An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump

Why does my cat hiss at nothing?  Why does she get angry at her own tail?  These questions and more will never be answered–

But what will be answer… or at least talked about… mentioned, perhaps, in a community newsletter, is the history of Barefoot Theater and its Upcoming Schedule of Theatricalized Events!

Now you may have heard about that em Barefoot Theater that’s been around since, like, 1999 and is all hip and true and whatnot in New York City (New York City! Get a rope!) but listen here babes and babettes (or babudes): We are not them.

In fact, we are close to not being anyone. In fact, we are, in short (but not too short), Erin Kidwell and Andrew Kozma, two artists on a mission.

“And what’s your mission statement,” some people ask.

To put on plays and have fun. Also, to kick ass and chew gum. And we’re all out of ass.

Here’s a picture to give you an idea of what Barefoot Theater is like:

Bare Feet! Theater! Laces tied together!

And here’s a rundown of our history:

1. A production of Waiting for Engines Act 1, with a monologue from Act 2, written by Andrew Kozma, sirected by Erin Kidwell, and produced by Unheard Voices. It was performed at the Midtown Art Center for two weekends in January of 2006 (the specific dates, as with the details of many of my particular dates, are lost to the vagaries of time).
2. A production of Lights up on a Room/Lights Out for the 2009 Bootown Houston Fringe Festival. It was again written by Andrew Kozma and directed by Erin Kidwell. It was performed in Houston at Mango’s and Avant Garden on May 15-17. This was the point where we decided to try and get a company together — not just form a company, you know, garner a name (apparently used), develop a following (Are you out there?), et al., but get a group of actors and technical staff (I guess the writer would be included in the latter) who would carry over from one production to the next like Grateful Dead Deadites. Deadheads? Zombies?
3. A production of Last Call written by Andrew Kozma, directed by Erin Kidwell, performed by a random accoutrement of actors and standybyers, and performed at Poison Girl on March 7, 2010. Of course, this is today, and this is for the monthly Poison Girl Drink Houston Better fundraiser (that this month helps us) to help fund (RAISE!) for the other two productions we’ll be doing shortly.
4. A production of Oedipus and the Sphinx for the 2010 Bootown Houston Fringe Festival written by Andrew Kozma, directed by Erin Kidwell, and performed sometime in mid-May.
5. A production of Tuned to a Dead Channel written by Andrew Kozma and directed by Erin Kidwell. This play will be performed at the Midtown Art Center on July 22-25 and July 29 to August 1.

Now, if you’ve made it this far than your in the inner circle and you can tattoo our logo on your shin (painful, yes, but definitely worth it). As one of the elect and encircled, I’m going to let you in on a secret about tonight’s Poison Girl Drink Houston Better event: You Can Take Part!

First, you can volunteer to be thrown out of the bar. It’s okay, we’ll let you back in. But for that moment you’ll be a star as I (or someone like I) blames you for things you haven’t done and takes you by the ear and deposits you on the outside sidewalk. Come on, how often do you get to be thrown out of a bar without good cause? Now’s your chance.

Second, we will be doing guerrilla theater demonstrations throughout the latter part of the evening from 8:30 to 11:30. The idea is that these events seem to happen spontaneously with a large number of people taking part, so that those who don’t know what’s going on feel as though they’re in an episode of The Twilight Zone. And the original, not the lame mid-eighties remake. One person will start each event and, if you’re in the know, which you are now, you will instantly join in.

8:30 pm: Sing “99 Bottles of Beer” until we drink ten beers or until someone starts throwing them at us.
9:30 pm: The slow clap. One person will stand and start slowly clapping, looking around as though others should join in praising, you know, whatever he/she is clapping for. Then others stand and join in until everyone is standing and cheering. And then it’s over. For demonstrations, go here and here.
10:30 pm: Sing “Happy Birthday”. You know, to someone or no one, it doesn’t really matter. The great thing about singing “Happy Birthday” in a public place is that often spectators will join in for no reason and, in this case, there will be no reason.
11:30 pm: Get up and dance, fool! Dance in the available spaces that Poison Girl offers, which is not much, but will have to be enough. Let’s make this the hippest dance joint in town!

There. You have your history and you have your mission. We’ve got a job to do, so let’s get doing.

It's the best! It's nonrequired! Go get some ice cream!

My essay “Prayers to Those Who Wait” is listed as an Honorable Mention (I’m sure that’s not the actual category title) in Dave Eggers’ Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009.  Which is awesome.

My stomach is full from a celebration meal (and wine) at Ruggles.

Also, my friend Adam Peterson had  a story listed as the same honorable type.  His stomach did not share a table with me, so I can’t speak of either its whereabouts or its fullness.

In other news, this listing/honor/recommendation is really awesome, but I’m not sure what it means.  And by <em>means</em> I guess I mean what does it mean for me as a writer.  Well, I’m a little late on the BNR 2009 bandwagon, so people have been reading it at least since, well, a while ago — Yes!  That’s what we need!  Exactitude!

Anyway, I guess what I mean is that this is what it means to be a writer: a slow accumulation, both of your own writing and that writing’s place in the world (a journey that one really has only a little power over).  Somewhere out there teenagers were reading my essay and arguing enough about its merit for inclusion in the book that it made it to the honorable mention stage.  Which is pretty darn awesome.

And I’ll take awesome for now.

I finished playing Prey months ago, and had been meaning to write about it since but–

Really, I never start these shortcuts without some sort of intro. Tangentially related, of course, as I’m praying you’ll see. When was the last time I prayed. Probably less than a week ago, though if you mean (and you know who you are) formal praying with formal prayers in or outside a church, then the answer would be at least a year and a half. A fact which I’m sure does not cheer my mom up at all.

But enough about Prey, let’s talk about you. Let’s talk about us. Let’s talk about teeth and how and why they get used to devour prey. But not the game, as that would taste horrible, would probably chip your teeth, and mean you wouldn’t be able to play the game. Unless you already have, in which case chomp away.

Shortcut #17: Prey

Pray for Prey!

So, um, I finished playing Prey months ago, and had been meaning to write about it since but have been caught up with job applications, fellowship applications, contest entries, agent queries, and playing other video games. Also, you know, reading and writing (but to hell with you, Arithmetic!). I’ve wanted to write about it in large part because I think the game is a pretty amazing play, but also because it received pretty poor reviews on release and is generally looked down upon overall.

Why? Probably summable in one word: Portal.

Now Portal is an amazing game. Awesome. Awe-inspiring. It’s funny and well-written and pleasingly challenging but we’re talking about Prey now and the reason the latter game is negatively affected by the former is that they both use portals — space-warping holes in space (space, space, space-ity space space) that connect two areas in often mind-bendingly physically impossible ways.

Of course, now that I’ve done research — in the twelve years since I began this post — I find out the truth. THE TRUTH! Which is that Prey came out a full year before Portal and actually received pretty good reviews. Ah well, I guess my purpose in writing this is finished. Kaput. [Insert some other foreign word that means The End.]

No, really, you can go.

I’m not saying anything else.

Not that I was saying anything in the first place.

It’s called typing.

Oh, all right. Here’s the cut and low-down, the skivvy, the kernel, the what-have-you, the bombast, the living end, and my thoughts on the matter:

The reason I play games is story, not so much gameplay, and Prey is pretty much a novel put to pixels, and not a nice novel at that. It’s horror in the way good horror novels and films work, through atmosphere and concept rather than effective, but cheap, thrills (i.e. cat in the cupboard). There are numerous moments in the opening hours where I was stunned at the world I had to navigate and horrified — really — at what was happening.

Partly, this is achieved… okay, this is pretty much achieved entirely by putting you firmly in the boots of Tommy, a Cherokee who desperately wants to escape the reservation. The first part of the game has no horror in it, but sets you up for the meat of the game by establishing Tommy’s personality and his relationships with his grandfather and girlfriend so that, once they are all abducted by aliens, you actually care about what’s happening. Nothing in this game is faceless. When people die, you care.

Or, I should say, I cared.

It managed to draw me into a world where I knew the plot was pre-determined, but I strove to change it anyway because I felt for the characters. And, unlike some games, Prey manages to keep these characters interesting until the end.

And who doesn’t want

THE END

It’s true, my young adult manuscript THE DREAM THIEF had made it to the second round of contention in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Which, you know, is good and all. And exciting. But it’s still a long way from anything substantial…

Here’s the breakdown:

There are up to 5000 entries in each category and so, from that 5000 in the Young Adult category

a thousand, including THE DREAM THIEF (and, with a quick skimming of the titles of the other mover-oners, a few other THE [Insert Noun Here] THIEFs) were chosen to move on to the next level. In the first round (see above) the contestants were judged on their pitches, a three-hundred-word-or-less summary of the novel. This is close to or exactly the same as what you would include in a query letter to an agent. What it does, at the most basic level, is show that you can write and that you can summarize and that you have the basis for an interesting plot. Not much, in other words. The next step (decided on or about March 23rd) will be winnowing novels based on a three thousand to five thousand word excerpt. This is essentially the next step in the agent-querying process as well, a taste of the actual writing to see whether the author can string interesting words together. From here

the contestants will number two-hundred and fifty. 1 in 4 will have moved on and the lucky (and/or skilled) ones will then have their entire manuscripts read by the professional reader/reviewers at Publisher’s Weekly. Manuscripts will be judged on originality of idea, plot, prose/writing style, character development, and overall strength. In some ways, this is the step I’m most worried about — I feel strongly about my originality and writing style and, well, okay, everything in that list, but I feel that the novel is strange (which might be hubris on my part) and so looked askance at. Anyway, enough with the self-denigration since now

we only have fifty people in each category, general fiction and young adult fiction. Here Penguin editors will read the fifty manuscripts and, using the same judging criteria, will pick three finalist from each category

which will then have excerpts voted on by Amazon customers and the votes will determine who the winner is.

I’m excited, though the process is a long ways from being finished. As with many other contests — or querying agents — or applying for jobs — it’s best to just forget about the whole thing until the results are announced. Forgetting (until March 23rd) engaged.

So, as I was saying, this video is awesome.

Chemical Brothers – Let Forever Be
Uploaded by hushhush112. – See the latest featured music videos.

And then I will post like there’s no tomorrow. Because, likely as not, there won’t be.

So take that, guilt!

Until then, this:

Note 1: I have a review up now on Zoland Poetry’s website. You can find my review (and the three others who share the spotlight this year) here. It’s not often I do reviews; even though I find them rewarding and important work, I’d prefer to spend my time doing my own writing. This could/would change if I had a regular venue for reviews and/or a paying publisher. Hint, hint. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. Know what I mean?

Writing reviews for me is a lot like writing papers for school. I managed to avoid the latter when I could, mostly because the papers were tailored to someone not-me.

Me?

No. But seriously, folks, taking on writing a review is an Atlas-like burden, even if the only world you’re carrying on your shoulders is that of the writer under review. Sometimes I am driven to review out of anger at the ineptitude of what I’ve read — though the anger has to be pretty severe in order to counteract the time taken away from my own writing. More often, I’m investigating a work that’s caught my attention through its strangeness or beauty or some quality I have yet to put a donkey-tail on. It’s most often the latter that drives me forward, as the close attention paid to another’s work pays dividends by shedding light on my own.

And, anyway, I think it’s a good review. And you should, too. Baby boo.

Note 2: I have a poem on a public radio show! Specifically, on episode 3-1 of the Quiddity Radio Program (that’s also associated with the Quiddity Literary Journal where my poem “Legend” was first published). You can find my poem at the 17 minute mark, preceded by an in-depth interview with Nigerian poet, proverb scholar, and novelist J.O.J. Nwachukwu-Agbada and followed by a story by Lewis Schrager.

Listen to it here.

You know what’s great about hangovers?

Neither do I.

Today I have two delectables for you — assuming you like to read, appreciate what I write, and aren’t expecting a pastry.

First Delectable: My poem “Elevator” was published in Rattle #31 this past summer, and the editor Tim Green has been putting up poems from the issue on-line, sometimes with additional content. My poem is one of those with aforesaid additional content — that being a recording of me reading “Elevator”, out loud, for all of you to hear. Assuming you click on this link.

Second Delectable: Frank Giampietro’s experimental on-line journal La Fovea recently accepted and put two of my poems up on their site. You can find the specific link here OR you can be adventurous and go to the home page and explore until you find me. If nothing else, visit the home page for the beautiful illustration of an eye.

Apparently, the above are able to be delected.

Though it maybe too early to tell whether the poem will live a long and fruitful life. As you know, poems are very delicate in the early stages of their lives and go through many changes, some sudden and drastic, some expected, and some fatal.

And, yes, okay, this post is a month late. That’s just the way I roll (the dice/the car/the rolls).

But that month has provided at least some distance (what is the formula for conversion, time to distance?) and I’m still pretty much in love with the poem. Problems abound always, especially in a work this long — so many chances for contusions — but the poem holds its power till the end. A lot of cursing, though, more than I’m used to, and though it’s organic to the poem, I still found myself a little shy in a crowd after having read it.

By now you’ve realized I’m back from my self-imposed exile re: the blog. And by self-imposed exile I mean vacation. Sometimes, especially around job-hunting/fellowship-snarking season, I find myself overwhelmed with all and sundry and so retreat to my most basic activities like a snail in a shell on a hot day waiting for rain (not butter or seasoning). In this case, that meant miniature painting. Here’s a picture:

Blood Angels Space Marine

In other news, I’ve been returning to reading after returning from a trip filled with socializing. I just finished issue 23.1 of the The Comstock Review and enjoyed reading it, overall, though I was annoyed that they had mistakes in my poems. Still, what I wanted to say is this:

It may be that I hadn’t laid eyes on a poem for a long while, but Jack Barrack’s poem “Bound Lamb” really struck me. I know that sounds like a backhanded compliment with the qualifier, but really it’s hard for me to remember the last time my attention was arrested while reading through a journal. And it’s hard for me to say what it is specifically about his poem that stopped me. The lines are short and… brutal. I guess that’s it, though what I’m describing is the feel of the words in the mind and on the tongue, not the words themselves (even if the poem is about a lamb being slaughtered). Here’s a sample:

The lamb was muscled now in lead.

Other poems I especially liked were “In Charge of Walt Whitman” by Carrie Heimer (though I don’t see the need for the epigraph) and “Olympia” by Carrie Shipers (ditto for the epigraph). Looking at all the poems again, what ties them together is their adventurous construction, adding Heimer’s singular flow and Shiper’s disjunctive sentences to Barrack’s (again, for lack of a better word) brutality.

Tomorrow (Remember, Remember the 8th of December!) I’ll be reading with Amanda Auchter as part of the NANO Reading Series at Kaboom Books. This is the main Kaboom Books on Houston Avenue, and we’ll be reading at 7:30 pm. Afterwards, there’ll be a reception-type thing in honor of the release of NANO Fiction’s newest issue.

For this reading I’ll be reading (reading? Reading!) poems from my experiments of the last two months. For those of you who have let the important details slip your mind, I mean the October Poetry-A-Thon (I keep writing “thong”) where I and a select few others wrote a poem a day, and November’s Write-a-Really-Really-Really-Really-Long-Poem Month, where I wrote a really, really, really, really long poem. “Phineas Gage”, the really times four long poem, takes twelve minutes or so to read, so I’ll probably read that and three other poems. Unless people say that they don’t want to hear the epic, in which case shorter poems will be the norm. Ha HA! Take that, planning!

So, if you’re in town, able to drive or be driven (though not by me, as I don’t have a car), then come out and see poets poeticize and eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we (hopefully, do not) die!

As with the Poison Pen reading in August, this reading, and especially the main poem I’ll be reading, are funded in part by an individual artist grant from the Houston Arts Alliance.

To be honest, I don’t know how to use tags. True, I cut them from my clothing, I rip them off of bed linens and pillows, and I attach them to blog posts. At least with the non-blog related efforts, I can see the absence of what I’ve done. Here, though, with WordPress and whatever template I’m using at the helm, my tags are lost, beholden to my categories, which are so vague as to be useful only as a veil.

All of which goes a short way towards pointing out that if I didn’t specifically say that this post was/is going to be a miniature treatise on Samuel R. Delany’s Triton then you might never know.

Unless you, well, read said mini-treatise. Minise?

Shortcut #16: Samuel R. Delany’s Triton

Never a more depressing vision of one person's life

I don’t think I had this much difficulty liking the main character of a novel since Crime and Punishment, and even there my memory is tainted with the fact that I first tried to read it in undergrad and gave up two hundred or so pages in, thankfully turning to the next book on the syllabus. When I read the novel again last year (this time to completion) it took me until page three hundred to grow wrapped up (and rapt up) in the story and Raskolnikov who, despite what I set just a sentence earlier, is not someone I ever disliked. Granted, it was still a hard three hundred pages that I spent wondering when, if ever, I was going to be drawn into the book, but when I hit that mark suddenly the rest of the novel fell into place, that I’d read and that which I had yet to read, and the entire experience was transformed from lead to gold.

With Bron, the main character in Triton, I only rarely identified with him or really cared about what was happening to him. No, that’s not true; I cared because he constantly seemed on the verge of realizing what an asshole he was and, through that realization, changing himself for the better. But, really, it was as though I were stuck in an asshole’s life, one who was/is completely unaware of his assholishness, and therefore all the more horrifying to be around. Especially because this character is the protagonist, but in this case instead of being the hero he’s the villain. There’s even a point late in the book where he, through lack of awareness and self-absorption, appears to have been the cause of a terrorist attack on his home city, one that causes hundreds of deaths.

Bron finds himself, early on, in love (though he denies that’s what he is feeling) with a theater artist called the Spike. Though she’s definitely strange (but pretty much everyone in this world is, by today’s standards) and a little standoffish, I soon discover that she’s the first and most important witness to the deadly selfishness that centers Bron’s emotionally poverty-stricken life. Not that she’s the first person he’s hurt or ignored, but that she’s the one who is the most important mirror of his actions, both to himself and to us, especially because she hides her true feelings from him — which may just as much be because the novel, although told in the third-person, is closely tied and allied with Bron’s point of view. And, as we see throughout the book, more evident the farther along we are, Bron lies just as much to himself as he does to other people, even though, in both cases, he doesn’t believe he’s lying.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the reading of this book has been one of the most unpleasant reading experiences I’ve had in a while. Earlier today, I was thinking that there’s no likelihood I would recommend reading Triton as a good read to anyone.

And yet. [And yet? -ed.] And yet, Delany is one of the writers I respect most, and I admire and envy the way he threads philosophy and science and what else have you through his books, even as his books are mostly just great literature in the Classics sense: books about people and their problems and the world that made them and that they make.

What comes clear to me is that we’re not supposed to like Bron (or maybe that’s because, though I’m a straight, white man — same as Bron except for my non-Nordicness — I’m reading this thirty-three years after its publication, thirty-five after its writing, and the world has changed some, if not all, and the shock to the system identification with Bron was supposed to be no longer plugs in) and he, in fact, is an example for us of what type of person doesn’t fit into the near-Utopia that the Outer Satellites (Triton being one of them) has become. In some ways, the situation in Triton reminds me of William Morris’ News from Nowhere, a Utopian novel from the 19th century. In News from Nowhere, the main character, William Morris (amazingly enough!), is given a taste of the Utopian future, but can’t stay there because he’s a relic, a throwback, a person from our (okay, their) time who isn’t suitable for the paradise the world will become. Bron, too, is unable to live happily in the paradise he lives in, and we have to take his position, because we, the readers, also can’t live in that world. Not that we don’t want to (okay, some of us probably don’t) but that we wouldn’t be able to handle it, psychologically, emotionally, whatever other -ally you want to put there.

But who wants to read about a jerk being a jerk for hours on end? Because that, essentially, is what the book boils down to. Granted, Delany’s project is not one of pure entertainment, at least not in the way that most science-fiction, hell, most novels are geared for these days. Instead, he is creating a world and investigating how that world works; in doing so, his fictional world funhouse-mirrors ours. Triton is worth the read — was worth my read — but still, it’s hard to recommend.

Quick Thoughts:

1. I identified with Bron, and that’s perhaps what made much of his posturing and careless-hurting painful to read. I’m not saying I act like him (though if I did act like him, that’s exactly what I’d say) but that I fear that I go around my life unaware of others and unwilling to accept their needs are as valid as my own.

2. The novel ends with a section of deleted scenes and an essay on science fiction. The essay is worth keeping the book for by itself, though I think I’ll be keeping the book on its own merits. It’s not as enjoyable a ride as Babel-17, but its strangeness calls for storing it on the shelf. The book is so, well, literary; it’s much more in tune with what I’m trying to do with my own novels than what I mostly find in the world.