What’s left to be said about 2020 that has not already been articulated?
DespiteI managed to write 33 new poems (and have 12 published or accepted for future publication; including 4 different anthologies), and wrote 4 new short stories (and had 3 older ones published). I’ve dialed back, by choice, my music/movie criticism, and channeled a great deal of that thought and energy into an ongoing project. As such, I’m thrilled to share that my first collection of poetry, THE BLACKENED BLUES, will be published this summer by the good folks at Finishing Line Press. (Much) more on that, soon!
I remember reading a disturbing piece about the science behind sports-related concussions (and how, a little more than 10 years ago, the NFL was –predictably– doing everything it could to deny, cover up, and obfuscate), and saw many more good non-fiction pieces as the evidence of cause and effect (including hockey, etc.) became increasingly impossible to ignore. But a couple of years ago I read a devastating piece (I think in Esquire?) about a teenager dealing with profound concussion symptoms, and it was heartbreaking to think about non-retired, non-rich athletes having their lives impacted, or even ruined.
And what do you do when the “bad guy” is sports, something so many love, and everyone who plays does so with joy and free will? It got me to thinking, which led to this short story “That’s Why God Made Men” (which is also the title of a collection I’ve been working on the last few years). I’ll resist pointing out the irony that it goes live the week of Super Bowl, but shout out sincere gratitude to Porter House Review for publishing it. Cheers and support our literary journals!)
Gratitude to Arkana for publishing my story “Red State Sewer Side” this summer. I had the opportunity to answer some questions as part of their Contributor Spotlight, and here’s how I described this story as part of an ongoing project:
I’ve noted that the batch of short stories I’ve written these last few years feature people and perspectives far outside my scope of lived experience, with characters (older widowed men, mothers, younger boys) I can’t claim to represent with authority. But they are informed by a repeated pattern and habit of reading, writing, and observing. And not just eyewitness appraisals of day-to-day life, but an active and ongoing dive into what’s happening—on the surface and beneath the façade; so that politics and history are inseparable from motivation. And there’s a common thread, which some of us were taught to find and deconstruct during grad school, that might better illustrate how people in different times or places have common (and in some instances, very different) desires or fears or obsessions.
More about that story as well as its origins and some additional reflections.
Thanks, once again, to the great team at Exterminating Angel for allowing me in another issue with another group of great writers; it remains a pleasure and honor (only more so) to be included in the mix. This very short piece was originally inspired by a Mad Men marathon, tweaked on and off for a few years, and now seems at once forward-looking and old-fashioned, circa our current socio-political apocalypse.
Here, in full, is the (short) short, “Anodyne Ever After.”
Everything old is new again.
Take me for instance. Every day that passes I’m older, yet eternally new. Every night more of you have joined me, yet I’m still near the end of a line I can scarcely trace. There are so many former somebodys up here you could work the front room and be in there forever.
I used to think it would be paradise to do away with earthly things, nirvana to never comb my hair or clean my teeth or move my bowels. Now I’d give anything to shampoo sweat from my scalp or stub my toe or spend a sick day fighting off a bout of food poisoning.
There’s only one thing worse than being busy and that’s being bored. The only thing more frightening than fear is uniformity. Being immortal is, above all things, anodyne. And so I find myself fondly recalling many of the things I liked least back when I counted myself amongst the scarcely-living: stuck in another senseless meeting, or stalled on the subway, at a business lunch with no appetite and nothing to talk about, prostrate during a dental exam. Not only did I never savor any of these occasions, I detested them. But during the worst moments of an ill-lived life I was still alive: I could smell, I could taste, I could suffer.
Speaking of suffering, I miss being cold, I miss being scared, I miss falling in or out of love.
Most of all I miss drinking.
The only ones who don’t are the idiots who never tried it or the suckers who couldn’t do it right. The secret is to enjoy it almost as much as you enjoy life: too little and it’s insufficient, too much and you’re out to sea. You can savor food but so can animals. You might feel inspired by music but we see things up here that make mortal aspirations seem silly. Passions? They only die in the end, like everything else. Alcohol is the one invention that was perfected by humans and can’t be improved upon by the gods. They say the gods gave us wine but a million stained toes tell a different tale. Nature may have put corn in the fields but human nature understood how to distill it to become greater than the sum of its stalks. Getting just one lifetime, especially an abbreviated one, to figure it out, to understand what we’ll be missing, is the cruelest prank anyone ever pulled. And when I finally get to the front of this line, that’s the first thing I’m going to say.
Everything old is new again.
Look at them, all these self-satisfied consumers rediscovering drinks we thought we’d concocted. We used to imbibe not for amusement but to oil our engines, to fortify our infested souls. Bloodshot eyes weren’t a badge of honor; they were the price of admission. We perceived how little we knew and that’s why we struggled. It’s also why we mattered. We endured as best we could, but it was never fun and it was never fashionable. So what do I think when I see people ordering Old Fashioneds and thinking it’s nostalgic? It makes me wish I was alive for one more day. I miss my Manhattan: my city, my drink, my self. My worst mistake was thinking I wouldn’t live forever. How are these fools going to appreciate what they no longer have one day if they don’t understand it now?
Everything new gets old.
Except up here. We have however long it takes to decipher what we might have done differently. And what’s the point if we never get another chance? At least when some of these people join me I can explain a thing or two to them. Maybe they’ll listen; maybe I can help. Or maybe they won’t miss being human because they happened to cherish it the first time around.
And then the poems.
I’m honored to have my poem “Bud Powell’s Brain” included in the new anthology Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era. Click here to read Bud Powell’s Brain.
Also honored to appear in the anthology Written in Arlington, which showcases the poets and poems of Arlington, Virginia.. Here’s my poem “Memorial Day.”
One enters writing contests the same way one plays the lottery: with hope but no real expectation. I was, therefore, surprised and delighted to be awarded 2nd Prize in Bethesda Urban Partnership’s 2020 Poetry Contest. (As it happens, the poem in question, “Notes from Underground,” hits uncomfortably close to reality right now, but perhaps that’s not entirely coincidental.)
This poem reflects a love of jazz, and sadness at how many geniuses –who made some of the best music in human history– walked amongst us, unrecognized, impoverished, and dispossessed by a society that neither understood nor appreciated them. The same society we see alive and unwell all around us, today. Click here to read Notes from Underground.
Peregrination, from the always-excellent Exterminating Angel Press.
So……it was at once a challenge and opportunity to interrogate this ostensibly benign sentiment in the context of our world, circa 2021. It’s an honor contributing to the latest issue of Voice Male Magazine, and riff, in counterpoint, off of Clifford Thompson’s essay, “Wonderful Worlds.” Couple of things: if you only know Louis Armstrong because of his ebullient and impossible to not love rendition of “What a Wonderful World,” you may be pleasantly surprised to discover what a hot trumpet player he was in his early days; also, it seems impossible to separate this song from the myriad movie soundtracks it has appeared in. What a Wonderful World?
John Coltrane’s Cancer. I’ve written a ton about John Coltrane, easily one of my all-time sources of light, love, and inspiration. But to tackle such a giant, creatively? It’s part of a project I’ve spent the last few years working on (more on that soon), and it’s been at once challenging and gratifying to celebrate (and interrogate) many of our cultural legends, many of whom should be household names but, sadly, are not. I’m extra grateful to Jerry Jazz Musician (a site and resource for jazz aficionados I heartily endorse) for publishing this tribute to John Coltrane in their autumn edition.
Once again in Jerry Jazz, this time for “Thelonious Monk’s Moods.”
From Nine Cloud Journal: We Were Too Young to be That Old.
And last but not least, thanks to Rough Cut Press for publishing “Why the Car Horn is a Perfect Metaphor for Capitalism.”
It’s always jarring Especially
In calm moments Of reflection.
That unambiguous blast Preempting
All possibility of peace Or resolution,
Aggression the entirety Of its purpose.
Giving the aggrieved Impetus:
This self-expression Without words.
As such, it’s impossible To rationalize.
But then we find ourselves Back
In the reality of our routines Grateful
That we can rely on this Perfection.
A mechanism existing for Asseveration
Like this: unassailable and Self-contained.
Illimitable trial and error Endured
For us to maturate this Miracle.
Finally, a couple of tributes.
In October, we lost the great Eddie Van Halen.
When it comes to Eddie Van Halen, we are talking about an artist everyone would agree was, through the typical combination of hard work, good fortune and inexplicable gifts, a once-in-a-generation type of talent.
And no one is going to deny that Van Halen set a new standard in terms of its influence (and not only on every other band going forward, but Van Halen itself).
Whether he squandered subsequent decades and a great amount of his gifts is debatable (hint: he did), but what he did for that first string of albums, from ’78 to ’84, is unassailable, inhuman. The world kept spinning after he put his guitar down, but everything after is in his shadow, in his debt.
Read the rest of the tribute, here.
Beethoven at 250.
Aside from the two other points in the eternal triangle, Bach and Mozart, has any artist contained such multitudes, expressed so much in ways that are ceaselessly challenging and rewarding? Maybe Shakespeare? Perhaps Hendrix or Coltrane had they been given more time? Suffice it to say, the list is exceedingly short, and while it’s a fool’s errand to single out one human being, I have no problem putting Beethoven at the top of the list. (Maybe because, or despite the fact that I’m a writer, I believe even the most profound and inventive writing ultimately suffers when compared to the best music; it’s like comparing vast oceans to infinite galaxies).
How to summarize such an output? How to get a handle on the scope of this achievement?
If the symphonies are novels, the operas screenplays, the concertos and quartets short stories, the piano sonatas are poems. One human being, one instrument: an entire universe of feeling and emotion. I would never want to be forced to choose what represents Beethoven’s “best” work (although the 3rd and 5th piano concertos would be impossible to dispense with, the late string quartets, of course, plus the 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 8th symphonies, all the overtures, and so on).
It’s with the heft of a full, engaged orchestra behind him that Beethoven seems most godlike, each individual instrument another arrow in his quiver (or cannon in his artillery); it is while conducting—or even composing—these sweeping masterworks that we envision the stern, mercurial, heroic genius gazing down at us mere mortals. For me, it’s the sonatas that reveal Beethoven at his most human, not merely because it’s just him and a piano, but his mind and the creative tension and exploration of the at once limited and limitless sounds those keys can make.
More on the great Ludwig Van, here.
