Hatching Static

To explain her transmitted muse, Karen Weiser introduces readers to her collection of poems The Light Out with research concerning Emanuel Swedenburg and Jack Spicer – both writers whom attributed their writing abilities to higher forces (or otherworldly transmissions) – as well as with scientific background about the origin of static. Opposite from the writers she mentions, who claimed to be inspired by outer sources, her claimed ethereal omen at the time of writing these poems was arising from within – her forming unborn child.

"After a while I realized that it was her signal. I couldn't hear my own ways of thinking or feeling with this other person's atoms multiplying inside of me. It was the sound of the big bang, and my own radio brain was turned in."

One of the breakthroughs of twentieth-century physics was the discovery of cosmic background radiations. That the noise between channels/receptions that was being disregarded by scientists as meaningless static, was rather the still lingering reverberation of the Big Bang. This is a fascinating concept of particular interest to me. In my mind it relates to the "static" in our brains between thoughts and ideas, the lost random sparks eager to find connection and  tuning into (or transmitting into) eureka moments. For Weiser, pregnancy lead to a very unique alternate frequency with a muse taking shape inside of her.

Weiser's daughter is lucky to have a mother so "tuned-in" to her cosmic communication – transcribing her signals as early as from the womb.

You can get your own copy at Ugly Duckling Presse.