Dear Friends of the Corpse:

We are going to shoot a documentary film about the Mississippi River this coming Spring, and are soliciting ideas from our friends. Those of you who live on the river are doubtlessly involved with the "continental trough," (Faulkner) or "the brown god" (Eliot) in ways we can't begin to dream about. We are looking for art performances that engage the river itself or some entity that affects the river. For instance, if Miss River Bridge crashes a public meeting of some sort, we want to be there. We are hoping that you could dream up an event, visual and expressive hopefully, that will encapsulate in an interactive way the river and what role it plays in your life/art. We are, of course, interested in the ecology of the beast, but also in its political cultures, music, folklore, poetry. This is not an institutionally sanctioned project, so you can let your darkest or oddest ideas fly. Yours in the flow, Andrei Codrescu

andrei@corpse.org

The request above went out to our mailing list. Much of what we got back forms the body of the current issue, THE MISSISSIPPI CORPSE. We have published only a sampling of the hundreds of responses, but continue to stay open to ideas. The film itself, directed and produced by Brian Doubleday and Rich Lerner; Executive Producer, Chip Baker; Vehicular Mouth Andrei Codrescu, begins shooting in mid-May, though one of the intial scenes, The Bonfires of Christmas on the Levee at Gramercy, Louisiana, has been already filmed. Some of these Corpse-ideas will certainly make their way into the film, so stay tuned.

For all practical matters relating to the film, as well as investment opportunities, contact Brian Doubleday at Brian2day@aol.com or check out BigRiverBlues.com.

Art for this issue comes from sketches by Shalom, footage by Rich Lerner, paintings by Melissa Sarat and Alice Henderson, and photos by Meesh and Andrea Garland.