Are you like me? Do you see faces and other pictures everywhere, in wood grain, in marble, in clouds? In case you weren't aware, the term for that is simulacrum (sing.; the plural is simulacra).

Submit your image (including video), audio, and other simulacra here!

You may want to explain what you see/hear and where you see/hear it if it's not obvious. Manipulations should only be for the purpose of marking (e.g., drawing a red circle around) or highlighting (e.g., making the image dark except for the simulacrum) what it is we're looking at. In other words, don't fake a simulacrum.

Or, if you do, say so! Maybe we can expand this collab by letting people create fake simulacra (audio, video, image) as long as it's clear that it's a creation; and maybe people can come up with stories about it!

Text RECords are also welcome, as you see fit - to describe something you don't have another RECord of, to write a story or poem about the topic, etc.

Ideas for what we can do with all of this are also most welcome!

Pom poms and athleticism not required!

Here's the idea: Should you all choose to use it, this collab is for you to root for a project you love and want to see happen. This isn't quite like re-RECs, and here's why:

Each RECord here will promote one project. Ideally, it's one you didn't start, but if it is one you started, that's OK too. The idea is to get others to join in, so what we're doing here is twofold: (1) bringing projects to others' attention; and (2) persuading people to join them. It would help to specify what the project needs, and anything else that might spark interest in others.

You can do that with whatever kind of RECord (video, text, etc.) you think will do the job.

If this collab takes off, it could be a one-stop shop for people who want to find a project to spend their creative energies on—a project that has clearly earned the passion of at least one other person than the one who started it; a project which perhaps hasn't even hit the radar of the administrative team or the people you're following.

I'll try to rotate the featured RECord for this collab. The first person besides me to contribute something will definitely get featured first!

One more benefit of doing this: Once you've created a RECord championing the project of your choice, you can then link that RECord elsewhere, either by pasting its URL into comments or by making it the REsult of a RECord or a person's portrait (if you want to invite a person to join).

2, 4, 6, 8, We want to collaborate! ;)

Inspired by the various "sum of hearts" RECords and comments.

Back home in Detroit, when I was writing up a storm, I used to perform in the same venues, on the same stages, on the same nights, with musicians—and occasionally with actors too—which was great fun. I felt it put poetry in its native home, with music and drama. It also prevented those poetry open mic type readings we've all been to that go on for hours till your head is spinning from trying to listen so concertedly for so long.

Anyway, one night at such an event, a writer friend of mine asked if I was working on a new book. I joked, "Yeah, this one's all covers." He knew what I was referring to: music covers, where musicians record other musicians' songs.

Of course, the idea was silly, and would be if, like some covers, the poet doing the covering merely gave an exact rendering of the original. That works with music when the intent is to demonstrate your skill in giving a perfect replica...which gets into all kinds of philosophical stuff I could bang on about for hours. I won't. This is already the third paragraph. (Oy!)

Here's the deal: This may or may not be a new genre. The idea is to "cover" someone else's poem (interpreted broadly—it could be a short bit of prose, a part of a script, a song lyric, etc.) by interpreting it in your own voice. Re-write someone's poem, but NOT because you think they could improve it. Again, keep music covers in mind: a cover isn't a musician's attempt to improve another's song, but to pay homage to it, get inside it for oneself. Sorta like an actor interpreting a role that's been done by others.

Does that make sense?

Found poetry counts too, BTW, if it's done in this spirit.

Let's leave the parameters really open right now. Remember, what you're writing is a tribute, in your own voice, to someone else's work. You could re-work the actual words and images, or you could read, sing, animate, act out, or write out in calligraphy someone else's poem. There are a couple of poetry collabs out there that you can mine for material.

As always, we should work with writing here on hitRECord, or with writing that's definitely in the public domain (the not-so-tiny stories collab might be a good place to mine for that), to avoid copyright issues. (Does anyone here know how that usually works with found poetry? I've always wondered...and it's one of the reasons I've never really tried it myself.)

Part of the idea behind this is to keep poetry submissions to hitRECord from being static. A few get set to music, but so many good poems just sort of sit there. Let's use them! (It goes without saying, mine are all game.) This can also be a good way to hone writing skills, especially when we're feeling less-than-inspired.

First, I was writing a comment, then decided to make it a RECord, and then decided others might want to join me (I hope)! Isn't that how so many of these collaborations start? The idea here is to tell a story or otherwise share anything you do or have done that you were dabbling in—just shy of an actual hobby. (See the featured RECord for an example that should clear this up.)

Maybe you took on something that was way over your head. Or maybe you really enjoy doing something you really have no business doing. Or maybe you tried it once and never cared to do it again, even if you were good at it and people encouraged you to keep it up. Or maybe it's something no one who knows you would ever have imagined you doing. Maybe you tried something that turned into a huge disaster. Write a little anecdote about it, record a video or audio RECord of you telling about it, or upload an example!

Hopefully this collab will do at least two things: Give us all a laugh and an outlet for sharing such stories; and help us all to see that other people do this too, and we don't have to be shy about trying stuff we may never be any good at. Then maybe, just maybe, this will help encourage us all to keep pushing our personal boundaries. And who knows what else we might do with these RECords?

Feel free to share good results: this isn't all about stuff you do but aren't good at.

And as always, feel free to indulge yourself with some victory ice cream wherever appropriate! Ooooh, that gives me an idea: I have no business indulging in victory ice cream, ergo....   ;)

Maybe I'm just piggy-backing on Regular Joe's new weekly re-REC collabs here, but I think this could be an interesting way of sharing those RECords that move us so much, that feel sacred. This collab will primarily be for a different sort of re-REC album—a full description of that is below. Whatever else this collab can become is up to you all.

Taken from the description in my own "That Which Moves the Heart" album, emphases added:

There are many reasons we recommend RECords here. Sometimes, a RECord makes us laugh or entertains us; sometimes it's graphically striking; sometimes it's a tune we can't get out of our heads; sometimes it's something we think could be REmixed into something very special, or that could be a useful element in a lot of new RECords. These aren't (merely) any of those.

My mentor, Alejandro García-Rivera (RIP), writes in his book, Community of the Beautiful, that "beauty is that which moves the heart." I've also quoted art historian and curator Peter Selz on this site several times: he has said (to a class I was in) that for him, "great" art is "a visual metaphor for significant human experience." Of course, "visual" can be substituted with whatever word is appropriate for the art form. Peter also contrasts "great" art with works you only have to look at once and you're done with them. Great works, on the other hand, reward any amount of time you give them, any number of times you return to them.

As we all know, great art inspires more art. Or, to cite philosopher Elaine Scarry, beauty makes us want to reproduce it, to make more beauty. So these RECords certainly could do or have done just that. They don't need to be REmixed or tinkered with for their own sake, but they could be; or they could inspire something new. They could be "sampled" as one does with music. If I'm hearing him correctly, Joe's always going on about how copyright laws as they are tend to put roadblocks in the way of that sort of creative reproduction (in Scarry's sense), and we all at hitRECord are specifically and deliberately trying to push beyond that, in part by the very radical (but also very human) act of giving others permission to use our work here any way they like. So, however great I consider these works to be, however finished they are in themselves, they aren't static. Art is never static.

What we're doing here at hitRECord is revolutionary: we're not condemning great works to live on sterile museum walls; we're reclaiming the fact that art gives life, and that it belongs to everyone. 

I'd encourage anyone to make a similar reRECs album! RECords you can return to again and again... you know the rest. --Elaine <3