Writing can be solitary work. A writing community can be a corrective, giving feedback and inspiration as well the moral support needed to stick with it. That’s what the Rebelsfare Collective does for its members. A loose group of artists working in the Danville area, the group released its first print publication, Rebelsfare Collective: Volume One, last November. Volume Two followed in February.
Rebelsfare hopes to shine a spotlight on artists working in East Central Illinois, by holding live readings and by publishing in print and online. I spoke to the three writers featured in Volume One about their writing, and how the collective has encouraged them to create and share their artistic work.
“Hand in hand we hold our breath hoping to beat the curse that
Found our parents, that crept into us
That makes love feel fleeting and so tough to trust”
– Dustin Danger, “Failing on All Cylinders”
The founder of Rebelsfare, Dustin Danger has spent decades writing and performing, playing in band The Villens for the last 15 years. He started Rebelsfare in the spring of 2015, and has provided the motivating force behind the group’s publications so far. Dustin emphasized the need for writers to form communities and support networks. “I look around, I see a lot of people who have given up on their natural talents, given up on their dreams… because life hits you square on the chin sometimes and it’s hard to get up.” Without a supportive group surrounding them, he said, it’s easy to lose the energy for artistic struggle.
Volume One includes the lyrics to several of Dustin’s songs, all of which address themes of longing and crushed dreams. In “To Be Drunk in America” he toasts to hopes and fears, seeing life as both a creative and destructive act. “Chasing the Moon” blurs the line between obsession with a romantic object and with art, with a focus on the way time slips away in both cases. In it he states, “Because if you got a song, hell you better be singing before all your words are gone.” It’s easy to see in these pieces an expression of the same strong creative desire that led him to start Rebelsfare. “I have two daughters now,” he explained. “I think of their futures – what can I do today that can outlast me as a man? And the answer is to create something bigger than myself.”
With multiple projects in progress, Dustin was optimistic about organically expanding the community. “People find me, I find them – I don’t know how it’s happened, but I’m a firm believer in the law of attraction. Put something out in the world, put in the work, and the world will respond.”
“Not being able to catch a ball and still being a virgin is nobody’s fault but
my own absent father’s. Going to get scratchers he said, smelling of booze,
battered women and cocaine, never to be seen again.”
– “Father’s Day”, Ryan Grayson
Ryan Grayson’s poetry tackles isolation head on. In “Just A Stranger”, Ryan depicts nighttime as an alien universe, one populated by “a whole other species / on the dark side of the world”. Both “Who Are You” and “Here Comes One of Them Now” cover romantic isolation and uncertainty. However, isolation isn’t always an obstacle to creativity, Ryan said. Working outside of a major metropolitan area means that artists here “have a chance at a clean slate, and I don’t think that there could be anything more inspiring or valuable for a creative individual/group than a blank canvas or page.”
For Ryan, Rebelsfare has been a source of encouragement to keep working. It has given him freedom to speak out, figuratively and literally: “Being a part of Rebelsfare has encouraged me to start doing some spoken word poetry, in public, in front of strangers… something I would’ve never thought of or attempted without this collective of creative people supporting”.
“He walked towards his bad habit and saw that Helen was still awake. She was following him with her eyes. Spooky like. She just lied there, curled up, eyes turning in all the various head goo that makes them work. Lee stopped and stood there, thinking of such things at a time like this. Blood and corpuscles and tendons and tissues. Again the silence.”
– Jason Allen, “Daddy’s Little Angel”
Jason Allen contributed three short fiction pieces to Volume One. “God Damn These Legs” covers a multi-year love triangle. Two friends are drawn together by poetry and painting, but an accident and years of resentment turn formerly positive artistic expression into a wedge to push them apart. In “Daddy’s Little Angel”, a run-in with a young stranger forces a man to decide how he feels about his relationship with his straying girlfriend.
Jason said that he had nearly given up on writing altogether for ten years. “It got to be too painful to go through all the exquisite joy and hell of spilling my insides onto the paper.” Working with Rebelsfare drew Jason back into writing. He stressed the importance of publishing in the making of art, as it’s the only way to get a chance “to be read, and maybe, just maybe, make some kind of meaningful connection with a couple strangers out there.”
Volume Two expands Rebelsfare’s scope, showcasing writing from nine artists. The collective hopes to keep expanding and publishing, with a third volume, containing only visual art, planned for release in June. And work has begun on an Album One, to be filled with members’ music and spoken word pieces.
About Nathaniel Forsythe:
Nathaniel Forsythe is a solitary writer living in Champaign.