also known as aurorabell, you get to see me as I truly am:

Scary.

In the next 48 hours, I must:

— post this week’s column this afternoon
— host my SPEAK reading tonight (c’mon down, the theme is “the dark”)
— finalize my set for Urbana tonight after the reading
— teach a class tomorrow morning, 9 till 12:30
— drive to NYC (ALONE!!! thanks, everyone… ;-D) tomorrow afternoon
— do a kickass feature at the BPC at 8:00 tomorrow night
— drive back to MA, alone

You’ll forgive me if I run…

This is why I hate this condition:

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/83750.html

If he is gone, he’ll be another notch on depression’s hilt.

Dammit.

I know I’m a huge prophet of doom and gloom when it comes to the state of poetry, especially in my home town of Worcester … so it delights me to say that while listening last night and at the Youth Slam on Thursday, I’m finally realizing that there are some REALLY GOOD poets coming up from the ranks.

mstegosaurus‘s and akamuu‘s recent cheerleading about Worcester has made me re-examine some of my pessimism. Thanks, guys…

Apart from known-quantity-getting-even-better androidlustre, we’ve got the ever interesting Raphael (and his father Larry ain’t bad either — someone suggested they could be a slam tag team), Nick Davis, Vo, and several others.

Time for me to get back on my game, I think… 😉

Now, if we could get a few more women involved…

I read “Suicide Notes” at the Asylum tonight, came home to find my wife watching a movie about a man who can’t bring himself to open the suicide note his wife left behind.

He is addicted to huffing gas.

This is the second movie I’ve watched this weekend that includes gas huffing scenes. The first one centered around a gas huffing man who committed suicide without leaving a note.

It took place on an Indian reservation.

The first poem in the Fugue State poems I’m working on includes the words “Suicide” and “Indian reservation”.

I just received my last Xmas present…My wife gave me the Rhino “No Thanks!” 70s punk boxed set.

I have most of this stuff on vinyl, of course, and much of it on CD as well, but it’s nice to have it all in one place; although where the Sex Pistols have disappeared to in all this is hard to fathom…and Boston’s hot Seventies scene is woefully underrepresented. Where the hell is DYS, for instance? Or the Real Kids, or the Neighborhoods, or SS Decontrol, or…

Ah well, plenty to kvetch about on any compilation which bills itself as definitive.

Nonetheless, feast your eyes on this track listing…

1.
I was born in Fort Dix, NJ, at the base hospital on March 3, 1960. This was the same day Elvis Presley was being mustered out of the service, and he was undergoing some sort of exit physical in the same building…so yes, dear friends, I was entering the building as Elvis was leaving the building.

2.
I spoke fluent Italian until I was 5 years old.

3.
Published my first poem when I was 9. “Highlights” magazine. I was hooked.

4.
I won a scholarship to college based on my writing skills. I never spent it all, since I dropped out halfway through my junior year.

5.
I was accepted at Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, and UMass. I went to UMass. I heard the parties were better. This explains the previous entry.

6.
One of my earliest performance poetry experiences took place when I was asked to stall for time prior to a concert because the lead singer of the band was too fucked up to go on stage. The band was Flipper.

7.
I quit smoking when I was 22. I was smoking three and a half packs a day when I quit. That was 21 years ago.

8.
I saw the Ramones in the Seventies, dammit. Ditto Blondie, Devo, the Talking Heads, the Pretenders, the Clash, Elvis Costello, and way too many others both famous and infamous…I really miss that time.

9.
As a concert security goon — yes, you read that right, I was one of those guys whose job it was to start, um, stop fights and such — I met everyone from Frank Sinatra to REM to Sammy Hagar.

10.
I’ve been married for 19 years, and with my wife for over 22 years.

11.
I live on the street I grew up on, next door to my folks, in the house I grew up in.

12.
I am allergic to mosquitoes, although not as badly as I was when I was a kid.

13.
I collect: combat knives, guitars, Tarot card decks.

14.
I’ve seen a ghost. Yes, I’m positive. No, I won’t tell you about it.

15.
I put “poetry” down as my religion when it’s asked for on forms.

16.
I was a Boy Scout.

17.
I sang in barbershop quartets, madrigal choirs, and assorted other ensembles throughout and long past high school.

18.
I’ve had a recurring premonition that I would die at 7:19 PM on Dec. 19 of some unknown year since I was twelve years old. I do believe it will come true.

19.
I did way too much: cocaine, acid, and speed.

20.
I didn’t do enough: loving.

The poems/poems in progress that are roughly being grouped together under the rubric of the Fugue State poems seem also to include several of my older works.

Since I’m thinking of turning this all into my next chap (and/or of using it as the basis for the CD project), I’m curious: how many of you have an aversion to re-publishing your poems from previous chapbooks/CDs in newer chapbooks/CDs?

I’ve never done it — it’s sort of a point of pride with me that every chap was brand spanking new work — and I know I’ve been disappointed when upon buying a “new” chap from someone, I found poems I already had in a previous chap in substantially unaltered form.

This is not the same to my mind as “jumping up a level”, by the way — putting poems that were previously self-published into a “book-book”, to use the technical term.

Am I just ridiculously persnickety?

So, I’ll be featuring at the Bowery Poetry Club a week from Thursday.

I’m really looking forward to this — originally, it was to be the start of an entire weekend in NYC, but now I have to be back here in MA for an appointment the next day. Which sucks a bit, but I’ll take any NYC I can get.

Figuring on getting into the city by 4:30 or so, with any luck; hope to be bringing my high school buddy Skip with me for the show; and still desperately figuring out what I want to do with my 20 odd minutes on stage.

I’m looking at a short mix of old and new stuff, balanced toward the new, with a de-emphasis on the more overtly political work (although if Lynne Procope is there, I suppose I’ll pull out “Political Art” for her…she requests it every time I see her, and I’ve not done it the last few times).

And I expect that the NY crowd will be there, yes?

More later.

I’m in the home stretch of waiting for the appointment with my new meds guy next week.

I already feel better, but shaky as hell; feel like the least blow will throw me off.

I’m also struck by the number of people who have told me to simply “cheer up”, or who have offered their own tips for how to not “feel blue”, or who have said, “well, we all get that way near the holidays…”

So, for the record, here are some things I’ve tried that don’t work for me, to save you some time…

— Full spectrum lighting
— The Bible
— Meditation
— Just making room for “me time”
— Journaling, or (alternately) “writing out my feelings in poetry” (I shit you not — from someone IN MY FAMILY last week!)
— A glass of wine after dinner
— Getting more sleep ( this to a chronic insomniac with severe sleep apnea)

Thank you.

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I’ve decided that the CD with Bob Jordan will likely be new work written for the project. Maybe even some of the Fugue State work would be appropriate…

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I really need to buy a new laptop. We’re down to a one computer household, and with my wife doing all her business stuff (she runs a marketing firm out of the house) on the existing desktop, we’re fighting for computer time left and right.

Her laptop died sometime ago, and my Powerbook is on longterm loan to my brother in law (an old model I hadn’t used much lately).

Come to think of it, SHE should buy the laptop for the business.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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How would you feel about submitting your work ahead of time to a panel of judges before slamming — in other words, having your writing juried before being allowed to perform it?

And — what size of purse would have to be on the line to get you to travel for this event? (Head to head — not team oriented.)

What else would have to be in place? Free rooms, workshops, etc?

Take these questions in the broadest possible sense — I’m being hypotehtical here, with an eye toward translating thought into action on a yet to be defined timeline.

After being off since Dec. 22, I’m back to work tomorrow.

I realize with mounting dread that I don’t want to go back, especially with the Fugue State poem on the cusp of a breakthrough.

I think I’m getting closer to admitting that I want to go into full-time writing, and I haven’t got a clue where to begin.

I also know I’m not making any rash decisions until I feel less shaky.

___________________________________________________________________

I skipped the Worcester Indy competition tonight. I’m down right slam-free these days.

Next thing you know, I’ll be wearing tweed.

___________________________________________________________________

Tweed Antidote: A musician I know, Bob Jordan,is bugging me bigtime to do a CD with him providing music for my poetry.

Jordan is a local lunatic, a hugely gifted musician who’s played guitar with all sorts of cult and fringe figures from Eugene Chadbourne to Michael Hurley and the Fugs.

We’re old buddies who occasionally haunt flea markets together looking for cheesy guitars (he’s a fan of ’60s Harmony Rockets, while I prefer Teisco Del Reys), and we also share a common interest in Portuguese fado music and its characteristic instrument, a mandolin-sized twelve-string guitar called the “guitarra de Lisboa”. (You prog-rock fans may know it as the instrument Steve Howe plays on several Yes albums. No, neither Bob nor I play any Yes songs.)

I’ve been putting this off for a year or so, but it promises to be big skronking fun, so I think it’s time. Bob’s solo work is a sort of cross between traditional folk music and the Butthole Surfers, so God knows what this will end up sounding like…especially if (as we’ve discussed) I decide to write specifically for the CD.

Stay tuned…

I’m working on a couple of projects right now, and am interested in your opinions.

1. Slam as a place to move performance poetry forward in terms of artistic merit seems broken right now. If you were in charge, what would you do to change that?

2. Anyone know anything about the psychological phenomenon known as a “fugue state”? Anecdotes, etc.? I know the definition.

Thanks in advance.

I’m trying to figure out what that spot is on my arm in my user-pic.

That was taken in Seattle at the Hurricane, during one of my various open mike appearances…It was probably dirt, or maybe it wasn’t.

Any thoughts? (Silly, I know; but I’m trying to get trivial here just to keep away from dwelling on things…)