Monthly Archives: March 2009

Three Proposals

14:47

Damali Ayo is an incredible artist, an incredible talker, and frankly, an incredible person. I’ve never met anyone with her particular combination of energy, humor, insight and charisma. Also, she has, how you say, balls. (Co-Jones, as my friend Luis would say.) She’s the kind of person I’m frankly a little intimidated by because I’m also a little in awe of her, which is dumb because she’s also super nice and approachable. But so it goes.

When we put out calls for the lists people had created under the Facebook meme “25 Random Things About Me,” I was really glad to hear back from her. We met at the Third Coast Festival a few years back, discovered we were both Brown alumni and kind of hit it off, I think. I interviewed her a few years ago for the Open Source show I produced on race and class in America from the perspective of black artists, and this was a welcome excuse to talk to her again. While we were chatting pre-interview, I took not of at least two or three other things I wanted to interview her about at some point. She’s really interesting.

In this story, Damali describes how she has proposed marriage to three different men over the course of her life, once in her teens, once in her 20s and once in her 30s. And, why she will never propose to another man ever again.

This story was produced as part of Vocalo.org‘s initiative Your Digital Life: Stories from the Web.

My First Taste of Freedom

10:56

Kate moves to Chicago from Michigan City, Indiana at age 18 and suddenly finds herself pregnant. Things go from bad to worse when she goes into labor four-and-a-half months early and gives birth in an unexpected place.

The story comes from Kate Ainsworth’s Facebook List “25 Random Things About Me Which You May or May Not Find Interesting.”  It was recorded as part of Vocalo.org’s initiative Your Digital Life: Stories from the Web. All this month, we’re combing the dark corners of the internet for the stories behind your status updates, tweets, blog posts, and texts. Have your own interesting “25 Things” list? Know the compelling story behind your friend’s last text? Email us at info@vocalo.org or call the Vocalo.org Hotline at 888-635-1112.

Reconstructing Providence Featured on the Etsy Blog

My friend Xander Marro, co-founder of the Dirt Palace and Managing Director of AS220, guest curated a selection of her favorite hand-made offerings from Etsy on the site’s Storque blog today.  She was kind enough to include the CD of my documentary Reconstructing Providence among her selections. Thanks Xander! And welcome to anyone who found their way here from Etsy.

If you haven’t checked out Etsy, it’s an amazing site filled with enticing hand-made goodies from what’s probably now hundreds of thousands of artists from around the world. I bought my coffee table there, a felt molskine pouch, and half a dozen other objects I’m pretty attached to. My favorite seller at the moment is OctopusME, who casts silver jewlery from real octopus tentacles.

While you’re there you should also check out the work selected by my other Providence-expat friends Luke Fischbeck and Sarah Anderson of Lucky Dragons, Sumi Ink Club and other projects. I really like both of them and the work they produce together, which is often (as another friend of ours put it) kind of like this magical artistic metaphor for their relationship.  I haven’t been in touch with them as much as I would like…I missed their Chicago show last spring and wasn’t able to look them up when I was in LA this past December.  Hopefully it won’t be too long before I have another opportunity to see them, one I’ll actually take up.

If you fish around my site, you’ll notice that I featured Luke’s work in a couple different episodes of No Soap Radio.  He also helped me build a Max/Msp player I used when I first performed RP in 2004, which I’m still grateful for.