Back now from the slam which was just an open reading and there was a beer and a poem about the origin of beer and it was a good night.

And now, bed. Thanks to the Orlando scene for being good company and good poets over the last few days…you’ve saved me from the accountants and auditors for two nights running. I’m grateful.

Work is done. The earrings are back in. I’m headed for the slam. Bye.

Cool shit. Tod and I started with a quick meal and a beer at a small downtown cafe (the place where Dani O’s slam happens), then sucked down another couple at a nearby bar, and then we went to the inaugural night of Diverse Words, a reading in a small, cool vegan cafe in another part of town. Big crowd, lots of good words. The night ended with a tag/cipher out in front of the building after the rain stopped.

I’m back in the Big Plastic Hotel now; will be working tomorrow, and then off to the slam tomorrow night.

Yay. Fun.

is where I’m at right now, and I don’t mean Bloom.

valis429 and I are heading out to grab some food and see some poeticness later. If you’re out and about around here, stop by wherever it is that we’re going.

It should be clear that I don’t know where that is, so don’t ask me.

and it ought to piss SOMEONE off.

 
The Zero Point Zero Regular Column!

Very much more than Nothing!

The layout for the chapbook is done. I need to find a picture for the cover, but that’s about it.

The new page imposition program I found for Mac, a freeware thingie called Cocoabooklet, is pretty easy to use and it seems to do the trick. I guess the sample copy will tell the tale.

I’ve renamed the book “Jim’s Fall.” It seems to capture the central metaphor and also allows for a second suite of poems to follow Jim’s continuing story.

Whew.

Next up: the CD. As I said, minor post-production stuff; I’m going to give it a try myself.

I ought to update the feature list:

Sept. 24 — Java Hut (w/Faro)

Oct 9 — Bar 13, NYC (w/Faro)

Nov. 13 — Stone Soup Poets, Cambridge MA

March 2007 — d’Alzon Reading, Assumption College, Worcester

I’m in Orlando next week on Tuesday and Wednesday. No poetry scheduled, but I’m looking.

If anyone’s looking for features, lemme know and we’ll talk.

Been pretty solidly offline for a couple of days…

Just got in from recording “The Jim Poems” for a CD. It came out remarkably well considering the environment and our equipment (recorded live, vocals and 5-string electric bass, to a digital 4-track). Minimal post production to be done…should have it available as a chapbook CD combo for the Java Hut premiere on Sept. 24, and for the NYC premiere at Bar 13 on October 9.

YAY! Exciting — my first CD, which I once swore I’d never do; I’m kinda opposed to spoken word CDs as I feel that they “freeze” performances. The number of poets I’ve heard covering work they only know through CD scares me, because I generally feel that what I’m hearing is impersonations of the original poets. I like it when someone can take a poem off page and make it their own without losing the original intent.

Of course, that would imply that the original poem was well-written enough to stand up to such interpretation.

Anyway, adding the music feels different to me — not sure how; perhaps because Faro and I developed the performances together as a single piece of art, not as an “accompaniment” to the poems I wrote. It seems natural to me to try and capture it.

PSYCHED.

I’ll be catching up on mail really soon, I promise.

EDIT: Are any of you jazz heads out there familiar with a movie called “Riffs?” I’ve not seen it, can’t find if anywhere online. Faro’s seen it once, and is looking for a tune from the movie — a really amazing bass duet featuring a Jamaaladeen Tacuma type funk player and a melodic, Jaco-esque partner. The movie was NOT a documentary and the actual players weren’t in the movie. He has the tune on a CD someone made for him with no identifying info.

Thanks in advance…

I’m fine, for those of you who’ve asked. Thanks.

I’m staying away from TV and radio and heading into the old job to lay some flowers at the memorial.

If I’m on here at all again today, it’ll be much later.

I’ve been sitting with the guitar tonight…that makes me pretty happy…

I’m trying to work up some reasonably competent second and third postion chord changes for a new song I’m working on. This sudden burst of songwriting is kinda weird, as I’ve written about four songs in twenty years.

Maybe I’ve been working up to this. Maybe it took me this long to be ready to do this.

Not questioning too much. Just enjoying it.

I’m watching the NASCAR race tonight.

I’m going to the race in Loudon NH next weekend.

Am I the only NASCAR fan in this crowd?

Addendum: Gotta say it — I think snobbery and elitism keep a lot of people ignorant of the appeal of NASCAR. I know I never even dreamed of watching a race until recently.

In the earlier post I mentioned a headache.

Please change “headache” to “migraine.”

My eyes hurt. Going to hide in the dark. Bye.

CNN will be streaming their real-time archive of the coverage of 9/11 on their site on Monday, starting at 8:30 AM. So if you want, you can relive the whole thing just the way it happened.

I won’t be watching, but I can understand why someone might want to see it.

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In other news, I have a headache.

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Just finished reading the Bob Dylan interview in Rolling Stone. I hadn’t picked up RS in a long time, so it was interesting to see the rag. It seems to have improved from the last time I read it.

I tend to agree with Dylan’s approach toward his music, where he says that he doesn’t listen to his albums and thinks of them as documentation more than as discrete works of art. I kinda feel that way about my books — I get focused on the next thing almost as soon as I’ve finished one.

An example: the set I’m planning for the shows on 9/24 and 10/9 (the Jim Poems, accompanied by Faro on bass) is really exciting and I think it’s going to kill (especially the ending), but in reading through the poems I’m already seeing a next set that continues Jim’s story, and I’m starting to get impatient to get these performances out of the way so I can “move on.”

This stands in direct contradiction to my own frustration with poets who don’t get up to read “unless I’ve got something new.” While I read new stuff all the time as part of the editing process, I think it’s critical NOT to abandon older work in favor of the fresh. Poems continue to resonate and change after they are “done.” We bring new things and experiences to them, and the reading of them changes (or at least, it should).

We have such a narcissistic streak — we think the latest and greatest stuff we just came up with needs to be heard immediately. Robert Bly once said that the urge to be excited all the time, to experience novelty, is a form of narcissism, and I agree with him. Life isn’t always new and exciting, and neither are we.

As I said, though, I’m as guilty as everyone else. I fight the tendency all the time. I try to balance the amount of new and old I do in open mikes and features. After all, the old poems are likely new to SOMEONE in the audience, and if you wrote them well enough, they should stand up.

I am tired of:

— poets who self-promote endlessly in a really ego driven way
— vicious posts to e-mail lists that end with “one love”
— people who believe winning a slam = being a good poet overall
— ridiculous claims as to personal popularity
— my own envy at those who succeed through such petty crap

— in fact, I’m just tired of trying to be myself in a scene that seems to thrive on masks