David Schermann (www.davidschermann.com) – Featured Photographer

I’ve decided to put all my music projects on hold until mid-August. I’m currently in Chicago and will be spending July officializing Gen Society as a business and blog. I’ll be back in my production suite to finish up two of the five projects I have on the horizon, following a short trip up the California coast in August.

After an unusual trail of events, I’ve also decided to apply for an MFA program in Iowa City for writing; a school I’ve long daydreamed about. The program is called the Writer’s Workshop and it’s well-known for both poetry and fiction. Other than the newly renovated additions in the back of the “facility,” which connects to a small library, the school itself looks as though it were just some random house plucked from some miscellaneous neighborhood and plotted along the gridlines of ordinaryville. On paper, the program is certified as a Master’s Degree and issued by University of Iowa; off paper, it’s just some slightly dilapidated house (at least on the interior) in the middle of nowhere that just so happens to residence one of the best writing programs in the country.

I was passing by Iowa City on the way to Chicago after visiting with family in Nebraska. The school was 5 minutes off the highway so I figured I might as well check it out and take a few pictures… nothing more than a novelty. But after speaking with the staff and learning it’s actually more feasible than I’d initially assumed, I warmed up to the idea of it as a realistic option. Though walking out the doors of this quaint little Midwestern antique, I was still hot and cold. I can be thankful it’s not a school for verbal discourse because I’m sure I left the impression of being a nefarious idiot. Though I suppose something as this can only help my odds, I’ve always played the field better as an underdog. In all seriousness, and what truly sank in my heart, they only seemed to care about the talent and individuality of the writer and their writing. It was a beautiful thing to hear. Much of the credo in the education system’s application process is based more around the concept of statistics rather than creativity and individuality. I was more than happy to learn this bit of information. But nonetheless, upon exit, I was still hot and cold.

As I was driving away, on the fence if this whole school idea was a waste of time, I began to discuss the program with my mom and aunt, both of whom were traveling with me on this cross-country expedition from Arizona to Illinois. And just as I was relaying the charm of the school’s philosophy, a giant pelican emerged from the shoulder of the highway and flew across the windshield. It was an omen. For whatever that may have signified for the unknown trek ahead, I knew I had to move forward with this particular decision and put everything I have into it.

So why was this significant? The short answer is this pelican incident has been a reoccurring synchronicity that continues to embellish the laws of attraction in my life. The pelican represents a parable modality that has repeatedly unveiled itself as some greater magnetic presence and blaring impetus, impelling a specific momentum as an unfettered guide on the journey of my existence. It has been an immovable force and a manifesto of fate, assuring me I’m traveling on the path of my destiny. Taoist’s would refer to this state of being as “The Way.”

This synchronicity that keeps repeating itself in my life is also responsible for the inception of Gen Society and this Journal. It reminds me that we are not alone in the universe and there is something magnificent between the lines, existing both within us and beside us…

For the longer version and full story, and the beginning of the pelican saga, click the photo below:

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M I S N O M E R S

David Schermann (www.davidschermann.com) – Featured Photographer

I have not seen, as I have seen her today—
the waves in my head like a cannon of lies.
I hate them; I wish for them to rot in a thousand graveyards;
for all the sunflowers cowering above that laugh. they are not lies!
if I could only become the person I could become.
she was soft, as spring rain. only sadder and more beautiful.

I know it may never become of desire. perhaps from esteem
of one too many illicit alterations—not enough sanity between us.
perhaps it was perfect, for a perfect moment in two richly stranded lives.
let us continue, for I do not believe in sudden enlightenment,
but I do believe in love. a fragment encrypted. a piece of beach glass
sharp enough to run home with, yet dull enough
to hang as a family portrait or emblem of fair play.
I am alone. There is no window. There is no letter. No one is watching.
please hold me for

one more night, then say goodbye. the aperture glares at
the frozen man in the street, wondering why he is the
way he is, and that person the way that person is.
are we all just misnomers, pretending to live the great adventure
while the sidewalks fill with trash. the real adventure,
only conducive in conversation and parable.
the forgotten one sleeps along the highway
composing symphonies with the wind—

there was a moment between the chaos declaring sides in her winter wage
as she paced back and forth in my room, allowing her demons to tug-o-war,
hoping to suck down the foul hieroglyphs passed on from generations in the starved
gamble of civilization and its brute hand of rings and narcotic.
if you stand from a distance,
human
life
is
void. if you pull in close, it’s blurred.
if you make way beyond, it’s invisible.
anything between is repelled and considered dark energy.

there is no going back, so calm the demons in your head my love, they are part in
stage, mere shadows and dust, and I, the keeper beneath the rail of the subliminal,
will be here when they bleed through, wiping your forehead with my dreams.
go hungry, my dear, go into the night. then come back to me. I will take your hand,
blind your face with opera’s evening mask, and gently walk you beneath the majestic
rings of planets, to a sanctuary I have found men buried in meditation and whimsical
interwork… is this how we must live, struggling back to the darkness we came?

Dammit, I have chosen such life—we must have had a say! so if
my shoes tear and my tongue blisters raw, if I fuck time and again
and forget to write home and everyone expires, is this how it shall be remembered?
Must I live, and know of such, before rejoining the screaming infant and crippling
elder. if we all shall do as such, I will walk the cold streets waving my flesh to every
blob in sight, and making love to those whom are simply there, not because they were
meant to be, but because—well, not for any reason at all.

it was all just here, every damn inch.
and you could tell a different story based on a different thought, between a day of sun
and a day of rain, and come up with the same damn thing.
it all keeps being read, to me to me, and my fingers are breaking. my eyes are python
rubber bands and someone is stealing this heart for a quick dimestore intravenous.

I am not mad, it is the world that is mad, and I am in it
or part to it
or around it,
therefore I am
mad. though what has created us shall not be reprieved; for such god, thus manifest, shall be
punished by serving eternity of switched roles. for as you swat the fly, shall you be
swat. And swat, for you shall swat again. for such a brain as mine, the creator shall
be condemned and sentenced. unless of course, it was I the creator… the verdict
carried out is indefinite. but who would know besides, for such a world as this
in veils and stagnation. and right there, between why my brain was ricketing and what
my genital was describing and how much my love, as undeniably charismatic as it
improvised to be, was merely catching her temple vaporously and cradling her eternal
flame in twin paragon—

there is little else to live for, do you not agree? shall we prove there is only one, and
one for all. that loneliness is not a choice, but an estranged gravitational push that
makes others choose against you. I am the battle scar of the last man standing,
swinging his sword to the night and cursing the whip of his father.

for here, I say, in the eternal ghost of the ancient desert pyramid, I have found you. as
the ground begins to quake and the geometrical mass elevates in space travel,
spinning alternately clockwise and counter-clockwise in the ruthless sky above, there
you are. between the massacre of the molten star and the meadows of the cowards along
the plain, the contour of your lungs expands pre-vibrato—
my life is complete. if I shall die today, or this very minute, or light years away, I shall
not go unfulfilled. if I reenter the shop of broken clocks and boiled dreams, all awaiting their master’s cue for resurrection, I shall bide my days sitting astoop the
store front, waiting for your number to be called.

the darkness in your heart has made me feel light, though I understand the burden of
time and the way space is a magnificently ironic creation. the journey of your embrace
has made me whole, though I know and understand the cabinet in which the razor lay
dormant. I know the way it prays to the magic voice between your temple. and it
waits, as I wait, in the same damn place…
a soldier in the vague distance marches once again. obnoxious metallic legs with
such terrible thrashing flutters echoes down the halls of your bad dreams and along
the face of your present lech. such the dilemma of an unseen retelling to the future
of now. ancient history, just as the granddad sunflower laughing at the dead.

If I shall see no more, they of hazel and dirt and hammer, they then belong to the
phoenix…

the dark beast glides above the clay village, shedding its embers and setting fire to
rooftops. it knows little of the power it holds. the people of the plain fill the streets to
its reception. they admire the beast and embrace the spectacle…

the council has judged wisely, “death, our greatest of enemy, has arrived much
sooner than we’d’ve preferred”—

as the beast reaches the outskirts of town and is seen off, gathering to its next flock of
tyranny, a residue of joy is spread throughout the land…

it is there, and only there, we shall feel pain no more.

by LORIN DREXLER

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What is Gen Society?

Gen Society is an art space blog for visual art and creative writing collaborations, and other randomizations. Hosted by writer and musician, Lorin Drexler, this online venue is an expressive experience for those interested in the world of the arts. It is a literary journey through the hearts and minds of contemporary artists in practice and a reflection of those that have long passed.

If you’re an artist and would like to submit your work in consideration to collaborate with Gen Society, please click below: