Dara writes:
Last night I had the honor of participating in the final performance of Cage Transmitted, the conclusion of a year long celebration of John Cage organized by Jason Andrew's Norte Maar.
I was joined on stage at the English Kills Gallery (114 Forrest Street, Bushwick) by Jason Andrew, John Driscoll, Mika Gellman, Rebecca Goyette, Andrew Hurst, Julie Fotheringham, William Powhida, Paradise Club, Reverend Vince Anderson and DJ jojoSOUL
A short section of the forty-five minute performance is above. As part of the reading, I included some of my original work, and I am delighted to publish one of them for the first time here.
PRAYER IN A BOTTLE
by Dara Mandle
I'm calling Walt Whitman,
curve and shelter,
calling river and silt
I rinse from my skin.
I'm calling Virginia Woolf,
young monarch, from milkweed.
I'm calling a flock of rooks
to flight, calling Frank O'Hara,
each August, from Long Island
Must call Henri Bergson
and Vergil, must call Keats
before tomorrow morning.
What we hope ever
to do with ease, we may learn
first to do with diligence,
wrote Samuel Johnson,
whom I call,
each day I call.