This is the only time I’ve ever really delved into a serious photo series. I used to shoot black and white film on a Minolta X-300, but that was for fun. The idea for this series came about after the housing bubble burst. People were desperate. I tried to call attention to this.
Enjoy the gallery. These prints are available in the Art for Sale section.
The days no longer really seem to have a beginning, middle and end. More like each day just feels like returning to interrupted, previously scheduled programming. I think any semblance of a regular schedule evaporated yesterday. Still can’t really be creative, but I did burn through Don DeLillo’s novel, White Noise. Truly a masterpiece of contemporary American fiction. The dude called it. And he could see why something like this was coming. I guess you have to be able to see the warning signs in order to predict the future. Otherwise, it’s just a guess. So now I’ve turned to reading The Plague, by Albert Camus, for the third or fourth time. I’m really bummed that I can’t get my hands on the new translation by Robin Buss. I’ve heard good things about it. If only I had a can of lilac-colored spray paint, I could get to work on that painting in the studio.
April Snow
The neighborhood is adorned with dog shit
dead leaves, ugly snow
what we want
what we get
It’s fifty-two
degrees I will walk my fear of death
up to the corner of Michigan & Clematis
& abandon it
like an unwanted pet
Like a hungry stray
it follows me home
It pains me
to stack the days
unread
books on a nightstand next to our bed
so we can refer to them
occasionally
while the sun parts
two clouds &
spits
—spring, 2006
Photo credit: Kierstyn Lamour
I am not a slam poet, or a spoken word poet, but I truly believe that all systems of poetry are generally meant to be heard. “Some Truths” straddles genres a bit, I guess: part page poem, a bit of spoken word. When I write page poem, I mean that the way the poem looks on the page was important in its construction.
I hope you enjoy it. It was originally published in an e-chap called Pure Pop which was put out by Revelator Press (many thanks to those folks forever). Coming to yoursilentface.com soon.
For now, some truths.
I’ve been listening to a lot of music during the quarantine. It really helps me. Music has always helped. But I’m not a musician.
Today, Pete Martens and I are unveiling Get the Balance Ri-i-ght: A Post-Punk Playlist. It’s enormous! Over 600 songs! Over 46 hours of that Golden Age of post-punk music.
Enjoy! Share! Follow!
Maybe you need a decent 80s New Wave playlist to listen to during these abnormal days. Pete Martens and I curated this one (Red Skies at Night) together. It’s a lot of fun to approach creating a Spotify playlist the same way you might approach curating a thematic group art exhibition. Pete, by the way, is a talented painter and printmaker.
A strange time to be launching a new website, to be sure. I hope it provides a welcomed distraction for a minute or two.
Here are six novelists who have influenced my writing: Marguerite Duras, John Fante, Reinaldo Arenas, Robert Coover, J.D. Salinger and Walker Percy. I think when I write, I’m often trying to create a narrator as compelling as a Salinger character, a narrator with the emotion of a Fante character. I think I try to create the depth of a Walker Percy character (using my own insights, of course). I strive for the economy and solemnity of Marguerite Duras, even though my natural inclination is to tell too much, and to continue telling it. Reinaldo Arenas helped me realize that it can be okay to experiment with different genres within a novel, that a novel can mean different things. Reading Robert Coover encouraged me to stop taking myself so seriously, and helped me realize that there can be something very serious about that approach.
