Art,

Bye bye. Hello real life. Goodbye translation; hello interpretation. Hello experience and thought unrendered; hello satisfaction or distress on the first order. Hello people, the people, by millions. Hello wilderness- fecundity, without people and art. Hello lucid utility or recreation versus incessant re-creation; hello fantasy. Goodbye delusion. Goodbye waste and sacrifice and conceit. Vacuum, fringe, excess. Hello spontaneity, free expression, whim. Goodbye gift; hello present. Never-ending potential; unending desire*.

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*to just live. Art is being quit every day. Left behind for higher purpose. Abandoned, or banished from. Sometimes the artists just go outside and never come back. Or at worst, return with something priceless, irrelevant, to wring into art. Some people were always out, lucky; stick a hand in at leisure. Happy strangers. Sometimes the world looks perfect, nothing to rearrange. The point is getting out, being out, however one can, even if on your ass, ass kicked, showing your ass. This series of letters samples varied people on the outs, and ins thereof, of art.

Moheb Soliman is an interdisciplinary poet from Egypt and the Midwest whose work is often oriented by themes of nature, modernity, identity, and belonging, often through writing, performance, and installation projects. In recent years he’s focused on the Great Lakes bioregion/borderland, presenting work in diverse US and Canadian art and public spaces and publishing a future related poetry collection with Coffee House Press. Moheb has degrees from The New School for Social Research and the University of Toronto. Before attending the Tulsa Artist Fellowship he worked as Program Director for the Arab American contemporary lit/art organization Mizna. www.mohebsoliman.info