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to chaelee@I-to-you.com30/04/2018 2:12 pm
Chaelee, who am I to you?
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to alex@hold-the-tone.com01/05/2018 8:31 pm
Dear Alex,
I used to think you were my better half, but now I’m not sure I believe in “better” or “halves,” when we’re talking about people. For me, our friendship comes in three movements. In the first movement, we mirror each other. In the second movement, we hold the same tones. In the last movement, we celebrate each other. You are someone who has stuck with me through all of our growing pains, individual and together. You’re past just sharing with me. You’re present with me. Your future has some semblence of us in it, even if as a memory.
Alex, what memories of us does your future hold?
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to come-as-a-surprise@chaelee.com02/05/2018 6:05 am
Dear Chaelee,
I’ve never been good at prediction. Most good things that come to me come as a surprise. I try not to check the weather before I go out for this very reason.
But! I see a love long-distance in our future. Which includes the precarity that comes with relying on big mechanisms (the internet! the telephone company! UPS! FedEx! etc!) to exchange words / ideas / thoughts / art, but also leaves us space to build worlds entirely of our own making. I see moments of glorious together-in-person in our respective worlds. In the homes we’ve built already and the ones we will build in the future.
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to aninvitation@you.com02/05/2018 3:20 pm
Dear Reader,
I hope this finds you well. You are about to read an email chain from us. We are Alex and Chaelee, high school best friends who fell in love with each other and the romantic idea of never settling for a love less than poetry. Somehow though, even after years of writing in tandem, we never truly wrote together- only next to each other, only past each other.
This project, Re:vision, is about thinking about “we” in a radically different way, both in our writing and our friendship. It’s about thinking about “we” without putting “you” and “me” in opposition to each other. It’s about hearing each other and building together.
This email explains a little about us, with both of us acting as interviewer and interviewee.
The other emails in this inbox reimagine email and poetry as not just responses, but revisions. Each of us sent the other a poem entitled “late,” “spite,” “sin,” or “miss.” The other person replied and transformed each poem, in whatever way they wished into “re:late,” “re:spite,” “re:sin,” “re:miss.” Feel free to explore the other parts of the email as well (drafts, spam, etc).
Reader, we are giving you a little glimpse of our friendship, its evolution and revolution. In doing so, we have one ask for you. A reader is not ever simply a passive observer. Reader comes from the Old English “raedere,” meaning “interpreter of dreams.” Please interpret our dreams. Please click compose and write your own haiku out of poetry lines from our past. What does interpretation, and reinterpretation mean to you? How many iterations of “we” and “re” can we create?
Love,
Us