Everyone felt our first virtual Learning Exchange was a great success. At the end of the two day program all participants were asked to sum up their experience using three words. The word art above is composed of all the words our participants used and our resident muse, Rik Spann, was provoked to write this poem after the first day:

Stories

of all ages
of all times
of all places
of all faces
of all lines

way back
when we were young
we were old
but didn’t know

I see a friend
on a picture
she doesn’t preach
she doesn’t find
what she wasn’t looking for
the way we were
who gives a fuck!

that we were
the way we are
who cares?
that we are
all that jazz?

who gives a damn?
that we play
that we fall apart
that we come together
again and again
with friends long gone
but always present
in the heres and nows
of the sound of it

that we live
that is what turns my heart
that ever beating 
memory of desire
into enough

enough to love
enough to be loved
enough to fall apart
to come together

in my whispers of our roars
in my roars of our whispers

Be jazz
Be the dance
Be what can’t be contained
by the glass we eat and see
the lines we speak and sing
the bodies that carry us
and wait to be received
by arms waiting in the wings

Write that thing
Don’t call it a poem
Don’t give it a name
Let it unfold into the treble in my voice

the loudness of the void I am
not jamming on the edge of chaos

that’s a lie
but being noise
shutting up
terrified to be noticed
terrified to be not noticed

that we live
that’s what drives
me sane

call it CMM
co-creating magic moments
calling mystic muses
cool modal moods

what it means
I don’t care
that it means
thát it
that

so let this thing
called CMM
be humble and humorous
human and humane
and mean us
into existence

of all ages
of all times
of all places
of all faces
of all lines

written on napkins
reflecting the flow and glow
of the Blue Wall

that does everything
except take us apart
that sends shivers
down spines
brings tears
to more than eyes
invites strangers
to the dance
and tells us this one story:

all we are,
that’s all we need
and then
we talked