Hart's Blog
Submitted by Hart Fowler on March 28, 2008 - 12:56pm.
I remember when Christina O'Conner (our dynamo-cute-sharpshooting-graphic designer/photographer) coined the title 16 Blocks. It was our first group meeting, with Dave, Flash and I sitting crowded in the Lyric office. Christina had just wound and rolled the projector and while the audience sat flinty eyed-staring at the big screen, we met to discuss our grand scheme.
I had tried to put together a ‘zine a few months before and it had fallen through due to lack of interest, time, money, collaborators, drive; all the usual suspects. I had wanted to name it “Souvenir” which is French for memory, and English for an object treasured memories are associated with. I’ve always liked the French dialect though I don’t speak it. I like listening to women speak it. A year before I was dating a French foreign exchange student from Radford University and those aarrrss from the top-of-the-mouth make me notice my heartbeat just rememberin’.
Souvenir, I don’t know, I still like the title. Like something you bring home from a baseball game or a great gift that will set on your mantle forever. Something that will move with you.
I’m saying all this at the meeting, how “Souvenir” is a good idea and everyone’s scratching their heads and it’s quiet and nobody knows what to say because brainstorming like this is silent-painful and very un-clever sometimes, and it’s reminding me of silly band name conversations I’ve had that I’ve always despised. It was not a good name and nobody wanted to say it, and nobody had anything to offer and we began mumbling amongst ourselves like we were speaking in tongues.
A rising action and then the clouds opened and a beam of light entered through the white tiled ceiling to a resounding pipe organ major chord. The light shown upon Christina and she spoke in a voice deeper than she is tall: “It hath been decreed from high above that on this very day this great undertaking shall walk under the banner of 16 Blocks, and it is under this name ye shall go out into the world and propagate.”
I thought 'propagate, great word choice'. Then the light died down and we all nodded our heads in a humble silence with our eyebrows high and mouths upturned, we agreed upon it. That’s how it happened. Oh, and 16 Blocks means something other than what you see inside the pages too, but that’s for another day.
Hart
Hart's Blog #2
The 16 Blocks office moves with me sometimes. Today, I'm working on the third floor of Newman Library because I like it here. It's quiet and cool and you can't smoke (good for me who is an old-school chain-smoking writer/editor) and I get to take coffee breaks with the American Literature CANON! on the comfortable couches.
But at this moment a class of students which must be fourth and fifth graders fell into the seat beside me, two girls seated on the chair, another hopped on one's lap. The teacher, an attractive hippy-ish mother style of woman leaned over and told them to type in "interracial marriage" to the Addison search engine and I turned and smiled broad, ear-to-ear underneath my sunglasses which I wear because my eyes have become very sensitive to light with a new contact prescription, not because I’m trying to play the part of Marcello in La Dolce Vita or Nicholson at the Lakers.
Man, how far we have come.
They jotted down the call number and went skipping, really, two hand in hand around the corner, like they were on the coolest scavenger hunt in the world.
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