"I'll bet those Golden Tickets make the chocolate taste terrible."

We decided to form this Collective because We could no longer wait for someone else to come along and start the fire. That invitation to the Algonquin Round Table was not (was INEXPLICABLY not) forthcoming, and no team of highly motivated, warehouse-having East Coast Burners had yet enlisted our brilliance for their sculpture.

Had we accidentally eaten the Golden Ticket, thinking it was a fancy edible decoration?

How many more years would we wait for the call telling us we'd won the cultural lottery, without ever knowing where to enter?

(At a bar writing this, with besuited men by my elbow discussing how to "be a big fish in a small pond." A few blocks back, I passed a park full of Occupy DC tents and, across the street, that man in the suit covered with question marks. I WANT TO BE AN EXCLAMATION POINT. And a small pond means stagnation, algae bloom, and leeches. Bring me the endlessly renewing River of Art, the river you can't step into twice, and let me add my little drops to the river.)

"I don't drink water, 'cause of what fish do in it." - W.C. Fields

We might be accused of shilling, because one of the very first posts in this blog is [going to be] part of Rachel Kramer Bussel's Virtual Book Tour -- it will not be a review so much as the closest we could come to a READING. This is not shilling; this is enthusiasm. This is Our virtual pub, virtual arts colony, virtual Algonquin Round Table, virtual Burner workshop, virtual salon, and what we wanted tonight was to have the lovely, talented, and incredibly arts-scene-supportive RKB share with us her latest enthusiasm. We wish you to envision a smoky bar (not so smoky you can't breathe; but yes, an artful curl of grey rising between you & the stage, where RKB stands in all her delectable glory, reading from... I'm sorry, is there any better book title than "Women In Lust"? D.H. Lawrence himself would be trying to elbow his way to a table by the stage.

"Lawrence had said to me women had no souls and couldn't love. So I broke a plate over his head." -- Frieda Lawrence

And somewhere in this virtual crowd, I am pretty sure a tray of cupcakes is being passed.

So that is coming to the EFAC Blog on November 9th, but you can start the virtual tour on November 1st and check out all these other places We haven't read yet: http://womeninlust.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/17/ In the meantime, let's get on with being creative and undaunted.

djh