Konch/us/nest of possibility and Eugene B. Redmond

My old friend Eugene B. Redmond can be a man of few words, when it comes to emails. But at least they tend to be his own words. As in, words he invented!

wow/yeah . . . righteous konch/us/nest . . . easy . . . ebr

Thus was his response to a recent post I had sent him about our work with Poetry Scores.

"konch/us/nest" is evidently the poet's way of saying "consciousness" while importing a whole raft of positive cultural values: the sea, sea life, African ways of making music from the sea and the remnants of sea life, summoning the ancestors, togetherness, collective consciousness, and nurturing.

Not bad for one little madeup word.

Thanks, Eugene.

Eugene B. Redmond, for those who don't know, is a pioneering poet, critic, performer, professor, and anthologist and (now) a literary celebrity photographer.

I have known him for more than twenty years, and he had as much to do with shaping my "konch/us/nest" and sense of possibility as anyone.

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The image of Eugene (looking like a pioneering poet in a beret) and me (looking like a drunk kid with a can of Budweiser and a beer spill on my shirt) is from 1989, at the book party for the Miles Davis autobiography that Quincy Troupe did. Another story ...