imitation sun.

for reasons unknown, I was a fugitive on a large plane heading to los angeles with my family. down in the cargo bay, I had to fight my way through a series of crates only to find the plane disintigrating. my father and I, wearing winter clothes for some reason, leaped from the bay as the plane began to fall apart.

as we floated down somewhere over brentwood, I ripped off my hat and gloves, tied my scarf to either side of my jacket’s sleeves and held on, forming a parachute - thanks to the magic of dream physics, this actually worked and my arms were not torn from their sockets or anything like that. I was able to slow my descent and make a running landing in a bucolic canyon overlooking a series of very nice houses.

“now we just can’t be seen,” I told my father, who landed nearby.
“we should call your friend dan,” said my father, even though none of my friends named dan live in los angeles in the real world. I told him this but he ignored it.

as it turned out, the bucolic canyon was part of a religious retreat/spa. we stumbled out into a small blue striped tent that served as the entrance location to the disapproving glares of men and women wearing similarly blue-striped towels. my father said something about purchasing a membership to the man behind the desk guarding the entrance, to which the man snapped “christ’s love is not for sale,” so we left.

at some point, driving with my head low along sunset boulevard, I was called on to read a scene from “tamourlaine,” which in the real world I have never read. I held up the faded parchment it was printed on, but I was overcome with stage fright when my cue came. (my dreams are very good at coming up with excuses for why things that are not possible in them, like reading or telling time, can’t be done.)

I woke up and washington was covered in snow.

March 02, 2009, 2:18pm   Comments

as the late-night hosts re-shuffle, I have a small suggestion: pbs (or at least thirteen in new york) should get in on the act and start their own variety show. the host of that show should be laurie anderson.

that’s about the only thing that would get me to watch actual tv.

February 27, 2009, 4:30pm  Comments

a quick blast of micro-fiction last night, for reasons unknown, followed by two songs by wire, maybe by way of apology, as we move towards officially opening this site on saturday (gonna make the general layout a little easier to read, and probably a little less busy in terms of the color scheme). some brief thoughts on the research and rationale behind the piece:

it should probably come as no surprise that I’m a follower of the british band wire, which has endured as an institution off and on since 1976. themselves a bit older than the punk movement (bruce gilbert was old enough to probably be closer to german experimental than any other “movement”), they’re now largely thought of as “post-punk” if only because they outlived the movement in which they grew up.

very short fiction (“micro-fiction” or “sudden fiction” or whatever) is often described as swatches of color, offering just enough to set a tone, maybe identify a single action. but you shouldn’t have to paint in broad strokes to get your point across. there’s ample proof that this isn’t true, and even in the “swatch” mode of writing micro-fiction you can get a lot across just by setting the stage. (sam over at fifty words here on tumblr does excellent work with this.)

I’m interested by how the punk movement in england died out - though please kill me by legs mcneil dealt with its american beginnings in rollicking oral-history fashion, our band could be your life by michael azerrad chronicles the american response long after the scene had closed, & rip it up and start again is not a very good look at what it means to be “post-punk,” the death of the movement has never been pinpointed or written about more seriously, in large part because the term has endured even when its original progenators, like wire, wanted nothing more to do with it.

to that end I wanted to write something very short that could tell a story of the decay of an amorphous movement that’d been co-opted by far-left and far-right alike and was already very much “dead” but still omnipresent without necessarily resorting to merely describing one given scene, place, time, or person. lydia davis’s varieties of disturbance is great for its… err… varieties of very short fiction, so she’s a big inspiration.

looking at the piece again this afternoon after hawking it up at 2 AM last night, I regret most that I didn’t manage to convey the narrator’s interest as anything more than a clinical detachment. I wanted to convey the flaws of the interlocutor to the reader as well, but it comes off reporterly and cold, another groaning offer of an observational narration at the hemingway altar.

welp, I’ve managed to make a post longer than the original work of fiction now, so I’ll let it go, lest this turn into a maoist self-critique or something.

for your further research:

• sudden fiction (early micro-fiction anthology)
• jim shepard - love and hydrogen (short stories)
• wire - “the 15th” (youtube video)
• ernest hemingway - a moveable feast (sigh)

February 26, 2009, 5:54pm   Comments

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Download

wire - crazy about love
from the crazy about love 12” single (1983, rec. 1979)
(zshare)

February 26, 2009, 10:49am  Comments

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Download

wire - 23 years too late
from the read & burn 03 EP (2007)

February 26, 2009, 9:57am  Comments

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“hamlet,” act V, scene ii
(a dry run for a project I hope to start in a few days, once the images start properly appearing on this site and it gets all properly “up and running,” so to speak)

February 23, 2009, 7:07pm  Comments

I’m endlessly intrigued by the work of mike long, even though I don’t know him personally. he has good taste in music, and a dj is (almost) always a better deal than pandora.

February 22, 2009, 7:29pm  Comments