Migration

I have moved over from Blogger to Wordpress. I hope you'll join me there, and update your links, your RSS feeds, and whatever Internet magic you do.

I'm still settling in over there, so some things don't look the way I want them to, and some sidebar stuff isn't quote up to speed--but we'll get there.

GrammarPiano.com will take you there, as per usual. Thanks for reading. I really do mean that.

Things I am Thinking About This Week

-Sorry it's been so long. Sometimes the world makes too difficult for me to compose my thoughts. Between gay bashings, gay torturings, Obama's idiocy regarding DOMA and DADT, Carl Paladino's iciocy, a brief bout with a seasonal cold, and what might be a touch of early seasonal-affective disorder or plain old creative comedown, I have felt too spread out to make any real sense.

-We saw La Bête on Broadway, which starred a very underused David Hyde Pierce and Joanna Lumley, being steamrolled over by the very good, but very exhausting and not particularly specifically-memorable, Mark Rylance. All the performances are quite lovely, but they are, sadly, weighted down by this play that, well, I just didn't want any part of after fifteen minutes. In writing circles, we might say "I am not the audience for this work."

-Delores Van Cartier, which is the name of the lounge-singer in disguise played by Whoopi Goldberg in "Sister Act," is the best name I've heard in a while.

-Is Sister Act ever really coming to Broadway?

-I found it fascinating that there was press regarding the fact that Jonathan Franzen's fantastic novel "Freedom" was not nominated for the National Book Award. (I found the book to be wholly-engrossing, purely pleasurable, and carefully, wisely written. Pretty fucking fantastic.) It was as if people couldn't stop talking about how they are ready to stop talking about it.

-Does anybody still order transcripts from television talk shows?

-Kip is sitting next to me on the couch, making us a White Tree of Gondor from aluminum armature and sculpey. I am the luckiest guy in the universe.

Hey Tim from St. Louis, This One's for You

This week, a lot of information was passed down from the Universe. Sometimes your job is to sift, stir well, and respond. Sometimes your job is just to listen. This post is sort of a combination of both. (Which, by the way, is what I have decided a blog is. Mostly.) So, here are all the things I am trying to make sense of this week:

--J.D. Salinger died. This is a tragedy.

--People at the market wondered whether Salinger wrote anything else. If, say, there were stacks of manuscripts tucked away in safe deposit boxes. People wondered if there was nothing.

--I saw in the bookstore that Knopf has published a collection of Nabokov's note cards, called The Original of Laura, which would have turned into a novel, maybe, at some point, had he lived long enough to finish it. He wanted the notes to be burned, but his wife, as the story goes, "could not bear to destroy her husband’s last work." Could not bear to see her future royalties disappear, if you ask me. Or maybe that is harsh. But art is personal. And me, at least now, I wouldn't want any half-done art in the world after I have died.

--An unfinished Ralph Ellison novel has also been published, Three Days Before the Shooting. Juneteenth, which was published earlier, was culled from this same material.

--My friend Jane wonders, in this post, if writers "become better and better at considering [their] audience not purely out of generosity or thoughtfulness, but as a strategy for getting what [they] want?"

--But there is my dear Meg, in videos of old Circus Amok shows, which are hosted on the Hempispheric Institute's website, streaming, for all to see, enjoy, study, relive. Even though she died some years ago--there she is, real again, her movements and gestures, her stature, her economy.

--Is seeing Meg on video anything like the Nabokov note cards? Or the Ellison novel? Or Jane wondering if writer's get better at getting what they want as they become better writers? Because what does it mean that these novels are published after the writer, ostensibly, isn't in control of what he wants?

Help. I'm not sure what to make of it.

Weekend Update

It took me about an hour and a half to drive home from the Greenmarket on Saturday night. We ended up getting about 9 inches of snow, with parts of Brooklyn getting as much as 14. After closing up the syrup stand, we went to have dinner at The Spain Restaurant, which is one of my favorites. When people ask me what it's like, I say, "It's 100 year old drunk waiters in polyester bolero jackets." It's also the place, when asked if they could bring something for the vegetarians, said: "I'll bring some potatoes." So, after dinner, we made it back to our parked trucks and slogged ourselves through the oncoming blizzard. Taxis were sliding all over Third Avenue. On the Queensboro Bridge, the visibility was so bad that you couldn't see any light from the city, from Queens, from the cars in front of you. I'm glad I made it home without incident. I was glad that I had a large heavy vehicle, and not some tiny plastic car. Perhaps the most New York-ish of images, was, of course, some delivery guy on a bike, at 10pm in a blizzard. How we do love our delivery.

I'm writing a set of discussion questions for Yield, which will be in stores in Sept 2010. I'm not sure what do to about this. What do people want to talk about, or think about, after they have read my novel? In some ways, I think that the author is the worst person to write these questions. Perhaps I am the best person to answer the questions once they have been written? Or, maybe the readers are the best people to answer these questions? I'm not sure what to think about this.

Kip and I are headed to South Carolina and Tennessee for a few days after Christmas. We hope to see Laura and Amy while we are all in the same place--perhaps convening at a Waffle House, which Amy has learned to love.

I'm taking a short break from the blog--and will see you in the beginning of the new year.

Love to everyone.

500

Back in the summer of 2005, which was the last summer I spent sitting at a desk all day, answering the phone, filing appearance contracts and expense reports, searching for things on "The Google," as my boss called it--I wrote this, which is part of the first post on this blog:

In the last few months, I have been forced to think a lot about my relationship with my writing, and I discovered that my resistance had (really) more to do with a self-imposed division of what is meant only for me and what is to be read by others. A fake sacredness that I invented.

And I'm over it.

Thus, the work can be "the work." And thus, the work can suit the purpose, be it here, as viewed by me (and maybe two people plus my mother, if I'm lucky) or committed to actual paper and available at your favorite independent bookstore (if I'm luckier.) Whichever is most appropriate.

I hadn't actually learned that lesson when I wrote those paragraphs, that lesson about letting the work just be the work, but sometime between then and now--this is my 500th post for GrammarPiano--I did learn it. Writing is alchemy; you can make things true that aren't, or that aren't yet. This blog has, for the most part, especially in the years since I felt like a "real" writer, given me the relationship that I have with my work.

Blogging teaches you how to sit down with nothing and make something. It teaches you to put your work out into the universe and expect nothing back. Sometimes you do get small blips on the screen--emails, comments, references from friends in your actual real life conversations--all that is wonderful, and reminds you that people really are reading. But, in the end, blogging really teaches you that you do it for yourself. You do it because you have something to say and you need to figure out what it is.

This blog also helped me get over some pretty terrible events. It gave me a place for my grief, a place to turn that grief into something observed, something distant enough from my real self, something that wouldn't swallow me. It has given me creative, cerebral, often deeply touching relationships with other great writers like this one, this one, this one, this one, this one and this one. It has given me the confidence to write what I think is the most real, true, strong and meaningful, as well as the most strange, observational, small, re-county, daily, blah stuff that happens--and taught me (hopefully) try to make those things interesting to read.

All that...and I am getting luckier, just as I wished--Yield will be in bookstores in the fall of 2010.

I kind of think that my writing is who I am, and this is one of the places where the writing lives, and so, kind of, I live here, this is me, transposed. I have never felt more like myself, never had such a clear idea of who that self was. And, conversely, I don't take myself all that seriously. I'm more open, listening, curious. Forgiving. I hope.

Thank you to all my dear readers, known and unknown. I see your IP addresses....so I know you are out there.

What I'm Thinking About Lately

--I'm coming up on 500 blog posts. I guess maybe I should think about what the blog has done for me, and maybe what it hasn't. How it has changed the way I write, the way I think about writing, the way I think about what it means to make writing for free, and give it away for free. I find that even though I'm not particularly interested in marking certain passages--year marks, large round numbers--I am also compelled to mark them, as evidence. Of something.

--I am ambivalent about everything. Perhaps too much.

--Does supplemental material change the perception of a work of art? I'm thinking about this age of DVD commentary, bonus tracks, and so on. I think about Doris Salcedo's work "Shibboleth," which was at the Tate Modern in 2007. She wouldn't discuss how the crack was made--and that actually made the work less interesting to me. Perhaps because the feat of it was so startling. I'm with her, in some senses--the work stands alone. But...

--Antony Gormley's current work of art, in London, "One & Other." Basically, for 100 days, 2400 members of the public will stand on the vacant fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square for an hour each. Watching the public use this moment--their 1 hour of a certain kind of fame--has been interesting. People are using it to raise awareness for a certain cause....or they are hanging out, taking pictures, having tea. It's interesting to me to think about use, and identity, and art, and how all these things are crammed in together with activism--which I never even thought about until the public started bringing signs and stuff with them to their hour on the plinth. This brings about the question of visibility, and what that means.

--I used to have a lot of sadness about finishing my novel--only in that you're essentially killing off people who have lived in your brain for so long, your friends in the loneliest of times. But, for whatever reason, it never occurred to me that, actually, in finishing it--you're giving them life, forever. (Or, as least, as long as you remain in print.)

Everything is Shitty

I'm taking some time away from the blog to deal with some personal stuff that's swirling me around in bizarro land. Just a little break. Not too long.

Please stay tuned....

Blueberry Sour Cream Pie

The fabulous Jane noticed that I twittered (see right) about the making of two Blueberry Sour Cream pies over the weekend. She asked for the recipe. This pie is, hands down, my absolute favorite. On more than one occasion, I've eaten half the thing in one sitting. My mother will tell you that she's seen me eat it for breakfast about a hundred times, as well. It's fantastic--in my humble opinion, the ultimate mix of texture, temperature and flavor.

Blueberry Sour Cream Pie
(makes one 9" pie, serves 6-8. Or serves 2, if you're a pig, like me.)

Crust: Make your own, or buy a frozen one.

Filling:

1 egg
1 cup sour cream
3/4 cups sugar
2 T flour
.25 t salt
1-2 t vanilla
2.5 cups fresh blueberries

Topping:

3 T flour
3 T butter, softened
3 T pecans, chopped (I always use much more than this, maybe a half-cup.)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Beat together all the ingredients for the filling for a few minutes. Fold in the blueberries. Pour into the unbaked crust. Bake for 25 minutes. While the pie is baking, mix together the softened butter and flour until you make an even paste. Then mix in the chopped pecans, and mix with your fingers until you have a nice crumble. Remove the pie, crumble the topping all over, and then bake for 10 minutes more. Cool completely, then chill for at least 6 hours before serving.

It should look something like this:

All Their Manipulated Acquisitions

Over on Ted's blog, he suggested we just tag ourselves with this meme, instead of waiting for someone else to do it. (Lots of life is like this, right?) So I'm tagging myself, and after this you tag yourself.

These are the meme rules:

1. Look up page 123 in the nearest book.
2. Look for the fifth sentence.
3. Post the three sentences that follow that fifth sentence on page 123.

The book I have nearest to me is Business as Unusual by Charlie Vazquez, a fabulous queer punk writer here in New York City. Charlie and I are both included in Best Gay Erotica 2008--so not only should you check out his book, but check out ours, too. So, on to the sentences:

"Eleanor vowed to fight for the box's contents. Whatever mystery awaited us belonged to Benito and no one would have time to track us down. Chances were they were too busy with all their manipulated acquisitions to ever care."

Eight Things About Me

I was tagged by the thoughtful blogger over at Leaf-Stitch-Word with this strange, boundless meme, in which you are supposed to write eight things about yourself. As far as I can tell, those are the only rules. Usually these things come with a set of constrictions--and thus you get to work within the form to find something interesting. This, however, is so freeing as to be impossible. So--here's my stab at it:

1) The first CD I bought was the Indigo Girls record "Nomads. Indians. Saints." It came in a long box, and I picked it out after having seen them on the Austin City Limits songwriter's special. This would have been 1990. The opening chords of "Hammer and a Nail" sounded so right, as if I'd never heard music so perfect before. They were from the South, they were out, they wrote about themselves with folky-abandonment. I still buy their records, nearly 20 years later.

2) If you ask my what my favorite movie is, I will tell you "Farewell My Concubine." This is not my favorite movie, but who has just one favorite movie? It is an important movie for me. What I want to say when someone asks about my favorite movie is: "Ask the question that you really want the answer to."

3) I don't like to eat apples without cutting them into pieces, and if then: Mutsu, Braeburn and Ginger Gold varieties.

4) I started writing a novel in the 6th grade called "Thomas and Herman's Incredible Adventure at the Bottom of the Sea." A turtle and a hermit crab go to the bottom of the sea and have incredible adventures. I was saving it on a black floppy disk, back when you did that sort of thing, and hiding the disk in the broken wall of the computer lab. When I moved on to the 7th grade, I abandoned it.

5) I love The Suze Orman Show. "Oh, Barbara, you are so denied, you do not have the money to buy this car, what are you thinking...?"

6) My kitchen looks clean, but it is not. Trust me.

7) I don't think there is such thing as good music or bad music. There is only music that you like and music that you don't.

8) Every day I fantasize about winning the lottery and having millions of dollars. With the money, I buy a huge building and create a center for artists and writers to work and live together rent-free. I support a small number of non-profit organizations. I hire my friend Keith to decorate my loft. I go to Iceland once a year, by myself. I buy a Prius and spend 6 months driving around the United States, visiting all my friends. I write a book about the travels. Trouble with all this is: I don't even play the lottery.

I'll tag: Aaron, Mario, How History Feels, and Amanda.

Winter Break!

Kip and I will be in South Carolina and Tennessee for a week (to see the Nephews and such) and I'll be away from the blog. Please enjoy this new set of covers during the brief hiatus.

GO HERE for the file directory, and to download the tracks.

1 - Milkshake -- Kelis
2 - Miss Jackson -- The Vines
3 - Cupid -- Amy Winehouse
4 - All That She Wants -- The Kooks
5 - Crying -- k.d. Lang
6 - Venus as a Boy -- Mike Flowers Pops
7 - Love Song -- Tori Amos
8 - Believe -- Robbie Fulks
9 - Crazy in Love -- Snow Patrol
10 - Wonderwall -- Ryan Adams
11 - Joyful Girl -- Soulive
12 - With or Without You -- Scala Choir
13 - Irreplaceable -- Sugarland
14 - Johanna -- Megan Mullally

You can also download and print this nifty CD cover if you want.

See how good I am to you.

My Sentiments Exactly

About a year ago, I decided that I would start another blog, this one focusing on the talk-back nature of graffiti on subway advertising. At the time, my cell phone wouldn't take pictures, and I didn't want to lug around my clunky digital camera, which, since it is from 1998, still uses four AA batteries, which means it weighs about nine pounds. Or at least feels like that in your bag. Then I decided that I didn't have the energy for another blog.

You, out there--someone should do this. We'll all arm ourselves with our phones and contribute to this fight-back mechanism. I suggest that you call it: The Platform Manifesto.

This, on The Bratz movie poster. My sentiments exactly.


Seems that other people are getting in on the same act. This morning, two days after my original post, the following appeared on another platform:

This Blog is Rated G

Apparently, my blog is rated G. As the website told me: "This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words: anal (1x)." If I had used the word anal, say--(7x,) or even (49x)--would that have pushed me over into another realm? Because, even though I want readers, I also want to be rated XXX, even though I'm not really interested in writing posts that say anal (49x).

This reminds me of Ani Difranco talking about that maybe-real list of banned songs which supposedly was circulated among Clear Channel radio stations post-9/11. How she kept saying to herself: "Oh man, ban one of my songs!"

So how about this: shit, piss, fart, fuck, pussy, cock, asshole, jack off. Now let's see what I get.

Now we're talkin'!