This 2007 version of
Ask for Sanctuary features
a new web design, opening audio, and selected lexias from
the original version.
Conceived as a series of electronic broadsides,
Ask for Sanctuary was begun in 2002 at the time
of Martin Luther King Day. The last lexia was posted on
Martin Luther King Day 2004. The work has been edited somewhat,
but written at a time when the author sought to metaphorically
reveal the potential for a covert persecution, these poet's
responses now stand as they are; each lexia reflecting the time
of its writing; each lexia returning to the words of the spiritual
that begins: "I ask for sanctuary."
The opening spiritual "I ask for Sanctuary" and the final lexias --
"and as they spoke the terror receded" -- differ from the rest
of the work in that, rather than metaphoric nightmares, they are
imagined dreams of hope.
The issues raised by this narrative -- such as the potential
impact on civilians of the covert use of extreme surveillance,
brain interference technologies, and high-power ultrasound
weapons -- are explored in more detail in:
Revelations of Secret Surveillance
and
Concerto for Narrative Data
For all of us, in every country in the world,
I ask for Sanctuary.
copyright 2002-2007 Judy Malloy