Hinge Online

The story of Hinge is not one I can tell; or, rather, one I can tell conclusively. They were around for a number of years in Philly; their el primo era seems to have been the early Aughts. I published in Hinge several times; they also accepted, eventually, several mp3s from Ardent, the '04 EP I made with Matt Stevenson in South Philly. Hinge for me are made most memorable, other than for their benign online presence, by the Northern Liberties extravaganza they put on in the spring of '04, in the middle of Ardent and me finishing Penn. It was a brilliantly sunny, warm, spring day; we got lucky, especially as the warehouse space where the show was held had a big yard in front where everyone could hang out, imbibe. It was, for the multi-media nature of what was presented (including my reading), and for the general Aughts Philly ambiance of permissive indulgence, as halcyon as it could be. As I watched Lucky Dragons weave a weird sonic web over the crowd and conquer our sense that computer-generated music couldn't have vibe and depth-resonance, I knew in the pit of my stomach that this is where the public side of my art had to go. I was thinking, still at the Hinge event, of the London Free School around Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd; that was the cultural reference point which occurred to me in there. Of course, London has few brilliantly sunny days, and what I imagined that Free School was like might or might not "op over" Hinge in Northern Liberties. Still, I wanted to conglomerate Hinge/Northern Liberties with my Swinging London fantasies, and by 7-10-04, was at the Highwire Gallery doing so, thanks to the generosity of Matt/Radio Eris.

These two Hinge hinged from Wordpress, On Love and Hamlet On Pine Street, demonstrate that as a poet, I was flexing muscles heavily under the influence of London; but, the London of Shakespeare and Keats, rather than Syd Barrett's. The space cadet, stoner, bed-hopping version of an art-city that is Aughts Philly has yet to be evaluated historically in comparison to these versions of London; when you are singed by a city's art, however, these manners and forms of questions are never far from your mind. With London, it is difficult to say. Here, Hinge Online will certainly have a vaunted place in the cultural history of Aughts Philly: tight but loose, a guarded fortress but a generous one, and right on a bunch of cutting edges at once, as the parameters broadened of what the Internet could be for artists, and those wishing to occupy cultural space in a city and a country, as we all did. Ten years later, all the richer.