![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6e3743c9bd83d536e271f555c5ae109e5f2593cd47e369b484059d0a864bcb66/WtL-big.png)
WE
THE
LAKE
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6e3743c9bd83d536e271f555c5ae109e5f2593cd47e369b484059d0a864bcb66/WtL-big.png)
August 2024
A note on themes & engaging with this text —
During the summer of 2023, inside a storm of painfully repetitious deaths, I started working on (listening to) an assemblage of writing & other forms called We the Lake. I felt wrecked, tired of echoes & of losing more precious & singular people. So I started, again, to write into grief. For better & worse, this is how I have always processed loss, confusion, frustration, difficulty — by walking straight into the center of it, searching for what I am to find.
The “writing” has been slow going thus far — a few new sentences at a time, much transcribing of pages that have been waiting, re-seeing of older work that wants to be included or considered as source material, & bright spots of correspondence with others. Thus far, We the Lake has many different & sometimes opposing things to say, but it has predominantly begun to think about tenderness & suicide, poets & artists & dreamers, the failures of poetry & philosophy & care, “madness” & sensitivity, survival, the particular tragedy of the American west, & many dear people who no longer have bodies.
Since this project started to emerge, loss & its partners seem only to have multiplied — more early death in the communities I am part of, the ongoing horror of genocide, acute & chronic suffering in cities & rural spaces alike, all of it rendered in greater & greater detail each day — & I feel a deep & quickening concern for those around me, for everyone still here. I do not know how to fix any of this, but I do know that I must attempt to tend to my one corner of things steadily & without fear. I hope that WtL can be a source of comfort or renewal, that someone might find a glimmer of recognition & renewal here, a phrase or two to carry.
It feels important to note that I listen into these spaces as a person who has experienced continual grief events from a young age, usually in the form of losses of friends by violent & sometimes willful means. I listen as a person who was born into a family history dappled with suicide & premature death. I listen as a person who exists within the spectrum of what contemporary western medicine has named bipolar disorder, who has many times made a choice to live, & who has been lucky to have the resources, tethers, & support to do so. The collaborators with whom I write & speak & listen have endured their own such experiences, their own situations of mind & origin & loss, & I am indebted to them, to the examples they have given me of how to be here.
WtL will be edited & changed & evolve over time, sections will be added & subtracted & grow at unknown rates. Names are usually represented by a single letter, with the exception of the dead & living collaborators whose names are included in full. I hope you will encounter the text below as a process document, an ongoing attempt to “show my work” as that work is happening. If you do choose to engage with it (thank you) please do so with care & consideration toward yourself, keeping in mind the themes at hand. & please scroll to the bottom of the page to pour some of your own grief into this lake.
CL
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![THE LAKE](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e8ed4bca2b65b04c0f5da25c540ad2b61e3562ea5f62f0e3a5eca89617278144/WtL-small.png)
I am interested in learning about how others are approaching being alive during this particular moment in time, as well as in how grief & loss inform that process. What is your grief/s? What is its shape? Color? How has your relationship shifted over time -- to it, to the dead, to what has been lost? How has it changed you? What has been released & what has returned? What has it shown you about living? About joy? How do you show up to the process of grieving? To the process of survival? What keeps you here? How do you stay awake?
Please click below to share your experience. I’m not sure what these offerings will become, but I’ll be in touch when that starts to take shape; in the meantime, your responses will remain private.
LAKE
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e8ed4bca2b65b04c0f5da25c540ad2b61e3562ea5f62f0e3a5eca89617278144/WtL-small.png)