A CORPSE IS A CORPSE, OF COURSE, OF COURSE...

Okay everybody… I want to try something. I know I have a few readers out there who are highly literate, in fact, exceedingly so – you know who you are. The others of you – and yes I know there are others – I don’t know about, but this post also applies to you. Actually this post applies to anyone who has a blog, or is willing to start one right soon.

As I said, I want to try something. I want to attempt an exquisite corpse blog post. For those of you who don’t know what an exquisite corpse is, take a gander at the one I lifted off the web. [This one was posted by Erin Dierking of the Louisville public school system, to give credit where credit is due.]

An exquisite corpse is a drawing or piece of writing or whatnot done by three or more people with each person only seeing the ending fragment of the previous person’s contribution. I want to attempt this blog-style. I am not quite sure how it would be arranged – I am sure I can figure out a randomization process and an email chain for passing the fragments without the whole thing falling apart or devolving into a hideous spam ring. Maybe each person doesn’t necessarily have to have a blog of their own, simply a place on the web where they can post and supply a URL for it to be found – what odd places might be discovered. Then, perhaps, I’ll set a date for posting, each post linking to the next in the chain.

This may be silly, perhaps pointless, or even stupid. But, still, I want to try. When the wife and I were visiting the wife’s mother, we did exquisite corpse drawings with the wife’s mother’s foster child. It amazed me how much joy and wonder it held for him, even the pride in participating in something larger than himself, the amazement at what unimaginable thing would result.

Not that I propose this to emulate that experience. I am quite sure we are all far too jaded and cynical to experience that again. But, nonetheless, I am interested. Perhaps this also stems from my fascination with peoples comments to posts on blogs, the addenda produced, relationships extended, and tangents explored.

There is something that draws me to this. The possibility of someone participating by posting their contribution on a dating site, or a fake help-wanted add, or through a comment on someone else’s blog, tt would assumedly move from writing to image, audio, and/or video and back and forth [all potentials that intrigue me, so long as they don’t become abusive]. This seems an inevitable by-product of blogs, of the web itself perhaps. I am sure this is nothing new, but alas, I still want to try it.

Actually, this is largely reinvention of a project I have been thinking about for about five years: URL poetry. Poems that consist entirely of a series of URLs, compiled to create a shifting metaphor set, ones that must remain open to changes in the listed pages’ content,links that may extend from the originally included, or even those URLs' removal from the web entirely. I have never gotten around to these; I am not sure I am really even interested in these beyond the premise.

But this, the online exquisite corpse writing project – let’s call it – I want to try.

So… I ask you dear readers, to take part. Drop me an email at contact@fourinchesofego.com to join the experiment, or leave a comment here. Give me an email address and I will keep you updated as far as when this gets off the ground. Go forward and recruit; seeing as this is the web, size constraints are not a problem. This is something that can even extend through time, perhaps even loop upon itself – or better yet spiral in an endless game of telephone [I’m sure you remember that one too].

With that said, I guess I shall await you, dear readers, and for your participation.