AUTHOR’S NOTE

The materials collected here span several decades and several different kinds of writing. These include poetry, fiction, songs, libretti, and technical work in research and data systems. At first glance these may appear to belong to separate domains. In practice, they tend to orbit a similar set of concerns.

One is structure. I’m very interested in how complex systems behave when placed under pressure. In fiction this may take the form of a group of friends confronting something uncanny in the woods. In music it may appear as a narrative moving across multiple voices. Or it may exist in the tension between composition and improvisation. In research it emerges in the architecture of data systems and the behavior of organizations.

Another is translation. Early work translating Ancient Greek poetry, then moving on into experiments in visual text, and later collaborating with improvising musicians all provided me a means to explore the movement of meaning across forms. Even technical standards work can be understood in these terms. After all, the attempt to create semantic data languages through which different systems might understand one another is really just a matter of communication. Of translation.

And then there is a longstanding interest in myth, ritual, and the supernatural. Things hidden. Things whispered about. These subjects appear most directly in the fiction, but their presence can also be felt in earlier experiments with symbolic systems, esoteric literature, and collaborative storytelling.

If there is a single thread running through the work, it may be, as I’ve alluded to, a curiosity about how people and systems respond to moments when ordinary structures begin to change state. Horror, music, research, and poetry each offer different lenses for observing that transformation.

This website gathers some of those observations.

— Shelly Blake-Plock