Amy says:
Those of you who have been following us for a long time might remember that during our traveling projects (Type Rider II: The Tandem Poetry Tour and The Tiny Book Show) we kept a blog, each writing our separate impressions of the day or event. Our Tandem Poetry practice is also written together, yet separately. When you give us a word or answer one of our questions to prompt us, we give you back two poems, one written by each of us.
Our decision to work this way was made for a couple of important reasons: One, so that we can land on a word in two separate ways from two distinct viewpoints. And two, so that the receivers of the poems experience two different writing styles. When the situation allows for it, we love to read our poems out loud to the recipient. We enjoy the chance to see where our writing diverges and where it intersects, where we might evoke the same imagery or use the same words, and where we careen off on completely different tangents.
The point of all of this reminiscing about way of sharing our experiences, is to let you all in on some big news. We are officially leaving New Jersey at the end of the summer and we will be blogging here about our adventures. Tandem style, of course.
Nutley has been my home for the last 22 years and Maya’s home for the last seven. We have lived in a sweet house for five of those years and love what we have created here. But the road is calling and we are ready to carve out a new life together, one that doesn’t have the ghosts of an old life attached to it at the joints. One that is “free from the tyrannies of economics and the tyrannies of expectation,” as our friend Peter Mulvey has said about his experiences as a traveling musician. A life that is an epic experiment in freedom, one that will include the exhilaration of not knowing exactly what comes next each day.
I can’t wait.
Maya says:
From a very young age, my parents instilled in me the importance of digging up your roots once in awhile. In our family, that looked like major moves across the US and internationally, which involved changes in schools and friends and all that was familiar. I was not always delighted by these sojourns, but as I got older, I understood the wisdom in shifting landscapes, changing course, reformatting the view, and starting over, and began looking at the big decisions of my life - jobs, romantic relationships, creative pursuits - with these guiding principles as vital ingredients.
That said, I am a creature of habit, more of a homebody than some might expect, often working very hard to create a sense of familiarity and routine that stabilizes, comforts, and provides a solid foundation underneath me. But after a good long spell in any one place, I am often asking myself “What next"?” As much as I enjoy consistency and stability, I am also a big dreamer, a muser of possibility, a creative artist and writer deeply driven by the space between ideation and manifestation, who loves that miasmic landscape where anything might happen, if you are open and willing and curious enough to see it through.
For the first time in my adult life, I am in a relationship with someone who’s ready to do that with me, and I couldn’t be more thrilled and excited to be sharing this moment of liftoff with Amy. It’s amazing enough to find one’s needle-in-a-haystack, but even more incredible to have a shared desire for change, adventure, and “what next”-ness.
And so, come late August, we’ll begin our “what next” in earnest, and it feels as if I am continuing the family legacy of leap-taking. The word “disruption” comes to mind now - the sense of breaking away from a long-held routine in favor of re-evaluating what’s important NOW, what’s itching to be experienced and explored. This inevitably means pulling out of certain structures that have been part of our lives for awhile - an address chief among them - in favor of what this kind of change might illuminate for both of us. Maybe we are meant to live on the road, or maybe we’ll find out a few months is more than enough. The most important thing is we’re committed to finding out, and that’s good enough for me. Onward!