I've been having a lot of hope for the human race lately.
Right after the Boston Marathon bombings, an online newspaper posted an old article about the United States bombing a wedding party in Afghanistan. It was almost ten years old, which people noted, and I suspect it was some kind of prank. But the intention of the prank was clear. We did murder those people in cold blood. Why didn't their deaths get mainstream coverage?
The bombings started a flurry of interesting articles about how the US reports its news. How the deaths of a bunch of white people in Boston is a tragedy, but the children murdered in Obama's drone strikes don't get reported. How there's no news coverage when the police kill another black child. The bombing, which ten years ago would be a rallying cry or a troop surge, instead caused a conversation about how white bodies are valued more than brown ones. And how, just because you're American, it doesn't make your life worth more. Condolences were coming in from countries that have been the victim of US oppression. Not for the government of course, but for the people who have no choice when the war is brought home.
That's exactly the kind of conversation we need to be having when this happens. I'm sure there were all sorts of folks, with their varying reasons, saying we should retaliate against somebody. But that wasn't the overwhelming discourse. The discourse I saw was about how we need to stop acting like we're special flowers whenever our country gets attacked. That white kid's life is not worth more than the hundreds of kids Obama has killed. If these Chechnyan fellows were inspired by their Muslim beliefs, then the Boston bombing is just one more tally in the neverending Christians vs. Muslims land dispute that's been going on since the Dark Ages. It's ancient, tedious, and entirely destructive. While it enables people like the Bush family to make money and name giant buildings after themselves, all it yields for the smallfolk is marathon bombings and drone attacks.
I haven't heard any great outcry for Obama to bomb anybody. Part of that is politics. The drive for the Iraq War in 2003 was always terribly partisan, and those who supported Bush's wars saw it primarily as a victory for white Republicans, a way to stick their tongue out at liberals and liberal allies, such as al Qaeda. No Republican wants to give Obama the chance to strut around in a flight suit, so that's why he does the same backdoor bombings that Clinton specialized in. In addition, and this is just a theory, I'm starting to think Americans are finally getting tired of war. We've been at it for twelve years now, and we've started to learn that there is no benefit. Nothing's gotten better. I spend much of my time around young people, and there seems to be a weariness with this state of endless fear and death. I can only call it a cultural maturation, after 9/11 turned us into a nation of adolescents throwing temper tantrums. What matters is that no politician has gained political traction off this tragedy, and that's a good thing, because they sure as hell want to.
The other recent score for the human race: dancing on Margaret Thatcher's grave.
Her death was the opportunity to learn more about her. God, what a vile person. Between invading the Falklands so she could win an election, supporting apartheid, supporting the Gulf War, cracking down on the miners, and privatizing everything in sight, the woman had a level of ambitiousness to her oppression that is unmatched outside of Bond villains. And the news of her death spurred England to engage in an honest and refreshing condemnation of the woman and everything she stood for.
This could have gone the other way. I remember when Reagan died, the Republicans had a week-day long state funeral on the country's dime. While I appreciated the assurance that he was dead, it was pretty disgraceful. This started the lionizing of Reagan's memory that they still use as political currency whenever they deny people healthcare or take away a woman's right to choice. Reagan was, at best, a senile old man who let his underlings do whatever they wanted and, at worst, the typical shady gangster that's been running the GOP for the last fifty years. And English conservatives were out in full force trying to spin the story like their American counterparts did.
The difference is, they weren't dominating the podium, turning Thatcher into a saint. They were too busy engaging in arguments. They were arguing on the comment section of The Guardian with the miners who Thatcher victimized. Instead of blithely naming her a feminist icon and savior of England, conservative politicians spent their time decrying those who were in the streets partying. Is it tactful to party when somebody dies? Not really, but it's about as honest a display of emotion as can be seen. It was also preemptive protest. The conservatives would use Thatcher's name to justify their policies, but the English people won't let them. "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead" went soaring up the charts, and that's her legacy.
Those who control the means of communication control what is considered normal. They can say that Saddam Hussein was golf buddies with bin Laden and that becomes "truth." But nowadays the means of communication are not so concentrated and what we have here are common people getting into the conversation before the powers that be define what is truth. That's what needs to be done in order to make sure we have an honest conversation about our world today. The first step to having, say, a world in which the lives of brown-skinned children are ascribed value, is to have wide groups of people question the injustice.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Friday, April 5, 2013
Chapter 100: In Which I Blog About the AWP Conference
Hard Times Blues is coming out July 15th!!!!!
There have been a million delays on this project, but, baring some kind of apocalypse, this is the hard date. It makes me want to break out a bottle of champagne. But, you know, college professor's salary. Maybe a space bag of Franzia will do.
For my 102 class, which is an advanced freshman comp course, I had the class read "Working Day and Night' by Andreana Clay, a fabulous essay about how Michael Jackson embodied/rebelled against/played with the notions of black masculinity. It talks about how black males are "adultified" from when their children, taught that they're criminals and an endangered species. They're taught that they won't live past 21. Sadly, this is socially reinforced: I've made it to 29 without being shot by other niggers, with the knowledge that BART police or Zimmerman or whoever might decide to finish the job. The essay discussed how black males are associated with oversexuality and hypermasculinity, and feel the need to replicate these stereotypes so they aren't considered "soft." Of course, since black culture is always co-opted by mainstream American, that bullshit is the norm with everyone. I suggest everybody go watch Spring Breakers. It deals with our glorification of thug culture, how people with white privilege have internalized it as "cool," and is very good.
Anyways, I decided to provide my class some context about the sexualization of black bodies in the States, so I talked about how blacks were treated as medical specimens (with their dicks, buttocks, thighs, etc. used to prove they weren't human), the association of black men with rape, castration as a punishment, the way rock music was co-opted to make white men feel masculine. I noticed as I was lecturing that my voice was quivering, that I was physically uncomfortable. This is a good thing. I think I read so much about these atrocities that I worry I might be desensitized to them. Talking about the horrible stereotypes still applied to black men makes me feel angry and miserable, which is the correct emotion.
Speaking of shitting all over brown people: ten years in Iraq. Not a single weapon of mass destruction found. Lots of dead bodies, though. That whole thing was such a tragedy, such a disrespectful waste of life. And now that we have Democrats in the White House again, we can go back to pretending like wars don't happen, because the Dems prefer air strikes. Those drones they use were probably being developed by CMU when I was protesting their robotics program ten years ago. This fucking country. Ten years in Iraq. Congrats, America. You bombed your way into a recession.
My first published piece of the year: http://weirdfictionreview.com/2013/03/wfrs-101-weird-writers-22-george-r-r-martin/. It's on George R.R. Martin's classic story "Sandkings." I've been quite enjoying writing these pieces for Weird Fiction Review. From this point on, I'm entering uncharted territory as far as these essays. I was already a huge fan of Hand and Martin; now I'll be writing about more unfamiliar writers, such as Tagore and Lieber.
Speaking of George R.R. Martin, loved the Game of Thrones premiere. They had me at the dragons. That conversation between Tyrion and Tywin was something I've been anticipating since they announced the show, and it did not disappoint.
Speaking of Liz Hand, she had this to say about my new book, Hard Times Blues:
"With its intoxicating blend of rock and roll and the supernatural, crazed religion and visionary prose, Hard Times Blues is a wild ride down the same shadowy American sideroads traveled by the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Greil Marcus and Samuel R. Delany. A marvelous collection by a strikingly original new voice in contemporary fiction."
Such an honor. I don't really know what the appropriate response is when one of the best fantasists I've ever read has such nice things to say about my work. So I'll simply say it's an honor.
AWP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z4ECBVWKao
Since attending the AWP conference in Boston, I've read a lot of negativity on the internet about it. How the organizers in Georgia don't listen to anyone. How there's not enough seating, the panels are too crowded, it's a scam for MFA programs, you don't really get anything out of it, it's all a bunch of pretentious writers, everybody's irrelevant, literature itself is irrelevant, it's an exhausting experience, yada yada yada. I guess I can see how tabling at the bookfair can be a little depressing, especially if your publishing company or school requires you to. You have to come down from your lofty perch and realize that you, a Writer, are still no more than a merchant. People will smile at you as they walk by, or purposefully ignore you, or come just to talk about their own business pursuits that you have neither time, nor money, nor interest in. Not selling anything, missing other things you're more interested in, then when you finally get the chance to go to panels you don't really like them. It's a sci-fi convention, in other words, complete with people walking around in costumes trying to get attention. I swear their was a dude there dressed as a centurion. I can see how attending AWP might deglamorize what's already a not-glamorous career.
I don't know. I don't spend $400 to fly across the country and feel miserable. I went to soak up the experience, to hell with whether I got an agent or whatever reason people say they go to these things. And I got inspiration for some stories, and felt a sense of community, which is more than I can ask for.
On the glamorous life of an academic: I was encouraged by the head of my program to apply for funding from the grad student association, even though I only had six days. They offer $400, which would cover flight and registration. ME: "But, I'm not doing a panel. They say you should be doing a panel." That was why I didn't apply when I went to Canada last year. She told me to apply anyway, and had the recommendation letter in the mailbox the next day.
I still needed a funding paper signed by the department chair, another signed by the chair and the dean of the college of arts and sciences, a personal request letter, and some proof that I was going for school purposes. I wrote up a letter on Friday, hung out all weekend (since the English department shuts down at 3 on Friday), copy-pasted the necessary paperwork from the online .pdf into MS Word, and got a signature from the department chair on Monday. He told me the other document would need a signature from the other department chair. I emailed the dean asking when was a good time to come by his office. He wrote me back saying he was actually the assistant dean, and the dean was some other guy. So, Tuesday, deadline day, the day before I fly to Boston, I go to the dean's office at 6 am. No, scratch that, I went to his office on Monday, where the secretary informed me that she could sign it herself, but I hadn't written anything on it, so she sent me away. So I wrote something on it, and went to the dean's in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. The dean informed me that I couldn't get signatures on a copy-paste, and needed one of those official papers with the pink and yellow paper on the back. He gave this to me, signed it, informed me I'd need the chair's signature all over again, and wished me good luck.
Well, there was no way I was finding the chair. Dude's never in his office. I was informed in the English office that I'd need another Official Paper, to replace the one he signed, and, after I was done with my morning classes, I'd have about fifteen minutes to get this in by the deadline. So I went to the graduate liaison, who took my letter of rec, my personal letter, and said she'd stay an extra half hour so I could get the two necessary signatures from the chair, and some proof that I was going on university business. She said the other grad students showed her "this email having something to do with tabling." Well, I didn't get that email. Even though I was tabling for Rougarou, I'm not on the staff, so I was not privy to the email confirming the table.
What followed was an absurd scavenger hunt. The other chair signed both papers, and said the first chair could have signed both, which was fine because I didn't have the real papers anyway, and I was roaming around the department looking for the three other humans going to AWP so I could learn about this email. I randomly ran into one of them, who told me I could just show the list of tablers from the website. So I was in our faculty lab pacing around as the clock ticked own. I printed out ten pages until I got to the one with Rougarou on it. Printed out my plane ticket confirmation. Was assured by my classmate that everybody goes through this their first year at the school. Got the paperwork in at 11:32 am.
There has to be a way to do this that doesn't involve people running around like hamsters on those little wheels. But then it would be easy. And folks wouldn't be so busy getting arbitrary paperwork that they'd have time to complain about stuff like salaries and health insurance. Whatever. Everyone knows schools are about social control. All schools, on all levels.
6 am flight to Boston. Ran into the guy whose office is next to mine. He was attending, doing a reading, book signing, everything else people do when they actually prepare for this. My decision to go was kind of last minute; next time I'll plan better. I finally got to see the Dallas airport after years of Houston International. The people in Dallas made fun of my winter hat. Touched in at Logan around noon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ziAsMTs9sg
Winteeeeer! Goddamn, it was cold. The snow was coming down bad, but not as bad as the wind. I got off in Quincy, where the friend I was staying with lived, went in the wrong direction, and the realization that I'd have to walk back a block got me seriously depressed. Now, it was nice to see some good old-fashioned snow, the kind that explains why us Yankees are such miserable people, but I can't say I missed it.
My friend and his fiancee are videogame designers who recently moved to Boston from the Bay. It was pretty surreal, walking into an east coast apartment and seeing all this stuff that just nine months ago I saw in a condo in Emeryville. In fact, surreal is a good way to describe most conference/convention experiences, where you're wandering around, unaware of the sleep you're not getting, the nourishment you're not getting, the calories you're burning walking between panels. I put down my stuff, showered 'cause I was stinkin', and caught the T to the convention center.
It's been a while since I stumbled through piles of snow, getting water all in my shoes. Every inch of bare skin felt like I was getting stabbed with an icicle. Getting there Wednesday was a great call. I spent a half-hour in line for on-site reg, standing behind seven people at the most, but at least I got it done. People who showed up on Thursday got a 2-3 hour wait, I hear. There has to be an easier way, but, you know, social control.
I probably didn't have to register at all. Nobody was checking badges. I accidentally left mine at home on Friday and got into panels and the bookfair just fine. Really, you can't even have badge checkers for something that big. There's not enough volunteers. There were, however, security guards literally dressed up like cops. I hate when they do that. Unless you got the gun, you're not a cop. Anyway, faux-cops everywhere, who thankfully weren't armed. AWP is one of those affairs, like Dragoncon, that takes over a good deal of the city. I imagine somebody could avoid the conference altogether, just go to offsite readings, and have a blast.
There was a reading at BU about race, and Thomas Sayers Ellis was there. The last time I saw Ellis was when he read at the University of Maryland's "Writers Here and Now" series a few year ago. I distinctly remember the line "All I know is, if I see any nooses, somebody getting they ass whupped," which was cool, as that semester some redneck fucktard hung a noose on a tree, trying to intimidate black students. This was before Obama cured racism, by the way.
Ellis is an amazing performer. It would be interesting to read his stuff on the page, because his reading voice is so distinct, I can only imagine the page is an entirely separate experience. I wonder if it would work as well. So I walked to BU, enjoying all the beautiful architecture, to the Tannery Series' "Race in Your Face" reading. Ellis was great. David Mura was also a fucking beast. He read two stories and one poem, all of which had something true to say about being a minority in this country. The story about the Filipino kid with the Somali girlfriend was just cool. He was also the first person in the Q&A to mention that the "post-racial" America doesn't exist. Rishi Reddi's book about intermarriage between Indians and Mexicans in early 20th century California opened my eyes to some stuff I didn't know. Then there was a slew of amazing, award-nominated, awesome writers who blend together for me because the event was so long, and after a while I fell asleep.
You can have the most excellent readers with the most interesting things to say, but any number past four turns into a marathon. This was a trend with the many, many off-site readings. There are two rules I learned when I was organizing readings: start promptly at seven, end in an hour-and-a-half. Anything longer than that, and you're competing with movies, TV, bars, clubs, or any other ways people prefer to spend their time. And watching people read gets boring after a while. Readings are a hard sell, so keep the length manageable. But at AWP, made by writers for writers, the publishers and magazines would pile readers onto the bill, as if the opportunity to actually have an audience for absurdly long readings destroyed their sense of moderation.
Ellis read with a saxophone player. Cool. During the Q&A he made the comment that he doesn't like poetry readings, and feels the need to jazz them up in order to break the atmosphere. I remembered dude wasn't fond of the academy either, but he still engages in both scenes. No judgment from me. Writers need to promote their work. They need jobs. Henceforth, we end up at poetry readings and teaching positions.
I got back to Quincy and, for the only time that weekend, got to speak to my friend's fiancee, who was hosting me. We talked about our careers a bit and she went to bed. She's a real sweetheart, and it sucks we didn't find the time to hang out. Then I plopped myself in front of their plasma TV and watched Graffiti Bridge on On-Demand. Every time I watch that flick, it somehow gets worse.
Here's the deal. I have much respect for Prince. I respect him even more for the fact that he swindled Warner Bros. into bankrolling movies he wrote and directed himself. But Graffiti Suck and Under the Cherry Suck are just so awful. What's even worse is that Graffiti is the sequel to Purple Rain, an actual good movie. Albert Magnoli took a cult musician, built a film around an album he made, and created a story with both pathos and style. It works as a film. Graffiti throws all that away. Why was Morris, who was a music manager in the first movie, all of a sudden some evil criminal overlord? Why is everything filmed on a cheap-ass soundstage when Prince could have easily done outside shots? Was Ingrid Chavez's horrible acting why they did half of her dialogue as voiceover? The only real continuity with Purple Rain is that Jill Jones is still there, humping all up on Prince while he treats her like shit.
The first movie had THE REVOLUTION, a tight unit of New Romantics held down by Wendy and Lisa, two badass Amazons who wouldn't take The Kid's shit. This movie has The New Power Generation, a bunch of nondescript, identical gay black dudes. Which leads to the worst offense: the music isn't even good. The OST did yield "Still Will Stand All Time," a gospel ballad that's one of my favorite Prince songs, and is used in the movie's ridiculous climax. And "The Question of You," which is pretty average on the record, though Prince kills it live. The rest of the Graffiti Bridge soundtrack is garbage. If Prince had just waited a year, he could have improved the whole experience by using Lovesexy as the soundtrack. I guess Graffiti Bridge made an impression on me, because I named a main character in one of my stories after the love interest. But seriously. Fuck Prince for making that movie.
THURSDAY
Fucking snow.
I got the family reunion started early by going into a bookstore to ask directions and saw a former classmate of mine from Mills. Ran into some other Mills folks after I got in. Went to a panel about redefining masculinity in the literary world, with all trans folk on the panel. Somebody asked an interesting question about how we could open a space in children's lit to question masculinity. And somebody pointed out how much they loved Peter Pan, a novel that is all about the rejection of manhood. We associate the male with the adult (nobody is told to "woman up"), and in rejecting adulthood Peter rejects masculinity. So these spaces exist, they're not blatant (yet).
It was during this panel that I started writing in my book. They gave you a frickin' Bible filled with ads and panel descriptions, hours of reading in itself. I began scrawling notes for different stories.
Hmm. I went to a panel about college lit presses and how to maintain them (ie. asking people for money). Went to one school's "odes and psalms" poetry reading. Attended a pretty interesting panel about making book trailers. I don't know if book trailers actually sell books, but I want one. I just dig it when one form of art, like a book, breeds more art.
Amelia Gray did a panel. Missed it. Alissa Nutting. Missed it. Found out after it was done that Carole Maso was there. Carole Fucking Maso. Missed it. Missing things is predominantly what folks do at AWP. There were more panels than anybody could possibly attend, so even if you went to panels from 9am through 5pm you're only experiencing 1/15th of the conference.
I wouldn't say the convention center was overcrowded, as it was palatial enough that you could find space for yourself. At times there was a little Woodstock '99 action going on, like that piss all over the men's room floor. Poor janitors.
Not nearly enough panels about genre (or "fabulism," as they called it). It was interesting, in the midst of a million panels about indigenous writers and POC and all these obvious efforts to be inclusionary, those prejudices show through. Even the fact that they call it "fabulist" instead of fantasy. The only good thing about that term "fabulist" is that it sounds slightly gay, like a genre of writing by and for drag queens. I don't know. I write fantasy. Any other term seems like obscuring it. Every time I've called myself magical realist/fabulist/weird/elfpunk/elfcore, whatever your preference, it's to disguise the fact that I write fantasy. Because "fantasy" makes people imagine garbage stories about dragons, whereas I write great stories about dragons.
Ran into my friend Jon "Phenomojon" Tucker, who was tabling for Split This Rock, a kickass youth poetry and activism program in DC. Ran into my old professor Faith Adiele, who was doing a panel on writers of color. I told her I was in Lafayette, which is three hours north of New Orleans. Dudebro sitting next to her informed me that Lafayette is actually west of New Orleans. Learn something new every day. Whatever. I barely even leave my office.
Ran into a young lady who used to live with me at the hippie house, and had just graduated from CCA. We were both at the Dark Room Collective retrospective. Seeing all those successful writers up there talking about their times organizing readings at Cambridge made me have all sorts of fantasies about the "Cyberpunk Apocalypse 20 Year Anniversary Retrospective," where me and Dan McCloskey will be up there fondling our Nebulas and going on for ten minutes about what DIY really means and how we redefined the nature of DIY and how we hate the academy, even though we'll be teaching at Berkeley and Pratt, respectively. That'll be at AWP 2028. I've already got the proposal typed up. See you there.
Anyway, my friend and I went to a reading at a theater in Cambridge. It was fun and all, but, I don't know, just pick four readers and give them the mic. It was, like, twelve people. I'm not buying anybody's chapbook based on 7 minutes. Though the truncated reading time does make the cream rise to the top. In all that buzzing of words, hearing a great line was like a smack in the face. My favorite part was when someone passed us a flyer for their reading afterward (readings upon readings!), which they assured would be more party than reading. I appreciate the honesty. I considered going, but I was already a bit drowsy from all those little plastic cups of white wine.
My friend went home. I met a poet on the bus and went to a bar called Bukowski's. As far as bars named after dead writers go, I preferred it to the college bar in Pittsburgh called Hemingway's. Found out that New Englanders take their beer seriously. Went dancing. AWP had a nightly dance in the hotel for those who didn't feel like walking to the clubs. The DJ was a young guy who must have been tickled by all the middle aged college professors grinding drunkenly on each other. First hour was open bar. That served to get everybody wasted enough that the idiots (ie. me) would pay ten bucks for a bottle of Corona. Got drunk. Danced. Went home.
FRIDAY
Conversations at AWP start thusly:
PERSON: How's it going? (shakes hands) I'm Toni Morrison.
ME: Elwin. Nice to meet you.
PERSON: Poetry or fiction?
ME: Fiction.
Didn't actually meet Toni Morrison. Would have been cool if I did, though. As a lover of all things subcultural, I thought it was pretty cool how AWP had its own language of discourse. "Poetry or fiction?" Of course! Like our academic concentration is some kind of military unit.
I ended up sleeping in, then devoted a good deal of my time to tabling for UL's grad program. I took turns manning the table with the program director, Marthe, and my classmates Chris and Emily (or womaning the table, in Marthe and Emily's case). My knees hurt. We had a pile of cheap Mardi Gras beads and a battery-powered alligator that roared if you smacked it a few times. The bookfair is like a dealers room at any convention: people try to sell you stuff. Which would be wonderful, if I had money, but I didn't, so there you are. About half were from MFA programs, were are no longer relevant to me. But it's good to see that literature is still a big thing and people care so deeply about it. I don't really care if the "mainstream" likes books.
That seemed to be a major theme in a lot of the panels. "Is ___ Still Relevant?" It seemed a lot of people were nervous of the idea that American culture is devaluing literature, afraid their appreciation for such things is shrinking into a circle jerk. To be honest, I don't know if Americans ever cared about literature. They read what they like. This is all part of a palpable fear in the humanities, what with shrinking job options in universities, and the fact that the new generation of students are going for degrees that actually offer some job security, thus all English academics can feel their world shrinking. The angst over the appreciation for lit is only important insofar as it enables writers and academics to make money, which is a whole separate issue.
And there were plenty of panels about "How to Get Funding for _____." I don't know. I'm just not in panic mode. Do what you're into. If it's good, it will be relevant. If you have to do it on a shoestring, then focus on quality of content over quality of production. When I was a socially minded person, as opposed to the raging narcissist I am now, I would work on social justice campaigns. You know what was always the worst part? Canvassing. Begging people for money. Same goes for the arts. I don't like that so much time is spent pleading for cash from the shrinking pool of people who have it. Eventually that well's going to dry. Then what do you do?
Spent time gawking at the beauty of snowfall over ancient buildings. I ate a cold Trader Joe's salad that I think was supposed to be microwaved. Saw Samuel Delany read. It was awesome because he was reading gay erotica. More awesome because he looks like Gandalf. Gandalf reading gay porn. In all seriousness, it's great that one of our living legends is still out there, giving readings and publishing and sharing his knowledge.
I read that Laura Kasischke was doing a signing down at the Sarabande table. Their intern at the table told me she cancelled. It was pretty interesting talking to said intern because of how enthusiastic she was about the publishing industry. How the next step for her is to leave Kentucky and go to New York. Reminds me how this whole "writer" thing is a culture. Of course you move to New York. Of course you hang out at cafes in Williamsburg. Of course you throw readings in warehouses. Of course you go to AWP. There's so much involved that really has fuck all to do with writing. But it's your culture (bugger it, let's be honest, my culture) and you engage in these rituals, worship your idols (New York City) because you find comfort in it.
I mostly went to readings, because they inspire me to write. Poetry readings anthology readings, grad program readings. Hearing others' creativity inspires me, and yes, I steal a line hear and there. I was also writing during panels. If one was especially boring, that's when I wrote the most.
I went to the "I'm So Tired" reading at Trident Booksellers & Cafe a block over. It was sponsored by OH NO books, of which a friend of mine from Pittsburgh is an editor of some sort. The upstairs cafe was painfully crowded. Saw Ben Kopel read again for the first time since our EPIC reading in New Orleans. So good. It reminded me of driving through the Carolinas with Ben and Dzig a couple months ago, and Dzig geeking out on Ben Kopel's poetry. He said it was really masculine. Good description. Masculine word choice, rhythm, and delivery. That dude straight up barks his poems. Among the 8,678,698 readers was a lady reading her version of "The Little Mermaid." In this version, the mermaid wants a pussy. There's this pretty cool gag about how the mermaids use artificial pussies when fucking humans. And since they have no buttholes, they poop out their mouths. My favorite line was, and I'm paraphrasing, that kissing a mermaid is like giving a rimjob to a dysentery victim. The videographer was a friend of Kim Vodicka's who came to the reading I did in Seattle two years ago. I kinda love this small world stuff.
I ate some beef and rice at an old dirty Chinese restaurant where the waiter was a thug-ass Chinese dude. After that I saw Terrance Hayes and Jorie Graham read in the ballroom. Hayes' is a name that pops up a lot from my friends who've attended CMU. He's the real deal, alright. Graham spoke to how poetry should address this apocalyptic moment were in, which I agree with. The earth is in a bad place and the arts should do their part. Hayes spoke about who the significant voices in poetry are, during which he slipped in a reference to Prince. You can tell whether a black person is in their 30s-40s by the level of devotion they have to Prince, and how often he slips into unrelated conversations.
Some of the receptions were open bar, some were cash bar. I went to the open bars. I went to the Split This Rock reception. They had two poets, one of whom spit an awesome poem about how no one believed Noah when the floods were coming. The next was by a young guy who won a contest, a poem about an LGBT person who was killed in Africa. What I did not know, but I learned, was that Split This Rock grew out of Poets Against the War. The war started ten years ago, and the young people who got involved, like Jon, are now veteran organizers helping to mold the next generation. It's good to see that the antiwar movement from 2003 bore some kind of fruit. Stuff like that reminds me how time can make things grow, and that there are silver linings to all this tragedy.
I went dancing. They played dubstep and I realized why my knees hurt. I should start doing stretches before jumping around like that.
There was a massive delay on the subway. I had to wait at one stop half an hour, watching two kids who were high as shit scratching tags into the glass. It was funny because they had a little nail that they were passing underhand, and looking around to make sure no one could see them. There are cameras on the train. If the driver cared, he would have done something. And they're acting all stealth to scribble a bunch of cursive on a window.
SATURDAY
I woke up early to table at 9. I was seriously impressed with their shoveling work downtown. The snow was cleared and there were more real people than writers wandering around. You would have never guessed there was a blizzard a day before.
It was the last day of the conference, and they were in some serious dead dog territory. Everybody was discounting their books so they wouldn't have so much to take on the plane. Or just giving stuff away. There were magazines and journals piled on the tables in the bookfair. Makes me wonder why anybody buys anything the first two days. Maybe they don't. I sold a book, and paid it forward by buying the new Kasischke collection. She is so good. One of my favorites.
I felt like a dead dog, utterly exhausted. During my time manning the table, I engaged in several rambling conversations in which I talked too much, and at one point tried to grab what I thought was my program bag from a classmate's hands. "That's mine," he said. I apologized and went off to find some new way to make an ass out of myself.
Went to a few panels. Only the one on social justice stood out. A couple of educators stood up to talk about how they used creative writing to empower disenfranchised communities. As much as AWP was a writer's conference, it was equally an educator's conference, and it was pretty inspiring to see the work done by folks like Writers in Schools. Makes me want to do the same. Made me very proud to teach. Will I continue to be an academic? Eh, get back to me in five months. But I will always be a teacher.
Went to panel about a program that encouraged people to make art from their poetry. They passed around a pillow with poetry stitched into it. They passed around a cigar box of poems rolled into blunts. I actually tried to unroll one of the blunts to read the poem inside, but as soon as the paper broke I decided it was a bad idea. It was interesting because, as cool and experimental as the concept was, I could only engage with any of those poems when I read them as a paper chapbook. Maybe there are other kinds of poem/art that would be more accessible for me.
I may or may not have seen Kate Bernheimer say something about fairy stories. I may or may not have attended a sex scene panel. Saw the Typewriter Girls walking around. I feel they put on the best reading series in Pittsburgh. Or at least they did the last time I lived there, in 2010. Stopped by Adam Atkinson's table where he and Ben Pelhan were having a two-man dance party to some New Orleans crunk music, which I didn't participate in, though I slapped one or both of them on the ass. Ate a burrito, and by 5pm I was ready to head straight to the airport and sleep on a chair until my morning flight. Then I ran into Faith and accompanied her to her birthday party at a fancy restaurant down the street. Caught a second wind drinking Stella Artois from anorexic beer glasses. I guess Stella is my Popeye's spinach. Anyways, it was a really nice time. I ended up talking to Yona Harvey for a while. I told her I was a fantasy writer who taught in Louisiana.
YONA: Ah! I've heard of you! You're friends with the cartoonist!
ME: Yeah, Dan's a good friend.
Apparently, she did some kind of event with Dan a few months ago, during which I was mentioned. Small world. It was overall surreal, just walking around and seeing people I'd encountered at World Fantasy, or Pittsburgh, or frickin' hipster parties in Williamsburg. Weird, in a good way, because it reminds me of the similarities I have with these people. We all love writing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wBOiO5ptJk
Late night. Everybody's wasted. Everybody's on coke and pills and it's hilarious because there's no amount of drugs that will make a bunch of English MFAs not huge dorks. The higher everybody got, the nerdier they got. That's a big reason why I don't use. I'd probably start quoting The Faerie Queen or some shit. I intended to leave around midnight but, in one of those turns of fortune you don't expect, made a new friend who I hung out with a few hours.
Caught a taxi to Logan, feeling like I'd just come from a death metal concert, that's how exhausted I was. The in-flight movie was Silver Linings Playbook. I liked what little I saw, as I was drifting in and out of consciousness, and would intermittently wake up to Jennifer Lawrence screaming at me. My favorite part was when Bradley Cooper threw the Hemingway book out the window. The landing in Lafayette was really shaky. The girl across the aisle from me threw up on herself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHdXQAQHjd8
So what did I get out of AWP? It inspired me to pick up the pace. And not in terms of writing a book a year, which I once wanted to do, but am now thinking is unnecessary. Real literature takes time. I mean writing every day. Putting at least an hour of creative work every day. I got ideas for stories. And I met like-minded people. That's all I need from a gathering of any group I'm a part of. If you'll excuse me, I'm about to go work on my audiobook.
There have been a million delays on this project, but, baring some kind of apocalypse, this is the hard date. It makes me want to break out a bottle of champagne. But, you know, college professor's salary. Maybe a space bag of Franzia will do.
For my 102 class, which is an advanced freshman comp course, I had the class read "Working Day and Night' by Andreana Clay, a fabulous essay about how Michael Jackson embodied/rebelled against/played with the notions of black masculinity. It talks about how black males are "adultified" from when their children, taught that they're criminals and an endangered species. They're taught that they won't live past 21. Sadly, this is socially reinforced: I've made it to 29 without being shot by other niggers, with the knowledge that BART police or Zimmerman or whoever might decide to finish the job. The essay discussed how black males are associated with oversexuality and hypermasculinity, and feel the need to replicate these stereotypes so they aren't considered "soft." Of course, since black culture is always co-opted by mainstream American, that bullshit is the norm with everyone. I suggest everybody go watch Spring Breakers. It deals with our glorification of thug culture, how people with white privilege have internalized it as "cool," and is very good.
Anyways, I decided to provide my class some context about the sexualization of black bodies in the States, so I talked about how blacks were treated as medical specimens (with their dicks, buttocks, thighs, etc. used to prove they weren't human), the association of black men with rape, castration as a punishment, the way rock music was co-opted to make white men feel masculine. I noticed as I was lecturing that my voice was quivering, that I was physically uncomfortable. This is a good thing. I think I read so much about these atrocities that I worry I might be desensitized to them. Talking about the horrible stereotypes still applied to black men makes me feel angry and miserable, which is the correct emotion.
Speaking of shitting all over brown people: ten years in Iraq. Not a single weapon of mass destruction found. Lots of dead bodies, though. That whole thing was such a tragedy, such a disrespectful waste of life. And now that we have Democrats in the White House again, we can go back to pretending like wars don't happen, because the Dems prefer air strikes. Those drones they use were probably being developed by CMU when I was protesting their robotics program ten years ago. This fucking country. Ten years in Iraq. Congrats, America. You bombed your way into a recession.
My first published piece of the year: http://weirdfictionreview.com/2013/03/wfrs-101-weird-writers-22-george-r-r-martin/. It's on George R.R. Martin's classic story "Sandkings." I've been quite enjoying writing these pieces for Weird Fiction Review. From this point on, I'm entering uncharted territory as far as these essays. I was already a huge fan of Hand and Martin; now I'll be writing about more unfamiliar writers, such as Tagore and Lieber.
Speaking of George R.R. Martin, loved the Game of Thrones premiere. They had me at the dragons. That conversation between Tyrion and Tywin was something I've been anticipating since they announced the show, and it did not disappoint.
Speaking of Liz Hand, she had this to say about my new book, Hard Times Blues:
"With its intoxicating blend of rock and roll and the supernatural, crazed religion and visionary prose, Hard Times Blues is a wild ride down the same shadowy American sideroads traveled by the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Greil Marcus and Samuel R. Delany. A marvelous collection by a strikingly original new voice in contemporary fiction."
Such an honor. I don't really know what the appropriate response is when one of the best fantasists I've ever read has such nice things to say about my work. So I'll simply say it's an honor.
AWP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z4ECBVWKao
Since attending the AWP conference in Boston, I've read a lot of negativity on the internet about it. How the organizers in Georgia don't listen to anyone. How there's not enough seating, the panels are too crowded, it's a scam for MFA programs, you don't really get anything out of it, it's all a bunch of pretentious writers, everybody's irrelevant, literature itself is irrelevant, it's an exhausting experience, yada yada yada. I guess I can see how tabling at the bookfair can be a little depressing, especially if your publishing company or school requires you to. You have to come down from your lofty perch and realize that you, a Writer, are still no more than a merchant. People will smile at you as they walk by, or purposefully ignore you, or come just to talk about their own business pursuits that you have neither time, nor money, nor interest in. Not selling anything, missing other things you're more interested in, then when you finally get the chance to go to panels you don't really like them. It's a sci-fi convention, in other words, complete with people walking around in costumes trying to get attention. I swear their was a dude there dressed as a centurion. I can see how attending AWP might deglamorize what's already a not-glamorous career.
I don't know. I don't spend $400 to fly across the country and feel miserable. I went to soak up the experience, to hell with whether I got an agent or whatever reason people say they go to these things. And I got inspiration for some stories, and felt a sense of community, which is more than I can ask for.
On the glamorous life of an academic: I was encouraged by the head of my program to apply for funding from the grad student association, even though I only had six days. They offer $400, which would cover flight and registration. ME: "But, I'm not doing a panel. They say you should be doing a panel." That was why I didn't apply when I went to Canada last year. She told me to apply anyway, and had the recommendation letter in the mailbox the next day.
I still needed a funding paper signed by the department chair, another signed by the chair and the dean of the college of arts and sciences, a personal request letter, and some proof that I was going for school purposes. I wrote up a letter on Friday, hung out all weekend (since the English department shuts down at 3 on Friday), copy-pasted the necessary paperwork from the online .pdf into MS Word, and got a signature from the department chair on Monday. He told me the other document would need a signature from the other department chair. I emailed the dean asking when was a good time to come by his office. He wrote me back saying he was actually the assistant dean, and the dean was some other guy. So, Tuesday, deadline day, the day before I fly to Boston, I go to the dean's office at 6 am. No, scratch that, I went to his office on Monday, where the secretary informed me that she could sign it herself, but I hadn't written anything on it, so she sent me away. So I wrote something on it, and went to the dean's in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. The dean informed me that I couldn't get signatures on a copy-paste, and needed one of those official papers with the pink and yellow paper on the back. He gave this to me, signed it, informed me I'd need the chair's signature all over again, and wished me good luck.
Well, there was no way I was finding the chair. Dude's never in his office. I was informed in the English office that I'd need another Official Paper, to replace the one he signed, and, after I was done with my morning classes, I'd have about fifteen minutes to get this in by the deadline. So I went to the graduate liaison, who took my letter of rec, my personal letter, and said she'd stay an extra half hour so I could get the two necessary signatures from the chair, and some proof that I was going on university business. She said the other grad students showed her "this email having something to do with tabling." Well, I didn't get that email. Even though I was tabling for Rougarou, I'm not on the staff, so I was not privy to the email confirming the table.
What followed was an absurd scavenger hunt. The other chair signed both papers, and said the first chair could have signed both, which was fine because I didn't have the real papers anyway, and I was roaming around the department looking for the three other humans going to AWP so I could learn about this email. I randomly ran into one of them, who told me I could just show the list of tablers from the website. So I was in our faculty lab pacing around as the clock ticked own. I printed out ten pages until I got to the one with Rougarou on it. Printed out my plane ticket confirmation. Was assured by my classmate that everybody goes through this their first year at the school. Got the paperwork in at 11:32 am.
There has to be a way to do this that doesn't involve people running around like hamsters on those little wheels. But then it would be easy. And folks wouldn't be so busy getting arbitrary paperwork that they'd have time to complain about stuff like salaries and health insurance. Whatever. Everyone knows schools are about social control. All schools, on all levels.
6 am flight to Boston. Ran into the guy whose office is next to mine. He was attending, doing a reading, book signing, everything else people do when they actually prepare for this. My decision to go was kind of last minute; next time I'll plan better. I finally got to see the Dallas airport after years of Houston International. The people in Dallas made fun of my winter hat. Touched in at Logan around noon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ziAsMTs9sg
Winteeeeer! Goddamn, it was cold. The snow was coming down bad, but not as bad as the wind. I got off in Quincy, where the friend I was staying with lived, went in the wrong direction, and the realization that I'd have to walk back a block got me seriously depressed. Now, it was nice to see some good old-fashioned snow, the kind that explains why us Yankees are such miserable people, but I can't say I missed it.
My friend and his fiancee are videogame designers who recently moved to Boston from the Bay. It was pretty surreal, walking into an east coast apartment and seeing all this stuff that just nine months ago I saw in a condo in Emeryville. In fact, surreal is a good way to describe most conference/convention experiences, where you're wandering around, unaware of the sleep you're not getting, the nourishment you're not getting, the calories you're burning walking between panels. I put down my stuff, showered 'cause I was stinkin', and caught the T to the convention center.
It's been a while since I stumbled through piles of snow, getting water all in my shoes. Every inch of bare skin felt like I was getting stabbed with an icicle. Getting there Wednesday was a great call. I spent a half-hour in line for on-site reg, standing behind seven people at the most, but at least I got it done. People who showed up on Thursday got a 2-3 hour wait, I hear. There has to be an easier way, but, you know, social control.
I probably didn't have to register at all. Nobody was checking badges. I accidentally left mine at home on Friday and got into panels and the bookfair just fine. Really, you can't even have badge checkers for something that big. There's not enough volunteers. There were, however, security guards literally dressed up like cops. I hate when they do that. Unless you got the gun, you're not a cop. Anyway, faux-cops everywhere, who thankfully weren't armed. AWP is one of those affairs, like Dragoncon, that takes over a good deal of the city. I imagine somebody could avoid the conference altogether, just go to offsite readings, and have a blast.
There was a reading at BU about race, and Thomas Sayers Ellis was there. The last time I saw Ellis was when he read at the University of Maryland's "Writers Here and Now" series a few year ago. I distinctly remember the line "All I know is, if I see any nooses, somebody getting they ass whupped," which was cool, as that semester some redneck fucktard hung a noose on a tree, trying to intimidate black students. This was before Obama cured racism, by the way.
Ellis is an amazing performer. It would be interesting to read his stuff on the page, because his reading voice is so distinct, I can only imagine the page is an entirely separate experience. I wonder if it would work as well. So I walked to BU, enjoying all the beautiful architecture, to the Tannery Series' "Race in Your Face" reading. Ellis was great. David Mura was also a fucking beast. He read two stories and one poem, all of which had something true to say about being a minority in this country. The story about the Filipino kid with the Somali girlfriend was just cool. He was also the first person in the Q&A to mention that the "post-racial" America doesn't exist. Rishi Reddi's book about intermarriage between Indians and Mexicans in early 20th century California opened my eyes to some stuff I didn't know. Then there was a slew of amazing, award-nominated, awesome writers who blend together for me because the event was so long, and after a while I fell asleep.
You can have the most excellent readers with the most interesting things to say, but any number past four turns into a marathon. This was a trend with the many, many off-site readings. There are two rules I learned when I was organizing readings: start promptly at seven, end in an hour-and-a-half. Anything longer than that, and you're competing with movies, TV, bars, clubs, or any other ways people prefer to spend their time. And watching people read gets boring after a while. Readings are a hard sell, so keep the length manageable. But at AWP, made by writers for writers, the publishers and magazines would pile readers onto the bill, as if the opportunity to actually have an audience for absurdly long readings destroyed their sense of moderation.
Ellis read with a saxophone player. Cool. During the Q&A he made the comment that he doesn't like poetry readings, and feels the need to jazz them up in order to break the atmosphere. I remembered dude wasn't fond of the academy either, but he still engages in both scenes. No judgment from me. Writers need to promote their work. They need jobs. Henceforth, we end up at poetry readings and teaching positions.
I got back to Quincy and, for the only time that weekend, got to speak to my friend's fiancee, who was hosting me. We talked about our careers a bit and she went to bed. She's a real sweetheart, and it sucks we didn't find the time to hang out. Then I plopped myself in front of their plasma TV and watched Graffiti Bridge on On-Demand. Every time I watch that flick, it somehow gets worse.
Here's the deal. I have much respect for Prince. I respect him even more for the fact that he swindled Warner Bros. into bankrolling movies he wrote and directed himself. But Graffiti Suck and Under the Cherry Suck are just so awful. What's even worse is that Graffiti is the sequel to Purple Rain, an actual good movie. Albert Magnoli took a cult musician, built a film around an album he made, and created a story with both pathos and style. It works as a film. Graffiti throws all that away. Why was Morris, who was a music manager in the first movie, all of a sudden some evil criminal overlord? Why is everything filmed on a cheap-ass soundstage when Prince could have easily done outside shots? Was Ingrid Chavez's horrible acting why they did half of her dialogue as voiceover? The only real continuity with Purple Rain is that Jill Jones is still there, humping all up on Prince while he treats her like shit.
The first movie had THE REVOLUTION, a tight unit of New Romantics held down by Wendy and Lisa, two badass Amazons who wouldn't take The Kid's shit. This movie has The New Power Generation, a bunch of nondescript, identical gay black dudes. Which leads to the worst offense: the music isn't even good. The OST did yield "Still Will Stand All Time," a gospel ballad that's one of my favorite Prince songs, and is used in the movie's ridiculous climax. And "The Question of You," which is pretty average on the record, though Prince kills it live. The rest of the Graffiti Bridge soundtrack is garbage. If Prince had just waited a year, he could have improved the whole experience by using Lovesexy as the soundtrack. I guess Graffiti Bridge made an impression on me, because I named a main character in one of my stories after the love interest. But seriously. Fuck Prince for making that movie.
THURSDAY
Fucking snow.
I got the family reunion started early by going into a bookstore to ask directions and saw a former classmate of mine from Mills. Ran into some other Mills folks after I got in. Went to a panel about redefining masculinity in the literary world, with all trans folk on the panel. Somebody asked an interesting question about how we could open a space in children's lit to question masculinity. And somebody pointed out how much they loved Peter Pan, a novel that is all about the rejection of manhood. We associate the male with the adult (nobody is told to "woman up"), and in rejecting adulthood Peter rejects masculinity. So these spaces exist, they're not blatant (yet).
It was during this panel that I started writing in my book. They gave you a frickin' Bible filled with ads and panel descriptions, hours of reading in itself. I began scrawling notes for different stories.
Hmm. I went to a panel about college lit presses and how to maintain them (ie. asking people for money). Went to one school's "odes and psalms" poetry reading. Attended a pretty interesting panel about making book trailers. I don't know if book trailers actually sell books, but I want one. I just dig it when one form of art, like a book, breeds more art.
Amelia Gray did a panel. Missed it. Alissa Nutting. Missed it. Found out after it was done that Carole Maso was there. Carole Fucking Maso. Missed it. Missing things is predominantly what folks do at AWP. There were more panels than anybody could possibly attend, so even if you went to panels from 9am through 5pm you're only experiencing 1/15th of the conference.
I wouldn't say the convention center was overcrowded, as it was palatial enough that you could find space for yourself. At times there was a little Woodstock '99 action going on, like that piss all over the men's room floor. Poor janitors.
Not nearly enough panels about genre (or "fabulism," as they called it). It was interesting, in the midst of a million panels about indigenous writers and POC and all these obvious efforts to be inclusionary, those prejudices show through. Even the fact that they call it "fabulist" instead of fantasy. The only good thing about that term "fabulist" is that it sounds slightly gay, like a genre of writing by and for drag queens. I don't know. I write fantasy. Any other term seems like obscuring it. Every time I've called myself magical realist/fabulist/weird/elfpunk/elfcore, whatever your preference, it's to disguise the fact that I write fantasy. Because "fantasy" makes people imagine garbage stories about dragons, whereas I write great stories about dragons.
Ran into my friend Jon "Phenomojon" Tucker, who was tabling for Split This Rock, a kickass youth poetry and activism program in DC. Ran into my old professor Faith Adiele, who was doing a panel on writers of color. I told her I was in Lafayette, which is three hours north of New Orleans. Dudebro sitting next to her informed me that Lafayette is actually west of New Orleans. Learn something new every day. Whatever. I barely even leave my office.
Ran into a young lady who used to live with me at the hippie house, and had just graduated from CCA. We were both at the Dark Room Collective retrospective. Seeing all those successful writers up there talking about their times organizing readings at Cambridge made me have all sorts of fantasies about the "Cyberpunk Apocalypse 20 Year Anniversary Retrospective," where me and Dan McCloskey will be up there fondling our Nebulas and going on for ten minutes about what DIY really means and how we redefined the nature of DIY and how we hate the academy, even though we'll be teaching at Berkeley and Pratt, respectively. That'll be at AWP 2028. I've already got the proposal typed up. See you there.
Anyway, my friend and I went to a reading at a theater in Cambridge. It was fun and all, but, I don't know, just pick four readers and give them the mic. It was, like, twelve people. I'm not buying anybody's chapbook based on 7 minutes. Though the truncated reading time does make the cream rise to the top. In all that buzzing of words, hearing a great line was like a smack in the face. My favorite part was when someone passed us a flyer for their reading afterward (readings upon readings!), which they assured would be more party than reading. I appreciate the honesty. I considered going, but I was already a bit drowsy from all those little plastic cups of white wine.
My friend went home. I met a poet on the bus and went to a bar called Bukowski's. As far as bars named after dead writers go, I preferred it to the college bar in Pittsburgh called Hemingway's. Found out that New Englanders take their beer seriously. Went dancing. AWP had a nightly dance in the hotel for those who didn't feel like walking to the clubs. The DJ was a young guy who must have been tickled by all the middle aged college professors grinding drunkenly on each other. First hour was open bar. That served to get everybody wasted enough that the idiots (ie. me) would pay ten bucks for a bottle of Corona. Got drunk. Danced. Went home.
FRIDAY
Conversations at AWP start thusly:
PERSON: How's it going? (shakes hands) I'm Toni Morrison.
ME: Elwin. Nice to meet you.
PERSON: Poetry or fiction?
ME: Fiction.
Didn't actually meet Toni Morrison. Would have been cool if I did, though. As a lover of all things subcultural, I thought it was pretty cool how AWP had its own language of discourse. "Poetry or fiction?" Of course! Like our academic concentration is some kind of military unit.
I ended up sleeping in, then devoted a good deal of my time to tabling for UL's grad program. I took turns manning the table with the program director, Marthe, and my classmates Chris and Emily (or womaning the table, in Marthe and Emily's case). My knees hurt. We had a pile of cheap Mardi Gras beads and a battery-powered alligator that roared if you smacked it a few times. The bookfair is like a dealers room at any convention: people try to sell you stuff. Which would be wonderful, if I had money, but I didn't, so there you are. About half were from MFA programs, were are no longer relevant to me. But it's good to see that literature is still a big thing and people care so deeply about it. I don't really care if the "mainstream" likes books.
That seemed to be a major theme in a lot of the panels. "Is ___ Still Relevant?" It seemed a lot of people were nervous of the idea that American culture is devaluing literature, afraid their appreciation for such things is shrinking into a circle jerk. To be honest, I don't know if Americans ever cared about literature. They read what they like. This is all part of a palpable fear in the humanities, what with shrinking job options in universities, and the fact that the new generation of students are going for degrees that actually offer some job security, thus all English academics can feel their world shrinking. The angst over the appreciation for lit is only important insofar as it enables writers and academics to make money, which is a whole separate issue.
And there were plenty of panels about "How to Get Funding for _____." I don't know. I'm just not in panic mode. Do what you're into. If it's good, it will be relevant. If you have to do it on a shoestring, then focus on quality of content over quality of production. When I was a socially minded person, as opposed to the raging narcissist I am now, I would work on social justice campaigns. You know what was always the worst part? Canvassing. Begging people for money. Same goes for the arts. I don't like that so much time is spent pleading for cash from the shrinking pool of people who have it. Eventually that well's going to dry. Then what do you do?
Spent time gawking at the beauty of snowfall over ancient buildings. I ate a cold Trader Joe's salad that I think was supposed to be microwaved. Saw Samuel Delany read. It was awesome because he was reading gay erotica. More awesome because he looks like Gandalf. Gandalf reading gay porn. In all seriousness, it's great that one of our living legends is still out there, giving readings and publishing and sharing his knowledge.
I read that Laura Kasischke was doing a signing down at the Sarabande table. Their intern at the table told me she cancelled. It was pretty interesting talking to said intern because of how enthusiastic she was about the publishing industry. How the next step for her is to leave Kentucky and go to New York. Reminds me how this whole "writer" thing is a culture. Of course you move to New York. Of course you hang out at cafes in Williamsburg. Of course you throw readings in warehouses. Of course you go to AWP. There's so much involved that really has fuck all to do with writing. But it's your culture (bugger it, let's be honest, my culture) and you engage in these rituals, worship your idols (New York City) because you find comfort in it.
I mostly went to readings, because they inspire me to write. Poetry readings anthology readings, grad program readings. Hearing others' creativity inspires me, and yes, I steal a line hear and there. I was also writing during panels. If one was especially boring, that's when I wrote the most.
I went to the "I'm So Tired" reading at Trident Booksellers & Cafe a block over. It was sponsored by OH NO books, of which a friend of mine from Pittsburgh is an editor of some sort. The upstairs cafe was painfully crowded. Saw Ben Kopel read again for the first time since our EPIC reading in New Orleans. So good. It reminded me of driving through the Carolinas with Ben and Dzig a couple months ago, and Dzig geeking out on Ben Kopel's poetry. He said it was really masculine. Good description. Masculine word choice, rhythm, and delivery. That dude straight up barks his poems. Among the 8,678,698 readers was a lady reading her version of "The Little Mermaid." In this version, the mermaid wants a pussy. There's this pretty cool gag about how the mermaids use artificial pussies when fucking humans. And since they have no buttholes, they poop out their mouths. My favorite line was, and I'm paraphrasing, that kissing a mermaid is like giving a rimjob to a dysentery victim. The videographer was a friend of Kim Vodicka's who came to the reading I did in Seattle two years ago. I kinda love this small world stuff.
I ate some beef and rice at an old dirty Chinese restaurant where the waiter was a thug-ass Chinese dude. After that I saw Terrance Hayes and Jorie Graham read in the ballroom. Hayes' is a name that pops up a lot from my friends who've attended CMU. He's the real deal, alright. Graham spoke to how poetry should address this apocalyptic moment were in, which I agree with. The earth is in a bad place and the arts should do their part. Hayes spoke about who the significant voices in poetry are, during which he slipped in a reference to Prince. You can tell whether a black person is in their 30s-40s by the level of devotion they have to Prince, and how often he slips into unrelated conversations.
Some of the receptions were open bar, some were cash bar. I went to the open bars. I went to the Split This Rock reception. They had two poets, one of whom spit an awesome poem about how no one believed Noah when the floods were coming. The next was by a young guy who won a contest, a poem about an LGBT person who was killed in Africa. What I did not know, but I learned, was that Split This Rock grew out of Poets Against the War. The war started ten years ago, and the young people who got involved, like Jon, are now veteran organizers helping to mold the next generation. It's good to see that the antiwar movement from 2003 bore some kind of fruit. Stuff like that reminds me how time can make things grow, and that there are silver linings to all this tragedy.
I went dancing. They played dubstep and I realized why my knees hurt. I should start doing stretches before jumping around like that.
There was a massive delay on the subway. I had to wait at one stop half an hour, watching two kids who were high as shit scratching tags into the glass. It was funny because they had a little nail that they were passing underhand, and looking around to make sure no one could see them. There are cameras on the train. If the driver cared, he would have done something. And they're acting all stealth to scribble a bunch of cursive on a window.
SATURDAY
I woke up early to table at 9. I was seriously impressed with their shoveling work downtown. The snow was cleared and there were more real people than writers wandering around. You would have never guessed there was a blizzard a day before.
It was the last day of the conference, and they were in some serious dead dog territory. Everybody was discounting their books so they wouldn't have so much to take on the plane. Or just giving stuff away. There were magazines and journals piled on the tables in the bookfair. Makes me wonder why anybody buys anything the first two days. Maybe they don't. I sold a book, and paid it forward by buying the new Kasischke collection. She is so good. One of my favorites.
I felt like a dead dog, utterly exhausted. During my time manning the table, I engaged in several rambling conversations in which I talked too much, and at one point tried to grab what I thought was my program bag from a classmate's hands. "That's mine," he said. I apologized and went off to find some new way to make an ass out of myself.
Went to a few panels. Only the one on social justice stood out. A couple of educators stood up to talk about how they used creative writing to empower disenfranchised communities. As much as AWP was a writer's conference, it was equally an educator's conference, and it was pretty inspiring to see the work done by folks like Writers in Schools. Makes me want to do the same. Made me very proud to teach. Will I continue to be an academic? Eh, get back to me in five months. But I will always be a teacher.
Went to panel about a program that encouraged people to make art from their poetry. They passed around a pillow with poetry stitched into it. They passed around a cigar box of poems rolled into blunts. I actually tried to unroll one of the blunts to read the poem inside, but as soon as the paper broke I decided it was a bad idea. It was interesting because, as cool and experimental as the concept was, I could only engage with any of those poems when I read them as a paper chapbook. Maybe there are other kinds of poem/art that would be more accessible for me.
I may or may not have seen Kate Bernheimer say something about fairy stories. I may or may not have attended a sex scene panel. Saw the Typewriter Girls walking around. I feel they put on the best reading series in Pittsburgh. Or at least they did the last time I lived there, in 2010. Stopped by Adam Atkinson's table where he and Ben Pelhan were having a two-man dance party to some New Orleans crunk music, which I didn't participate in, though I slapped one or both of them on the ass. Ate a burrito, and by 5pm I was ready to head straight to the airport and sleep on a chair until my morning flight. Then I ran into Faith and accompanied her to her birthday party at a fancy restaurant down the street. Caught a second wind drinking Stella Artois from anorexic beer glasses. I guess Stella is my Popeye's spinach. Anyways, it was a really nice time. I ended up talking to Yona Harvey for a while. I told her I was a fantasy writer who taught in Louisiana.
YONA: Ah! I've heard of you! You're friends with the cartoonist!
ME: Yeah, Dan's a good friend.
Apparently, she did some kind of event with Dan a few months ago, during which I was mentioned. Small world. It was overall surreal, just walking around and seeing people I'd encountered at World Fantasy, or Pittsburgh, or frickin' hipster parties in Williamsburg. Weird, in a good way, because it reminds me of the similarities I have with these people. We all love writing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wBOiO5ptJk
Late night. Everybody's wasted. Everybody's on coke and pills and it's hilarious because there's no amount of drugs that will make a bunch of English MFAs not huge dorks. The higher everybody got, the nerdier they got. That's a big reason why I don't use. I'd probably start quoting The Faerie Queen or some shit. I intended to leave around midnight but, in one of those turns of fortune you don't expect, made a new friend who I hung out with a few hours.
Caught a taxi to Logan, feeling like I'd just come from a death metal concert, that's how exhausted I was. The in-flight movie was Silver Linings Playbook. I liked what little I saw, as I was drifting in and out of consciousness, and would intermittently wake up to Jennifer Lawrence screaming at me. My favorite part was when Bradley Cooper threw the Hemingway book out the window. The landing in Lafayette was really shaky. The girl across the aisle from me threw up on herself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHdXQAQHjd8
So what did I get out of AWP? It inspired me to pick up the pace. And not in terms of writing a book a year, which I once wanted to do, but am now thinking is unnecessary. Real literature takes time. I mean writing every day. Putting at least an hour of creative work every day. I got ideas for stories. And I met like-minded people. That's all I need from a gathering of any group I'm a part of. If you'll excuse me, I'm about to go work on my audiobook.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Chapter 99: In Which I Discuss an Atlanta Non-reading
I am just noticing how many typos are in this blog. That last post? Embarrassing. But I will not edit them. Those words are the raw, unfiltered thoughts of an award-nominated, semi-coherent author. When my biographers quote these posts they can add [sic]s on their own time.
Random anti-capitalist thought of the day: people call the Black Bloc cowardly because they wear masks, ignoring the fact that the Boston Tea Party was some dudes dressed as Indians. Because only an idiot does illegal acts in public while showing their face. The Tea Party (ugh, that term has been so sullied) was a Black Bloc, plain and simple.
Happy news! I have to extend my congrats to my friend Maddy Barnes, who is publishing her first chapbook this year. I can't wait to read it. I believe she is currently in Europe, busy being young, talented, successful, and other obnoxious things. It's always great to see friends of mine get their work out there, which is becoming a common occurrence.
December tour. Memories. I dragged my sick body out of bed to see The Hobbit and do our Atlanta reading, which was booked at the last minute. Our friend's wife was kind enough to drive us in the torrential rain. The drive felt a lot more leisurely than the drive to Athens, where we were late, and lost, and Dzig's smartphone GPS got a temporary case of dumb. There's something intrinsically uncomfortable about being stuck in the car, in the rain, with a bunch of people. Cause it's a whole crowd being bummed and sullen...ALL TOGETHER!
We got to the spot in Atlanta, where nobody was there, so we went to get pizza. We found a pretty fun hipster bar up the road, where the waiters had tattoos and stuff. We discussed The Hobbit, and how the kazillion trailers before it were so uniform. STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS! JACK THE GIANT KILLER! THAT TOM CRUISE MOVIE! The only one I felt interested in was the Guillermo del Toro Evangelion rip-off, but all they had to say to get me excited was "Guillermo del Toro." They could have skipped the scenes of Idris Elba yelling entirely.
BEN: There was a part in The Hobbit where the rock giants were fighting, and there were doing anatomically correct boxing. If they're so sentient, how do they feel when they get their heads knocked off? How come nobody looks at their perspective?
ME: Wasn't that in The Neverending Story?
Ben went to check on the space. Two ladies showed up for the reading, but they seemed pretty disgusted when he said he did comics, so bollocks to that. We went home. Those two people did keep Atlanta from being the least-attended reading I've done, so that's cool. We concluded that, for the future, we should embrace it when we get a rest day, and actually rest. There were ultimately three cancelled shows on the tour: Atlanta (no crowd), Boone (flaky booking), and Memphis (straight up fatigue).
On the way from Athens we stopped to get gas. Dzig took a picture of me standing on the car in a manner he described as "badass merkat." You know, something like this.
That's how I was standing. In my time, I have born resemblance to many African savannah creatures. Ben stipulated that we were NOT stopping in South Carolina. We drove straight through. And obeyed the speed limit.
Present day. I'm chillin' in New Orleans. Tomorrow I'm going to the WWE Elimination Chamber PPV. I'm excited. This is the first WWE show I've been to since King of the Ring 1998 (the one where Undertaker threw Mankind off the cage). The WWE's product is...not as great as it used to be. But the good thing about going to a PPV is that there is guaranteed to be wrestling. Unlike Monday Night Raw, which is three hours of talking and bad comedy skits. Thanks, but no thanks. Anyway, I'm hyped to see CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, the Shield, the Rock, Chris MF'in Jericho, Cesaro, the list goes on. I pretty much like everyone on the card except Cena, who's boring, and Randy Orton, who is apocalyptically boring. Should be a good show. As I said, it'll be nice to see them wrestle, and not cut 20-minute rambling promos or get beat up by dwarves.
Random anti-capitalist thought of the day: people call the Black Bloc cowardly because they wear masks, ignoring the fact that the Boston Tea Party was some dudes dressed as Indians. Because only an idiot does illegal acts in public while showing their face. The Tea Party (ugh, that term has been so sullied) was a Black Bloc, plain and simple.
Happy news! I have to extend my congrats to my friend Maddy Barnes, who is publishing her first chapbook this year. I can't wait to read it. I believe she is currently in Europe, busy being young, talented, successful, and other obnoxious things. It's always great to see friends of mine get their work out there, which is becoming a common occurrence.
December tour. Memories. I dragged my sick body out of bed to see The Hobbit and do our Atlanta reading, which was booked at the last minute. Our friend's wife was kind enough to drive us in the torrential rain. The drive felt a lot more leisurely than the drive to Athens, where we were late, and lost, and Dzig's smartphone GPS got a temporary case of dumb. There's something intrinsically uncomfortable about being stuck in the car, in the rain, with a bunch of people. Cause it's a whole crowd being bummed and sullen...ALL TOGETHER!
We got to the spot in Atlanta, where nobody was there, so we went to get pizza. We found a pretty fun hipster bar up the road, where the waiters had tattoos and stuff. We discussed The Hobbit, and how the kazillion trailers before it were so uniform. STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS! JACK THE GIANT KILLER! THAT TOM CRUISE MOVIE! The only one I felt interested in was the Guillermo del Toro Evangelion rip-off, but all they had to say to get me excited was "Guillermo del Toro." They could have skipped the scenes of Idris Elba yelling entirely.
BEN: There was a part in The Hobbit where the rock giants were fighting, and there were doing anatomically correct boxing. If they're so sentient, how do they feel when they get their heads knocked off? How come nobody looks at their perspective?
ME: Wasn't that in The Neverending Story?
Ben went to check on the space. Two ladies showed up for the reading, but they seemed pretty disgusted when he said he did comics, so bollocks to that. We went home. Those two people did keep Atlanta from being the least-attended reading I've done, so that's cool. We concluded that, for the future, we should embrace it when we get a rest day, and actually rest. There were ultimately three cancelled shows on the tour: Atlanta (no crowd), Boone (flaky booking), and Memphis (straight up fatigue).
On the way from Athens we stopped to get gas. Dzig took a picture of me standing on the car in a manner he described as "badass merkat." You know, something like this.
That's how I was standing. In my time, I have born resemblance to many African savannah creatures. Ben stipulated that we were NOT stopping in South Carolina. We drove straight through. And obeyed the speed limit.
Present day. I'm chillin' in New Orleans. Tomorrow I'm going to the WWE Elimination Chamber PPV. I'm excited. This is the first WWE show I've been to since King of the Ring 1998 (the one where Undertaker threw Mankind off the cage). The WWE's product is...not as great as it used to be. But the good thing about going to a PPV is that there is guaranteed to be wrestling. Unlike Monday Night Raw, which is three hours of talking and bad comedy skits. Thanks, but no thanks. Anyway, I'm hyped to see CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, the Shield, the Rock, Chris MF'in Jericho, Cesaro, the list goes on. I pretty much like everyone on the card except Cena, who's boring, and Randy Orton, who is apocalyptically boring. Should be a good show. As I said, it'll be nice to see them wrestle, and not cut 20-minute rambling promos or get beat up by dwarves.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Chapter 98: In Which I Discuss Too Much Time on my Hands
Chickens Coming Home to Roost
America is built on violence, and now it's coming back to bite the perpetrators. Dorner, who the LAPD just burned alive, has already become a martyr and folk hero. While I would not personalize aggrandize him, as he was obviously disturbed and not a radical, I cannot help but note this irony. The LAPD is so corrupt that their evils caused a full scale insurrection in the 1990s, and it finally results in one of their own going First Blood on them. Like the ex-military he was, he practiced shock and awe by targeting civilians. The police responded with predictable brutality, bringing terror everywhere they went in order to get their payback, but you know none of those cops are gong to be able to sleep easy. It is not negligible that he was black. Dorner was the proverbial negro overseer raising his status by keeping his own kind in line, and now the LAPD's whole racist notion of meritocracy has shown it's cracks. They're going to be seeing a possible Dorner in every brown face to come through their academy.
Our police are getting increasingly militarized, to the pont they are using drones on American citizens. They're always willing to use the latest technology against unarmed protestors or drug dealers. This fetishization of war and oppression has backfired on them, within their own ranks. Contrast this to another recent event, where a guy who got rich bragging about killing Iraqis was shot dead by a Gulf War veteran with PTSD. Most Iraq veterans are not celebrities like that sniper. More of them are his friend, turned into a killer and then forgotten about. Lonely, tormented, doped up on VA pills. It's such a sad, disturbing state of affairs, and speaks directly to our militarized culture. The system creates monsters and now the monsters are turning on their own. And it was absolutely, positively inevitable.
Mardi Gras
So my semester has been pretty leisurely this year. The exact opposite of last semester. Taking two classes, teaching twice a week. I've had lots of down time, which I admit I haven't spent writing. I need to get back on the wagon, I know. And speaking of falling off wagons, I went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. I was aware it was one of the world's biggest carnivales, but that wasn't surprising to me. People from all over the world were there, getting straight sloppy. I spent some time on Bourbon Street, where at a few points I was walking several feet on beads. Listened to some kickass jazz and partied with old and new friends until I turned around on the barstool and saw it was daylight outside. Definitely worth the trip. I going down to Nola again for my birthday this weekend. Don't know what I'll do, or if I'll do anything besides hang out. Flogging Molly is playing House of Blues, then there's the Valentine's Day New Jack Swing Reunion.
In case you don't know what a New Jack Swing Reunion is, five acts will come onstage. Toni Tony Tone, SVW, Guy, Dru Hill, and Al B. Sure. Al B. Sure! The crowd will be nothing but 30-something year-old black people. Sisqo is going to break out "Thong Song" and we'll all be like "Ohhhhh" and act like that shit was ever cool to begin with and start grinding like we think we're still at Freaknik. Partying like it's 1992. I don't know if I'll go cause the tickets are super expensive. I'm a big NewJack Swing fan, but I'm thinking I might want to go to the WWE Elimination Chamber instead. That's on Sunday, and it's cheaper, and I haven't been to a live WWE show since King of the Ring 1998. So I might go to one of those, or none of them, and just enjoy a Nola vacation.
J.J. Abrams
J.J. Abrams created one of my favorite shows. It's called Felicity, and is seriously one of the greatest works of art I have seen. A college show that actually focuses on education, a flawed yet likeable heroine, a love triangle where the characters are dynamic and not stereotypes, characers who I actually enjoy spending time with. I first watched Felicity as it aired, starting with the pilot, and stuck with it through some questionable directions, including poorly thought out time travel plots. I related to Felicity as a young adult finding her way in the world. She graduated college the year I graduated high school, and they capped the show at the right time. Four good seasons.
Here's the kicker. J.J. Abrams, the man who gave me Felicity, went on to do esclusively genre work. Cloverfield, Alias, Lost. Now he's battling Joss Whedon for geek supremacy, taking both Star Wars and Star Trek under his umbrella. Yet I have watched none of this genre work, despite the fact that it's right up my alley. I genuinely don't know why, when i heard e was doing a spy show all those years ago, I shrugged. Now he has so many series to catch up on. At some point I'll sit down and watch Lost. Or maybe I'll rewatch Felicity again and be just as happy.
I was talking about the Star Wars thing a little while ago with my editor. We could totally envision Abrams sitting at a table with Whedon and being like, "I'll see your Avengers and raise you a Star Wars." Abrams vs. Whedon is the Cold War of our time, and won't stop until these men have divided up every geek property. And, while it would take a lot to get me ever interested in Star Wars or Star Trek, it is kind of sad that they are literally the same thing now. It used to be, you saw one for adventure and the other for characer and social commmentary. Now they're the same property overseen by the same man, filling them with explosions and Joker/Bane/Silva style domestic terrorists. Eh.
Books
The other day I finished some edits on the "Brother Roy" end of the audiobook. The voices are indeed inconsistent, which is why I did alternate recordings of that particular story. It's going to be irritating to do that editing. I'm not dwelling on it now, moving onto "Assistant." Before, when parceling time in the stories, I made it an even 5/10ths of a second between each line. I was inspired by audiobooks I lisened to that moved at a fast clip. But I started listening to slower ones, like the new recording of George R.R. Martin's Dying of the Light, and decided I liked tht pace better. With "Brother Roy," instead of counting tenths of a second, I listened for when it felt natural to put the next line, slowing down the pace. It worked well. Which means I'll have to go back and slow the pace for the first three stories.
In the next week or so Six Gallery is printing the first ten ARCs for Hard Times Blues. Yay! I'm a happy clam.
And finally, I read this interesting post on author self-promotion at Helen Marshall's blog. I like it, especially the part about being clear on what you want to achieve. Words to live by. Makes me think about my own upcoming marketing campaign.
http://movable-type.me/
America is built on violence, and now it's coming back to bite the perpetrators. Dorner, who the LAPD just burned alive, has already become a martyr and folk hero. While I would not personalize aggrandize him, as he was obviously disturbed and not a radical, I cannot help but note this irony. The LAPD is so corrupt that their evils caused a full scale insurrection in the 1990s, and it finally results in one of their own going First Blood on them. Like the ex-military he was, he practiced shock and awe by targeting civilians. The police responded with predictable brutality, bringing terror everywhere they went in order to get their payback, but you know none of those cops are gong to be able to sleep easy. It is not negligible that he was black. Dorner was the proverbial negro overseer raising his status by keeping his own kind in line, and now the LAPD's whole racist notion of meritocracy has shown it's cracks. They're going to be seeing a possible Dorner in every brown face to come through their academy.
Our police are getting increasingly militarized, to the pont they are using drones on American citizens. They're always willing to use the latest technology against unarmed protestors or drug dealers. This fetishization of war and oppression has backfired on them, within their own ranks. Contrast this to another recent event, where a guy who got rich bragging about killing Iraqis was shot dead by a Gulf War veteran with PTSD. Most Iraq veterans are not celebrities like that sniper. More of them are his friend, turned into a killer and then forgotten about. Lonely, tormented, doped up on VA pills. It's such a sad, disturbing state of affairs, and speaks directly to our militarized culture. The system creates monsters and now the monsters are turning on their own. And it was absolutely, positively inevitable.
Mardi Gras
So my semester has been pretty leisurely this year. The exact opposite of last semester. Taking two classes, teaching twice a week. I've had lots of down time, which I admit I haven't spent writing. I need to get back on the wagon, I know. And speaking of falling off wagons, I went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. I was aware it was one of the world's biggest carnivales, but that wasn't surprising to me. People from all over the world were there, getting straight sloppy. I spent some time on Bourbon Street, where at a few points I was walking several feet on beads. Listened to some kickass jazz and partied with old and new friends until I turned around on the barstool and saw it was daylight outside. Definitely worth the trip. I going down to Nola again for my birthday this weekend. Don't know what I'll do, or if I'll do anything besides hang out. Flogging Molly is playing House of Blues, then there's the Valentine's Day New Jack Swing Reunion.
In case you don't know what a New Jack Swing Reunion is, five acts will come onstage. Toni Tony Tone, SVW, Guy, Dru Hill, and Al B. Sure. Al B. Sure! The crowd will be nothing but 30-something year-old black people. Sisqo is going to break out "Thong Song" and we'll all be like "Ohhhhh" and act like that shit was ever cool to begin with and start grinding like we think we're still at Freaknik. Partying like it's 1992. I don't know if I'll go cause the tickets are super expensive. I'm a big NewJack Swing fan, but I'm thinking I might want to go to the WWE Elimination Chamber instead. That's on Sunday, and it's cheaper, and I haven't been to a live WWE show since King of the Ring 1998. So I might go to one of those, or none of them, and just enjoy a Nola vacation.
J.J. Abrams
J.J. Abrams created one of my favorite shows. It's called Felicity, and is seriously one of the greatest works of art I have seen. A college show that actually focuses on education, a flawed yet likeable heroine, a love triangle where the characters are dynamic and not stereotypes, characers who I actually enjoy spending time with. I first watched Felicity as it aired, starting with the pilot, and stuck with it through some questionable directions, including poorly thought out time travel plots. I related to Felicity as a young adult finding her way in the world. She graduated college the year I graduated high school, and they capped the show at the right time. Four good seasons.
Here's the kicker. J.J. Abrams, the man who gave me Felicity, went on to do esclusively genre work. Cloverfield, Alias, Lost. Now he's battling Joss Whedon for geek supremacy, taking both Star Wars and Star Trek under his umbrella. Yet I have watched none of this genre work, despite the fact that it's right up my alley. I genuinely don't know why, when i heard e was doing a spy show all those years ago, I shrugged. Now he has so many series to catch up on. At some point I'll sit down and watch Lost. Or maybe I'll rewatch Felicity again and be just as happy.
I was talking about the Star Wars thing a little while ago with my editor. We could totally envision Abrams sitting at a table with Whedon and being like, "I'll see your Avengers and raise you a Star Wars." Abrams vs. Whedon is the Cold War of our time, and won't stop until these men have divided up every geek property. And, while it would take a lot to get me ever interested in Star Wars or Star Trek, it is kind of sad that they are literally the same thing now. It used to be, you saw one for adventure and the other for characer and social commmentary. Now they're the same property overseen by the same man, filling them with explosions and Joker/Bane/Silva style domestic terrorists. Eh.
Books
The other day I finished some edits on the "Brother Roy" end of the audiobook. The voices are indeed inconsistent, which is why I did alternate recordings of that particular story. It's going to be irritating to do that editing. I'm not dwelling on it now, moving onto "Assistant." Before, when parceling time in the stories, I made it an even 5/10ths of a second between each line. I was inspired by audiobooks I lisened to that moved at a fast clip. But I started listening to slower ones, like the new recording of George R.R. Martin's Dying of the Light, and decided I liked tht pace better. With "Brother Roy," instead of counting tenths of a second, I listened for when it felt natural to put the next line, slowing down the pace. It worked well. Which means I'll have to go back and slow the pace for the first three stories.
In the next week or so Six Gallery is printing the first ten ARCs for Hard Times Blues. Yay! I'm a happy clam.
And finally, I read this interesting post on author self-promotion at Helen Marshall's blog. I like it, especially the part about being clear on what you want to achieve. Words to live by. Makes me think about my own upcoming marketing campaign.
http://movable-type.me/
Monday, January 28, 2013
Chaoter 97: In Which I Discuss A Nalo Hopkinson Reading, Among Other Things
Thank Pan and all his nymphs for the second amendment. All I hear about on the news is that crazy people are taking to the streets wielding assault rifles because of a paranoid fantasy that Obama wants to take their guns. I hear they've got so much ammo they're actually shooting themselves at gun shows. I know what all these guns are for, of course. The additional paranoid fantasy that black people are going to invade their homes. They're afraid of the mongrel hordes, which is why they have weapons made specifically for killing humans. Every last one of them is a Zimmerman in the making, a Minuteman in the making, and I'm glad the second amendment enables me to arm against them. Maybe then I can safely walk around wearing a hoodie.
I opened for Nalo Hopkinson at UL on Saturday. It was a good reading, and an honor to be her opener. I read from a Hard Times Blues story titled "A Song For the Yellow Prince," a Gothic story that has, surprisingly, proven a good read-aloud piece. It's more poetic than my usual stuff, with less dialogue and more mood-setting. This audience and the audience in Chapel Hill dug it. As I get older, I find myself drifting back to my first love, which is poetry. Three of the five stories in HTB are pretty lyrical, and I just got a poem accepted to The Southwestern Review.
Nalo read from her last book, and her upcoming book, and of course it was great. I'm going to have to read her book The Chaos, which, from the excerpt she read, sounds like just that. In a good way. Volcanoes in Toronto and Baba Yaga's house fighting off cops. Very anime. She also read from her new book, which sounded interesting, about twine girls who are raised by their uncle, who is some sort of angel of death.
The audience asked intelligent questions, specific questions, and you could tell they'd read the books. Many of them were teaching these books to college and high school students. Makes me wonder when I'll get to teach a fantasy class.
One person asked the old chestnut, "What is your advice for beginning writers?" Nalo's response (paraphrased): "The fun is in the revision. If you are afraid to write it, it is worth writing. And if you feel a piece is too personal, establish off the bat that you don't have to show it to anybody."
There was also a good question about how she incorporates patois into her work, something I've dealt with myself as a writer. Yes, patois can be alientating to certain readers. She said she never writes it as dialect. Sometimes she'll give an explanation for a term after using it, but rarely, as it breaks the flow. And she will never do footnotes, as people have Google and can look up things. I agree with this. No footnotes. You hear that, Mills College Advanced Writing Workshop? I will not footnote that story! Also, she refuses to itlaicize "foreign" words. It was interesting to see her rationale, as I do write in dialect, and I sometimes italicize in some stories to mark that shift for the reader (though I'm trying to wean myself off of that). Anyway, good reading. +5 points for fantasy.
Afterward, we went to dinner, where everybody was talknig in-depth about Xena and Buffy. I never watched Buffy, but I'm a big Xena fan. I didn't really contribute to the conversation, because I generally don't contribute to conversations. I've always had crippling social anxiety, and being unable to talk to others makes me feel very lonely sometimes, but I find myself content to listen. I really enjoy listening. I enjoy it more than interrupting people when they're in the flow of conversation. I genuinely love hearing the way people talk, how they reinterpret the things they see and experience. On the other hand, I obviously have things to say, so being unable to say them feels confining sometimes. But I digress. Last year I got to introduce Nuruddin Farrah, and this year I opened for Nalo. Spending time around amazing artists is simply my life now, and I would have it no other way.
Hard Times Blues
The ARC for Hard Times Blues is done. Six Gallery is printing out twenty review copies, at a price of $120. The printing company is giving us a deal of 10 for $60. As funds are limited, we have to be pretty selective in the people/places we query. I query for blurbs personally, contacting writers I've read who I feel would appreciate the slipstream nature of my work (not just fantasy writers). Though time-consuming, it's one of the more fun parts of working without an agent, because sometimes they write back! And sometimes they can't take a look at the book, as they are busy, but they're always very gracious about it, and I have to step back and think about how I'm dialoguing with an author I respect, about writing, and that in itself is amazing.
Hard Times Blues is looking nice, by the way. It's shorter than Jack Daniels Sessions, clocking in at 137 pages, with a pretty wide range in length between stories. The longest is a novella, and the shortest is three pages.
Speaking of writing, I'm going to AWP this year. Yay! UL is leading a team there, and I feel up for a vacation to Boston. The workshops look amazing, and there's a good rate for students.
Current projects: The Piper's Christmas Gift, a Christmas card story I've turned into a novella. I think of it as my "pagan Christmas" story. Also editing the audiobook. I'm currently on "How Brother Roy Lost His Dog, Twice."
Next project: Sometimes you have to wonder at serendipity. I have a radio project idea I've been kicking around for almost ten years. It's about a group of anarchists in the year 2003. I anticipate having to do a lot of research to capture the time period.
I was at my dad's place over the holiday, and he asked me to go through a bag o' stuff he had lying around, to see if I wanted to keep any of it. So I go through this bag, and among the Warped Tour photos, anime programs, and various other bits of nostalgia, is a PILE OF NEWSPAPERS from 2003. Pittsburgh local papers I must have gathered in college. I didn't even know I kept papers from back then. It's an archival treasure trove, and I plan on going through every article from The New People, the Post-Gazette, even that college paper The Pitt News in order to prepare.
Also, I signed up pretty late for classes this semester (though on time, thank you very much). A professor got back to me saying he would not have me in his class becasue I'd already missed two meeting and assignments. "What do I do?" I ask the department. You need at least nine credits to keep your assistantship. They tell me I can do dissertation hours, i.e. work on my dissertation for credit. After the initial shock that I'd actually be doing creative writing as part of the UL creative writing program, I felt pretty jazzed to work on my dissertation.
What is my dissertation? You guessed it.
These are what we call "signs." It's safe to say this is a project I have trepidation about starting, as it's so expansive and will involve so much time. I've been putting it off for ten years. In the meantime, I moved between three cities, taught creative writing, graduated two colleges, published two books, and traveled pretty extensively. And this project was always at the back of my mind. The universe is tellnig me it's time to climb this mountain. Here goes.
Summer Tour
Two years ago Christine Stoddard and I ran a kickstarter to raise promo money for our book. We got some cash out of it, and when I met up with her we discussed how best to spend the money. We settled on putting it towards a summer tour through the northeast. Pittsburgh is a definite, of course. DC. Baltimore. Philly. NYC. Boston. Touring is a wonderful time, and exhausting, and something I think I might back away from over the next few years. I've been touring once a year for the last three years. Organizing them takes up so much time and I want to focus more on writing. But if this is my last tour for a while, I want it to be the best, most performative, most ambitious storytelling I've done. Stay tuned, in other words.
I opened for Nalo Hopkinson at UL on Saturday. It was a good reading, and an honor to be her opener. I read from a Hard Times Blues story titled "A Song For the Yellow Prince," a Gothic story that has, surprisingly, proven a good read-aloud piece. It's more poetic than my usual stuff, with less dialogue and more mood-setting. This audience and the audience in Chapel Hill dug it. As I get older, I find myself drifting back to my first love, which is poetry. Three of the five stories in HTB are pretty lyrical, and I just got a poem accepted to The Southwestern Review.
Nalo read from her last book, and her upcoming book, and of course it was great. I'm going to have to read her book The Chaos, which, from the excerpt she read, sounds like just that. In a good way. Volcanoes in Toronto and Baba Yaga's house fighting off cops. Very anime. She also read from her new book, which sounded interesting, about twine girls who are raised by their uncle, who is some sort of angel of death.
The audience asked intelligent questions, specific questions, and you could tell they'd read the books. Many of them were teaching these books to college and high school students. Makes me wonder when I'll get to teach a fantasy class.
One person asked the old chestnut, "What is your advice for beginning writers?" Nalo's response (paraphrased): "The fun is in the revision. If you are afraid to write it, it is worth writing. And if you feel a piece is too personal, establish off the bat that you don't have to show it to anybody."
There was also a good question about how she incorporates patois into her work, something I've dealt with myself as a writer. Yes, patois can be alientating to certain readers. She said she never writes it as dialect. Sometimes she'll give an explanation for a term after using it, but rarely, as it breaks the flow. And she will never do footnotes, as people have Google and can look up things. I agree with this. No footnotes. You hear that, Mills College Advanced Writing Workshop? I will not footnote that story! Also, she refuses to itlaicize "foreign" words. It was interesting to see her rationale, as I do write in dialect, and I sometimes italicize in some stories to mark that shift for the reader (though I'm trying to wean myself off of that). Anyway, good reading. +5 points for fantasy.
Afterward, we went to dinner, where everybody was talknig in-depth about Xena and Buffy. I never watched Buffy, but I'm a big Xena fan. I didn't really contribute to the conversation, because I generally don't contribute to conversations. I've always had crippling social anxiety, and being unable to talk to others makes me feel very lonely sometimes, but I find myself content to listen. I really enjoy listening. I enjoy it more than interrupting people when they're in the flow of conversation. I genuinely love hearing the way people talk, how they reinterpret the things they see and experience. On the other hand, I obviously have things to say, so being unable to say them feels confining sometimes. But I digress. Last year I got to introduce Nuruddin Farrah, and this year I opened for Nalo. Spending time around amazing artists is simply my life now, and I would have it no other way.
Hard Times Blues
The ARC for Hard Times Blues is done. Six Gallery is printing out twenty review copies, at a price of $120. The printing company is giving us a deal of 10 for $60. As funds are limited, we have to be pretty selective in the people/places we query. I query for blurbs personally, contacting writers I've read who I feel would appreciate the slipstream nature of my work (not just fantasy writers). Though time-consuming, it's one of the more fun parts of working without an agent, because sometimes they write back! And sometimes they can't take a look at the book, as they are busy, but they're always very gracious about it, and I have to step back and think about how I'm dialoguing with an author I respect, about writing, and that in itself is amazing.
Hard Times Blues is looking nice, by the way. It's shorter than Jack Daniels Sessions, clocking in at 137 pages, with a pretty wide range in length between stories. The longest is a novella, and the shortest is three pages.
Speaking of writing, I'm going to AWP this year. Yay! UL is leading a team there, and I feel up for a vacation to Boston. The workshops look amazing, and there's a good rate for students.
Current projects: The Piper's Christmas Gift, a Christmas card story I've turned into a novella. I think of it as my "pagan Christmas" story. Also editing the audiobook. I'm currently on "How Brother Roy Lost His Dog, Twice."
Next project: Sometimes you have to wonder at serendipity. I have a radio project idea I've been kicking around for almost ten years. It's about a group of anarchists in the year 2003. I anticipate having to do a lot of research to capture the time period.
I was at my dad's place over the holiday, and he asked me to go through a bag o' stuff he had lying around, to see if I wanted to keep any of it. So I go through this bag, and among the Warped Tour photos, anime programs, and various other bits of nostalgia, is a PILE OF NEWSPAPERS from 2003. Pittsburgh local papers I must have gathered in college. I didn't even know I kept papers from back then. It's an archival treasure trove, and I plan on going through every article from The New People, the Post-Gazette, even that college paper The Pitt News in order to prepare.
Also, I signed up pretty late for classes this semester (though on time, thank you very much). A professor got back to me saying he would not have me in his class becasue I'd already missed two meeting and assignments. "What do I do?" I ask the department. You need at least nine credits to keep your assistantship. They tell me I can do dissertation hours, i.e. work on my dissertation for credit. After the initial shock that I'd actually be doing creative writing as part of the UL creative writing program, I felt pretty jazzed to work on my dissertation.
What is my dissertation? You guessed it.
These are what we call "signs." It's safe to say this is a project I have trepidation about starting, as it's so expansive and will involve so much time. I've been putting it off for ten years. In the meantime, I moved between three cities, taught creative writing, graduated two colleges, published two books, and traveled pretty extensively. And this project was always at the back of my mind. The universe is tellnig me it's time to climb this mountain. Here goes.
Summer Tour
Two years ago Christine Stoddard and I ran a kickstarter to raise promo money for our book. We got some cash out of it, and when I met up with her we discussed how best to spend the money. We settled on putting it towards a summer tour through the northeast. Pittsburgh is a definite, of course. DC. Baltimore. Philly. NYC. Boston. Touring is a wonderful time, and exhausting, and something I think I might back away from over the next few years. I've been touring once a year for the last three years. Organizing them takes up so much time and I want to focus more on writing. But if this is my last tour for a while, I want it to be the best, most performative, most ambitious storytelling I've done. Stay tuned, in other words.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Chapter 96: In Which I Expound A Little Bit More on Tour
A lot of people bought merch in Pensacola. Pretty cool. At one point, a fellow was having a conversation with Dziga about Pensacola, a town he described as similar to some other southern city, only "without the blacks."
DZIGA: That's what they say?
DUDE: Yeah.
DZIGA: That's really racist.
I didn't know if it was racist under the circumstance, as I barely caught it, and his perspective towards "without the blacks" can be construed two ways. Either positive, as in the town has less crime and drugs, and other vices stereotyped on blacks. Or negative, as in it physically resembles this other town, but is unwelcoming toward minorities. Dzig pretty much killed that conversation, and lamented the fact that gay white men feel it's okay to say such things to him, imagining he'll agree for some reason.
There was a similarly awkward situation in Savannah, which was as a whole maybe the weirdest night of the tour. First of all, Ben was weirded out by how much it had changed since he went to college there, and how it was gentrified and so many cool people had left. Second, the downtown area itself is strange, as everything is packed together. It feels like the soundstage for some old MGM musical. All the college kids were gone, nobody was out other than some locals, and the place felt sleepy. Third, the crowd was pretty unresponsive. It was a good turnout, and there's certainly no problem with people simply listening, but it was odd to not have the usual back-and-forth of energy. They were so quiet. Also, the room was dimly lit, and the tables were far from the stage. It felt like doing dinner theater or something. My solution to the set-up was to read part of "Assistant" in the audience, walking among the tables. At one point we asked how the audience was doing.
GUY IN THE BACK: Uptight.
RANDOM LADY: Speak for yourself.
Dude. Crazy. But, yeah, good show. The folks at the venue were super cool. Gave us a free meal and a drink. I met this older lady who, when I told her I wrote fantasy, proceeded to talk my ear off about how she loved those old 80s films. Labyrinth, Dark Crystal, Ladyhawke, all the classics. The fellows met these two young ladies who seemed nice enough, and we met up with them at a bar. The kind of spot with a neon-lit counter and a DJ spinning soul records, yet, inexplicably, a death metal show going on upstairs. I'm not nearly as social as Ben and Dzig, and spent my time nursing a hot totty to help with this nasty cold I'd acquired. My energy was flagging, which was unfortunate, as Savannah ended up being the 24-hour party people, never go to sleep, rock star night of the tour. We talked about anarchy and our future plans and the mrits/demerits of putting mellow music on the same bill as death metal, which was what they were doing upstairs. Conversation eventually went to one of these girls asking Dzig if he had a "weakness for Latin flavor," partner-wise.
Oh my god, I'm thinking.
It was interesting to watch, as he very patiently told them that he doesn't consider attraction a "weakness," and tries not to tokenize his partners, and he can't speak to anybody's "flavor" as they're human beings and not ice cream. And both of these girls--both!--instead of admitting she said something problematic, proceed to just dig the hole deeper, talking about how Hispanics are "spicier," and I'm pretty sure at one point one of them screamed, "Gooooooooool!"
Fuck, I thought.
I never thought about how often Latinos get described with food metaphors. Hot. Spicy. Flavor. That's some weird vore shit to me. As these girls weren't my recently-acquired friends, I stayed out of it. Dzig saw it as a "teachable moment," I guess. We went with them to some bar, walking down a succession of Savannah streets that were horror movie empty, and one of them managed to fit in some dumb statement about how easy it is to convert to Judaism, and how she might do that, and no, she did not sound sincere, or cognizant of the fact that she was speaking about a whole ethnicity. That killed the mood.
As I was trying to save my money, I wasn't really drinking. That and I'm wary of getting drunk in strange towns where I'm not sure of my sleeping arrangements. I found it best to stay sober. We hung out at the bar where Jimmy Carter announced his candidacy for president, and were there mad long, and I wanted to go sleep, or kill myself, whichever was easiest at the time. I just wasn't up for a pub crawl. We left at, like, 12:30, and the girls hung out with some other guys, and we met up with Ben's friend who worked at the pizza parlor. This pizza parlor was also, of course, where we ate dinner earlier. He offered us a place to crash. I called it a night and slept a few hours in his loft apartment, while the other two cats continued their bar crawl. I woke up in the middle of the night with extreme acid reflux, despite the fact I barely drank anything. In the morning we went to the Waffle House. It turned out that Ben and Dzig had stayed up another two or three hours, during which they injured Dziga's hand play-fighting in the street. We big goodbye to Savannah. The lesson: you can't go home again. Or something like that.
DZIGA: That's what they say?
DUDE: Yeah.
DZIGA: That's really racist.
I didn't know if it was racist under the circumstance, as I barely caught it, and his perspective towards "without the blacks" can be construed two ways. Either positive, as in the town has less crime and drugs, and other vices stereotyped on blacks. Or negative, as in it physically resembles this other town, but is unwelcoming toward minorities. Dzig pretty much killed that conversation, and lamented the fact that gay white men feel it's okay to say such things to him, imagining he'll agree for some reason.
There was a similarly awkward situation in Savannah, which was as a whole maybe the weirdest night of the tour. First of all, Ben was weirded out by how much it had changed since he went to college there, and how it was gentrified and so many cool people had left. Second, the downtown area itself is strange, as everything is packed together. It feels like the soundstage for some old MGM musical. All the college kids were gone, nobody was out other than some locals, and the place felt sleepy. Third, the crowd was pretty unresponsive. It was a good turnout, and there's certainly no problem with people simply listening, but it was odd to not have the usual back-and-forth of energy. They were so quiet. Also, the room was dimly lit, and the tables were far from the stage. It felt like doing dinner theater or something. My solution to the set-up was to read part of "Assistant" in the audience, walking among the tables. At one point we asked how the audience was doing.
GUY IN THE BACK: Uptight.
RANDOM LADY: Speak for yourself.
Dude. Crazy. But, yeah, good show. The folks at the venue were super cool. Gave us a free meal and a drink. I met this older lady who, when I told her I wrote fantasy, proceeded to talk my ear off about how she loved those old 80s films. Labyrinth, Dark Crystal, Ladyhawke, all the classics. The fellows met these two young ladies who seemed nice enough, and we met up with them at a bar. The kind of spot with a neon-lit counter and a DJ spinning soul records, yet, inexplicably, a death metal show going on upstairs. I'm not nearly as social as Ben and Dzig, and spent my time nursing a hot totty to help with this nasty cold I'd acquired. My energy was flagging, which was unfortunate, as Savannah ended up being the 24-hour party people, never go to sleep, rock star night of the tour. We talked about anarchy and our future plans and the mrits/demerits of putting mellow music on the same bill as death metal, which was what they were doing upstairs. Conversation eventually went to one of these girls asking Dzig if he had a "weakness for Latin flavor," partner-wise.
Oh my god, I'm thinking.
It was interesting to watch, as he very patiently told them that he doesn't consider attraction a "weakness," and tries not to tokenize his partners, and he can't speak to anybody's "flavor" as they're human beings and not ice cream. And both of these girls--both!--instead of admitting she said something problematic, proceed to just dig the hole deeper, talking about how Hispanics are "spicier," and I'm pretty sure at one point one of them screamed, "Gooooooooool!"
Fuck, I thought.
I never thought about how often Latinos get described with food metaphors. Hot. Spicy. Flavor. That's some weird vore shit to me. As these girls weren't my recently-acquired friends, I stayed out of it. Dzig saw it as a "teachable moment," I guess. We went with them to some bar, walking down a succession of Savannah streets that were horror movie empty, and one of them managed to fit in some dumb statement about how easy it is to convert to Judaism, and how she might do that, and no, she did not sound sincere, or cognizant of the fact that she was speaking about a whole ethnicity. That killed the mood.
As I was trying to save my money, I wasn't really drinking. That and I'm wary of getting drunk in strange towns where I'm not sure of my sleeping arrangements. I found it best to stay sober. We hung out at the bar where Jimmy Carter announced his candidacy for president, and were there mad long, and I wanted to go sleep, or kill myself, whichever was easiest at the time. I just wasn't up for a pub crawl. We left at, like, 12:30, and the girls hung out with some other guys, and we met up with Ben's friend who worked at the pizza parlor. This pizza parlor was also, of course, where we ate dinner earlier. He offered us a place to crash. I called it a night and slept a few hours in his loft apartment, while the other two cats continued their bar crawl. I woke up in the middle of the night with extreme acid reflux, despite the fact I barely drank anything. In the morning we went to the Waffle House. It turned out that Ben and Dzig had stayed up another two or three hours, during which they injured Dziga's hand play-fighting in the street. We big goodbye to Savannah. The lesson: you can't go home again. Or something like that.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Chapter 95: In Which I Expound a Little More on Tour
I realize the tour updates stopped around my exciting trip to see The Hobbit. That's because I got sick in Pensacola, and by the time we finally chilled in Athens, I was bedridden. Tour colds certainly happen, though I got my butt out of bed for every reading, thank you very much. Our Pensacola reading was better-attended than I could have hoped for, especially for such a muggy day, and much love to the organizers for getting the word out. The space was also just a cool radical spot, with all their sales going to the local Books to Prisons. Ben and Dziga were on point, as usual. I did a cold reading of "Dead Teenagers," which is an intense story to just start reading the middle of in front of strangers. I don't know if it went over too well, honestly, but it was worth a short. Super receptive audience, overall.
Afterward, we hung out with some established Pensacola punks. The kind with jobs and kids. We caught pizza at this restaurant that was in the basement of an old insane asylum. The upper floors were supposedly like a horror movie set, with gurneys and wheelchairs and cells. The middle floors were also pretty scary; rooms rented out to artists, filled with surreal paintings of puppy dogs. Or so I'm told, as a description of the place was enough to keep me downstairs, drinking my beer. A trip to the bathroom was enpugh to creep me out. WHY IS THERE A CELL WITH BARS IN THE BATHROOM?!? Needless to say, this old spot was a popular hangout for the Pensacola punks we were rolling with, back in their youth. One of the guys had this super-cute kid named Ignacius, who showed Dziga his karate moves. The walls of the pizza joint were covered in pictures of pizza slices that little kids could color with decorations. About a third of them were from kids, but most were done by adults. I liked the Kimbo Slice (decorated to look like the famed backyard brawler) and the Vanilla Slice (decorated to look like the reviled rapper). But the absolute best was the two slices put together and made into a Spy vs. Spy drawing. It looked just like something out of Mad Magazine. I wish I took a picture. Ben made his slice into a mutant monster pizza slice threatening New York or some such city. The waitress loved it, and put it up, and told us how she was constantly having to take down stuff like Slutty Slice and Crackhead Slice.
Speaking of pizza, our breakfast dinner itinerary was literally Waffle House in the morning and pizza in the evening. At every stop. That is not an exaggeration. Ben and Dziga love diners and pizza.
The folks we crashed with were cool. They lived in a real-ass punk apartment, filled with all sorts of monster movie and serial killer and vampire ephemera. I opted out of drinking beer until dawn with everybody else, as we had to drive and all. I will be honest: I wasn't too jazzed about sleeping on a couch with no blanket, my face buried in a Chester Cheetah pillow, while some random goth dude in a Skinny Puppy shirt decides the best course of action is blare his industrial music at two in the morning. I woke up sick and not rested at all. But you don't slag people who show you hospitality, so I won't. Just, y'know, it was two in the morning.
We left at noon for Athens, but didn't factor in the time change. Ben drove pretty much the whole way. We didn't factor in the time change and ended up rolling into Athens an hour late and reeking. We needed showers badly. The Athens reading, which was in a bar, was small but good. I read part of "Assistant." We hurried through it, as we were already late, and we had to clear by 8 so a band could set up (band didn't show up until 10, by the way). Athens is a gorgeous little town, filled with all sorts of boutiques and shops, and the college kids were out in full force, serenading us with arbly renditions of "Kiss From a Rose" at the karaoke bar.
The lady hosting us was, I believe, an Anthropology PhD, the wife of one of Ben and Dzig's friends in New Orleans. We had pizza with some Anthro majors. Two of Dzig's friends--a couple who lived in Athens--came to the reading, and I overheard them telling him about how they watched wrestling, and how Vince McMahon is an amoral scumbag, and the hilarious faces he made during his wife's concession speech after she lost the Connecticut senate race, and blew $90 million of his money.
And this shit is hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2BXtzC6fMI. Oh my god, look at Vince's face! The big, tragic sigh is gold. The eyeroll is gold. But I think my favorite part is Shame McMahon on the side, trying hard not to bust a gut at his dad. They literally wasted $90 million of their personal money. Hilarious.
And thank Zeus, Hera, and Demeter she lost. Can you imagine that old carny Vince having a hand in politics? Sometimes prayers are answered.
But I digress. I heard them talking about wrestling and had to jump in with: "OHMIGOD I LOVE RASSLIN! THE AMERICAN DREAM DUTH-TAY RHODES! RICK FLAIR! THE FOUR HORSEMEN! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Then me and this dude tag teamed telling Dzig the last thirty years of pro wrestling history.
Best part of the night, hands down.
More reminiscences soon.
Afterward, we hung out with some established Pensacola punks. The kind with jobs and kids. We caught pizza at this restaurant that was in the basement of an old insane asylum. The upper floors were supposedly like a horror movie set, with gurneys and wheelchairs and cells. The middle floors were also pretty scary; rooms rented out to artists, filled with surreal paintings of puppy dogs. Or so I'm told, as a description of the place was enough to keep me downstairs, drinking my beer. A trip to the bathroom was enpugh to creep me out. WHY IS THERE A CELL WITH BARS IN THE BATHROOM?!? Needless to say, this old spot was a popular hangout for the Pensacola punks we were rolling with, back in their youth. One of the guys had this super-cute kid named Ignacius, who showed Dziga his karate moves. The walls of the pizza joint were covered in pictures of pizza slices that little kids could color with decorations. About a third of them were from kids, but most were done by adults. I liked the Kimbo Slice (decorated to look like the famed backyard brawler) and the Vanilla Slice (decorated to look like the reviled rapper). But the absolute best was the two slices put together and made into a Spy vs. Spy drawing. It looked just like something out of Mad Magazine. I wish I took a picture. Ben made his slice into a mutant monster pizza slice threatening New York or some such city. The waitress loved it, and put it up, and told us how she was constantly having to take down stuff like Slutty Slice and Crackhead Slice.
Speaking of pizza, our breakfast dinner itinerary was literally Waffle House in the morning and pizza in the evening. At every stop. That is not an exaggeration. Ben and Dziga love diners and pizza.
The folks we crashed with were cool. They lived in a real-ass punk apartment, filled with all sorts of monster movie and serial killer and vampire ephemera. I opted out of drinking beer until dawn with everybody else, as we had to drive and all. I will be honest: I wasn't too jazzed about sleeping on a couch with no blanket, my face buried in a Chester Cheetah pillow, while some random goth dude in a Skinny Puppy shirt decides the best course of action is blare his industrial music at two in the morning. I woke up sick and not rested at all. But you don't slag people who show you hospitality, so I won't. Just, y'know, it was two in the morning.
We left at noon for Athens, but didn't factor in the time change. Ben drove pretty much the whole way. We didn't factor in the time change and ended up rolling into Athens an hour late and reeking. We needed showers badly. The Athens reading, which was in a bar, was small but good. I read part of "Assistant." We hurried through it, as we were already late, and we had to clear by 8 so a band could set up (band didn't show up until 10, by the way). Athens is a gorgeous little town, filled with all sorts of boutiques and shops, and the college kids were out in full force, serenading us with arbly renditions of "Kiss From a Rose" at the karaoke bar.
The lady hosting us was, I believe, an Anthropology PhD, the wife of one of Ben and Dzig's friends in New Orleans. We had pizza with some Anthro majors. Two of Dzig's friends--a couple who lived in Athens--came to the reading, and I overheard them telling him about how they watched wrestling, and how Vince McMahon is an amoral scumbag, and the hilarious faces he made during his wife's concession speech after she lost the Connecticut senate race, and blew $90 million of his money.
And this shit is hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2BXtzC6fMI. Oh my god, look at Vince's face! The big, tragic sigh is gold. The eyeroll is gold. But I think my favorite part is Shame McMahon on the side, trying hard not to bust a gut at his dad. They literally wasted $90 million of their personal money. Hilarious.
And thank Zeus, Hera, and Demeter she lost. Can you imagine that old carny Vince having a hand in politics? Sometimes prayers are answered.
But I digress. I heard them talking about wrestling and had to jump in with: "OHMIGOD I LOVE RASSLIN! THE AMERICAN DREAM DUTH-TAY RHODES! RICK FLAIR! THE FOUR HORSEMEN! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Then me and this dude tag teamed telling Dzig the last thirty years of pro wrestling history.
Best part of the night, hands down.
More reminiscences soon.
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