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It’s strange what the mind constructs in such moments. Moving fast through the legible possibilities—our reclusive neighbor? a hermit come down from the forest access road?—my discernment was also lurchingly slow, in retrospect. The light continued to move, but what was it about that sway? Then, about a hundred feet off, the light stopped moving. It settled into what we suddenly came to understand was a stare. The fixedness of its glowing cast an unmistakeable halo around the head of a creature now according us its full attention. Or, I should say, we were now giving it out complete attention; it would have been behind and aware of us all along. 

I’ve been thinking a whole lot about the notion of an us lately. What does that mean now, in an orphaned culture such as ours and one so obsessed with the self? What happens when connection via one glowing rectangle or another comes to stand in for connection? What becomes of our commons?

As we contemplate the darkness that surrounds us today, what if instead of collapsing we fashioned our own imaginal discs? Blueprints for something not only beautiful, but wildly different, winged, life-giving.

Imaginal Discs was recorded and produced by Alexis Gideon and myself in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during three extended pre-pandemic visits.