Bob MacKenzie's Blog

While ever-changing and always current with the times, the literary magazines more often called little magazines or litmags among my generation of writers and activists, have enjoyed a long and important history. On September 1st, I wrote about the sense of community found in these nontraditional presses by writers who were political or were in other ways outliers or outsiders during the mid-20th century. I hope below to fill in more about the origins and history of the little magazines.

In an article published on July 26, 2017, Michael Barsanti wrote that “‘Little magazines’ is a term referring to a set of literary periodicals published between roughly 1912 and 1939 that are characterized by their small readership, financial fragility, and artistic innovation [and which] provided a place where writers of new, unusual, and often iconoclastic work could get into print.”

Barsanti is mistaken about the timeline in which he places little magazines , which were being published long before 1912. Arguably, the first litmag, established in 1864 by Pierre Bayle in France, was “Nouvelles de la république des lettres.” As mainstream literary magazines became common by the early part of the 19th century, so too did litmags as outliers and remedy for the university-based or academic literary publications. (Wikipedia)

These litmags also continued to be published and distributed after 1939. Then in mid-century a revolution occurred. In 1887, the A. B. Dick Company had released the first Edison Mimeograph duplicator. 3 By the last half of the 20th century, used Mimeograph machines and similar spirit-duplicators such as Gestetner and Ditto machines were readily and inexpensively available. The low cost to operate these printers made them ideal for small publishers.

In 1956, two months before the City Lights first edition, Allen Ginsberg self-published 25 copies of his poem “Howl” on the Mimeograph machine at San Francisco State College. He sent copies to T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Lionel Trilling, William Faulkner, William Carlos Williams (who wrote the City Lights edition’s introduction), and others. The embryo litmag soon became the outlier medium of choice, published and edited by poets, hand-collated and stapled together.

From Mimeograph and Gestetner machines flowed litmags bearing the poetry and commentary of my generation. While some of these little magazines were mainstream, many were underground carriers of protest and counterculture ideals. This was the milieu in which my poetry and that of many others was germinated and grew. The Sixties and Seventies were a time redolent of lingering McCarthyism, the illegal American invasion of Vietnam and Cambodia, and other political and social issues we believed must be addressed. We were street warriors writing for the people and we found a home for our work in the litmags.

Poet and scholar Frank Davey wrote that, “Historically, little magazines have sprung up whenever new, animated, and serious writing cannot find a market. Thus these magazines are usually managed and edited by writers–writers who are anything but reluctant to publish their own works. The annoyance that gets such writers into the magazine business is, of course, that in any period both the commercial outlets –whether ‘literary’ mags or publishing houses–and the glossy-paged scholarly quarterlies cater chiefly to established writers. A new group or school of writers cannot possibly get a sufficient quantity of its work published to make its presence felt.”

My poetry, stories, and articles appeared in litmags published across Canada, The United States, and Mexico as well as some in countries around the world. Through copies mailed to me, I discovered many fine writers published in the same mags as me, and I found listings of even more litmags where I could submit.

The mimeo litmag has now all but vanished. It hasn’t died but morphed into new and exciting forms. With the advent of digital technology and the World Wide Web came the zine, a new and inexpensive form of personal publishing, created digitally, printed direct from the computer, stapled and mailed. Among the wide variety of zine content, the spirit of the litmag lived on. By now, the zine has all but disappeared, but the litmag is embodied in the online literary magazine, published and edited by poets and artists. The form may have changed, but the spirit lives on.

The new book footsteps in the garden, new and selected poetry by Bob MacKenzie, is now available from the publisher, Cyberwit.net, or at Amazon worldwide. In Canada, this book is also available at Chapters/Indigo for pickup at the door or sent to your address. Get your copy now.

Ask your local bookstore or public library to order this book for you.

Eleven years ago I posted a Facebook Note under the heading, “Luddites are damaging The Arts and hurting artists.” Now Facebook has shown this short essay to me as a “Memory” of October 19, 2010. As I read the words I’d written more than a decade ago, I realized not much has changed. With a bit of updating, here’s that essay.

Some 56 years ago, when I embarked on my writing career, I saw nothing wrong with submitting hand-typed manuscripts in the mail and including a self-addressed stamped envelope (sase) for return.  I sent hundreds of manuscripts by this manner, everything from a single poem to a full length novel.  Back then, there was no digital composition, no internet, no other way to submit.  After a couple of years, I realized that publishers, who may respect the writing,  have no respect for the manuscript and do not handle it with care.  When I saw that my manuscripts were being returned battered and tatty and not suitable to send out again, I stopped including the sase and instead included a note saying to destroy the manuscript when finished.  After all, that’s what most publishers had done before they mailed my work back, rendered it unfit to submit anywhere else..

A couple of decades ago, as technology advanced and I became more interested in the oral aspects of storytelling, I became disillusioned with the world of print publication and especially with the quaint, even stodgy academic literary world.  Although I had always performed my works (as opposed to giving a dull live reading), I moved increasingly in the direction of live and recorded performance with music.  I spent my time writing for performance and moved quite away from print publication.  Now my interests have swung somewhat the other way, or at least toward some sort of centre where I aim for both performance and print publication.

During the time I was concentrating mainly on live performance, the world changed.  Now we have digital composition, the Internet, the World Wide Web, the ability to put more than one novel manuscript on a small silver disc and mail it away, and so much more to make the lives of both writer and publisher easier.  However, if the world has changed, the publishers have not.  Indeed they seem to be locked in some sort of time-warp that stalled at around 1960.  In the true Luddite spirit, the publishers, especially the small presses and literary publishers are doing everything they can to stop progress in its tracks.

Here’s just one example of what I had encountered a decade ago and still encounter.  Say there’s a publisher in Newfoundland (though it could be in Toronto or Vancouver, or anywhere in Canada), and let’s call it Generic Press.  Newfoundland is quite some distance from where I am in Ontario.  Then let’s say that I have a manuscript 300 or more pages long that I want to send to Generic Press for them to consider.  Since I’ve created this work using modern digital technology such as my desktop computer or laptop, I could send them the entire thing attached to an e-mail as a word processor file or as a pdf.  Easy.  Generic Press doesn’t want this.  They want the manuscript typed on white paper and sent by surface mail, including sase.  Just like 1960.  

So, the writer (that’s me) has to invest in more than half a ream of paper, a substantial volume of printer ink, electricity at today’s inflated rates, and two boxes or large envelopes (one for the return sase), plus round trip postage.  This is no small investment.  From where I am in Ontario to where Generic Press is in Newfoundland, mailing this package will cost more than $30.00.  Add to this the cost of paper, ink, and packaging.  If I send the sase as requested, that’s again more than $30.00 postage, plus the packaging. So where I could submit this manuscript to Generic Press digitally at virtually no cost to either party, Generic Press wants me to invest at least $70.00 to send it round trip with no guarantee of acceptance or publication.  Where’s their motivation?  None of this money goes to publish their literary journal or books.  The answer is simply that they are Luddites.

Between this and other Luddite attitudes even more apparent among the academic literary community and the publishers who serve them,  I’m starting to remember why as a writer I had two decades ago packed my bags and left home.  Writing by hand with a quill pen then transcribing to typewriter before sending by snail mail does not make the writing any better than if it’s written on a computer and sent digitally.  However, it may serve to keep the writer living in a garret, having paid all available income to Canada Post.

The new book footsteps in the garden, new and selected poetry by Bob MacKenzie, is now available from the publisher, Cyberwit.net, or at Amazon worldwide. In Canada, this book is also available at Chapters/Indigo for pickup at the door or sent to your address. Get your copy now.

Ask your local bookstore or public library to order this book for you.

We drink water, wash and bathe in water, use water in our cooking and cleaning, and put it to many more mundane uses. Yet there is beyond that a spiritual element in our relationship with this versatile material that can be solid, liquid, or an æthereal mist or invisible airborne vapour. In my life, as in all our lives, water has been with me since birth, in my home and community and in nature. While at home and in the community water was mostly taken for granted as part of everything, it was outside that context that water has drawn me to its larger natural and man-made incarnations.

I grew up in Alberta, Canada’s second most western province, always near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, with the Rockies visible in the distance. Much of each summer was spent camping in the mountain ranges of Alberta and British Columbia, travelling as far west as Vancouver and as far north as the Cariboo country, where my grandparents had homesteaded and my lumberjack uncle operated a sawmill. Life in rural Alberta and our summer roving brought me in contact with a great deal of water with varying depths, both physical and philosophical.

I once read that Alberta has the most sunshine in Canada but also the most rain (also later read that B.C. has the most rain with Alberta possibly a close second). When I lived there, the plentiful rain was called liquid sunshine. What I noticed then and do now is not the rain but the water on the ground, the ponds, lakes and other bodies of water.

The water tower in the farming town of Coronation needed to be filled from somewhere. With scarce water resources, the town had dug an open reservoir fed mostly by rain, a rectangular pond the size of several football fields. Water was pumped from there through a treatment plant and then up into the tower. In the summer, kids would swim in the reservoir, which was much deeper than a swimming pool. The alternative was farmers’ dugouts, rectangular water-filled pits about the size of two Olympic pools and shallow enough that a twelve-year old could stand on the bottom. These clay-bottom pits were intended as watering holes for cattle, so the bottom was a mix of wet clay and manure. We kids didn’t mind.

In the prairies, the lakes are shallow. We went swimming at the beach in Sylvan Lake, a tourist town with a population of about about 500 in winter and 5,000 in summer. An adult could walk many metres toward the lake’s centre and the water would still be waist-high. For a kid it might reach his chest. During the summer, my aunt and uncle would take us to the beach at Hamilton Lake to watch the hydroplane races. The lake seemed shallow enough that an adult could walk all the way across. When one of these powerful boats would flip over or stall, the driver would just get out and walk to shore. This was an amazing thing for a kid to see.

In the mountains, lakes are something else. Deep cracks in the terrain created by massive upheavals or ground out by moving glaciers are filled by streams and rivers and by runoff from glaciers high in the mountains further north. While prairie lakes appear blue as the sky above or tawny as their clay bottoms, these mountain lakes are often green as jade or emeralds. Some of them are claimed to be bottomless, and divers have failed to reach the bottom of some. There’s an element of mystery to these deep mountain lakes not to be found in prairie lakes. Walking along the shores of such a lake or on a path high up the side of the mountain and looking far down to the water, one can’t help but sense the spirit of this water.

From our earliest beginnings, we humans have given water a special place in our personal lives and as part of our various cultures. We have animated water through language such as “a body of water” that treats it as not simply one of the four essential elements but a living being. We have elevated water to the level of deity as one who along with earth, personalized as the mother of us all, provides the necessities of life. At some time not so long ago in our history, we discovered that more than half of our body’s composition is made of water and we could not live without that content. Perhaps unconsciously, we had known that from the start.

The new book footsteps in the garden, new and selected poetry by Bob MacKenzie, is now available from the publisher, Cyberwit.net, or at Amazon worldwide.

Ask your local bookstore or public library to order this book for you.

My interest in writing reviews was sparked early in my career by prominent Canadian arts reviewer Jamie Portman, while I was a junior reporter and he a columnist in the newsroom of The Calgary Herald. Beginning at about the same time, while I was working with other writers, attending professional writers’ workshops, and studying reviews written by others, I learned a certain ethic that I followed when writing reviews.

Two important elements characterize this ethic: be honest and be helpful (that is, don’t just praise or pan, but explain why and suggest ways to improve the weak bits in the work being reviewed). For more than four decades now, I’ve adhered to that ethic while writing professional reviews of works in most disciplines of The Arts. Hundreds of these reviews had been published in everything from local newspapers to national magazines, broadcast on local and regional CBC radio, and hosted online.

A few days ago, this ethic was tested. After I had submitted an assigned book review, the editor proposed “edits” that amounted to rewriting my review to remove all but the most positive bits. In effect, this would have reversed the sense of my review to be undiluted praise rather than my intended honest commentary on a far-from-perfect poetry collection, including some helpful suggestions for the author. In suggesting her revisions, the editor wrote “our reviews section is part of our commitment to community-building, rather than perhaps a critical hub for poetry.”

Here’s where my long-standing ethic as a reviewer was challenged. Should I just take the money–yes, it was a paid review–and let the review be redacted to create the illusion that the book reviewed is much better than it is? Or should I stand by what I believe is the purpose of any review, an honest and helpful analysis of the work reviewed?

In my experience, rather than faux and patronizing praise, authors appreciate warts-and-all reviews that are informed, honest, and helpful. Whether novice or master, amateur or professional, these writers welcome the opportunity to learn and to improve their craft. An article that offers up only praise, no matter the actual merits of the book, is not a legitimate book review. It’s purposeful flattery and, in my opinion, no way to “build community.”

This brings to mind the difference between the “book reports” we wrote in school and professional book reviews. Book reports, meant to test the student’s understanding of the book’s content, tend to uncritically reprise the content in précis or condensed form. On the other hand, a book review is meant to be informative to both the author and the prospective reader about the book’s successes and failures. A puff-piece that features only undiluted and perhaps undeserved flattery benefits nobody.

I learned to be honest in critiquing another writer’s work whether in a writer’s workshop or in a written review. To “critique” is to do fair analysis, never to “criticize” but to support and uplift and to suggest improvements where they may be needed. It’s always best for artists to learn about problems in their current work–as well as ways to improve their skills in present and future creations. Certainly, in workshops and reviews, I have always appreciated the comments and suggestions others make regarding my own work. I believe the quality of my writing has benefitted from this input.

I turned down the payment and asked the editor not to print the review as revised.

Sometimes, if rarely, Facebook brings pleasant memories of past posts, or rather the stories these posts tell. Yesterday, September 13, 2021, was one of those times. Thirteen years ago–on September 13, 2008–I had posted a note to my Facebook timeline, a flashback to events more than two decades earlier than the post. This gift of memories had been triggered by the arrival in my mail that day of the Special Home Issue of The Windsor Review. Everything I had written in that note is dear to me, and I’d like to again share these memories from a lifetime ago. This is what I had posted on that long ago day.

Yesterday, I received in the mail my copies of the Windsor Review, Volume 41, No. 1, the special home issue which contains two of my poems. Turning the pages of this new issue was like turning back the years. I had long eschewed the academic literary world in favour of spoken word performance, words in visual art, and music incorporating poetry. It had been almost exactly a quarter century since my work had appeared in this prestigious review based at the University of Windsor. To read this aptly themed issue was for me like coming home.

In this issue, I became reacquainted with friends and colleagues spanning half of my life and most of my literary career. The Managing Editor, Marty Gervais is an old friend and poet beside whom I had often been published long ago and with whom I had worked on presenting readings in Windsor. The Fiction Editor, Alistair McLeod had been my faculty advisor for my Masters degree program at the University of Windsor. I had more recently met John B. Lee, the guest editor, who had told me about this upcoming issue. I remember Poetry Editor Susan Holbrook from my Days at the University of Windsor. R. D. Roy and Tai Grove are also more recent literary acquaintances from the Kingston area, while I remember being in workshops and readings thirty-some years ago with Joseph Farina. Joanne Arnott was at the University of Windsor with me, and from the same period I remember several other contributors. The memories and images drift backward and forward through the mists in my mind and I am drawn inexorably back into this literary world in which I had lived so long ago.

To have had these two poems published is more than just publication. It’s a wonderful time machine that carries me through my life less like a slide show than a kaleidoscope of people and images. How wonderful is that!

Looking again at the list of contributors in this edition, I see even more names familiar to me, and I am honoured to have been included among such a stellar group of writers. In the list are included John B. Lee, Joanne Arnott, Heather Cadsby, R.D. Roy, Kim Grove, Joseph A. Farina, Penn Kemp, Kate Marshall Flaherty, and Susan McMaster–with all of whom I have a personal connection through conversation, correspondence, or by performing on the same stage before or since that issue was published. I’m also familiar with most of the other contributors listed and respect their work, though I may not have met them. What lovely memories this flashback brings.

My poems published in that Special Home Issue were “To a Fence Post” (page 81) and “The Dark Shimmering Deep” (page 101).

If you’d like to browse the entire Spring 2008 issue, it’s available online. Just follow this link: The Windsor Review, the Special Home Issue, Vol. 41 No. 1

The new book footsteps in the garden, new and selected poetry by Bob MacKenzie is now available from the publisher, Cyberwit.net, or at Amazon worldwide.

Ask your local bookstore or public library to order this book for you.

Definition is the setting in stone of a word, a term, or practically any real or imagined thing. On the other hand, connotation is more flexible and brings a certain fluidity to meaning. The abbreviated term litmag evolved from having one connotation that became its dictionary definition to be balanced by a second, activist connotation in the political underground.

Long ago, the term litmag appeared as an abbreviation of literary magazine and was usually applied to small publications of limited circulation, often hand-made and self-published. This was and remains the accepted definition of the term.

A new connotation was born amid the strife of the 20th Century. The term litmag was appropriated by activist artists throughout North America, revised to abbreviate little magazine. This was the birth of politicized little volumes of poetry, short fiction, and protest. They were usually typed (yes, on a manual typewriter), printed on Mimeograph or Gestetner presses, assembled by hand, and delivered through the mail.

Many of my poems and articles in the Seventies were published in these left-leaning, sometimes communist or socialist, litmags originating in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. During the final decades of the last century, these litmags gradually vanished. Born of the new digital technology, a renewed form of self-published magazine appeared, the fanzine or ‘zine.

Similar to the litmag, the ‘zine is defined as, “a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. ‘Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very small group, and are popularly photocopied into physical prints for circulation.” (Wikipedia)

Fanzines, like Litmags, had gained a foothold during the early 20th Century, many becoming a forum for activists. However, with the advent of the World Wide Web, politicized ‘zines moved out from under-the-radar to express their activism more publicly. More recently, there’s a tendency for ‘zines to be less political, though there certainly are still political ‘zines.

I believe the ‘zine’s adaption to the new technology has had a positive impact, bringing its activism to important new audiences. I miss the political litmags that had once published me, and sometimes wish they had made the same successful transition as the zines had.

The anti-war and other political content once at home in the litmags seems now to have been relegated to Facebook and Twitter posts or comments. This once vital underground community has been sorely watered down. In these troubled and uncertain times, this is a great loss.

The new book footsteps in the garden, new and selected poetry by Bob MacKenzie is now available from the publisher, Cyberwit.net, or at Amazon worldwide.

Ask your local bookstore or public library to order this book for you.

Compared to other poets, I write at a snail’s pace. I was surprised when, talking with two fellow artists only hours apart, both told me they are impressed with how productive I am. The first is impressed with the number of poems I submit to publishers and how frequently I submit. The other feels I create a public “smoke and mirrors” illusion of productivity, but is impressed with how frequently my books get published. I’ve never compared my productivity to that of other writers, but this was a challenge. I know many poets who publish more than I do, and more frequently.

One poet announces new publications of his poems in literary journals around the world. Often he will post new successes several times a day. This year alone, he expects to have written more than two thousand poems. Another poet’s books of surreal poetry and prose are published by small presses across Canada. Many poets are writing a thousand or more poems a year, and getting them published. Poetry is flowing from poets as though each is a cornucopia of words and images.

How could my productivity match what these poets are accomplishing, I wondered. Using simple math, I set out to find the truth behind my alleged smoke and mirrors. I divided the total number of poems I’ve ever written by the number of years that have passed since writing the first poem. The result? On average I write fewer than ten poems a year. To be exact, I have written 9.267857 poems per year. Fewer than seven of these, only 6.571428, per year have been published in literary journals, magazines, newspapers, anthologies, and books. If you consider that some have been published two or more times over the years, the number increases only slightly.

Yep. A snail’s pace poet, that’s me. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Perhaps productivity, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder.

Whoa! Time really does keep on slipping, slipping, slipping Into the future. I haven’t posted to my blog for six years, and now it’s 2021 and I expect Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett Brown may show up at my door any minute now. A lot can happen in six years, and it has. I’ve published three new books–The Hired Gun (Dark Matter Press, 2016), somewhere still in wind the tree is bending (Silver Bow Publishing, 2018), and footsteps in the garden (Cyberwit.net, 2021)–and written new long poems, won awards, published poems and short stories, and of course performed live and on recordings. Oh, and we’ve embarked on a years-long pandemic!

I won’t say more about the past six years. That might read like a dusty and boring library catalogue. Now that we’re living in Marty McFly’s future, let’s think about where we’ll go from here. The first thing, I think, is that we can take good care of ourselves and each other and get through this pandemic. How about the artists, the musicians, writers, actors, exhibiting painters and sculptors, and other artists? Let’s get “live” in public again so the artists can get back to work. And let’s support our artists by attending concerts, stage plays, and dance recitals. Let’s buy local artists, books, music, and paintings and photography. Let’s invite the magic made by artists back into our lives. Above all let’s get back to living our full and wonderful lives without pandemic restrictions.

That’s about it for now. Watch for a return to regular posts on this blog. I’ll be here, writing away!

A few days ago, in an effort to educate an idealistic young professional about how dark and evil acts can be perpetrated in the real world, even in her profession, I wrote her a long message telling of certain events that had happened in my own life. This was a difficult process that ripped open old wounds from 20 years before, and I cried a lot and have been in very real pain, since I wrote that message. Was it worth it? I don’t know. I suppose it depends on whether this young woman “listened” to what I had to say and whether she took found any of it useful in her own life.

This evening, I watched the second of two episodes of a television drama series, which dealt with similar issues and the terrible damage they can do. As I watched, I wept to the end but I watched. Why would I watch this, especially after ripping open my own wounds? I’ve often thought about this question. Why would I participate rather than just end the conversation? Why would I watch instead of changing channels?

These experiences and how I’ve handled them are just part of why I am totally against so-called Trigger-Warnings. My opposition is not, as some may think, simply an academic philosophy related to how I approach my own life and my art. No matter who you may be, you cannot run from the terrible things that may have been done to you in the past nor hide from the fears of your present. At some point, they will leap out of the shadows where they hide. You cannot escape them.

Instead, admit they are there. Stand your ground and face them down. It’s better and safer and will probably save some money on analysis, counselling and drugs. That’s what I do. Whether it’s painful or not, it works.

Trigger-Warnings are a bandage on a gaping wound. No matter what happens, triggers will pop up out of the darkness and you will be in agony. But it will pass, and the next time will not be quite as bad. Believe me.

I’ve been through some very dark experiences and have “survived” them, but not without lifelong damage done to me and a terrible ache in my heart. I regularly encounter “triggers” in my personal life and in my work as an artist, and they hurt me terribly. Still, I believe this is less damaging than retreating ever-further into some dark cocoon, led by warnings others have decided you need, until your life withers away.

Many people who know me will know that I don’t speak publicly about these things. Other trusted friends will know that I do talk to them in private if times get too tough and we share stories, hugs, and tears. Seeing in my writing and collages a darkness they don’t see in me, others will realize that I bleed off some of my agony into my art. The pain must be addressed and expressed, not kept in some secret place to fester and grow.

This is not an artist’s opinion; it’s a human being’s real-life experience. In a world where one cannot always be protected from danger or even the perception of danger, Trigger-Warnings are as dangerous as any other act of oppression.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted to this blog. A lot has happened in my life and in my work, but that can wait for another time. For now, there’s something else that’s been simmering on the back burner for a while.

When I was a teen, there was more to popular music than just the music. Whether performed live on stage or recorded for the movies or television, our rocking music was about stage presence, about lively presentation. While many artists in country music or cool crooners like Dean Martin and Perry Como stood in one place while performing, the artists of rhythm and blues line-danced across the stage. Chuck Berry played his rocking tunes while crouched in a duck walk across the stage. Marshall Lytl, Bill Haley’s bassist, rode his double-bass across the stage like a horse as he played.

For a while during the Fifties and Sixties of the last century, many R&B and Rock n Roll groups included sometimes complex choreography in their live stage presentations. As they sang and played their hits, they performed coordinated dance moves across the stage and executed high kicks and dips worthy of a Broadway musical. For us as teens, these bits of theatre made the music that much more interesting.

When we were fifteen or sixteen, my friends and I would discuss what would be the ideal combinations of instruments for a rock and roll band, talk about harmonies and vocal technique, explore guitar pickups and sound technology, and learn lyrics word by word by playing 45 rpm discs over and over again. Much of the time, we would also discuss the importance of choreography and how we would develop onstage dance moves of our own.

What is choreography really? Merriam-Webster (merriam-webster.com) defines choreography as: “‘the art or job of deciding how dancers will move in a performance, also the movements that are done by dancers in a performance’ or 1. the art of symbolically representing dancing; 2a. the composition and arrangement of dances especially for ballet and 2b. a composition created by this art; and 3. something resembling choreography.”

Although I’m no longer a teen, as a multi-disciplinary artist who sometimes if not always works in a musical context, I still see the merit of incorporating the idea of dance into one’s art. While in music performance choreography seems an obvious match, it or something resembling choreography can also prove a powerful technique to improve effective presentation across all disciplines of the arts.

After all, isn’t art in any discipline to some degree bound up in rhythm, flow, and movement?