Vibe of the Venue

[Stray Gallery]

The Classical era had the Agora*1.

The Enlightenment had Salon gatherings *2.

And,

The Modern day, has Facebook, and MySpace.

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The age of conversation is long dead

And along with it,

Public gatherings which:

Provide a community where intellectuals can discuss ideas.

Provide a place for people to organize under common ideals.

And with this decline

The public sphere is nothing more

But private fallacious opinions derived from the new clergy class,

The media pundits.

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The Stray gallery

Will stray back

To these times

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*1. The Agora was the marketplace and civic centre of the Greeks. In addition to being a place where people gathered to buy and sell all kinds of commodities, it was also a place where people assembled to discuss all kinds of topics: business, philosophy, parable, politics, current events, the nature of the universe and the divine. The Agora is where ancient Greek democracy first came to life, for it provided opportunity for the people to examine the commercial, political, religious, and cultural life of one of the great cities of the ancient world.

*2. A salon is a gathering of intellectual, social, political, and cultural elites under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, which is, "either to please or to educate". The peak of the salon era was in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the capital of this movement was in France.

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While this will be the general atmosphere of the Stray itself, I will also be hosting an experimental poetry reading/discussion, which will be a hybrid of poetry readings, and discussions inspired by them; this, in theory, will take the ideals stated above to a new level. Stay tuned for updates in this developing project!

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– Christopher Sean Williams