In our Writers and Music series, authors discuss the music that has either been included in their most recent project or the influence music has had on their work overall.
It was in
the autumn of 1998, when I first heard Fugazi.
This was at
a time in my life when I foundered, virtually drowning, on the shoals of
addiction. I had dreams, but they were setting down, an evening sun. Saturated
with chemicals and craving, I stood a shaky six foot three, weighed about a
buck seventy five. It’s a wonder my best friend from Arkansas, who’d lately
come out west to visit, recognized me. He might’ve considered staging an
“intervention,” but that’s really not his style. Instead, he gave me a CD.
“Dude,
you’ve got to listen to this,” my
friend told me.
My friend
shook his head. “Just listen,” he reiterated.
Then, in the
semi-darkness of a seedy little kitchen on 45th and Belmont, I
proceeded to cue the disc up on a cheap portable player with busted belt clip,
and tattered earphones, foam mostly rotted away. “Who the fuck are these guys?” I cried, after hearing the
opening measure of a number called “Break” at maximum volume.
My friend
smiled. I removed the headphones to hear his reply: “You can
keep that…”
Now, a few
lines from the song “Recap Modotti” come to mind:
…Recap in taxi,
No clothes, no food
Take care of the children
We’ll send for you soon …
Oh, I
remember that version of me, in my sorry Belmont kitchen, pushing forty,
possessed of all the pallor and disfiguration of a scarified poppy, and yet
then, still, coming alive with the
strains of that music – watching my own rail-thin shadow get down with its bad
self on the wall, moonlight pouring through a little window above the sink:
this shadow, who clutched a battered Sanyo CD player like a lucky hymnal,
commencing to fist-pump, to hum and dream and hope via pantomime, the old hip
sway with chest bump, my eyes glued to the ear drums insisting everything could
still turn out okay, blown away by this strange new music -- beside myself:
…Alien,
you find you feel at home
Everywhere
you get by with so much less
than anyone …
My friend
returned to Arkansas a couple days later.
I would not
get clear of my chemical dependency for four more years; wouldn’t publish my own
poem called “Abduction” – (about aliens, transubstantiation, hospice and hope;
and borne upon the current of the aforementioned music, surely as I’m sitting
here) – for four years beyond that. But I’ll never forget the night I heard Fugazi
for the very first time. No turning point,
per se, but a vector, a euphony I can still point to – its sonic trajectory a little ahead of me, and a touch behind,
recursive and propulsive at one remove, like a riff you simply can’t get out of
your mind. Or a friend, who comes to visit from far away:
…Outside my window
the passing night sky
full of people I know
taking me…
Today, I’m totally
engrossed in a You Tube video: a talented filmmaker has put together some
stunning imagery to accompany the Fugazi song “Turkish Disco.” Behind
Brendan Canty’s signature snare drum cum tom-tom pulse, and Joe Lally’s bass
line (thumping like a dogged hot spring of the heart’s natural magma) – there, on the screen sits a forlorn
barn, cupped by this cozy pastoral snow bank. And as the song commences, this
barn slowly begins to change colors, hue to hue to hue, as the haunting bars
drive by:
Rust -- to russet. Vermilion,
bleeding cerise. Baby shit blue morphing into stone cold indigo. Forlorn forest
green, in time, becoming lime.
Reader,
believe me: I’m happy as hell to be a fan of Fugazi.
In our Writers and Music series, authors discuss the music that has either been included in their most recent play/novel/poems or the influence music has had on their work overall.
Scott Adkins received his MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College in 2006. His plays have been heard via radio waves (WFMU and WNYE), appeared at the U.N., in unassuming locations under Brooklyn like RabbitHole Studios, in various NYC downtown theaters as well as in the Clubbed Thumb Summerworks Readings, at CATCH, in Little Theater and annually at the Cho Chiqq Backyard Theater Festival. His play The Anti-Gardener appears in the 2011 Spring issue of PAJ and his play Running Commentary No. 4 was published by 53rd State Press in the Joyce Cho Anthology. He co-founded the Brooklyn Writers Space with his wife, Erin Courtney, in 2002. He is a co-curator of the Obie award winning Little Theater that presents new work monthly at Dixon Place. He co-founded Sock Monkey Press in 1996 and has released a new book of poetry by Terence Degnan earlier this month.
I grew up singing, mostly in church. But I also sang in ‘that’ swing choir in high school, chamber choir, even sang for a couple years in college. Maybe I used to be a good singer but now, well now it is better for everyone that I don’t sing, too loudly anyway. I’ll tell you though, there is nothing more fun on a Saturday night than getting together with friends and picking up our instruments and ripping out a “Hey Good Lookin'” or a “Beat on the Brat."
My first plays had no songs in them or if they did they were other people’s songs, a lullaby or old simple melodic songs ("Hush Little Baby" and "Amazing Grace") that would evoke some memory for me.
My latest work, The Kioskers, which is about a mysterious family traveling the world in a floating kiosk, has all original songs and music composed by the amazing Alaina Ferris.
Alaina Ferris' music for The Kioskers illustrates her passion for Rimsky Korsakov, Eastern Europe lullabies and Sea Shanties.
I've also had the pleasure of working with Rebecca Hart and Robert Wagner.
Rebecca makes progressive folk rock magic and wrote the music for Running Commentary No. 4. I am thrilled to say that to this day she plays some of those songs at her gigs.
Robert Wagner comes from New Orleans jazz and composed most of the music for the Klezmer All Stars. He composed the music for Black Dot for three a cappella voices using his influences from the middle east, eastern europe and world jazz.
All these plays would deflate without the juxtaposing songs and music clocking the rhythm of each piece. There is something remarkable about having performers engaging with us, the audience, with spoken word then suddenly revealing a sincere song. As individuals we rarely tell stories just one way. We use monologues, dialogues, poems, exposition, narrative, gestures, visuals, and songs. So as a playwright, I do the same thing.
Songs being, in my mind, the most powerful way to tell a story, compress elements like perspective, exposition, raw emotion, memory, nostalgia, visuals and most importantly an opportunity for sincere goofiness. (Sincere goofiness being the ingredient of the most entertaining theater no matter how dramatic or sad or dangerous.)
My songs don’t always have overtly meaningful language. Sometimes they pop up in order to cast a different perspective on moments past or moments to come. Kind of like the sweet frosting in between the two chocolate wafers of an Oreo cookie.
Songs and singing and music let us get the crazy out as writers, performers and listeners. If we don’t get the crazy out, well we might just explode or something. Whenever I do a reading of a new play with songs in it, there is usually not an opportunity to compose, learn, and perform a song so I always have the actors use a melody they know well and fit the words to it. Then I say commit, fearlessly commit. It is always beautiful when a performer fearlessly commits, and also I get to really see if the rhythm of the lyrics is working.
Anyway, I have songs in my work sometimes simply to break the predictability of what we are seeing. A kind of way to say directly to the audience, come with us now. I use songs as tools to retell everything that has happened. I want songs to be gifts to everyone, the performers and the audience. I never want to torture an audience. I totally get it when you come to a play exhausted, have that one beer and after fifteen minutes of words coming at you the eyelids get heavy as lead.
So I put in a song, not so intentionally or formally, but I know that when someone who has dozed off snaps awake for a song they won’t be lost, they’ll be right with the play. Maybe in a way the songs are there to minimize any sort of theatrical suffering that might be happening, but mostly I can say I put them in instinctually because they make me feel good.
In our Writers and Music series, authors discuss the music that has either been included in their most recent novel/play/poems or the influence music has had on their work overall.
Susan Tepper’s fourth book is titled From the Umberplatzen (2012). It’s a quirky love story set in Germany and told in linked flash fiction. Susan is the series editor at Fictionaut for the Monday Chat Interview column and hosts FIZZ, a reading series at KGB Bar in NYC.
As a kid, I would lie on my bed and recall every chord and nuance from my dad’s Frank Sinatra records. I could hear it all as if Frank were standing at the foot of the bed serenading me. In retrospect, those were kind of strange and uncanny events, though at the time I took it all for granted. It was fun.
In 5th grade, my family moved from Nassau to Suffolk County on Long Island, which meant a school change for me. All the little girls in my new class were part of a choral group that practiced each day after lunch. They were sweet girls and encouraged me to join, so I tried out.
The music teacher, Mr. Acappella (name changed to protect the not-so-innocent), said he was "sorry," but I didn’t have "a voice." Sad and shamed, I had to sit with all the boys after lunch while the girls practiced. But here’s the thing: our classroom teacher, Mr. Wonderful (for real, he was wonderful), read Huckleberry Finn aloud. When that book was finished he read Tom Sawyer.
Not only did I no longer care about being excluded from chorus, I waited with bated breath every day for the appointed hour when the girls would exit the classroom in a giggling stream and the stories of Huck and Tom and the mighty Mississippi began to unfold.
When I was seventeen I went off to drama school. It was there I discovered I had near-perfect pitch. I went on to perform with all kinds of bands as the "girl singer." Up and down the Jersey shore, we played rock, folk, country and pop gigs. This from a girl who didn’t have "a voice."
There was a movement I heard about years ago called "Anyone Can Sing." I don’t know if it still exists, but I saw it on a TV documentary, and it followed people in that group from their first croaking attempts at song to their colossal debuts as singers who could do it really well.
The psychology of this group was that "anyone can sing." I believe that. It’s as natural as talking. I think somewhere down the line, people encounter their own "Mr. Acappella" and big fear sets in. I didn’t own that fear, but I could have been crippled by it, were it not for the arrival of Mark Twain’s stories at that precise moment.
I also discovered that I liked the company of the boys, quietly entranced by those stories.
In our Writers and Music series, authors discuss the music that has either been included in their most recent novel/play/poems or the influence music has had on their work overall.
Holly Anderson has written lyrics and adapted her poems for the likes of indie rock pioneers Mission of Burma, Rhys Chatham, Jonathan Kane, Peg Simone and Lisa B. Burns. She thinks a song is the perfect container for a poem: mobile, repeatable, soft or loud, in a crowd or solo, and simple to share.
The Night She Slept With A Bear (May 2012) is a collection of flash fiction and mesostics shipping with an original soundtrack by Chris Brokaw.
The formative music events that shaped some of The Night She Slept With A Bear are all over the map geographically, emotionally, time and genre-wise, too.
Here in no particular order:
Driving solo from upstate New York to Los Angeles with the original cast recording of The Gospel at Colonus cranked full-blast in western Nebraska as a towering blueblack storm piles up and rolls towards me from 50 miles away across the wildly waving plains.
Seeing Patti Smith on her first tour in support of Horses at The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and then running home - hard - through falling snow in a rapture under a vaulted star-spitting sky.
Delibes’ Lakme – loud real loud – on my Walkman on a Turkish bus speeding across the Anatolian plain after bathing in the calcium springs at Pamukkale. The entire day like a citronella-scented acid trip.
Hearing Steve Reich’sMusic for 18 Musicians for the very first time and immediately laying down flat on the floor to keep from rising straight up out of my body in a grimy studio in the North End of Boston.
Copland’sNonet for 3 violins, 3 violas and 3 cellos on a no-name cassette rewound again and again. Driving through the green clefts and curtains of trees, corn and cows in the Catskills while trying to hash out a poem that just wouldn’t come. And it never did.
Rhys Chatham’s 100 Guitar Orchestra playing An Angel Moves Too Fast To See outdoors on a cloudless night in late June at Teatro di Verdura in Palermo, Sicily while my soon-to-be two year old daughter sits absolutely motionless in my lap, transfixed for an hour watching her father, Jonathan Kane, play the drums.
Dancing non-stop at a 4-hour King Sunny Adé show until sweat filled up my little red heels and they slid right off.
The Melodic Version of The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer by La Monte Young. The piece: 4 notes, played on 8 muted trumpets at Merkin Concert Hall and the baby - in utero, 7 months - is rolling, spinning and thumping against my rib cage.
Neil Young’s 1971 Journey Through the Past solo tour date in Minneapolis when I was a wee hippie, a stripling in the 10th grade. The same sets were bootlegged later that winter at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion show in LA, and I soon wore that double album out.
Chris Brokaw’s solo instrumental Red Cities. I was writing lyrics for Clint Conley’s fierce but short-lived band Consonant. Chris let his songs breathe and always held back the right amount. No pyro, no bombast, just beautiful guitar playing and real clear thinking. Some years later when he said he’d love to score my collection of flash fiction and mesostics I was very happy to say ‘yesyesyes’.
(Holly Anderson has been anthologized in Up is Up, But So Is Down: New York's Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992, The Unbearables & The Unbearables Big Book of Sex, and First Person Intense. Her limited edition books Lily Lou and Sheherezadeare in library collections including MOMA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Victoria & Albert Museum, Brooklyn Museum, The Downtown Collection at Fales Library, NYU, and the Harry Ransom Center at UT, Austin.)
In our Writers and Music series, authors discuss the music that has either been included in their most recent novel/play or the influence music has had on their work overall. We've talked to dozens of novelists, playwrights, and poets and discovered amazing stories of the unhinged live performances or forgotten B-sides that have inspired their work and kept them writing.
Jason Grote is the author of the plays 1001, Civilization (all you can eat), and Maria/Stuart, among others. He has written for film and TV, including season one of "Smash," and co-hosted The Acousmatic Theater Hour on WFMU in 2008-09. Visit him at jasongrote.com.
Has a specific song ever influenced one of your scripts?
Much of the time, yes. The most obvious example would be my play 1001, which actually calls for music in the script; when I started writing the play, I was listening to Push The Button, a Chemical Brothers' album, especially the song "Galvanize," which featured rapping by Q-Tip. I think the play was influenced by that song, which featured Muslim chanting, Middle Eastern violins, and a powerful, vaguely revolutionary message.
I also listened to a lot of electronic and hip-hop music coming out of the Middle East in the 90s and 00s, and raï music, which was a kind of Algerian rock-pop (mostly Rachid Taha). Right now I'm writing a play about Shostakovich, so obviously I'm using a lot of that music.
You were a writer for the first season of Smash. What was the biggest challenge writing for a musical series?
TV writing is a whole different animal, but one of the biggest challenges with the show was the contemporary numbers, because you would write something into the script - this wasn't a pitch but an actual finished draft - and then the music people would come back with a different number, based on their expertise, or what they could obtain the rights to, or maybe what they thought they could sell as iTunes downloads.
In and of itself this wasn't such a bad thing, because I have a really spotty knowledge of current Top 40 music and it wouldn't have been so great to have me dropping in, say, Guided by Voices or Clash songs, but it would have been better to have integrated the songs more organically into the scripts. I'm not on Season Two; maybe they'll have changed this by then.
You’ve done a lot of work and fundraising for WFMU. What drew you to that station?
I briefly worked at the Montclair Book Center in 1990, where they played the station all the time. It was a great job, except I was paid less than minimum wage, and I usually took that in used books instead of money so I couldn't pay my rent. For years after that, I would strain to get a signal and listened to it here and there whenever I could, usually in a car, but at some point in the late 1990s I started listening online. It's the best radio station in the world and everyone should listen to it at WFMU.org.
You wrote and produced WFMU’s Acousmatic Theatre Hour.
I loved going down to the station once a week to be on the radio, but honestly I just remembered it being a lot of work. It was hard coming up with something interesting to play on the radio every week (it was a radio play show, and contemporary, interesting radio plays are next to impossible to come by and extremely time-consuming to make), so we'd often play archival material from UbuWeb, PennSound, or the WFMU record library.
It was an important life lesson: I could love WFMU as a listener and volunteer, but I didn't necessarily have to go on the air. But I'm glad I got it out of my system.
What was your best and worst live music experiences?
Hmmmm...best would be tough - I saw Fishbone at City Gardens in Trenton, NJ, in 1987 in a small crowd, and it was pretty incredible, just fantastic, fun energy. My other favorites are all fairly recent: Patti Smith at the Bowery Ballroom on New Years' Eve 2006, Ted Leo & The Pharmacists at McCarren Park Pool in 2007, The Dirtbombs at Southpaw in 2008.
My least favorite included a truly frightening Cro-Mags/Mentors show at City Gardens, also in 1987 (though it was also really memorable), and Porno for Pyros at Roseland Ballroom in 1993. That last one ruined Perry Farrell for me - the crowd was full of moshing jocks (one of the worst things about the 1990s). The band played for 35 minutes, and Farrell ended the show by asking the audience, "How does it feel to be a bunch of cunts?"
In fact, the 1990s was kind of a lost decade for me, musically - I just saw tons of big festival shows like Lollapalooza, and then the Grateful Dead and jam bands. Though I still like The Dead and make no apologies for it.
Your play 1001, a modern retelling of Arabian Nights, has been receiving a steady stream of praise and productions since its 2007 premiere. Why do you think this play has resonated with audiences?
Who knows? I think theaters like that it's epic and ambitious, but maybe it's had a life because it's hopeful in the face of tragedies like 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Civilization has been well-received by theaters because it's my most similarly epic play in years, but it's much more bleak, and it's an explicit criticism of capitalism, which seems to touch a nerve - in DC in particular. The Washington Post loved it, but all these 24-year-old bloggers hated it, like viciously hated it with an unusual level of vitriol. I can only imagine it was because it makes desperate, ambitious people look like assholes. And who's more desperate and ambitious than a 24-year-old blogger in DC?
1001 also went after a much easier target, the neocons who were waging war against the Arab world, even though it felt much riskier at the time. When a liberal Democrat is in power, theater audiences don't want to hear criticisms of power quite so much. It's actually more of a taboo. Though I hear they loved Civilization in Germany!
Is there a musical act you think is criminally underrated?
Love, definitely - Arthur Lee was insane, but they were way better than The Doors, CSN, or any number of other L.A. acts at the time.
I also think there's a huge garage/psych/punk scene that's been going on since the 1980s and is still going strong today, and which deserves attention above and beyond Jack White (though I like Jack White): Dan Melchior, Billy Childish, Holly Golightly, The Dirtbombs, New Bomb Turks, Redd Kross, The Black Hollies, The Ettes, Jay Reatard, Gentleman Jesse, King Khan & The Shrines, Davila 666, The Cynics, Black Lips, Thee Oh Sees...I could keep this up forever. There were some great Boston bands from the 1980s waiting to be rediscovered, like Big Dipper and Volcano Suns.
There's some really fantastic electro/pop/punk coming from Brazil right now, and the internet has allowed for there to be literally thousands of compilations of great forgotten music from every contentent except Antarctica, though there's probably a Love Peace & Poetry: Antarctica compilation in the works that I don't know about.
Do you have any new work coming up?
I'll be reading my short story from the Significant Objects anthology, from Fantagraphics Books, at The Strand on July 10. That's going to be a pretty cool event, not because of me, but the other authors: Luc Sante, Ben Greenman, Shelley Jackson, Annie Nocenti, who wrote the best run on Daredevil in that comic's history (and yes, I'm including Frank Miller).
I just finished the program note for The Wooster Group/Royal Shakespeare Company production of Troilus & Cressida at The Globe in Stratford-upon-Avon and London, and I'm very proud of that, even though it's just a program note. Civilization should be coming to Chicago in 2013. I'm developing some original ideas for TV and film that I can't talk about just yet.
(Elford Alley has had plays produced and read across the United States and his sketch comedy featured in several shows in Chicago. His articles have appeared in cracked.com. He currently resides in Dallas with his wife and daughter.)
In our Writers and Music series, authors discuss the music that has either been included in their most recent novel/play or the influence music has had on their work overall.
Gary Winter’s plays have been seen or heard at The Chocolate Factory; The Flea; HERE; PS 122; The Cherry Lane Alternative; Playwrights Horizons; The Lark; defunkt theatre. His play I Love Neil LaBute was recently publishedin Shorter, Faster, Funnier: Comic Plays and Monologues (Vintage Books, summer 2011). From 1998 to 2008 Gary volunteered as Literary Manager of the Flea Theater, where he currently helps organize Pataphysics, workshops for playwrights.
Taking matters into one’s own hands
I think one thing that characterized the New York art scene in the 80s was the "DIY" zeitgeist. In that spirit, my friend Scott Lewis & I created the Scott & Gary Show. Inspired by the live dance shows of the 60s, we wanted to produce a TV show with a sense of energy and joy. The concept was simple: Experimental bands performing live.
Some of the bands we had on were the Beastie Boys, the Butthole Surfers, Shockabilly and ½ Japanese. We taped “as live” and friends came down to the studio to dance. I directed and Scott hosted. A reviewer in a music magazine aptly called it “The American Bandstand from hell.” We taped twenty episodes in all, fourteen in NYC and the final six at a public access studio that Jeff Krulik (Heavy Metal Parking Lot), ran in Maryland. (You can find clips of the show on YouTube).
We operated with a team of volunteers and a $135 per show budget. In spite of minimal resources (or because of), we were able to articulate a vision and carry it through. In his book Unbalancing Acts, Richard Foreman clearly articulates what he’s attempting to do, and I think this is one of the most important things a playwright can ask of him/herself. Not everyone is going to connect with your stuff and that’s fine. If a few people are genuinely affected by your work, you’ve done your job.
I’ve had the privilege to be part of 13P, the theater company founded by thirteen playwrights whose mission has been to produce one play by each of its members. Taking control of one’s artistic vision has been our goal, and towards that end each of us has served as artistic director of his/her own show. At the time of my show (AT SAID), I was exploring a way of writing that was new for me, and I needed to see the show sixteen times to figure what did and didn’t work. The process proved invaluable to my learning curve.
I think 13P has been part of a larger movement over the past decade of intrepid artists turning the focus away from relying on the institutional model (away from development and towards production), and putting the focus back on the individual artist. This is not a dig at established theaters or performance venues; it’s a way of saying that when individuals feel empowered, they will make vital work and steer institutions towards a more flexible model. Call it trickle up theory, if you will.
There’s only so much you can control
Five minutes before the Butthole Surfers were scheduled to go on they told me they needed to drop acid. I said fine, just be back in five minutes. You can’t be in control of every contingency, but you can keep a cool head. (They returned in five minutes, and none for the worse. Probably better.)
End things
We taped twenty episodes of Scott & Gary (1984-1987), and then it was time to move on. One more show and 13P implodes. That’s been the plan all along. You’re all invited to the implosion bash this fall (date and place TBA).
In our Writers and Music series, authors discuss the music that has either been included in their most recent novel/poems or the influence music has had on their work overall.
Andrew F. Sullivan was born in Peterborough, Ontario. He has an MA in English in the Field of Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. Sullivan’s fiction has recently been published by Joyland,The Good Men Project, The Cleveland Review and Riddle Fence. You can find him at: http://afsullivan.blogspot.com/
The first time I was thrown out of a bar it was at a Constantines' show. I spent the encore sitting on a mailbox, singing along, unaware of the slush that had been splashed on my face by passing cars.
You could feel the building shake from outside. You could feel it down your spine. The tension and release building up in every song, the hoarse words coughed and hacked into a microphone someone would need to wash before the next show. Like a shambling, enraged ghost of Springsteen lost in the wastelands of Southern Ontario, the Constantines were a wrecking force. No vocal cords were spared. No ear drums left undented. No one left clean.
Of course, they are gone now. Four albums. A few EPs. That’s it. Everyone gets older.
It`s all still there though. The tension and the release—the fear and desperation in songs like “Hyacinth Blues," the hand claps like a dire warning in “Some Party," the howls for something better, something purer, where “a tired man can exist” in “Blind Luck.” Those things don’t fade. They remain raw and weathered. They remain defiant and messy and busted. There is no gloss.
I still go searching for those moments when I sit down to try and put a story together. I want to open with a relentless assault. I want the reader to feel the bottom drop out, to feel all that controlled tension finally erupt into something wild and unhinged—something they can’t avoid. You can see the end coming; you can predict the reckoning headed your way, but you can’t prevent it. You can’t deny it or undo it. You can only play a witness. You can only watch.
That’s what we are doing when we tell stories. We are playing witness to each other’s truths, if that’s what we want to call it. We are being asked to acknowledge something real, something we can’t find in everyday life. And it doesn’t have to be pretty—it rarely is. And it doesn’t need to be an affirmation or a call to arms or a claim for some moral high ground above all the messy, broken stuff we’d rather not remember.
There is a reason we love to read about dystopias. There is a reason why we lie and spin stories filled with pain and suffering and loss. We are playing a witness for each other; we are trying to say something or understand something that the logical narratives of daily life can’t always uncover. We don’t claim these are universal truths or that they should carry any meaning for anybody else. We are just there to say this happened; this mattered—whether it is real or not. This was done. Every time I write, every time I read, I am a witness. The Constantines understand that. They want you to join in on that chorus in “Young Offenders.”
Young hearts, be free tonight. Time is on your side.
Can I get a witness?
Even sitting on a mailbox in the cold with my ass frozen to the metal, I was a witness.
In our Writers and Musicseries, authors discuss the music that has either been included in their most recent novel/poems or the influence music has had on their work overall.
Paul Corman-Roberts edits fiction for Full of Crow and writes the monthly column "Dispatches From Atlantis" for Red Fez. His upcoming flash fiction collection is Sometimes You Invent New Words for Old Losses from Tainted Coffee Press. He's had coffee with Eldridge Cleaver and tea with Harold Norse (not at the same time).
I remember the moment I renounced my right to call myself a musician. It was the moment I decided to sell my trap drum kit in 2005, all so I could have a little bit of extra cash to go out partying with my friends.
I probably did the kit a favor since I sold it to a chemistry teacher who found himself ditched in an office gig. Unlike me, he was not a parent and not trying to be a writer. He genuinely played a lot of music in his free time away from our desk jobs at the school where we worked.
For $60 my co-worker was getting a bass drum, snare, two toms, cymbal with a shaky stand, high hat with a dodgy clutch and my now dead dream of helping hold down the bottom end in a completely unhinged band like the Sisters of Mercy or at least a metalized version of The Cure. I remember saying to myself at the time, “Now I’m a writer.” I knew in intellectual terms this wasn’t true, but I couldn’t viscerally tie it to my practical, everyday existence.
I can now.
It’s absurd to think my desire to write fabulist analogies has nothing to do with how haunted I feel listening to the sturm and drang and/or gothic chanting laid out over the tribal rhythms of the blues. I was four years old when I first heard Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”…and I had heard Jimi Hendrix and the Stones at an earlier age, but NOTHING had grabbed hold and shaken my understanding of what music could be like in those three power chords as delivered by Jimmy Page, and particularly, power drummer John Bonham, who would become my hero.
I would get that same feeling at the age of 29 when I went to see a couple of post-Beat performance poets named "Vampyre" Mike Kassel and David Lerner at the Paradise Lounge in San Francisco. Those men and various performers in their scene, known as the Babarians, changed my conception of what a poem could be, just like John Bonham changed my conception of what a rock tune could be. Like Bonham, Kassel and Lerner would succumb to substance abuse. The discovery of art that is haunted holds the same thrill as discovering a new haunted house.
To this day, it is why I love dark music and dark writing. Not just the thrill of self-destruction made manifest in art, but the sense that unless that haunted quality of the human condition is not being addressed, then the art being created is not entirely genuine. Or honest. Or even worthy of being considered art.
I miss my drum kit. There are times when I wish I could pound something in anger, but truly, I miss being able to play it when I’m sad. When I’m haunted. Maybe someday I’ll have it back. Until then, I’ve got these words and you. Thank you.
did you have to be the only one who insisted on being yourself?
“Pretending" is set in Dan Lynch’s, a classic NYC club. Have you ever been there? If so, did you go specifically to see a band?
I was actually at the music bar, Dan Lynch, on a date. She was a German artist. I put my hand on her leg before the music started. She told me her female roommate was her lover. That was news to me. I took my hand off her leg. She asked me why I didn’t go for men. I told her that men never attracted me. I don’t remember the band much, except for the fact that they were all male and their loud music made it very difficult to continue our conversation, which I was grateful for.
The line “white musicians pretending that they were black” brought several musicians to mind. What white musicians do you think pretend to be black? Why do you think they behave in this manner?
Elvis Presley purposely sounded like a Black man. He sang that way to make money and meet a need. I always liked the film, “Field of Dreams.” There was a line in the movie. “If there’s a need, people will come.” There was a need for the White race to meet the Black race on different terms. Music reflects what goes on in real life.
The Black Panthers were popular while I was going to college. At Washington Square College, New York University, I was in an honors seminar with Ralph Ellison, author of The Invisible Man. He kept saying that society was going to appropriate Black culture. That’s what Elvis did until he took so many pills and got too fat – he had to wear a girdle – to shake. I don’t mean to put down Elvis. I felt sorry for his later life. He had a bad manager who exploited him – put him in too many second-rate movies.
I was struck by the line “the people next to us jumped up & down, pretending that they were rock stars.” They’re the audience not performers and yet they're "pretending to be rock stars." Why do you think some people have such a desire to be on stage? What’s the appeal of being a rock star?
The appeal of being a rock star is fame and more fame. People think it’ll be easier to meet others if you’re already famous. That may be true. But then again did anyone really know Elvis? He was surrounded by his bodyguards. He had very little privacy. When Elvis got married the first thing his wife did was to make a bonfire to burn his books. She was trying to change him. People change slowly.
I’m famous but my fame is only spread among the poetry scene. I have limited fame. That’s the best kind. When I was in Paris – I went there partly to meet a Parisian girlfriend but ended up meeting an American one – I met a young woman who told me she was going to be famous. I said in what area. She said she didn’t know yet, but whatever it was, she was going to achieve fame. I felt sorry for her. She was too driven.
It reminded me of the Phil Ochs' song, “Chords of Fame.” There’s a line that goes, “Whatever you do, don’t play the chords of fame.” This woman was strumming them a little too loud for my taste. It’s like Zen. If you strive for fame, you don’t achieve it. You can only get true fame by not seeking it.
Two of the poem’s central themes are pretense and duplicity. How do you think clubs/bars contribute to a person’s desire to be somebody else or something they’re not?
The music scene is set up for pretending you’re someone else. Look at Janis Joplin – she was a star and yet she still pretended she was popular. If the stars pretend they’re popular, so will the audience. I’ve always liked the Judy Collins’ song, “You make up your memories and think they have found you.” Or like The Kinks wrote, “It’s a mixed-up shook-up world where boys pretend to be girls and girls pretend to be boys.” Bob Dylan wasn’t his real name. Or like the Stones sang, “What can a poor boy do but join a rock & roll band.’ Mick Jagger wasn’t poor. He went to the London School of Economics. In fact, I fantasized about being a rock & roll star along with thousands of other fans.
One of my most memorable moments was when I was told by the owner of an East Side book store that Bruce Springsteen walked in, took my first book from a display, started reading it, then began laughing. Then he bought two copies of my book by check. The owner promised to give me the cancelled check, but he never did. Now the store is closed.
What has been your most memorable live music experience?
When I went to hear Barry Harris play piano at the Jazz Cultural theatre. Harris used to live in the same house in New Jersey with Theolonius Monk and the Countess who took care of them. Monk was a genius pianist and composer who had severe mental problems. Some days he would wake up and not recognize his wife and kids. He acted like they were strangers. Barry would play Monk compositions, like “Around Midnight.”
I empathized with the jazz world, because they were at the lowest end of the music world, like poets being at the lowest end of the writing world. Barry would play Monk’s songs and it felt like they were touching my soul. I felt close to Monk, even though we were entirely different personalities that came from totally different backgrounds.
What are your favorite spots for live music/performance?
I’ve been to Webster Hall with a date to hear The Smithereens. They didn’t impress me. They sounded like a modern day louder version of The Monkees – canned music.
I went to Madison Square Garden with a friend to hear Ike and Tina Turner open for the Rolling Stones. I fell in love with Tina. One of the first questions I asked a woman who I was interested in dating was who did she like better – the Stones or Beatles. If she said the Stones, then she passed the test. If she said the Beatles, I’d ask her who was her favorite one. If she said John Lennon, I’d still ask her out. If she said Ringo Starr, I wouldn’t even bother getting her phone number.
I went to hear Chubby Checker perform at the Fillmore East. I was impressed by his piano playing.
My biggest regret was not going to Woodstock. The friends I was planning to go with chickened out, because they thought they would be busted for drug use. They got paranoid.
I heard Holly Neat and Sweet Honey and the Rock at Carnegie Hall. I remember Holly liberating the men’s bathrooms, telling the women in the audience that they shouldn’t be afraid to use the male facilities. I agreed with her until I had to use the bathroom and had to wait while liberated women cut ahead of me in line.
On Writer’s Almanac, you mentioned your book Stray Cat Blues. Can you talk a little about the title and why you appropriated The Rolling Stones’ song?
Titles cannot be copyrighted. Therefore, anyone can use them. I have another poem, which I use a poplar song title as my title - "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do."
“We don’t have anything in common,”/ I said. “We’re two completely different people./ It doesn’t make sense to stay together.”/ But then she started to rub my penis/ through my pants, & I suddenly remembered / that we both did like Indian food.
"Stray Cat Blues" is the title of a poem in my new collection. I like stray cats, though I’m allergic to them, which is one of the themes in my work – the mind is sometimes a step ahead of the body.
(Photograph by Kim Soles) In our Writers and Musicseries, authors either discuss the music that has been included in their novel/poems or the influence music has had on their work overall.
Hal Sirowitz first began to attract attention at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe where he was a frequent competitor in their Friday Night Poetry Slam. He was a member of the 1993 Nuyorican Poetry Slam team and competed in the National Poetry Slam.
Sirowitz has performed his poetry across the country and on television programs such as MTV's Spoken Word: Unplugged and PBS's The United States of Poetry.
He is best known for Mother Said, My Therapist Said and Father Said. Sirowitz is a 1994 recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Poetryand is the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York. He is the best-selling translated poet in Norway, where Mother Said has been adapted for the stage and turned into a series of animated cartoons. Sirowitz worked as a special education teacher for 23 years.
Our conversation with Hal is in two parts. Below is part one. Check back tomorrow (5/4) for part two.
Gena Anderson at Bookslut called you “a poor man’s Woody Allen.” What do you think she was suggesting?
I thought of adopting a Bob Dylan persona for interviews and attacking the interviewer. But I like being interviewed. It makes you define yourself. I have a love/hate relationship with Woody Allen. “Manhattan” is one of my favorite all time movies. I hated “Interiors.” Just like Bob Dylan, I expected Woody Allen to reflect my life. I consider them brothers in the arts.
I was devastated listening to “Lay Lady Lay” when it was first played on the radio. That song didn’t have the angst of his previous ones. It didn’t teach me anything about relationships, except to look for sex – something I already knew and wasn’t helpful in keeping the relationship solvent. I thought Dylan was selling out. Now I know he was only being human.
The good thing about poetry is there isn’t much money in it. That gives you freedom to do what you want and to become incognito while doing it. I was never under the gun, like Woody Allen and Bob Dylan, to compete against myself. I wrote some bad poems, like “Lay Lady Lay," but they have gone unnoticed. I think I’m smart enough not to put any of my real bad poems in one of my collections.
How has music informed your poetry?
I compose my poems while listening to music. I like Paul Williams, Mikail Gilmore, and others who wrote about music. I like Townes Van Zandt, and was surprised to know that someone who got more depressed than me was able to put his depression into song. You can’t separate music from my work. I started out wanting to be a poetical version of Bob Dylan, only to give up that fantasy to find my own voice.
You've been a “slam” poet. Do you view yourself as a performer?
I was selected to be on Spoken Word Unplugged with John Hall, leader of the band King Missile and Gil Scott Heron. Performing has always been part of my act. I do a dead-pan performance. Then I developed Parkinson’s Disease, which slurred my speech. I had a brain operation – batteries and electrodes put into my chest and head. I’m the authentic electrical man the poet Walt Whitman wrote about.
Tell me about your relationship with They Might be Giants.
I was the opening act for They Might Be Giants when they were first starting out at a lower East Side club called Darinka. I remember performing four sets in two nights. I was called the “Mother Said” poet, but I never told my mother I was writing about her. I was afraid she might hit me over the head.
John Flansburg brought me to his studio - his old apartment where he lived before he got married - to record me performing my poetry. In those days they had their own music label and would record friends and bands that they liked.
On the radio show “Studio 360,” John Linnnel claimed that their song, "Palindrome," was influenced by my "mother" poems. They were great guys. John Flansburg had a lot of energy and while his main band was resting between gigs, he’d put together another band to perform. He had a show at Mercury Lounge and had me as their opening act for old- time sake. It was a standing room only crowd.
I got on stage and said, “I forgot to bring my guitar. I guess I’ll just have to read this stuff.” There was total silence in the room. Then a few people started laughing. I read my golden oldies – old poems guaranteed to get a reaction from the crowd. After my reading a couple of women declared they were fans and gave me rocks as presents.
What song/album/musician/band has directly influenced your writing?
When I was young I got blown away by the song “Purple People Eater” and Buddy Holly’s “It’s So Easy to Fall in Love.” He was right. It’s harder to find someone who falls in love with you. I always liked Leonard Cohen because he was a poet first and became a songwriter later. He’s not as good live as he is recorded. I liked the compilation albums of other singers recording his songs.
I love the blues – Mississippi John Hurt, John Lee Hooker, etc. I like Billie Holiday – she sings depressing songs in an uplifting manner. I like Cleo Laine – she sings Broadway classics with soul. I like J.J. Cale. The list is endless. I even like early Neil Diamond.
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