at once the sap of flow bubbling and running within the cast of petrification. I tell myself stories in the dark he said. We felt him. We adopted his line as creed. We tell ourselves stories in the dark. Amidst fractures and parallels merging we are unified in that story is the cause. The be all end all. Without story no voices and we fade to void. We are purest simplest mathematics in this respect. Addition subtraction all that jazz. That is us. Addition subtraction all that jazz. Within story the formless chaos of all that jazz assumes forms such as hard bop swing gospel scat fusion. We tell ourselves stories in the dark seeds born from the bones of word winding back to In the beginning.

Photograph by Cindy Sherman