From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Their Most August Public Organ
*Their Most August Public Organ* is C. W. Smith's forthcoming work of experimental typeset prose (with embedded musical notation and radio/instrument cues), occupying the **second position** in a three-volume triptych. The first volume, Everyone I Love is Alive in the Unlimited Present of the City and its Waters, was published in 2025; the third, Surplus of the Seen, remains in planning.
In the architectural scheme of the triptych, *Their Most August Public Organ* stands as a middle chamber — a document of writing-in-progress, capturing the generative moment between the completed and the emergent. The work's precise relation to A Complicated Surgery Will Take Place on the Beach Tonight and the broader Beach Surgery franchise remains unconfirmed pending publication. [citation needed]
The title's enigmatic phrasing — "most august public organ" — suggests a civic or bodily instrument of collective significance, though interpretations remain speculative. [citation needed] The work is expected to extend Smith's practice of hybrid forms that blur autobiography, theory, and narrative invention.