Still wrestling with a DSL connection that intermittently flakes out without warning. Bear with me, please, as I try to catch up as best I can. I love computers, but I hate them, you know?
* * * * *
Meanwhile, a reading announcement: I'll be the featured reader at the Writers' Center of Indiana (in Indianapolis) in their "Evening with the Muse" series, coming up on Sunday, August 9 at 7 pm. The reading is free, and will be followed by an open mic and light refreshments. If you're in the neighborhood, please do stop by!
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Technical difficulties
We interrupt your regularly scheduled Land Mammal for this bulletin: My DSL is misbehaving and I can't make it work. I'm doing my bestest to drag the laptop out to Starbucks/Soma/Panera/the library and use wi-fi every so often, but for the next few days I'm afraid responses to email, facebook, blog comments, etc. will be slow at best.
I hope to be back up to speed soon -- got a technician scheduled to come out on Tuesday.
I hate computers. Phbt.
I hope to be back up to speed soon -- got a technician scheduled to come out on Tuesday.
I hate computers. Phbt.
Monday, July 20, 2009
I live by the river
Just because I've been watching this over & over this evening and sharing it everywhere else, I'll share it with y'all too. Here is Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band about 3 weeks ago, with their opening number at the Hard Rock Calling festival in London. Yes, they're covering the Clash, and doing an extremely creditable job of it too. If this doesn't put a big grin on your face, you have no rock & roll in your soul. LOVE. THIS. Love this so much.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
On self-confidence and suckage
So I spent a good chunk of time this weekend poking and prodding at my new manuscript. Just about every time I read through it I pull out a poem or two; slowly but surely it's coming down to fighting weight. On the last pass through it this afternoon I pulled out 3 pages and put in one new one. I made slight revisions to a whole bunch of poems, and finally rewrote a last line that had been driving me crazy (thank you, Carl Phillips, for teaching me how to see into the architecture of a poem & hear the underlying rhyme and meter even when there isn't any).
And then I emailed the first two (of three) people who've agreed to read the thing, and asked them if they're ready for it. Which is a big step, in a way. These poems are all pretty new, by inclusion-in-manuscript standards; the very oldest of them date back to April of last year. I usually sit on poems for several months at the very least before sending them out anywhere, and most of my two- to three-year-old poems still feel brand spanking new to me. So although I've done a lot of intensive work on this manuscript & on the poems in it, I don't feel like I have that much perspective on it yet. In other words... I can't guarantee with 100% certainty that the thing doesn't basically suck.
Now, I don't think it probably sucks. I am certain that it's imperfect; I'm open to the possibility that it may be deeply flawed. The thing I know for certain is: it's too new for me to have perspective on it. I'm a little in love with the thing, and like any shiny new love, I'm probably blind to both its true virtue and its true failings.
So what I posted on Facebook was, "Yikes! What if it completely sucks?" Which is really shorthand for all of the above. And of course, a couple of friends immediately rushed in to assure me that it couldn't suck, etc. And my reaction to this reassurance was interesting to me. (Why, yes, I'm a Gemini; I react to something with one part of my brain even as I'm observing my own reaction with another. What, doesn't everybody do that?) Because what I thought was, hey, it might suck -- and if it does, so what? I'll just write something else. And I like thinking that way. I like it a lot.
See, early on in my writing life, I had to fight the "OMG what if I write something and it sucks?" paralysis, just like everyone does. And like most people do, I fought it by consciously bolstering my own confidence. I told myself that no, what I was writing didn't suck, that I had the right to write what I was writing, that my voice deserved to be heard. And that was pretty difficult at first. That took me some years, actually, but I finally got there, finally got around to believing that maybe I do have some degree of talent as a writer, that maybe some of my poems are not too shabby. Getting published helped. Getting positive feedback from peers and from teachers helped. Mostly, just doing a whole lot of reading and a whole lot of writing helped.
But now, you know what? Sometimes I write a draft and it's a dead end, it isn't going anywhere, it basically ... sucks. That shouldn't shock anybody. There isn't a poet alive, and probably no dead ones either, who can claim that every word that falls out of them is priceless or whatever. There may be some who believe that of themselves, but they're wrong. *grin* And if I write something and it sucks? So what. I've developed enough confidence over the years to believe that I can leave the sucky draft behind and write something else. Hell, even Roger Federer makes unforced errors in every match, and he just shrugs them off and moves on to the next point. If he let every error get to him, he'd probably just fall apart and never win another match.
Natalie Goldberg (I think -- or was it Anne Lamott?) has written about embracing your own willingness to write "shitty first drafts," and William Stafford wrote about "lowering your standards" as the key to writing prolifically. And you know what? They're right. Not only that, but if you fail, sometimes it's because you are taking risks that ultimately move your work forward. That doesn't mean the failed drafts are any good; they probably suck. Suckage doesn't mean they aren't useful to your process. Write them without censoring yourself; realize they suck; learn from them; move on. That's one way to get better at this writing stuff. It's probably not the only way, but it's the way that works for me.
It seems to me there are two ways to defeat the internal censor -- you know, the one that stops you from writing. One is to hear that little voice that says "this sucks" and to out-shout it with a confident and hearty "Does not! Does not! Does not!" The other is to hear the "this sucks" voice and to quietly say back, "So?" and keep on writing. I think maybe it takes some time and experience to develop this second method, to find the confidence to allow the "this sucks" voice its truth and yet at the same time to disempower it. Maybe this is advanced poetry jiu-jitsu, or something. Or maybe it's just advanced denial. Whatever; it works for me, right now.
And maybe this manuscript does suck. It probably doesn't, but if it does, so what? I'll either fix it, or write another. I've learned a lot from writing it. I've worked hard, and I've had fun. And no matter what, there will be more poems where these came from. To me, that's what it means to be self-confident as a writer: to be okay with failing now and then, knowing that there's more. Because there's always more.
And once you know that, the possibilities are endless.
And then I emailed the first two (of three) people who've agreed to read the thing, and asked them if they're ready for it. Which is a big step, in a way. These poems are all pretty new, by inclusion-in-manuscript standards; the very oldest of them date back to April of last year. I usually sit on poems for several months at the very least before sending them out anywhere, and most of my two- to three-year-old poems still feel brand spanking new to me. So although I've done a lot of intensive work on this manuscript & on the poems in it, I don't feel like I have that much perspective on it yet. In other words... I can't guarantee with 100% certainty that the thing doesn't basically suck.
Now, I don't think it probably sucks. I am certain that it's imperfect; I'm open to the possibility that it may be deeply flawed. The thing I know for certain is: it's too new for me to have perspective on it. I'm a little in love with the thing, and like any shiny new love, I'm probably blind to both its true virtue and its true failings.
So what I posted on Facebook was, "Yikes! What if it completely sucks?" Which is really shorthand for all of the above. And of course, a couple of friends immediately rushed in to assure me that it couldn't suck, etc. And my reaction to this reassurance was interesting to me. (Why, yes, I'm a Gemini; I react to something with one part of my brain even as I'm observing my own reaction with another. What, doesn't everybody do that?) Because what I thought was, hey, it might suck -- and if it does, so what? I'll just write something else. And I like thinking that way. I like it a lot.
See, early on in my writing life, I had to fight the "OMG what if I write something and it sucks?" paralysis, just like everyone does. And like most people do, I fought it by consciously bolstering my own confidence. I told myself that no, what I was writing didn't suck, that I had the right to write what I was writing, that my voice deserved to be heard. And that was pretty difficult at first. That took me some years, actually, but I finally got there, finally got around to believing that maybe I do have some degree of talent as a writer, that maybe some of my poems are not too shabby. Getting published helped. Getting positive feedback from peers and from teachers helped. Mostly, just doing a whole lot of reading and a whole lot of writing helped.
But now, you know what? Sometimes I write a draft and it's a dead end, it isn't going anywhere, it basically ... sucks. That shouldn't shock anybody. There isn't a poet alive, and probably no dead ones either, who can claim that every word that falls out of them is priceless or whatever. There may be some who believe that of themselves, but they're wrong. *grin* And if I write something and it sucks? So what. I've developed enough confidence over the years to believe that I can leave the sucky draft behind and write something else. Hell, even Roger Federer makes unforced errors in every match, and he just shrugs them off and moves on to the next point. If he let every error get to him, he'd probably just fall apart and never win another match.
Natalie Goldberg (I think -- or was it Anne Lamott?) has written about embracing your own willingness to write "shitty first drafts," and William Stafford wrote about "lowering your standards" as the key to writing prolifically. And you know what? They're right. Not only that, but if you fail, sometimes it's because you are taking risks that ultimately move your work forward. That doesn't mean the failed drafts are any good; they probably suck. Suckage doesn't mean they aren't useful to your process. Write them without censoring yourself; realize they suck; learn from them; move on. That's one way to get better at this writing stuff. It's probably not the only way, but it's the way that works for me.
It seems to me there are two ways to defeat the internal censor -- you know, the one that stops you from writing. One is to hear that little voice that says "this sucks" and to out-shout it with a confident and hearty "Does not! Does not! Does not!" The other is to hear the "this sucks" voice and to quietly say back, "So?" and keep on writing. I think maybe it takes some time and experience to develop this second method, to find the confidence to allow the "this sucks" voice its truth and yet at the same time to disempower it. Maybe this is advanced poetry jiu-jitsu, or something. Or maybe it's just advanced denial. Whatever; it works for me, right now.
And maybe this manuscript does suck. It probably doesn't, but if it does, so what? I'll either fix it, or write another. I've learned a lot from writing it. I've worked hard, and I've had fun. And no matter what, there will be more poems where these came from. To me, that's what it means to be self-confident as a writer: to be okay with failing now and then, knowing that there's more. Because there's always more.
And once you know that, the possibilities are endless.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Low high; hi!
It's been cool and cloudy today and, honestly, really lovely. I don't think the temperature even hit 70 degrees all day. In Indianapolis, the record "low high temperature" was set over 100 years ago at 75, and they probably broke that record today. I know climate change is probably to blame for this, but I confess I've been enjoying it immensely.
I've returned safe & sound from the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago (attendance, including registrants and exhibitors, totaled 28,941 - this conference could eat AWP for lunch and still be hungry!). While an unfortunate amount of my time was eaten up on the shuttle buses between my hotel and McCormick Place, I attended some interesting sessions, met a few people, saw some cool stuff in the exhibits, and picked up some great freebies - notably the free frothy coffee drinks from ProQuest (I hit that line three or four times) and a free copy of Rachel Zucker's forthcoming book, Museum of Accidents (out from Wave in, I think, October). I got to hear Zucker read, which was great fun, and chatted with her for a minute at her book-signing; I also got to hear Jane Hirshfield (but didn't go to her book-signing because it conflicted with Rachel Zucker's reading - I already have Hirshfield's newest book anyway) and Sherman Alexie (didn't go to his signing either, as the line was about 980300198 people long - librarians love them some Sherman Alexie! - but did snag a copy of the bound excerpt from his forthcoming book that they were handing out). Other very popular book-signers included Judy Blume (who I gawked at for a minute) and Neil Gaiman.
Besides that, and besides getting together with Sara for a bite and some drinks & good conversation on Friday evening (yay!), the conference pretty much took me entirely out of poetry-brain for a full week. I'd taken my new manuscript with me, knowing I'd have the option of at least one or two quiet evenings in my hotel room and thinking I'd take advantage of the marauding-cat-free space to spread out pages all over the floor & juggle them a bit, but I found I didn't even have the -- what, ability? willingness? mental sharpness? -- to read poems, much less write them or fiddle with them.
It was a relatively interesting conference, & gave me some good food for thought especially regarding some of the technology trends that are going to affect how libraries serve their users (I really, really want to play with Google Wave now), & helped me get a little clearer understanding of how what I do on a day-to-day basis fits into the larger world of library work. So, that's good. All in all, I have to say AWP is way more fun. But ALA was worth my time. And I had an incredible view from my hotel room; I stayed at the Holiday Inn Mart Plaza, up on the 19th floor of the Merchandise Mart, & to the west I had a clear view all the way to the broad sweep of the horizon, directly below/before me was the Chicago River, and to the east & north I could see much of the Chicago skyline, including the John Hancock bldg., with glimpses of Lake Michigan in between skyscrapers. Evenings were spectacular, watching the big fat orange sun sinking below the horizon & watching all the lights slowly twinkling on. The daytime view was gray and kinda bleak (I'm not a fan of cities; give me a view with grass & trees any day) but at night it was spectacular & dazzling; I kept my curtains open all night just to look out at it all.
Next up - two Springsteen shows in Mansfield, MA in August, and a Rosanne Cash show (for which I have front row seats!) in September at Notre Dame. And I'm plotting: we just got 25 new Springsteen tourdates, so I'm trying to figure out how many (& which ones) I can afford to go to. St. Louis is almost for sure, and I'm considering Chicago & Cleveland as well. Sorely tempted by Nashville, which was a fantastic show & venue last year, but the date is horribly inconvenient for me; also by Kansas City, which is the night after St. Louis so it would be a lovely "double shot" but the drive back is long. And I only have so much money - not that much, especially now that we've received the official word that the university isn't giving out any raises this year (not cost-of-living, not merit, not anything - no, it's not a surprise; yes, I'm glad that I have a job at all, and one I generally like, to boot - but it does look like I'm going to be driving the '91 Corolla for at least another year).
Sure, I'm crazy for chasing a rock band around the country like this when I don't exactly have the kind of disposable income to justify such a thing. But every show I go to, I come away feeling energized, rejuvenated, glad to be alive. I come away feeling at least ten, maybe twenty years younger. I come away with all kinds of energy for my own creative work. I come away in love with rock & roll again and with the world. And that's worth every penny & every mile.
I've returned safe & sound from the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago (attendance, including registrants and exhibitors, totaled 28,941 - this conference could eat AWP for lunch and still be hungry!). While an unfortunate amount of my time was eaten up on the shuttle buses between my hotel and McCormick Place, I attended some interesting sessions, met a few people, saw some cool stuff in the exhibits, and picked up some great freebies - notably the free frothy coffee drinks from ProQuest (I hit that line three or four times) and a free copy of Rachel Zucker's forthcoming book, Museum of Accidents (out from Wave in, I think, October). I got to hear Zucker read, which was great fun, and chatted with her for a minute at her book-signing; I also got to hear Jane Hirshfield (but didn't go to her book-signing because it conflicted with Rachel Zucker's reading - I already have Hirshfield's newest book anyway) and Sherman Alexie (didn't go to his signing either, as the line was about 980300198 people long - librarians love them some Sherman Alexie! - but did snag a copy of the bound excerpt from his forthcoming book that they were handing out). Other very popular book-signers included Judy Blume (who I gawked at for a minute) and Neil Gaiman.
Besides that, and besides getting together with Sara for a bite and some drinks & good conversation on Friday evening (yay!), the conference pretty much took me entirely out of poetry-brain for a full week. I'd taken my new manuscript with me, knowing I'd have the option of at least one or two quiet evenings in my hotel room and thinking I'd take advantage of the marauding-cat-free space to spread out pages all over the floor & juggle them a bit, but I found I didn't even have the -- what, ability? willingness? mental sharpness? -- to read poems, much less write them or fiddle with them.
It was a relatively interesting conference, & gave me some good food for thought especially regarding some of the technology trends that are going to affect how libraries serve their users (I really, really want to play with Google Wave now), & helped me get a little clearer understanding of how what I do on a day-to-day basis fits into the larger world of library work. So, that's good. All in all, I have to say AWP is way more fun. But ALA was worth my time. And I had an incredible view from my hotel room; I stayed at the Holiday Inn Mart Plaza, up on the 19th floor of the Merchandise Mart, & to the west I had a clear view all the way to the broad sweep of the horizon, directly below/before me was the Chicago River, and to the east & north I could see much of the Chicago skyline, including the John Hancock bldg., with glimpses of Lake Michigan in between skyscrapers. Evenings were spectacular, watching the big fat orange sun sinking below the horizon & watching all the lights slowly twinkling on. The daytime view was gray and kinda bleak (I'm not a fan of cities; give me a view with grass & trees any day) but at night it was spectacular & dazzling; I kept my curtains open all night just to look out at it all.
Next up - two Springsteen shows in Mansfield, MA in August, and a Rosanne Cash show (for which I have front row seats!) in September at Notre Dame. And I'm plotting: we just got 25 new Springsteen tourdates, so I'm trying to figure out how many (& which ones) I can afford to go to. St. Louis is almost for sure, and I'm considering Chicago & Cleveland as well. Sorely tempted by Nashville, which was a fantastic show & venue last year, but the date is horribly inconvenient for me; also by Kansas City, which is the night after St. Louis so it would be a lovely "double shot" but the drive back is long. And I only have so much money - not that much, especially now that we've received the official word that the university isn't giving out any raises this year (not cost-of-living, not merit, not anything - no, it's not a surprise; yes, I'm glad that I have a job at all, and one I generally like, to boot - but it does look like I'm going to be driving the '91 Corolla for at least another year).
Sure, I'm crazy for chasing a rock band around the country like this when I don't exactly have the kind of disposable income to justify such a thing. But every show I go to, I come away feeling energized, rejuvenated, glad to be alive. I come away feeling at least ten, maybe twenty years younger. I come away with all kinds of energy for my own creative work. I come away in love with rock & roll again and with the world. And that's worth every penny & every mile.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Checking in quick
Hope everyone in the U.S. had a good Fourth of July holiday. It rained here allllllll day on the Fourth. I think I started growing moss.Just wanted to post a quick check-in as I won't be around much for the next week or so. I'll be headed to Chicago for the big American Library Assn. annual conference, a humongous event which takes over the McCormick Place convention center as well as several of the big downtown hotels. While I'll be doing library-ish stuff most of the time, I do hope to steal away for an hour or so each day to catch some of the readings that will be going on. Not the plethora (I've always thought "plethora" sounded like some kind of a prehistoric fish...) of readings you get at AWP, but still, there are some good ones including Jane Hirshfield, Rachel Zucker, Janice Harrington, and Sherman Alexie.
I've touched bases with at least a couple of Chicagoans, but if you're going to be at ALA or in the area, drop me a note! My conference schedule is looking relatively nuts, which is par for the course, but I'm hoping to escape the ALA-mania for at least one evening. I don't think it will be quite as much of a social whirl as AWP, but hopefully it will be fun.
Speaking of AWP, I didn't get the grant that I applied for, so chances are I won't be going to Denver next year. Oh well. I'm still looking around for funding possibilities, so maybe something will turn up -- but as great a time as I had in Chicago, I can't do another one on my own nickel. Maybe in 2011 (D.C.) though more likely not until 2012 (Chicago again) -- heck, by then I may have finally finished reading all the books I picked up this year, huh? :)
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Steamy River
A few days ago I mentioned a video of "The River" from Glastonbury in which Bruce Springsteen literally has steam rising up off of him. Here it is, at least for now (the BBC's been taking these down as they find them, but this one's been up for a little while so maybe it'll stay). I've never seen anything quite like this. It starts getting steamy (literally!) just before the two-minute mark.
* * * * *
For those watching Wimbledon -- I'm so glad I have tomorrow as a holiday, because the Match of the Andys (Andies?) -- Roddick vs. Murray -- should be awfully entertaining. And I'm sure Roger Federer, who's bound to have a much easier time dismissing his semi-final opponent (Tommy Hass), would love to see them spend five long sets demolishing one another.
* * * * *
Separated At Birth?
Sugarland musician Kristian Bush...
Poet/editor Tim Green...
Tim? You got a cowboy hat hiding around there somewhere? Because it's kind of uncanny. ;)
* * * * *
Happy Fourth, y'all. Be careful if you're playing with fire this weekend.
* * * * *
For those watching Wimbledon -- I'm so glad I have tomorrow as a holiday, because the Match of the Andys (Andies?) -- Roddick vs. Murray -- should be awfully entertaining. And I'm sure Roger Federer, who's bound to have a much easier time dismissing his semi-final opponent (Tommy Hass), would love to see them spend five long sets demolishing one another.
* * * * *
Separated At Birth?
Sugarland musician Kristian Bush...
Poet/editor Tim Green...
Tim? You got a cowboy hat hiding around there somewhere? Because it's kind of uncanny. ;)
* * * * *
Happy Fourth, y'all. Be careful if you're playing with fire this weekend.
Monday, June 29, 2009
New kids & cheap books
Quick notes:
- Look who's blogging now! A couple of my favorite poets have recently joined the (I know this isn't a word) blogosphere: D.A. Powell and Patricia Fargnoli. Drop by and welcome them.
- The University of Pittsburgh Press is having a humongous Summer Poetry Sale until August 1. Lots of great stuff for half price. Because you can never have too many books, right? (sigh)
I know. I know.
Seems like every post I make starts off with an apology. I'm going to stop doing that & just accept that these days I don't seem to have much to blog about, or much inclination. I'm still reading most of you at least occasionally. Not quite ready to declare myself on an official hiatus, not just yet.
Today I spent, no joke, about ten hours tampering with manuscripts -- both the Firstborn and the New Kid. I rejiggered the Firstborn somewhat: pulled out a good handful of poems and shook up the sections, which now number 4 instead of 5. The New Kid is still taking up more space than it oughta, but it's down below 100 pages now at least, which is a pretty nifty feat considering the very first draft clocked in at just over 140. (I know! Crazy. This thing is gonna have more viable outtakes than Springsteen's The River album.)
I'm still working on tightening up the New Kid. But, I'd be very happy to get suggestions for presses that might consider a strongly thematic poetry manuscript of almost 100 pages.
The two mss. are so different it's unreal. I definitely feel that they are both "my voice," whatever that means, and they certainly have some overarching themes/obsessions in common (I'm almost afraid to run either of them through a tag-cloud machine because I'm scared to see how big the word "light" would be), but there are very, very few -- if any -- poems that could conceivably be swapped from one into the other. #1 is your typical first book, where I'd written poems one by one over several years & have played puzzle pieces with them, fitting them together to see how they interact with one another. It does have an emotional/thematic arc, or a couple of them, and I do think it hangs together as a ms. But #2 clearly has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and almost all of the poems in it were written knowing that they were going to be part of an extended story. In fact some of the poems in #2 may not even make a lot of sense outside the context of the collection.
It was interesting today, going back to the Firstborn after having spent so much of my time & energy on the New Kid recently; despite their differences I'd definitely gained a few insights that helped me tighten up the Firstborn. So, that's good.
What is the New Kid about? Well, I've got snippets from various places incorporated throughout the thing, and this one sums up a good bit of it:
I do have two readers lined up for the New Kid, and one for the revised Firstborn. I don't know whether or not I want to go out looking for more, but if anyone's dying to cast an evaluative eye on one of 'em, feel free to backchannel me.
I've had a few other things eating my brain over the past few weeks, besides poetry. I've vacillated about whether or not I wanted to mention anything about this in such a public place, and I may come back later & edit this post -- but, my mom has just started radiation treatments for a wee dab of breast cancer. All the doctors are extremely optimistic, and there's every reason to believe that after a little radiation she'll be able to put this thing completely behind her. But it has, understandably I think, thrown me for a bit of a loop. So there's that to contend with. Among other things.
Well, this has certainly been a self-involved post. I was going to leave you with a really cool video to make up for that a bit, but it's been taken down from YouTube "due to a copyright claim by British Broadcasting Corporation." Dang. It was Springsteen singing "The River" at the Glastonbury festival in the UK a couple days ago; a decent performance of one of his best songs, but what was really cool about it was that steam was visibly rising off of his body. He sweats a lot when he's onstage, and apparently it was chilly & damp at Glastonbury (chilly & damp in that part of the world? nooooo!) which caused the striking visual effect. I mean, I've seen racehorses steaming after a workout, but never rockstars. It's an image I would love to steal for my rock-related manuscript, but nobody would believe it! You'll just have to take my word for it, I guess. It was just a cool, cool video, with the steam and the humongous crowd and the giant flags & banners everywhere. Maybe they'll release it on DVD or something. One can only hope. I'd buy it.
Today I spent, no joke, about ten hours tampering with manuscripts -- both the Firstborn and the New Kid. I rejiggered the Firstborn somewhat: pulled out a good handful of poems and shook up the sections, which now number 4 instead of 5. The New Kid is still taking up more space than it oughta, but it's down below 100 pages now at least, which is a pretty nifty feat considering the very first draft clocked in at just over 140. (I know! Crazy. This thing is gonna have more viable outtakes than Springsteen's The River album.)
I'm still working on tightening up the New Kid. But, I'd be very happy to get suggestions for presses that might consider a strongly thematic poetry manuscript of almost 100 pages.
The two mss. are so different it's unreal. I definitely feel that they are both "my voice," whatever that means, and they certainly have some overarching themes/obsessions in common (I'm almost afraid to run either of them through a tag-cloud machine because I'm scared to see how big the word "light" would be), but there are very, very few -- if any -- poems that could conceivably be swapped from one into the other. #1 is your typical first book, where I'd written poems one by one over several years & have played puzzle pieces with them, fitting them together to see how they interact with one another. It does have an emotional/thematic arc, or a couple of them, and I do think it hangs together as a ms. But #2 clearly has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and almost all of the poems in it were written knowing that they were going to be part of an extended story. In fact some of the poems in #2 may not even make a lot of sense outside the context of the collection.
It was interesting today, going back to the Firstborn after having spent so much of my time & energy on the New Kid recently; despite their differences I'd definitely gained a few insights that helped me tighten up the Firstborn. So, that's good.
What is the New Kid about? Well, I've got snippets from various places incorporated throughout the thing, and this one sums up a good bit of it:
"On stage your exhilaration is in direct proportion to the void you're dancing over."Anyone else out there have the experience of working on two different collections simultaneously? I never thought I'd find myself in this position, for sure. It's interesting.
--Bruce Springsteen, Super Bowl Journal (February 2009)
I do have two readers lined up for the New Kid, and one for the revised Firstborn. I don't know whether or not I want to go out looking for more, but if anyone's dying to cast an evaluative eye on one of 'em, feel free to backchannel me.
I've had a few other things eating my brain over the past few weeks, besides poetry. I've vacillated about whether or not I wanted to mention anything about this in such a public place, and I may come back later & edit this post -- but, my mom has just started radiation treatments for a wee dab of breast cancer. All the doctors are extremely optimistic, and there's every reason to believe that after a little radiation she'll be able to put this thing completely behind her. But it has, understandably I think, thrown me for a bit of a loop. So there's that to contend with. Among other things.
Well, this has certainly been a self-involved post. I was going to leave you with a really cool video to make up for that a bit, but it's been taken down from YouTube "due to a copyright claim by British Broadcasting Corporation." Dang. It was Springsteen singing "The River" at the Glastonbury festival in the UK a couple days ago; a decent performance of one of his best songs, but what was really cool about it was that steam was visibly rising off of his body. He sweats a lot when he's onstage, and apparently it was chilly & damp at Glastonbury (chilly & damp in that part of the world? nooooo!) which caused the striking visual effect. I mean, I've seen racehorses steaming after a workout, but never rockstars. It's an image I would love to steal for my rock-related manuscript, but nobody would believe it! You'll just have to take my word for it, I guess. It was just a cool, cool video, with the steam and the humongous crowd and the giant flags & banners everywhere. Maybe they'll release it on DVD or something. One can only hope. I'd buy it.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Peeking out from under
Sorry I haven't been around. I'm way behind on email as well, so if I owe you one, please be patient & accept my apologies... I've had a lot going on, to be honest, some of which won't see the light of this blog, some of which will.
What I've been doing
Well, partly, I've now got a working draft of my second (!) book manuscript. (The firstborn is out there in the world, visiting editors and trying to make nice. Imagine it like some ever so slightly questionable hippie hitchhiking and couch-surfing, hoping somebody will ask it to just move in...) I was actually up until ahem-ahem-A.M. one night last week pulling together the initial draft, from which I've since pulled out a bunch of poems and added a couple of new ones. This one has been a very different experience from my first ms., in that this has consciously been A Project almost from the beginning, just over a year ago. I won't say that makes it better or worse than the firstborn, just different. I'm at the dangerous stage right now of being a little bit in love with the thing. I need to get over that before I start giving it to readers (got the first one lined up).
Now that this ms. has gone from being a disorganized pile of poems to being A Thing, I may be in a better position to go back to the firstborn and revisit it; I haven't looked closely at it for a few months. They're very different projects, but maybe I've learned a few things. I actually want to write at more length about the differences between the two, though maybe talking too much about a manuscript before it gets accepted anywhere might jinx it.
Readings
The Indiana University Writers' Conference is going on this week. As always, the evening readings by conference faculty are open to the public. I can't make most of them this week due to work & other commitments, but I did get to see Aracelis Girmay and Manuel Munoz the other night. I heard Aracelis Girmay last year at the Indiana Review "funk reading" and really liked her work, so I was glad to see her again; she read a lot of new work that was just phenomenal. (Seriously, there was a poem involving a green dress which alone was worth the price of admission -- well, the reading was free, but if there'd been an admission price, this poem would've been worth it. It got spontaneous mid-reading applause, too, which is always nice.) I enjoyed Manuel Munoz as well; fiction readings often leave me a bit cold, especially when the writer races through paragraphs & pages like they were being paid by the word & need to get in as many as possible in their allotted time, but he read at just the right pace & had a great reading voice. I'll have to check out his work.
Road Trip
I seem to have planned a quick trip out East in late August (yes, there are concert tickets involved). I haven't yet booked a flight, so I'll throw this out there: if anyone knows of a possible reading venue in or near Boston, MA or Providence, RI on August 20 or 21, drop me a note. If I could sell a few chapbooks, it'd be worth my while to extend the trip by a day or so.
You Know You're Really Truly Middle-Aged...
... when you find yourself reading an article about one of your favorite rockstars, not in High Times or Rolling Stone, but in Arthritis Today.
Seriously.
Drafty...
Here's one of the newest poems from Manuscript #2 (aka The Project That Pretty Much Ate My Brain This Year). The protagonist has been on the road and is well on the way to becoming a successful touring musician, but there turns out to be a price...
(I'll take this down in a day or two)
[gone again, gone again]
What I've been doing
Well, partly, I've now got a working draft of my second (!) book manuscript. (The firstborn is out there in the world, visiting editors and trying to make nice. Imagine it like some ever so slightly questionable hippie hitchhiking and couch-surfing, hoping somebody will ask it to just move in...) I was actually up until ahem-ahem-A.M. one night last week pulling together the initial draft, from which I've since pulled out a bunch of poems and added a couple of new ones. This one has been a very different experience from my first ms., in that this has consciously been A Project almost from the beginning, just over a year ago. I won't say that makes it better or worse than the firstborn, just different. I'm at the dangerous stage right now of being a little bit in love with the thing. I need to get over that before I start giving it to readers (got the first one lined up).
Now that this ms. has gone from being a disorganized pile of poems to being A Thing, I may be in a better position to go back to the firstborn and revisit it; I haven't looked closely at it for a few months. They're very different projects, but maybe I've learned a few things. I actually want to write at more length about the differences between the two, though maybe talking too much about a manuscript before it gets accepted anywhere might jinx it.
Readings
The Indiana University Writers' Conference is going on this week. As always, the evening readings by conference faculty are open to the public. I can't make most of them this week due to work & other commitments, but I did get to see Aracelis Girmay and Manuel Munoz the other night. I heard Aracelis Girmay last year at the Indiana Review "funk reading" and really liked her work, so I was glad to see her again; she read a lot of new work that was just phenomenal. (Seriously, there was a poem involving a green dress which alone was worth the price of admission -- well, the reading was free, but if there'd been an admission price, this poem would've been worth it. It got spontaneous mid-reading applause, too, which is always nice.) I enjoyed Manuel Munoz as well; fiction readings often leave me a bit cold, especially when the writer races through paragraphs & pages like they were being paid by the word & need to get in as many as possible in their allotted time, but he read at just the right pace & had a great reading voice. I'll have to check out his work.
Road Trip
I seem to have planned a quick trip out East in late August (yes, there are concert tickets involved). I haven't yet booked a flight, so I'll throw this out there: if anyone knows of a possible reading venue in or near Boston, MA or Providence, RI on August 20 or 21, drop me a note. If I could sell a few chapbooks, it'd be worth my while to extend the trip by a day or so.
You Know You're Really Truly Middle-Aged...
... when you find yourself reading an article about one of your favorite rockstars, not in High Times or Rolling Stone, but in Arthritis Today.
Seriously.
Drafty...
Here's one of the newest poems from Manuscript #2 (aka The Project That Pretty Much Ate My Brain This Year). The protagonist has been on the road and is well on the way to becoming a successful touring musician, but there turns out to be a price...
(I'll take this down in a day or two)
[gone again, gone again]
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Ah, memories...
Spent some time poking around Flickr tonight and was rewarded by finding one more great shot from the Springsteen show in Chicago last month. You may need to click on the photo to enlarge it. Look just to the left of Bruce, a little lower than his butt (ahem). I'm the chick in the tie-dye t-shirt, singing along for all she's worth.
Damn, that was a great night.
Damn, that was a great night.
Monday, June 01, 2009
Poem of the week & salsa!
My first writers' group (the one that I started back in, um, 1985 or 1986 -- we meet sporadically and casually these days, but we still have a powerful bond with one another) met yesterday afternoon. We sat around on Barb's back deck in the sunshine, which was lovely. Anyway, we generally bring some kind of munchies to share, and I was in a chips-and-salsa mood so that's what I brought. Except I randomly decided to bring a kind of salsa I'd never tried before: peach-mango! Boy oh boy, is that ever some good stuff. It has that spicy-sweet thing going on that I just love. Very summery and refreshing. I brought home what was left & just finished it off as an after-work snack (I had the late shift on the reference desk tonight so didn't get home until after 9). Yum.
Then I randomly stumbled across a poem I know I'd read before, but not recently. You know how sometimes a poem you've read before will haul off and wallop you upside the head like a whole new revelation? Yeah. That. This is the one that did it to me this time:
The Truth the Dead Know
For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959
and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959
Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.
We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.
My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.
And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in their stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.
-Anne Sexton
That third stanza! Holy crap. And the fourth one too. I'm generally allergic to drama and excessive intensity in my actual life (not counting whatever happens in the context of a rock show), but boy howdy do I love it in poems.
* * * * *
As I was typing that my computer made its little "you have a new message! go look at it instead of having any kind of actual attention span!" chime. I could tell from the first few words (gmail displays the subject line and the first few words of the message before you open it) that it was a rejection note -- when they're accepting something they usually use your name instead of the generic "Dear Poet" -- but was pleased to note a P.S. mentioning they'd liked one of the poems, which was my own favorite of the batch anyway. I think that's the first time I've ever gotten "ink" on an emailed rejection note; I've gotten emailed rejections that I suspected were the "encouraging" version of the form rejection, but I've never been sure about those. Too bad they didn't actually take any of the poems, but encouragement is encouraging and so I am duly encouraged.
Then I randomly stumbled across a poem I know I'd read before, but not recently. You know how sometimes a poem you've read before will haul off and wallop you upside the head like a whole new revelation? Yeah. That. This is the one that did it to me this time:
The Truth the Dead Know
For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959
and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959
Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.
We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.
My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.
And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in their stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.
-Anne Sexton
That third stanza! Holy crap. And the fourth one too. I'm generally allergic to drama and excessive intensity in my actual life (not counting whatever happens in the context of a rock show), but boy howdy do I love it in poems.
* * * * *
As I was typing that my computer made its little "you have a new message! go look at it instead of having any kind of actual attention span!" chime. I could tell from the first few words (gmail displays the subject line and the first few words of the message before you open it) that it was a rejection note -- when they're accepting something they usually use your name instead of the generic "Dear Poet" -- but was pleased to note a P.S. mentioning they'd liked one of the poems, which was my own favorite of the batch anyway. I think that's the first time I've ever gotten "ink" on an emailed rejection note; I've gotten emailed rejections that I suspected were the "encouraging" version of the form rejection, but I've never been sure about those. Too bad they didn't actually take any of the poems, but encouragement is encouraging and so I am duly encouraged.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Poem of the week
Just finished reading Ali Liebegott's novel-in-verse The Beautifully Worthless. It gave me lots of ideas about how to structure the project, book, whatever it is that I'm working on currently -- one of my characters has started writing letters, which may or may not show up in the manuscript interspersed with actual poems. (They may also just be background information for me to use myself. Don't know yet. I'm leaning towards including them, though.)
Liebegott's book struck me as a bit uneven, but overall pretty interesting and handled the balance between lyric & narrative pretty well. Here's a bit from it:
Once, I found myself beneath a woman,
her legs straddled my lap, her face bent down
to my turned-up mouth, my turned-up mouth
that was turned like flames following the curve
of gasoline thrown by the arsonist.
I wanted exactly what happened that night
for this woman, to undo the buttons of my shirt
exactly as she did,
it was as if the shirt were my skin,
for months after, I was haunted by buttons
opening and falling like the light plunk of a penny
into a wishing well, there's no way I loved her,
and I know she's never thought about those buttons
and how they felt, like something sacred,
like she was God and I was the dying child coming home.
-Ali Liebegott, from The Beautifully Worthless
Liebegott's book struck me as a bit uneven, but overall pretty interesting and handled the balance between lyric & narrative pretty well. Here's a bit from it:
Once, I found myself beneath a woman,
her legs straddled my lap, her face bent down
to my turned-up mouth, my turned-up mouth
that was turned like flames following the curve
of gasoline thrown by the arsonist.
I wanted exactly what happened that night
for this woman, to undo the buttons of my shirt
exactly as she did,
it was as if the shirt were my skin,
for months after, I was haunted by buttons
opening and falling like the light plunk of a penny
into a wishing well, there's no way I loved her,
and I know she's never thought about those buttons
and how they felt, like something sacred,
like she was God and I was the dying child coming home.
-Ali Liebegott, from The Beautifully Worthless
Friday, May 29, 2009
Just wondering...
So it's been almost a year since I started sending my first book ms. around, which means that some of the same deadlines are coming around again. The ms. has been tweaked here and there since I started submitting it, but hasn't been significantly restructured -- it's still essentially the same book, though hopefully the tweaks have made it a little stronger.
So... obviously nobody's accepted it yet. Do any of y'all ever send essentially the same ms. to a publisher/reading period/contest for a second time? I know most of them use different judges every year, but if you don't get past the initial readers to become a finalist it doesn't really matter who the judge is anyway. I'm inclined not to resend it to anyplace that rejected it without comment, but haven't decided about the places that at least gave me a nice word or two. My instinct is not to resend it even there until it's been significantly restructured, but... what do you guys think? Seriously looking for advice here.
Thanks!
So... obviously nobody's accepted it yet. Do any of y'all ever send essentially the same ms. to a publisher/reading period/contest for a second time? I know most of them use different judges every year, but if you don't get past the initial readers to become a finalist it doesn't really matter who the judge is anyway. I'm inclined not to resend it to anyplace that rejected it without comment, but haven't decided about the places that at least gave me a nice word or two. My instinct is not to resend it even there until it's been significantly restructured, but... what do you guys think? Seriously looking for advice here.
Thanks!
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Monkey see...
So this is my first attempt at making a video, using the bitty camera on my bitty new netbook. Not sure how crazy I am about it, and the video quality leaves something to be desired, but I'll put it up at least for now. This is a "rainy morning in Provincetown" poem -- I wrote the first draft sitting in the Adams Pharmacy looking out at cranky wet tourists walking by, then moved over to the Provincetown Public Library and worked on it for a while, then went back over to the Fine Arts Work Center and typed it up & printed it out & took it in to my workshop that afternoon. It was a good day.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Tweet!
The new issue of OCHO, featuring poets who Twitter, is up! Collin Kelley & Didi Menendez did a great (and fast!) job putting this together. There's a wide range of voices and you're sure to find something you like in this one, whatever your taste. (Maybe you'll even like mine, a kinda weird thing called "Verge" -- you tell me what it's about 'cause I'm still not sure.)
Also, in just over an hour, I will be forty-eight years old. That's a big number.
Also, in just over an hour, I will be forty-eight years old. That's a big number.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Drafty in here
Of course I am disappointed, though not exactly surprised, by today's California Supreme Court ruling. I do believe there is momentum in the right direction... baby steps, baby steps. Have faith and keep fighting.
Meanwhile, just to assert that my little join-the-circus road trips really do spawn something other than long rambling blog posts, here's a rough draft from today. I'll take it down in a day or so. It's definitely rough, but so much fun to recall a moment and turn around & put myself in the other person's shoes. Er, boots.
[gone again]
Meanwhile, just to assert that my little join-the-circus road trips really do spawn something other than long rambling blog posts, here's a rough draft from today. I'll take it down in a day or so. It's definitely rough, but so much fun to recall a moment and turn around & put myself in the other person's shoes. Er, boots.
[gone again]
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Road notes from the E Street Nation: Part 2 - The Beat, The Beat, The Beat
No, I haven't run away and joined the circus (or a rock & roll band... same difference). Still here.
I have been restless and impatient ever since returning home from my oh-so-short road trip a couple weeks ago, feeling centered only when listening to music, bashing away at my guitar, or writing. I feel like something's come unplugged.
Rock concerts -- at least the ones I go to and love -- give the audience full permission to express and enjoy a couple of things that are, intentionally or not, less than abundant in my life: unbridled romanticism (from"the screen door slams, Mary's dress sways / Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays..." all the way to "big wheels roll through fields where sunlight streams / meet me in a land of hope and dreams") and unfiltered sexuality (cue up any throbbing bass line, any drumbeat shuddering through the air and into each and every body in the room, any scorching guitar solo). Hell, just immersing yourself in -- giving yourself over to -- music that's being created by other human beings to the extent that your body moves, almost involuntarily, with what those other humans' hands are doing... that's almost frighteningly sexual in and of itself. Rock music isn't sexual because of its lyrics, but because of its pure, immersive physicality, and the expectation of surrender. So... yeah.
Strong stuff for a middle-aged hermit. No wonder I'm ready to run off and join the circus, huh?
You know, if I had my life to live over again, the one big thing I would do differently is: I would push myself harder with my own music, make myself learn to sing even if it's emotionally challenging (which it is, for me, for some reason -- more than physically or technically challenging -- singing in front of people feels like standing there naked), not put down the guitar just because I'm busy doing other things. Because as much as my fangirlcelebritystalking ways are exactly that -- at the heart of it, it is much more that I long to be a part of the larger thing that is the music itself. I would much, much rather be someone's lyricist or even background singer (yeah right) than their groupie. Much as I get all fangirly about the musicians I love, I don't give much of a shit about celebrity itself -- if you put me in a room with, say, Tom Hanks or some other megasuperstar and a minor-league musician I happen to love, it'd be the musician I'd get all tongue-tied talking to. Because they are the emissaries of the Music, corny as that sounds.
(Which is how it happens that a middle-aged doofy poet gets all swoony over being given a little plastic guitar pick by a middle-aged doofy rockstar. Trust me, I know how silly this all is, but it's truly in service to something larger. And knowing that, my friends, is part of what makes it different now -- and deeper -- than what it was like seeing this same band thirty years ago, when it was just wild and fun. All the deeper stuff was there then, but I didn't know it yet, at least not with the brain part of my brain.)
At my age (forty-eight in a few short days!) I'm obviously not about to run away and join the circus. I know it, you know it, my colleagues at work know it, my cats know it most of all. I'm too fond of having health insurance and of sleeping in my own bed at night. Certainly "Chasing Angels," the manuscript I'm working on these days, is in part my stab at living vicariously through my characters, imagining the good and the bad of being a full-time touring musician. If I can get the thing written and (cross fingers) published, it will certainly serve in part as a very public love letter to the music and the people who create it.
It's all my dad's fault, really. He was a musician and I grew up in a house full of music -- my dad's band occasionally practiced in our living room (when they couldn't use the drummer's basement for whatever reason) and music was just a part of the air I breathed. And then when I was 12 years old he got his doctorate, got a faculty position, packed us up and moved us to Indiana, and never made an effort to find himself a musicians' community or people to play with, and he pretty much gave up playing. Which is just tremendously heartbreaking to me, even now. He always loved music and listened to it, but he was never a part of it in the same way again.
What would it be like to reach middle age without having given up on your greatest, craziest dreams?
Getting a little taste of that, even from a distance, is another reason I love Springsteen/E Street Band concerts. In part it's what they're selling us -- the dream, the romantic sense of belief. I know that. It's a circus, it's a show; they're performers, playing their parts. But also, there's something there that's much too real to be just an act, just entertainment. You watch Bruce on that stage with every cell in his body committed to what he's doing (living the dream he's been working on since he was a kid, really) and as you sing along and raise your arms in the air and become a part of it, you can't help but believe the message on some level. "Dreams will not be thwarted / Faith will be rewarded."
Late in the show on a Saturday night (Milwaukee, 2008)...
Bruce: "Don't you [people in the audience] gotta be in church tomorrow?"
Steve [Van Zandt, guitarist]: "We're in church."
Bruce: "What?"
Steve: "We're in church now."
Religious experience? Sure, maybe. I really don't care what you call it. All I know is, when I go to these concerts, I become a part of something much, much larger than myself. Call it Music, call it God, call it twenty thousand people getting sweaty together in a very large room. Call it a little corner of joy and hope and letting your whole body be alive. Call it whatever you want... all I know is, I want more.
I have been restless and impatient ever since returning home from my oh-so-short road trip a couple weeks ago, feeling centered only when listening to music, bashing away at my guitar, or writing. I feel like something's come unplugged.
Rock concerts -- at least the ones I go to and love -- give the audience full permission to express and enjoy a couple of things that are, intentionally or not, less than abundant in my life: unbridled romanticism (from"the screen door slams, Mary's dress sways / Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays..." all the way to "big wheels roll through fields where sunlight streams / meet me in a land of hope and dreams") and unfiltered sexuality (cue up any throbbing bass line, any drumbeat shuddering through the air and into each and every body in the room, any scorching guitar solo). Hell, just immersing yourself in -- giving yourself over to -- music that's being created by other human beings to the extent that your body moves, almost involuntarily, with what those other humans' hands are doing... that's almost frighteningly sexual in and of itself. Rock music isn't sexual because of its lyrics, but because of its pure, immersive physicality, and the expectation of surrender. So... yeah.
Strong stuff for a middle-aged hermit. No wonder I'm ready to run off and join the circus, huh?
You know, if I had my life to live over again, the one big thing I would do differently is: I would push myself harder with my own music, make myself learn to sing even if it's emotionally challenging (which it is, for me, for some reason -- more than physically or technically challenging -- singing in front of people feels like standing there naked), not put down the guitar just because I'm busy doing other things. Because as much as my fangirlcelebritystalking ways are exactly that -- at the heart of it, it is much more that I long to be a part of the larger thing that is the music itself. I would much, much rather be someone's lyricist or even background singer (yeah right) than their groupie. Much as I get all fangirly about the musicians I love, I don't give much of a shit about celebrity itself -- if you put me in a room with, say, Tom Hanks or some other megasuperstar and a minor-league musician I happen to love, it'd be the musician I'd get all tongue-tied talking to. Because they are the emissaries of the Music, corny as that sounds.
(Which is how it happens that a middle-aged doofy poet gets all swoony over being given a little plastic guitar pick by a middle-aged doofy rockstar. Trust me, I know how silly this all is, but it's truly in service to something larger. And knowing that, my friends, is part of what makes it different now -- and deeper -- than what it was like seeing this same band thirty years ago, when it was just wild and fun. All the deeper stuff was there then, but I didn't know it yet, at least not with the brain part of my brain.)
At my age (forty-eight in a few short days!) I'm obviously not about to run away and join the circus. I know it, you know it, my colleagues at work know it, my cats know it most of all. I'm too fond of having health insurance and of sleeping in my own bed at night. Certainly "Chasing Angels," the manuscript I'm working on these days, is in part my stab at living vicariously through my characters, imagining the good and the bad of being a full-time touring musician. If I can get the thing written and (cross fingers) published, it will certainly serve in part as a very public love letter to the music and the people who create it.
It's all my dad's fault, really. He was a musician and I grew up in a house full of music -- my dad's band occasionally practiced in our living room (when they couldn't use the drummer's basement for whatever reason) and music was just a part of the air I breathed. And then when I was 12 years old he got his doctorate, got a faculty position, packed us up and moved us to Indiana, and never made an effort to find himself a musicians' community or people to play with, and he pretty much gave up playing. Which is just tremendously heartbreaking to me, even now. He always loved music and listened to it, but he was never a part of it in the same way again.
What would it be like to reach middle age without having given up on your greatest, craziest dreams?
Getting a little taste of that, even from a distance, is another reason I love Springsteen/E Street Band concerts. In part it's what they're selling us -- the dream, the romantic sense of belief. I know that. It's a circus, it's a show; they're performers, playing their parts. But also, there's something there that's much too real to be just an act, just entertainment. You watch Bruce on that stage with every cell in his body committed to what he's doing (living the dream he's been working on since he was a kid, really) and as you sing along and raise your arms in the air and become a part of it, you can't help but believe the message on some level. "Dreams will not be thwarted / Faith will be rewarded."
Late in the show on a Saturday night (Milwaukee, 2008)...
Bruce: "Don't you [people in the audience] gotta be in church tomorrow?"
Steve [Van Zandt, guitarist]: "We're in church."
Bruce: "What?"
Steve: "We're in church now."
Religious experience? Sure, maybe. I really don't care what you call it. All I know is, when I go to these concerts, I become a part of something much, much larger than myself. Call it Music, call it God, call it twenty thousand people getting sweaty together in a very large room. Call it a little corner of joy and hope and letting your whole body be alive. Call it whatever you want... all I know is, I want more.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Interlude: Radio Nowhere
Still scratching my head trying to put some words together about some of what the recent Springsteen shows meant to me. Maybe it won't happen. Maybe it will.
Meanwhile, here's part of Radio Nowhere (from a couple of weeks before "my" shows) so you can see I wasn't kidding about Mister Holy Crap Jay Weinberg. Not that a little YouTube video can capture half of what it's like when you feel that bass drum in your chest and legs... but maybe you'll get a little of the idea. (I love how he's singing along, too! He's just SO into it, it's unreal.)
Meanwhile, here's part of Radio Nowhere (from a couple of weeks before "my" shows) so you can see I wasn't kidding about Mister Holy Crap Jay Weinberg. Not that a little YouTube video can capture half of what it's like when you feel that bass drum in your chest and legs... but maybe you'll get a little of the idea. (I love how he's singing along, too! He's just SO into it, it's unreal.)
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Road Notes from the E Street Nation: Part 1 - The Thunder
So last week I spent a few days with my mom in northern Indiana, then drove to Chicago, flew to St. Paul, flew back to Chicago, and drove back home. All for the love of rock & roll. It wasn’t quite as epic as last summer’s road trip, but it sure did have its moments.
One thing I was looking forward to was the new kid on the drums. Max Weinberg, who’s been the E Street Band drummer since the mid-seventies, has a “day job” as bandleader for the Conan O’Brien show – and with Conan taking over Leno’s timeslot, Max won’t be able to miss the first few weeks. It was revealed a few months ago that Max’s 18 year old son, Jay Weinberg, would be sitting in for at least some of the European shows that Max won’t be able to make – and Jay’s been warming up by playing at least portions of most of the recent U.S. shows (though he didn’t make an appearance at the Denver show I went to). Now, Jay’s usual gig is with a metal band, and did I mention that he’s 18? Just… yeah. I have to admit that my first reaction was “An 18-year-old metalhead? Has Bruce Springsteen lost his freakin’ mind??” But I’d been hearing good reports from the shows Jay had played so far, and I was dying of curiosity to see for myself.
The St. Paul show opened with “Badlands” and Jay was on the riser – and holy crap, people! The kid’s impressive! “Radio Nowhere” is his real showpiece – long black hair flying, bringing the thunder like nobody’s business. I immediately became a convert. True, he doesn’t have the precision, the consistency, or the depth of repertoire that his father has. Nor can he read Bruce’s mind quite the way his father can after so many years. But let me tell you, the kid makes up for it with his passion, enthusiasm, power, and joy. He is SO much fun to watch. At about the halfway point of the show Max took over, and the changeover was just incredibly sweet – both Bruce and Max visibly busting with pride, giving Jay hugs and high-fives, the audience ROARING as Jay took a bow. (And for the rest of the show Max played, if anything, even harder & better than usual, & his "usual" is damned amazing -- a little challenge from the younger generation never hurts, I guess!)
[photo from backstreets.com]
Understand: the E Street Nation is very, very protective of its little band. We’re incredibly lucky in that most of the guys in the band are the same ones many of us fell in love with thirty-plus years ago; and we don’t much care for change, or for new faces. So to see the audience embracing the “new kid” was sweet indeed. Does it help that he’s “family”? Sure. I wouldn’t deny that. There are lots of competent, even brilliant, drummers (my hometown guy Kenny Aronoff comes to mind) who could have stepped in to get the job done. But they would have just been hired hands. So the blood connection does make a difference. That said, Jay had to win us over on his own – it wasn’t a gimme. And he did so with gusto.
A little known fact about the younger Mr. Weinberg: “Jay” is actually his middle name. The whole show I found myself calling him by his full name, which is HOLY CRAP JAY WEINBERG. I heard more than a couple of other folks using his real first name as well. Seriously!
Anyway, so St. Paul was a pretty good show. But Chicago’s what I really want to talk about. See, I had general admission tickets both nights. The way they work GA is this: you show up at the venue between 2 and 5:00 on the day of the show with your ticket in hand, and you get a wristband. The wristband has a number on it. Around 5:00 they start getting people lined up in numerical order. Once people are sort of lined up they let you know how many wristbands have been given out (around 1200 in St. Paul and a little less than that in Chicago), and they let you know how many they will be allowing into the “pit,” which is the partitioned-off section right in front of the stage. (600 in St. Paul, 550 in Chicago – it varies by venue.) They draw a “random” number, and the person whose wristband matches that number gets to be first in line. It generally works more or less okay, and keeps people from sitting in line in front of the venue all night like in the bad old days.
ANYWAY. In St. Paul, I didn’t get into the pit, and in fact I had a good couple hundred people ahead of me going into the main GA area, so I had quite a few people in front of me – at 5 foot 1 this is an issue! – but honestly I still enjoyed it more than I would have from a seat. The energy is higher on the floor, and those of us who like to stand up and dance and shout and sing the whole show don’t have somebody behind them begging them to please sit down. But still… you want that magic number, you want to be close. In Chicago, my wristband was #782. I stood in line, surrounded by strangers, my heart pounding as they drew……… #747. I was in!! Not only that, but I was WAY in… I knew at that point that I’d either be in the very front or at most I’d have maybe one person between me and the stage. Oh, the glee! Oh, the anticipation! Oh, the people high-fiving and texting their friends! 20,000 people in the United Center and we’re going to be in front of all of ‘em!
We were ushered into the arena a good couple hours before the show, so most of us used the time to sit on the floor and relax while we could. Some people brought in food and enjoyed their dinner. Lots of chatting, reminiscing about shows past, getting to know your neighbors. I always meet really great folks at these shows, and St. Paul & Chicago were no exception. A few times I stood up to stretch and just gazed at the stage… right… THERE… within touching distance. The stage is like an altar to me, a sacred thing, set with the implements of magic: guitars, microphones, Soozie Tyrell’s violins, Roy Bittan’s white piano. There’s a comfort in seeing water and setlists set out for the band members a few minutes before showtime, in the ritual of the last-minute soundcheck. I’ve never been a performing musician, but looking at that stage just feels like home to me. It’s funny.
And then that magic, magic moment when the lights go down. The crowd erupts and under cover of darkness, one by one, the musicians slip onto the stage. And the lights blaze up and the band crashes into “Badlands” and I’m out of my mind with giddy delight. It’s funny, being six feet from the musicians – the show is BIG: grand gestures, full voices, everything devoted to pushing the songs’ energy all the way up into the rafters. Being so close to that is like chatting with someone who’s in full stage makeup – it’s TOO vivid, too big, too MUCH almost. It takes a little getting used to. (Oh, but I can get used to it… oh boy can I ever.)
It’s a different show, being close enough to actually interact with the band a little. Close enough to get hit with a flying drop of sweat (Bruce sweats like a horse and he plays that guitar pretty hard… it’s actually fairly unsanitary up front *grin*). I was, in an uncharacteristically brilliant move, wearing my favorite tie-dye “Little Steven’s Underground Garage” t-shirt, and as luck would have it, I was planted squarely in front of Little Steven himself. It was a fun moment when he noticed the shirt and gave me a big smile. (And then at the end of the show, he came over in my direction and handed me a guitar pick – someone else was reaching for it and he was very careful to make sure it got into MY grubby little hands. Swoon!)
I actually find, when I’m up close, that I only end up watching Bruce about half the time – even though he’s pretty much the greatest and most charismatic performer in the history of rock & roll. I just love watching all the other band members as they rally round to support his vision – the little interactions between them, the scrambling when Bruce changes up the setlist on the fly, the dedication and love that every one of them puts into the music. It’s a remarkable band, made up of (from everything I have heard from people who know or have met them) remarkable people. Yes, it is Bruce’s vision and commitment (and NOBODY, nowhere, conveys pure commitment in their performance like Bruce Springsteen does) that’s out front leading the way, but the E Street Band is a magnificent machine: the sheer virtuosity of Nils Lofgren and Roy Bittan; the mighty thunder of Max Weinberg; the heart and soul and rock&roll conviction of Little Steven; the reliable foundation of Garry Tallent’s criminally underrated bass playing; the "biggest man you've ever seen," mountain of love, Clarence Clemons… it’s like a bumblebee, this band: with that many strong-minded individuals on stage, it should be physically impossible for it to fly -- but fly it does. Oh baby… fly it does.
[photo taken with my crappy cellphone camera. that's Bruce up there standing on the piano.]
Next up: Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll (except not so much with the drugs part).
One thing I was looking forward to was the new kid on the drums. Max Weinberg, who’s been the E Street Band drummer since the mid-seventies, has a “day job” as bandleader for the Conan O’Brien show – and with Conan taking over Leno’s timeslot, Max won’t be able to miss the first few weeks. It was revealed a few months ago that Max’s 18 year old son, Jay Weinberg, would be sitting in for at least some of the European shows that Max won’t be able to make – and Jay’s been warming up by playing at least portions of most of the recent U.S. shows (though he didn’t make an appearance at the Denver show I went to). Now, Jay’s usual gig is with a metal band, and did I mention that he’s 18? Just… yeah. I have to admit that my first reaction was “An 18-year-old metalhead? Has Bruce Springsteen lost his freakin’ mind??” But I’d been hearing good reports from the shows Jay had played so far, and I was dying of curiosity to see for myself.
The St. Paul show opened with “Badlands” and Jay was on the riser – and holy crap, people! The kid’s impressive! “Radio Nowhere” is his real showpiece – long black hair flying, bringing the thunder like nobody’s business. I immediately became a convert. True, he doesn’t have the precision, the consistency, or the depth of repertoire that his father has. Nor can he read Bruce’s mind quite the way his father can after so many years. But let me tell you, the kid makes up for it with his passion, enthusiasm, power, and joy. He is SO much fun to watch. At about the halfway point of the show Max took over, and the changeover was just incredibly sweet – both Bruce and Max visibly busting with pride, giving Jay hugs and high-fives, the audience ROARING as Jay took a bow. (And for the rest of the show Max played, if anything, even harder & better than usual, & his "usual" is damned amazing -- a little challenge from the younger generation never hurts, I guess!)
[photo from backstreets.com]
Understand: the E Street Nation is very, very protective of its little band. We’re incredibly lucky in that most of the guys in the band are the same ones many of us fell in love with thirty-plus years ago; and we don’t much care for change, or for new faces. So to see the audience embracing the “new kid” was sweet indeed. Does it help that he’s “family”? Sure. I wouldn’t deny that. There are lots of competent, even brilliant, drummers (my hometown guy Kenny Aronoff comes to mind) who could have stepped in to get the job done. But they would have just been hired hands. So the blood connection does make a difference. That said, Jay had to win us over on his own – it wasn’t a gimme. And he did so with gusto.
A little known fact about the younger Mr. Weinberg: “Jay” is actually his middle name. The whole show I found myself calling him by his full name, which is HOLY CRAP JAY WEINBERG. I heard more than a couple of other folks using his real first name as well. Seriously!
Anyway, so St. Paul was a pretty good show. But Chicago’s what I really want to talk about. See, I had general admission tickets both nights. The way they work GA is this: you show up at the venue between 2 and 5:00 on the day of the show with your ticket in hand, and you get a wristband. The wristband has a number on it. Around 5:00 they start getting people lined up in numerical order. Once people are sort of lined up they let you know how many wristbands have been given out (around 1200 in St. Paul and a little less than that in Chicago), and they let you know how many they will be allowing into the “pit,” which is the partitioned-off section right in front of the stage. (600 in St. Paul, 550 in Chicago – it varies by venue.) They draw a “random” number, and the person whose wristband matches that number gets to be first in line. It generally works more or less okay, and keeps people from sitting in line in front of the venue all night like in the bad old days.
ANYWAY. In St. Paul, I didn’t get into the pit, and in fact I had a good couple hundred people ahead of me going into the main GA area, so I had quite a few people in front of me – at 5 foot 1 this is an issue! – but honestly I still enjoyed it more than I would have from a seat. The energy is higher on the floor, and those of us who like to stand up and dance and shout and sing the whole show don’t have somebody behind them begging them to please sit down. But still… you want that magic number, you want to be close. In Chicago, my wristband was #782. I stood in line, surrounded by strangers, my heart pounding as they drew……… #747. I was in!! Not only that, but I was WAY in… I knew at that point that I’d either be in the very front or at most I’d have maybe one person between me and the stage. Oh, the glee! Oh, the anticipation! Oh, the people high-fiving and texting their friends! 20,000 people in the United Center and we’re going to be in front of all of ‘em!
We were ushered into the arena a good couple hours before the show, so most of us used the time to sit on the floor and relax while we could. Some people brought in food and enjoyed their dinner. Lots of chatting, reminiscing about shows past, getting to know your neighbors. I always meet really great folks at these shows, and St. Paul & Chicago were no exception. A few times I stood up to stretch and just gazed at the stage… right… THERE… within touching distance. The stage is like an altar to me, a sacred thing, set with the implements of magic: guitars, microphones, Soozie Tyrell’s violins, Roy Bittan’s white piano. There’s a comfort in seeing water and setlists set out for the band members a few minutes before showtime, in the ritual of the last-minute soundcheck. I’ve never been a performing musician, but looking at that stage just feels like home to me. It’s funny.
And then that magic, magic moment when the lights go down. The crowd erupts and under cover of darkness, one by one, the musicians slip onto the stage. And the lights blaze up and the band crashes into “Badlands” and I’m out of my mind with giddy delight. It’s funny, being six feet from the musicians – the show is BIG: grand gestures, full voices, everything devoted to pushing the songs’ energy all the way up into the rafters. Being so close to that is like chatting with someone who’s in full stage makeup – it’s TOO vivid, too big, too MUCH almost. It takes a little getting used to. (Oh, but I can get used to it… oh boy can I ever.)
It’s a different show, being close enough to actually interact with the band a little. Close enough to get hit with a flying drop of sweat (Bruce sweats like a horse and he plays that guitar pretty hard… it’s actually fairly unsanitary up front *grin*). I was, in an uncharacteristically brilliant move, wearing my favorite tie-dye “Little Steven’s Underground Garage” t-shirt, and as luck would have it, I was planted squarely in front of Little Steven himself. It was a fun moment when he noticed the shirt and gave me a big smile. (And then at the end of the show, he came over in my direction and handed me a guitar pick – someone else was reaching for it and he was very careful to make sure it got into MY grubby little hands. Swoon!)
I actually find, when I’m up close, that I only end up watching Bruce about half the time – even though he’s pretty much the greatest and most charismatic performer in the history of rock & roll. I just love watching all the other band members as they rally round to support his vision – the little interactions between them, the scrambling when Bruce changes up the setlist on the fly, the dedication and love that every one of them puts into the music. It’s a remarkable band, made up of (from everything I have heard from people who know or have met them) remarkable people. Yes, it is Bruce’s vision and commitment (and NOBODY, nowhere, conveys pure commitment in their performance like Bruce Springsteen does) that’s out front leading the way, but the E Street Band is a magnificent machine: the sheer virtuosity of Nils Lofgren and Roy Bittan; the mighty thunder of Max Weinberg; the heart and soul and rock&roll conviction of Little Steven; the reliable foundation of Garry Tallent’s criminally underrated bass playing; the "biggest man you've ever seen," mountain of love, Clarence Clemons… it’s like a bumblebee, this band: with that many strong-minded individuals on stage, it should be physically impossible for it to fly -- but fly it does. Oh baby… fly it does.
[photo taken with my crappy cellphone camera. that's Bruce up there standing on the piano.]
Next up: Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll (except not so much with the drugs part).
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