The point of this exhibition, stated often and clearly, was not to assemble an exhibition of clothes that ‘someone famous once wore’; rather, it was an examination and celebration of costume design as a discipline, and as an art form which, often subconsciously, defines both characters and time periods and can have a real influence over the fashions and icons of the age. Most appropriately, it is sponsored by Harry Winston, so some of the Hollywood sparkle remains.

The exhibition is divided into three Scenes: Scene I explains the role of costume design in a character’s development; Scene II describes the collaborative relationship that must exist between the Costume Designer and the Director; and Scene III, the main event, is basically a room full of some of the most iconic and fabulous costumes you ever did see, the three dresses mentioned in the first paragraph included.

Scene I was fascinating, and most likely my favourite. Being a writer myself, the narrative and anecdotal titbits given about each costume were hugely informative, and several of my favourite films were included. Did you know, for instance, that Margaret Mitchell unwittingly described every single one of Scarlett O’Hara’s dresses as a shade of green in Gone with the Wind? Her green velvet curtain dress was there as an exhibit. And did you know that Fight Club’s Tyler Durden’s leather jacket was deliberately dyed that dark red colour to evoke the colour of dried blood? Apparently, walking down that costume trailer, with Ed Norton’s clothes on one side and Brad Pitt’s on the other, it was difficult to believe that both rails contained costumes from the same film. There was a great analysis of the characters in Ocean’s Eleven, with Danny’s well-made old clothes contrasted against Rusty’s disposable, flash party boy ensemble, and Matt Damon’s unstructured, every man novice. Also featured were Indiana Jones’ classic ensemble, based around the classic hero-pilot get-ups of the thirties and forties, Beyonce’s silvery Dreamgirls dress, which was gorgeous, plus two denim-and-Stetson outfits from Brokeback Mountain, which were so soft-looking and well-worn as to make the whole story come alive before me, and to make me rather sad. This was all topped off by an analysis of Matt Damon’s Bourne uniform of neat, unremarkable grey, a veritable invisibility cloak, ‘the Dude’s’ brown bathrobe, showing his imperviousness to circumstance, and an outfit of Kim Novak’s from Vertigo, which looked like something Joan Holloway would wear on her day off, and maybe something I should be wearing too. A whole family of Addams Family costumes lingered near the end of the section, from Gomez right down to Pubert, ostentatiously looking so perfect as to make you feel that ‘you were wrong about your way of living, and they were right.’ I could be convinced.

Scene II, as mentioned above, talked about the collaborative relationship between Director and Costume Designer: a character is effectively dreamt up during filming, with discussions between the Director and Costume Designer having a huge say in not only their creation, but also the eventual appearance of the entire film. For instance, Edith Head, the Costume Designer on Hitchcock’s The Birds, invented the colour of Tippi Hedren’s suit – interesting enough to look at for a whole film but simple enough not to be distracting – calling it ‘Eau de Nil green’; Darth Vader’s costume – yes, he was there – was apparently cobbled together out of an old Nazi helmet, some breast plating and a cape, to give an idea of his retro-futuristic darkness. They all took weeks and months to perfect, of course, that being the key message of Scene II. Technology was also covered: the process of dressing Jessica Rabbit in that gravity-defying red sparkling dress was done in a way of course you could never do on a human – it notes her as the ‘most complying actress ever’ – and Andy Serkis featured in a short film about the ‘dressing’ of a character like Gollum through CGI. I was fascinated to learn that real-life costumes are actually made for heavily computerised films such as Avatar, as they literally have to be seen and felt to be accurately constructed, and it was interesting to read the case studies of Meryl Streep and Robert de Niro, who are given as examples, with costumes also, about how important actors are in the character dressing process.

Scene III, the Finale, was an orgy of beautiful and iconic clothes. There were far too many outfits for me to mention – I felt the exhibition actually somewhat overlong – but the ones that really stuck out for me were Kate Winslet’s dress from the opening scenes of Titanic, as it was so beautiful and so restricting, and so her, as well as that stunning, stunning green dress of Keira’s Knightley’s from Atonement; apparently, the brief was that she look as naked as possible beneath her clothes. It glowed with temptation, dramatic potential and vivid colour, I felt. Also, a navy sequinned dress of Renee Zellweger’s from Chicago knocked me sideways and Natalie Portman’s black tutu from the finale of Black Swan was intricate and dramatic enough to evoke the entire film, with a lot of embellishment that I never noticed on screen. Marilyn Monroe’s white dress from Some Like It Hot was everything one would hope it would be, with the tiniest waist and the most curvaceous proportions, but Holly Golightly’s gorgeous black Givenchy was a real disappointment, little more than a plain satin black sheath. Of course, its simplicity is its beauty, but still, you could buy that dress a thousand times over and no-one in real life would give it much thought.

Overall, this was a well-thought-out, intelligent and surprising exhibition which rightly examined the creative processes involved in costume design and character development, rather than going for the novelty and the name-dropping, although I felt that it was over crowded and a touch overlong. How pleasant though to spend an afternoon revelling in silver screen magic.

Hollywood Costume is at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London until the 27th January 2013.

- Lyndsay Wheble

Ocean Vuong and Warsan Shire are two names that are forever on the tip of my tongue when someone asks about talented poets of my generation.   Vuong was born in Saigon, Vietnam and ended up in Hartford, CT, while Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet living in London–and the shadow effects of war permeate their writing even at its most personal.

‘All the best story titles could also be the name of a bar or club,’ she said.

Suddenly the clouds parted, the sun shone down and I had the key to naming every story I might ever write.

Because it works. Try these on for size:

‘The Old Man and the Sea’ (Hemingway) – cosy but windswept seafront pub with an open fire, right?

‘The Inimitable Jeeves’ (P.G. Wodehouse) – a swanky Deco cocktail bar with extraordinarily dapper table service.

‘The Rules of Civility’ (Amor Towles) – ditto, but more raucous, and maybe with a cheeky burlesque act.

‘Treasure Island’ – colourful, themed, a bit childish, with a yellow and blue eponymous cocktail.

The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern) – based entirely on the circus tent in the story, complete with imaginary icicles and black and white striped uniforms.

Paradise Lost (John Milton) – dark, dank, dangerous. Probably the best night of your life.

So, do you agree that this is a great and infallible rule? Are there any classic ones I’ve missed? Or do you disagree with me (and Becca) entirely?

- Lyndsay Wheble

I started researching hostels when I began my love affair with international travel from afar. I started reading a book called The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost by Rachel Friedman a couple summers ago, a memoir about a college girl who spontaneously decides to spend a summer in Ireland and, after meeting a free-spirited Australian girl, ends up on a personal journey of self-discovery that takes her to a few continents and teaches her to live in the moment as opposed to the very structured, planned-out life she was previously living. Rachel’s tales of showing up in Ireland with Big Red (her giant, red suitcase) and her experiences of staying in a hostel for the first time were my first glimpses into what traveling alone would be like. That book and Rita Golden Gelman’s Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World (awesome travel memoir, btw) were my travel gurus for a brief few months.

After reading several travel memoirs I started browsing various travel blogs by backpackers and realized backpacking, budget travel, (whatever you want to call it) was exactly the kind of travel I wanted to experience. I didn’t want to stay in fancy resorts (not like I could have afforded it anyway) sheltered from the local culture. Wanderlust was consuming me and even though the prospect of staying in a dorm room with 20 other strangers unnerved me I decided it was probably time for me to become a little unnerved. I wanted to throw a notebook, camera, and a few other things in a backpack, head to a foreign country, and be open minded to whatever came my way.

Before I went on my backpacking trip to Central America I researched different hostels in towns I thought I might end up staying in throughout the different countries I was visiting. Although many indie travelers online portray a carefree attitude about just showing up to a town and randomly picking a hostel, I was still a bit nervous and wanted to at least have a list of places I could reference when I arrived.

Hostel prices can vary depending on the area you’re in (for instance, in Europe they’re around $40/n) but throughout Central America they can range from $5-$12/n for a dorm bed and $10-$25/n for a private room. Travelers can often choose if they want a smaller dorm with one sex only (4 bed female dorm, 8 bed male dorm, etc). I’ve always chosen to be in a smaller one sex dorm room as to eliminate possibilities of travelers stumbling in drunk or having to deal with gross, smelly dudes (sorry dudes) who snore all night. Amenities for a hostel are usually much more scaled back compared to a hotel (I usually recommend bringing a sleeping bag in case the hostel has thin or no decent blankets) but are much more plentiful in other ways such as free breakfast, free wifi/computer area, free calls to the U.S., fun lounge areas, and discounts on tours and adventure activities.

One of the first hostels I stayed at was in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, a cozy reggae town on the Caribbean Sea. During my bus ride there a guy named Adam told me he hadn’t really done any research on hostels but had heard of one hostel that was legendary in the area. I’m not going to name names but I told Adam I had heard of the place and it had a bad rep in reviews for being extremely dirty and unsafe, as many party hostels are. While party hostels are great for travelers looking to get wasted on cheap shots and spend their trip socializing with hostel guests instead of experiencing the local culture, they usually have higher crime incidents and a lack of cleanliness. I told Adam where I’d be staying and that although I couldn’t guarantee it would be the right fit for him I at least knew from my research that it had been deemed to be on the ocean, clean, safe, and with a restaurant and bar downstairs.

I headed to my hostel hot, hungry, and annoyed as I had a very hard time finding it and my backpack was killing me. Unlike the other hostels it wasn’t right in the main part of town but instead a bit of a walk farther down a street that followed the curve of Playa Negra. I wasn’t sure if this would be a good or bad thing.

View of Playa Negra in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica.

When I arrived I was pleasantly surprised. The opening to the hostel that included the bar, restaurant, and lounge was wide and expansive with lush green flora surrounding it. Tables looking out from the lounge had views of the ocean. The decor was rustic and tropical and the staff was welcoming and friendly. I checked into a brightly colored 4 bed female dorm that provided clean beds, soft pillows, and roomies from Norway, Germany, and Australia.  Since it was still morning I headed downstairs for the free breakfast and to hopefully meet new people. For $10 a night I felt like I had hit the jackpot.

When you’re at a hotel have you ever noticed how every hotel lounge has big, uncomfortable looking chairs and no one is ever sitting in them? That’s because hotels are never designed to really be a social place for people to meet and hang out. Hostels, on the other hand, usually provide several lounge areas with several couches, foosball tables, pool tables, video game systems, book shelves for book swaps, and more.

Hostel lounge in San Jose, Costa Rica.

Hostels promote the exchange between travelers and give them the opportunity to interact with each other if they want to. I’ve met some of the coolest and most interesting people on my travels just by relaxing on the couch in a hostel after a long, busy day. Many of them I’m still in contact and friends with today.

Back at my chosen hostel in Puerto Viejo Adam eventually showed up and agreed the party place he originally booked was not the place he wanted to spend his time.  Both Adam and I spent over a week at the hostel on Playa Negra because we loved it so much. At the restaurant/bar we became friends with another group that included a girl from the U.S., some guy from “Whale Wars,” a Hollywood casting agent, and the bartender; a local legend hailing from Brooklyn, NY who had brought his family’s pizza recipe down with him to Costa Rica. The six of us became instant friends and developed a routine of catching up with each other after the sun had gone down with shots of moonshine and cheap Costa Rican beers.

Since that trip I have stayed in many hostels and I still have yet to experience a bad one. Bad experiences do happen though and travelers live to tell their hostel horror stories. Also keep in mind hostel accommodations aren’t only for young backpackers. Some hostels market themselves to the 18-year-old party crowd and others are looking for more restrained guests who simply want an enjoyable and relaxing stay.  Hostels are a great way to save money, meet other people, and to get out of the standard travel mindset that the only comfortable and safe place to rest your head at night is an expensive hotel stay.

-Koty Neelis

Koty Neelis is a prose enthusiast for Revolution House Magazine and a budget travel word DJ for Planes and Passports, The Hostel Life, Yahoo! and more. 

We didn’t stay for the bows. After saying goodbye to her, I left the Joyce and sprinted through Chelsea up along 8th Avenue to the 23rd Street station. Once underground, an Asian man aggressively muttered sexual affirmatives in my direction as he glared at my hips and I didn’t bother waiting for an express train as I got on a car as far away as possible on the C.

I found Disiac on 54th and 9th. It was a nondescript place with a barely visible sign on the sidewalk. At the end of a dim, long, and narrow lounge was Colin waiting at a booth with spinach dip, chips, and two glasses of red wine. We later asked for a bottle. He tasted like the malbec. I settled the bill at around one when we were the last ones there. We took the uptown 1 from Columbus Circle. The train had to go above ground before we finally got to his stop.

Colin was on Broadway — 148th and Broadway. He was an actor who recently returned to New York from a regional production of Titanic The Musical near his hometown in Ohio. He lived in a four-bedroom in Hamilton Heights with six roommates, his own currently away for the weekend. Their room was like a college dormitory: party photos and musical theatre posters taped to the walls, polka dot purple sheets on the top bunk, striped navy blue sheets on the bottom. Colin was on the bottom bunk.

“Do you want to take out your contacts?” Colin offered me a spare case and I accepted his offer. I did the same when he said I could keep my phone charged overnight, the same when he got us glasses of water, and the same when he offered me a towel. By then, it was about three. I fell asleep to the sound of police sirens and his snoring.

We showered together the next morning. Colin had the opening shift at The Container Store where he worked part-time. All of his roommates were still asleep when I left for the downtown 1 on 145th. Before switching to the uptown 3 on 96th, I sat at a nearby Starbucks, had a soy latté and an oatmeal, and read the Sunday wedding announcements.

I texted him throughout the week but he replied sluggishly. The next weekend, Colin got us comp tickets to previews of Closer than Ever at the York Theatre on 53rd and Lex inside the building of St. Peter’s Church. We had good seats in the small theatre behind an older gay couple. I put an arm around Colin. He didn’t respond. The song was “There’s Something About A Wedding.”

We left the York together and walked across town to Columbus Circle; Colin’s roommate was back and was talking to him on the phone for the length of 57th. The scaffolding for Discovering Columbus was almost complete. We took the uptown 1. I got off at 96th to take the express uptown, 2 or 3, whichever, whatever.

A few weeks later, I saw Keigwin + Company at the Joyce on my own. I wanted really good seats in the orchestra but couldn’t afford to pay for another ticket. I tried calling Colin after the show, but he didn’t pick up. I went to the Duane Reade on 17th and 8th and bought disposable toothbrushes before stepping into Gym Sportsbar next door to the Joyce in Chelsea. I put my glasses in my pocket.

-Matthew Ortile

“Out of Hamilton Heights” is the third in a three-part series called “Field Notes After Dinner.” The first part is “In the West Village” and the second “At Columbus Circle.”

‘Shouldn’t we be there by now?’ I asked repeatedly, the answer always yes. ‘Look at that gorgeous room of books up on the second storey of the house opposite,’ we said, walking past. Several minutes later we were in that room, sparkling wine in hand, listening to the saddest stories of Sir Andrew Motion, the ex-Poet Laureate.

Peirene Press, a publishing house to love, run Peirene Salons in addition to their usual activities, which are sophisticated evenings of literature and laughter, wisdom and wine, in the greatest European tradition. First drinks, then a reading, then dinner and conversation with around 50 of your most cultured and effervescent new friends.

‘You’re Lyndsay Wheble?’ two lovely, bespectacled young women exclaimed as I gave my name on the door to the publisher’s son – the Press is run from the Publisher’s house – and, I’ll admit, I basked a little in the glow of fame whilst learning that they worked for another small publisher that recently sent me a review copy of Nancy Mitford’s Christmas Pudding. It turns out the lit world is as small as any other and it was a joy, over wine and by flickering candlelight, to put faces to the Twitter names in Meike’s (the Peirene publisher) gorgeous kitchen, before travelling up to the aforementioned room of many books where fifty tiny school chairs were packed like sardines in the hope of fitting us all. At the front sat the poet Andrew Motion, his back to the window and a stack of poems in his lap.

Intimate is definitely the word for this reading: we were so close to him and the context of his poems is so personal that I doubt that there was a person amongst us who wasn’t deeply moved. His poems – straight-forward linguistically but deeply romantic in tone – are found in schools, on buildings, and in the best anthologies due to his ex-Poet Laureate status and classical, lyrical accessibility. My knowledge of them was a little patchy, my knowledge of poetry being the same, but the vivacity of his reading has made me determined to rectify this. We heard Serenade, about the horse that threw and tragically injured his mother when he was in his teens; The Mower, a lighter and more humorous look at his family’s ritualistic behaviour when his father would cut the grass; and several others, including Anne Frank Huis, The Death of Harry Patch and Holy Island, plus a new one about a pre-maps explorer that his is currently still working on. This newest poem – which reminded me a little of Tennyson’s Ulysses- brought together the general theme of the poems that evening, and what he acknowledges to be the ever-pervading theme of his work: that of eulogy; first for his mother as he remembered her, then of others, including Princess Diana, and now increasingly, of himself. He said to us that this tendency towards eulogy is both his greatest gift and his greatest limitation, as he often struggles to form a poem about something until it is passing or coming to its end. He also explained that the structures of his poems appears in the same way as his words do – that is, organically, and upon inspiration – but if after editing it no longer fits, he has no problem with reworking the structure entirely. He also said that he often struggles to reconnect with the real world after his daily, early-morning, writing session, comparing it to a slow process of moving from the dark, lonely downstairs of a house into the light breezy upstairs, where there are activity and people, and that not writing poetry was not an option for him. No.

My overall impression of Andrew Motion, as a man and a poet, was that he seemed, in spite of his wild acclaim and success, profoundly and epically sad. Philippa, one of the lovely bespectacled girls I met at the doorway, said that she had a strong urge to lean over and hug him whilst he was reading, which she did well not to give in to, as she was sat very close to the front. Maybe it was because we were all so close in that room together, or maybe it was because he reads his work beautifully, but I struggle to feel anything other than sorrow for a man who says he only feels happy with a poem for about thirty seconds after finishing it, before he realises how far he’s fallen short of what he had in his head, and that he has struggled with real depression recently upon looking back over his enormously successful forty-year-career whilst putting together a new US anthology and thinking ‘is that it?’

He feels disappointed, he said, that he never manages to write the great ‘state of the world’ poem, rather than just exploring what occurs to him at each particular moment, but he did at least repeat Beckett’s mantra ‘fail better’ as his own personal philosophy towards shortfall and personal disappointment. It just goes to show, I suppose, that fame and acclaim make little dent in a poet’s disposition, and that success maybe never alters your difficult relationship with your own work. It was a real honour to both learn the contexts of his poems – gosh, does that make a difference – and also to see glimpses of the real man behind the titles, and be moved.

Thereafter, in need of buoying, Peirene did what any sensible or person organisation would do in that situation, and presented us with an abundance of cheese: a wheel of melting Brie, a wheel of smoked Cheddar, plus potato salad, bread and dessert, and we were all raised back to our sparkling best. Like all the best parties, there were too few chairs and too many things to talk and laugh about to talk to everyone you wanted to. As the evening progressed, I was part of a raucous conversation about feminism and Fifty Shades on the stairwell, a wry conversation about the links between readers and giant spectacles and I, although I forget how, made a sincere promise to send a Swedish bun recipe along with a promised book review, in which one gets blueberries up to their elbows. Needless to say, it was marvellous and glamorous and cultured, and just you watch me try to stay away from the next one…

Cheers, I say, literary salons all round!

- Lyndsay Wheble

at CUPSI ’09 (college slam nationals), the last time I felt remotely close in age to my writing peers

I went to a tiny reading in Cambridge last weekend that ended up a round-robin situation with some saxophone players and a few poets trading off, sharing renditions and drafts.  Normally, I can make this kind of set-up work for me.  At readings, I am often the tag-along friend, rarely the featured performer.  An accidental salon-style round-robin lets me pull out my smartphone and jump into the mix without any of the pressure of preparing a set, worrying about merch, or feeling obligated to make small talk.  I can read my work and then recede into the background until my next turn.

During the salon, someone asked if I was applying to MFA programs; in response I mentioned my age and said I felt like I still had a good chunk of time before a graduate degree would feel like a priority for me.  This is my knee-jerk response to such questions.  I feel far too young to be on the graduate school path.  Mentioning my age is my way of arguing that point.  But the deflection tactic came back to bite me once we got to the bar.  One of the women I was with told me she was impressed my work was so mature for someone my age.  Now, sometimes backhanded compliments happen by accident.  But this one felt purposeful, dismissive.

I am thoroughly familiar with being the “baby” socially.  I had an early birthday in school and was always the youngest of my friends.  I had a full time job throughout college and graduated a semester early, so I was thrust into the “adult” world when I was barely 21.  My partner is 7 years my senior.  So the, “wait, you’re how old?” conversation has gotten a bit tiresome at this point.

The woman and I danced around this awkward spot in our conversation: she piled on qualifiers for her original statement while I answered shortly and tried to reorient the conversation in a less uncomfortable direction.

HER:  So, when did you start writing?

ME:  I mean, I’ve always written.  Do you mean “seriously” writing?  I guess in college, but I had kept notebooks very seriously for years before that…

HER:  It’s just so interesting, I mean, when I was your age my voice wasn’t nearly as…

UGH.  That’s the only thing it feels appropriate to say in this situation.  I refuse to apologize for my age, or the fact that I’ve made writing a very serious part of my life for at least a decade.  The biggest frustration that I have about this reoccurring conversation is that I could easily avoid it if I would just keep my stupid mouth shut.  That number is at once an excuse (just in case I disappoint) and a jibe (just in case I’m really awesome).  If I under-perform, I can blame it on being young.  If I exceed expectations, I can obliquely taunt those in nearby company with my wunderkind abilities.

Either way, I will never understand how age is at all proportional to talent, drive or craftsmanship.  I take my writing seriously, and have for quite some time.  I know what excites and interests me in my own writing and the writing of others.  Shouldn’t that be enough to make me a peer to any other writer?  Aren’t we all just lovers of words regardless of age, intention, or advanced degrees?  It seems so arbitrary to draw attention to what year I was born as it relates to what I’ve managed in my writing life.  Except, of course, if it’s making somebody older a little uncomfortable with where they stand in relation.

Emily O’Neill believes that age ain’t nothin but a number.  She edits poetry for Side B.

Last night I had a Skype meeting with a film-maker friend who told me he needed my help.  He’s starting work on a short stop motion project that he wants to build a world around.  It’s a dystopia.  There are robots, along with  a mysterious religion that is the only form of true societal structure.  I was in it immediately, tossing out ideas, talking about what we need to put together to get the ball rolling.  Now, in spite of spending a lot of time among film majors in college, I am not a film-maker at all.  Sure, I’ve made a few shorts and written a few scripts, but it is not something I’d name as a marketable skill in my arts arsenal.  But nothing inspires me more than collaborative art projects.  In addition to writing and editing at Side B, I also edit non-fiction for Printer’s Devil Review, and will be performing in an upcoming installment of the Somerville Encyclopedia Show.  Juggling collaborative projects can be difficult, but if multitasking makes you as giddy as it makes me, I have a few pieces of advice.  The following is a quick list of ways to make sure a collaborative project will drive you to do your best work .

1 – Don’t be afraid to say ‘yes.’

Everybody has their niche.  If someone were to ask you what kind of art you make, chances are there is a medium that springs to mind before any others.  But pushing those boundaries will give you new ways of thinking.  If a friend wants to work on a project that drags you out of your comfort zone, don’t say no outright just because it asks you to do something new.  Maybe writing for a web comic will help you pare down your fiction.  Maybe painting a mural will help you see how your poems work together to paint a larger picture.  Maybe you need to shake things up to get past some writer’s block.  New techniques can be learned (and mastered) on the fly, so you should never be afraid to participate simply because you’ve not been asked to contribute something you know you can nail.

2 – Make sure your collaborators are just as tirelessly passionate as you are.

Everyone I know has a pet project they want to get off the ground.  And lots of them reach out for help in realizing their dreams.  My friend Charley moved clear across the country to launch a web show called Wrecked.  The hours are long, the funding comes from Kickstarter, and he is hustling his ass off.  But so is everybody else involved with the show.  They promote tirelessly.  They work incredibly hard.  They are all equally committed, and they are making something excellent because of all that effort.  When you start a project with someone, make sure they are just as committed as you are.  Delegate responsibilities in a way that plays to everybody’s strengths.  And be sure to celebrate your success with some positive reinforcement, followed by more hard work.

3 – Communicate.

There is nothing more disappointing than going to your separate corners after a production meeting, working your tail off on your portion of the project, and returning to your collaborators only to find that your visions were not in sync.  Scrapping something you’ve put a lot of yourself into can be truly heartbreaking.  The best way to avoid time-wasting is to make sure you talk about all of it.  Make a list of shared references–movies, TV shows, books, articles, art, etc.–to refer to when talking about your project.  Building a shared vocabulary will make it easier for you to articulate what you are trying to do together.  Send emails whenever a “what if” pops into your head.  Keep the team on board with your thought process.  If everyone is thoroughly in the loop, it is much easier to keep your objectives from morphing into disparate beasts.

4 – Set realistic goals.

A lot of the pitfalls of collaborative art come up because people have different ideas of how much time it takes to accomplish a given task.  It’s important to be clear about how much time you’re willing to commit to the project, and also how much and what types of work you can contribute towards the end product.  How many words are you willing to write per week?  How frequently can you meet to touch base?  Is email or Skype easier than face to face meeting for you?  Who will be in charge of delegating responsibilities and determining deadlines for the project?  Is there someone who could pick up the slack if one of the team members falls behind?  The more clearly articulated expectations are, the easier it is for everybody to do their best work.  Make a shared calendar with all of your deadlines.  Adjust it whenever their are delays or new tasks.  Artists are a notoriously disorganized lot, so make sure you have plenty of fail-safes in place to keep everyone on task and honest about how much of the workload they can handle.

5 – Make sure you’re having fun!

I never say yes to collaboration if there is not the potential for riotous good times.  This isn’t to say that I expect everything to be smooth sailing, but the risk has to be worth the reward.  If I’m carving out time in my schedule for a project, the hard work I put into it has to at least be proportional to how much fun I’m having.  This project with my film-maker friend is going to demand a lot of writing; I committed to writing three pieces of flash fiction a week until the Kickstarter launches this spring.  That’s a whole flash fiction collection in the space of a few months!  But I love writing short shorts, and it’s something I don’t do nearly as much as I’d like to because of the other writing projects I have on my plate.  This collaboration gives me an excuse to dig in and make huge strides. I get to write sci-fi.  We are inventing the scripture and structure of a completely new religion.  I get to reread the Bible with an eye towards penning strange cartoon robot religious tracts.  I get to build a completely new world with somebody whose brain totally clicks with mine.  For me, that’s what art is about–imagining ourselves into new spaces every time we sit down to create.  Even better if we don’t have to go it alone.

Emily O’Neill is an artist and writer currently living in Somerville, MA.   She edits poetry for Side B.

I already had dinner with friends at Republic in Union Square, but I still met up with Ben for drinks at Room Service on 9th between 47th and 48th. He paid for my cocktail and edamame, and we walked up along 9th through Hell’s Kitchen. We headed towards 8th on 57th and he led us to his apartment building. But it was a Monday night and I couldn’t repeat an outfit at work.

We sat at the fountains at Columbus Circle instead. Everyone was seated in pairs. At about half past midnight, Ben and I resurfaced for air and I reapplied chapstick. Ben dropped me off at the 59th Street stop next to Trump International; the uptown 2 was running local anyway. “I’ll see you tomorrow then?” and I made a mental note to carry a contact lens case filled with solution.

After work the following day, I went home and put on a change of clothes. I went to the Yale Club of New York for a post-Gay Pride Parade mixer for Ivy League and Seven Sister schools — open bar included. My friends and I eventually found ourselves with Yale, Brown, and Harvard grads at The Beer Bar across the street from the Club on 45th and Vanderbilt. I got about five or six cards. I remembered to bring a contacts case.

A Yalie insisted I go home with him, but Ben had been texting me all night. The Yalie tried to put his hand down my pants, I closed my tab, and Ben was on speakerphone giving me directions to his block as I stumbled from one side of midtown Manhattan to the other alone.

I found myself at the Duane Reade across from Ben’s place. I had run out of the toothbrushes at my office desk and I couldn’t find disposables so I bought an actual toothbrush. Then Ben buzzed me into his building. His bathroom was small and messy. His toothpaste was Sensodyne and I took out my contacts. His bed was soft and his sheets were cool to the touch. He had A/C. It was only ten thirty.

In the light of day, I saw Ben’s studio had an exposed brick wall but his white kitchen was completely open to the living space. Plates piled in the sink. The trash can was filled with take-out containers. The place was strewn with clothes, some of them mine, most of them his. There were fashion magazines everywhere; he was a freelance writer. He had a Madonna poster on the wall.

I pulled my phone from his extra charger and slipped out of bed. The shower was freezing but Ben knocked on the door and asked if I wanted Starbucks. There was one across the street, the one facing Columbus Circle. His apartment was Whole Foods-adjacent and only fifteen blocks away from 4 Times Square. So I brushed my teeth and left the toothbrush and the contact lens case in his medicine cabinet.

Ben texted me everyday. I wouldn’t reply often. 4 Times Square has terrible reception, I said. Clingy, said my co-intern. Freelancer, said Ben. Lots of time, said Ben. You’re beautiful, said Ben. But on the night before Fourth of July, after many margaritas at Bar 169 on East Broadway with friends, I paid nearly twenty dollars for a cab to Ben’s bathroom and his bed. I took out my contacts, plugged my phone into his extra charger, and brushed my teeth before breakfast at Starbucks.

We were at Whole Foods collecting cookies for his friends’ Central Park picnic plans for the Fourth and he asked if I wanted to come along. I had the day off from work and I said no. Within the next week, the scaffolding for the Discovering Columbus installation began to cocoon the monument at Columbus Circle. It was an eyesore.

Towards the end of the summer, we caught up over dinner at Nanoosh on Broadway between 68th and 69th. Ben got a job as a copywriter for Victoria’s Secret and we talked about the election. I had to order two glasses of Chardonnay. After an hour, we walked up to the 72nd Street station. He went downtown, I went uptown, and it was only eight thirty. I said we’d keep in touch. I left my contacts case and toothbrush in his medicine cabinet; I had just landed a fall internship at Hearst and Ben lived across the street from the office.

-Matthew Ortile

“At Columbus Circle” is the second in a three-part series called “Field Notes After Dinner.” The first part is “In the West Village.”

A few days later, I sat in a temporary sound booth and spoke into a microphone about the revolution I’d most like to see in the world. In summer 2012, I was able to walk into an art show and literally find myself, a speaking voice amongst a hundred others, all emerging out of school desks to comprise an undulating wave of sound.

Maybe I should explain a little more. 2012 has been celebrated across the UK (and the world?) as the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’s birth, and, because of this, organisations across all media have looked to reflect on and honour this in some way. The artist in question here, Suki Chan, designed an installation called 100 Seas Rising, which recorded one hundred voices, like mine, and then combined them to represent the great revolutionary mob in Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, and China’s 1957 Hundred Flowers Movement. One hundred desks arranged in the gallery space, each with an individual speaker emerging from it, playing a single voice recording which rose and fell in volume in pattern with the other voices around it. The voices were grouped by content, so there was an economic area, a social area, a feminist area, a political area, etc etc. Interestingly, there were more female voices in social and more men in economic.

So, this was the first time I’d done anything like this and I’ve been asked a few times what it was like to be part of an art installation, and I’ve never really known what to say. For a start, all the stages were so different that it’s funny almost to imagine them as part of the same thing.

The easiest thing is probably just to walk you through it.

The act of actually being contacted to ask if I wanted to participate was flattering, exciting and, if I remember rightly, the email came in on a rather dreary Wednesday afternoon, so it was also very, very welcome. Would you like to be in something novel? Yes please! I think it went. I do a lot of lit-based things around where I live, but was especially pleased that people automatically equated me with something like this.

Then, going to do it was nerve-wracking. I faffed and fumbled with various ideas of my ideal revolution – the change I’d like to see in the world – until about an hour before my recording, when I settled on my revolution being one where people swap a desire for object-based consumerism for one where education is the desired, aspirational thing. A year later, would that be my ideal revolution? I don’t know. It turned out to be a good one to talk about though as I rambled on quite easily for twenty minutes, giving examples as they popped into my head and saying again and again how reading and education make us nicer people, as if that had been proven and I was quoting research. Speaking for that long into a microphone was bizarre in itself: I felt on a strange high wire between great profundity (ha!) and sounding like a pretentious idiot, and the only way to keep from falling decisively one way or the other was just to keep. on. talking. I bumped into another participant on the way out who said it was better than therapy, which made me very keen to know what she talked about, but I do understand what she meant. Getting to the stage where you mind is freely associating from one topic to another whilst speaking, as with writing, is hugely liberating, and the nerves that came with knowing that people were actually listening to my ranting meant I left the booth buzzing, on a cloud.

The unveiling itself was a little anti-climatic. I’d rounded up a few friends plus husband to come with me to the opening, which was a well-publicised affair with wine and chat plus the installation in full swing, and wore the outfit I thought most made me look arty and, you know, wise. I think in a small part of my mind, I hoped that what I’d said six months before was some kind of new and unique treatise on revolution and upon walking into the gallery and opening my mouth, someone would exclaim ‘I know your voice, you’re desk no. 12,’ as if I’d altered their thoughts on revolution with my very profound words. As it was, the well-publicised launch was amply attended, so it took my friends and I ages to find the desk spouting my voice amongst the hundred. You know how your voice always sounds weird when recorded? Yeah, that. It was fine though, and listening to the other ninety-nine was far more interesting than listening to my own. I actually went back a few weeks later on a weekday afternoon to listen in peace, and then I felt very proud to be part of a moving, intelligent piece.

Now. Now, I feel proud to have donated a little of my time for free to, you know, art, and I feel queasily excited by the thought that my voice is now a separate entity to me that will soon be off travelling the world. Currently it’s on the Isle of Wight, which is not far away at all, but thereafter it will travel internationally as part of the hundred voice collective.

I find the thought that a twenty minute recording of my thoughts will now float off away from me quite magical, and as time, and I, move on, it will remain the perfect encapsulation of my thoughts at that particular moment in time. Did you know that there was a librarian called Fyodorov in 19^th century Russia who believed quite literally that books were animate beings, pulsing with memories and words, which contained the writer’s soul? It feels a bit like that, I guess.

I suppose it makes particular sense that I would be excited about this, perhaps more than the average person, as the act of recording one’s voice and then letting it go off into the world to meet people and have adventures is just the same as writing in general, don’t you think? And isn’t this what we all write/draw/design/sing/dance for? To exist outside of ourselves, and to exist in the world long after we as people have ceased to do so?

-Lyndsay Wheble