WE

THE

LAKE



TRANSMISSIONS

a note on themes & engaging with this text


During the summer of 2023, inside a storm of painfully repetitious deaths, I started working with an assemblage of writing and other forms. Much of this included transcribing of and sorting through texts that already existed. It continues to take shape, but for now I am thinking of We the Lake as a collaborative public text & grief offering. For now it has arranged itself into three primary sections.

The first is a slowly growing pool of grief knowledge gathered from individuals who choose to share their experience. New responses are assembled and updated monthly. Please consider adding your own grief.

The center section comprises a series of collaborations and conversations between myself and other individuals or groups that have taken place between 2020 and the present, some part of Sema, many still in process. Updates and additions will be made frequently.

The final section is my own thinking about & offering of grief; early pages from ongoing writing that I think will be a book someday. This section includes writing that considers “madness” and sensitivity, suicide, the failures of poetry and philosophy and care, the particular tragedy of the American west, and the relationship between grief and survival, among other themes. I offer it here with the hope that its “project” might engender the openness of others in sharing their own experience. Please read with care.

I hope you will encounter We the Lake as an evolving collaborative text and process document, and that you might find some reflection or comfort or renewal here, some space to share your own questions and understanding. If you’d like to receive updates about this project, please sign up here. Thank you.

—CL








Sema Ep. 0 / Sema
Sema 2 / Writing, Detachment, & Ritual w/ Rushi Vyas
Sema 1 / Loss, Being a Therapist, & Intergenerational Grief w/ Ann O’Leary Young
 Sema Ep. 3 / Boise, Friendship Loss, & Time w/ Tyler Brewington
Sema Ep. 5 / Newborn Loss, Place, & Deep Grief w/ Cedar Brant
Sema Ep. 7 / Ambient Loss, Having Children, & the Necessity of Storytelling w/ Camille T. Dungy
Sema Ep. 6 / Adoption, Potentiality, & the Loss of Unknowing w/ Erinrose Mager
Sema Ep. 8 / Relationality, Embodiment, & Suicide w/ Mairead Case