The band Dictaphone has, ironically, eschewed the use of voice in its two previous LP’s, Vertigo II and M.=Addiction, for a language of machine-like hisses, sighs, and glitches punctuated by sparse strings and euro-jazzy clarinet riffs.   This Belgian collective, led by composer Oliver Doerell, continues the formula on Poems from a Rooftop, but does include the spoken word on one notable track, “Rattle,” as well as elements of speech in the title song and “Maelbeek” (reference to a small “green space” in Brussels which many see as a monument in direct opposition to Belgium’s growing urbanization).  If the album title looks familiar,  it’s because you may remember that during Iran’s Green Revolution in 2009, citizens, in fear of government persecution, protested from their rooftops.

You’ll find Dictaphone under the genre “electronic,” which is, of course, misleading.  All recorded music is electronic in the sense that electronic signals are required to transmit sound to contemporary recording devices, even those we may call “digital,”  a distinction which complicates things even further (though it is true that there is no digital signal without an electronic one first).  Besides the fact that Dictaphone uses traditional classical instrumentation in it’s compositions, the “electronic” elements of the music are often sampled “field noises”–meaning they are sounds recorded from the world, rather than sounds created by “electronic” instruments, like a Moog, say, or, to complicate things again, an electric guitar.  If anything, these sound pieces are acts of resistance against the very idea of classification.  And yet this is a controlled rebellion, each tune unfolding carefully and melodically, respectful of the silence which makes it possible.

Behind the idea of the dictaphone, or recorded sound in general, is the idea of capture–arresting motion, which is life, and, by artificial means, fixing it in time.  And one wonders about these etchings in wax, the pressure of a stylus against a supple medium,  vibrations and currents switching from off to on, on to off, off-off and on again, silence to non-silence–sounds that in Tolstoy’s words are “too dreadfully exciting” to not find means of impression.

When I attempted this 100 books project the first time back in January of 2011, I began with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (read the review here), which had long been recommended to me by several friends/colleagues. I loved it, and it remains in the top 5 of my list of all time favorite books. I was excited to return to Atwood this year with The Edible Woman. I’m sad to report, upon its completion, that I didn’t think much of it.

The prose sounded distinctly Atwood (if I’m allowed to make that judgement, having now read only two of her many, many novels), but unlike in The Handmaid’s Tale, in which her vivid and lengthy descriptions are achingly beautiful and enrich the heartbreaking loneliness and despair found in the pages of that book, the details in The Edible Woman come across as unnecessarily long, boring, and a little self-indulgent, and I found myself sometimes skimming several paragraphs and thinking, Get on with it already.  

Additionally, the protagonist, Marion, is not very likable, which made it difficult to become invested in any of her conflicts. The other characters, who are also pretty unlikeable, are at least a bit more engaging, particularly Marion’s fiery and deceptive roommate, Ainsley, who tricks a man into impregnating her, as well as the mysterious Duncan, whose friendship with Marion threatens to dissolve her engagement. These two are the ones who kept me reading until I reached the end of the novel, long after my interest in Marion’s passivity and inaction had waned.

It’s impossible to talk about Atwood’s writing without talking about feminism (or protofeminism, as is the case with this novel, which was first published in the mid-1960s). The Handmaid’s Tale is layered with feminist themes, making clear through the compelling narrative what a loss it would truly be to both genders if society were to devolve into the alternate future that book presents. The Edible Woman, while exploring similar themes, delivers them much less successfully, and these ideas, like the characters, come across as frivolous and trivial.

I’ll of course continue to explore Atwood’s other work, but I can’t recommend this particular novel.

Be on the lookout for some poetry reviews in the coming weeks!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/opinion/and-the-winner-of-the-pulitzer-isnt.html

View more of Tatiana’ work here.

Tatiana Plakhova is an art director, graphic designer and illustrator. She graduated from Moscow State University with a Masters in Social Psychology, and later studied at The Higher Academic School of Graphic Design. Her clientele includes Playboy, Wired Magazine and 33 Across, among others. Her work has been featured in many publications including Designcollector, Electronic Beats, and Redefine Magazine.

The interior design of the cabin on the lake has not been updated since the early 1970s or maybe earlier. The carpet is orange shag, and the furniture in the living room is yellow vinyl. Taxidermied creatures inhabit many corners, stare out from every wall, and augment countertops. Ryan and Gabriella are in a bedroom, one of three. Their friend Keener, whose parents own this place, is in another, and Gabriella’s sister Maggie is in the third with her boyfriend Dave. They are all either freshmen or sophomores at the University of Alabama. Ryan and Gabriella are naked in bed, but they are not having sex because neither of them thought to bring condoms on this trip.

Two weeks earlier, Ryan and Gabriella met when this same group of students drove to Birmingham in Keener’s car to see a rock concert. Ryan and Gabriella ended up making out in the back seat of the car on the drive home. They’ve run into one another on campus a few times since then and taken walks together. Since they both have roommates and live in dorms where visitors of the opposite sex are strictly monitored, this is the first opportunity they’ve had to spend the night together.

As Ryan stares at the ceiling, he is composing a melody in his head. He hasn’t yet thought about the lyrics, but he thinks it will be about shame. Shame and frustration. Gabriella has rolled over with her back to Ryan and is sleeping soundly. In the other rooms of the cabin, Dave and Maggie are having sex. Keener is alone in his own room with a bottle of blended scotch, sketching out some Dungeons & Dragons characters that he hopes to use later in the week. The lake outside is silent and cool.

Later in the week, Ryan and Gabriella will actually have sex for the first time, in Ryan’s dorm room, while his roommate is in class. Ryan will be nervous and ejaculate almost instantly upon penetration. They will try again an hour later, and it will be much better for both of them. Over the next two years, they will both learn a lot more about one another’s bodies and how to give one another pleasure, and then they will sink into a routine that will satisfy their basic urges but will lack the transcendence of the early experimentation. Occasionally, they will try something new, such as incorporating vibrators and other toys, but this will most often bring back the awkwardness of their early relationship without the same level of excitement. They will make no discoveries that improve their overall routine. At the end of their junior year at the university they will break up.

The painting above the bed shows a woodsy landscape and uses thick layers of dark green and brown tempura to capture the texture of the tree-lined mountainside. It was originally created by Keener’s mother many years ago when she audited some art classes at a local community college. Ryan thinks it would look good if it had some neon space monkeys painted among the trees, and perhaps some robots shooting lasers out of their eyes. He has made a mental note to mention this to Keener in the morning.

Earlier tonight, Ryan told Gabriella that the one time he’d had sex before, it was in high school with a girl from the country whom he had pursued explicitly because he thought he had a good chance of losing his virginity with her. He said that he met her at a fast food restaurant where she worked and thought she was pretty. They went on only a few dates and had nothing at all in common. All of this was true except the part where he had sex with her. He’d made that up because he didn’t want to admit to still being a virgin. Gabriella said she had only had sex once before also, the previous year, with a short-term boyfriend whom she said “liked me enough for the two of us.” Her story was true.

Later, Ryan will write the song that is currently germinating in his head and teach it to his band. Dave is the drummer in the band, and Keener is the bass player. The song will eventually be called “The Ballad of Desire and Shame,” but its first name will be “Faust” because Ryan is an English major, and the lyrics will be about making a deal with the devil that ends badly. Though he normally writes catchy power pop anthems, this song will come out as a slow country waltz, where the chorus changes to double time and takes on a glorious gospel feel. Not having much of a feel for country, Ryan’s band will play the song with heavy power chords, distortion, and delay effects, and it will not sound very good at all.

The cabin has an “atmosphere refreshment system” that pumps an artificial scent—a combination of pine and cinnamon—into the air at regular intervals. Keener’s parents are heavy smokers, and the system does little to mask the stale cigarette stench that over the years has infiltrated every fiber of every piece of furniture in the place. At this point however, it has overtaken the smell of sweat and semen in the bedroom.

Earlier, Gabriella said they couldn’t have intercourse without a condom, but there were other things they could do. After fumbling around for only a few minutes, Ryan sprayed ejaculate across Gabriella’s pert, tan breasts. Ryan confessed that he had lied about his previous experience and then covered his head with a pillow. Gabriella warned him not to lie to her anymore, but also reassured him that he’d get the hang of it. They’d just have to practice more. Anyway, she told him, she was impressed with the force and volume of what came out of him. He must have been really excited she said.

Ryan’s toenails are entirely out of control and are beginning to resemble twisted roots. They remind him of the cypress knees in the shallows of the lake outside. Outside, an owl prepares to swoop down on a deer mouse. A white tailed doe nibbles on some acorns, its fawn drowsing nearby. The pink brilliance of Venus is clearly visible just above the horizon. Ryan thinks that maybe he’ll try to grow out his beard this year.

Later, Ryan will wake up with a stuffed bobcat from the living room staring him in the face, and he will resist the urge to scream. Over breakfast, Dave will admit to sneaking into their room in the middle of the night to pose it there. Dave will think this is much funnier than everyone else does.

“Emblem” Richard Hoffman
Barrow Street Press, 2011, $16.95

Emblem is Richard Hoffman’s third book. His second, Gold Star Road, won the 2006 Barrow Street Poetry Prize.

Emblem departs from Alciati’s 1531 Emblemata, a Latin metrical collection of moral, proverb-like sayings, in which ethical teaching is couched in elegant and forceful diction. That text is accompanied by woodcuts. After Alciati, writing such a collection became a pastime for humanists steeped in classical culture; which is to say, with Emblemata, Alciati spawned thousands of imitations, creating a Renaissance genre.

Hoffman’s Emblem is not an emblem book, though the second section of the book draws closest to wit and forceful diction. Beautifully designed and composed, Emblem is an outstanding book of poetry. A response to yankee puritanism, humanist cynicism, and Zen. It is book of lovely georgics about finding one’s way in the world; perhaps of finding one’s way to one’s creative source and to finding one’s balance with the world.

Yes, the world may be a ship of fools, but it is a magical place. In one poem an ancestral monster comes bounding to assist its progeny. In others, a husband watches a plumber “snaking” a drain, Columbus (another specious world voyager?) discovers––not Indians––but the working class; aphrodisia is deconstructed in a villanelle. There are celebrations of laughter and the nutritions and joys of a life of wakefulness and watchfulness; futility, nothingness, cowardice, and apathy are used as foils, and at the same time are exposed.

In one poem, fire metaphorically rises to make a cloud and eventually extinguishes its own ancestral fire. In different poems, Hoffman’s imagination engages fire, earth, water, air, and aether.The physical world is ethereally reflected in poetics. In another lyric, the voice in the poem theistically considers a New England snow storm:

You have made me to seek refuge
and charged me to care for my brothers.

How cruel. That could only be You out there
howling, cracking the trees, burying everything.
What could I possibly want from You
that would not undo the whole world as it is?

(“Winter Psalm”)

In one––if security is what we want, the voice adjures us “to walk among thieves: Pocketless.” In another, “On Impulsiveness,” the lean, solitary living bobcat keeps springing after pray leaving the dogs to devour his kill (work ethic overkill?). The dogs, being social creatures, have to accommodate to live and hunt in a pack; but by sacrificing their privacy, they are well fed.

What would a philosophical examination be without considering erotic Love? In one poem Hoffman deconstructs courting, down to a boy bringing flowers and a fish:

Shall we read the meaning
that he rules both land and sea?
For flowers, one must wait for their season,
and to catch a fish means patient waiting too,

a day declines to evening and you doubt your luck
and wonder at the river’s mysteries, hoping
down below the worm still wriggles on your hook.

(“Emblem 107” On Love)

There are passages of arresting ars poetica:

protect me from haste,
from willingness,
from forgetfulness,
and the wish to please….

Easy now, easy….

Here in my head the world
abrades and sparks. Still, this kind of understanding is like
those photographs of lightning over the sea or the plains,
exquisite but no longer thrilling because no longer auguring

thunder seconds later to disclose how far away the rain is,
how much time we have to take shelter, to gather what we’ve
brought, to confer with one another whether we will make it.

(“Anamnesis”)

“Here in my head the world.” The English word world comes from the Old English weorold, weorld, worold (-uld, -eld), a compound of wer “man” and eld “age.” (The fullness of the world is perhaps likened to the mature, perceiving individual.) The corresponding word in Latin mundus, literally means “clean, elegant”, itself a loan translation of Greek cosmos “orderly arrangement.”

Emblem is Hoffman’s wise, artful meditation from aboard the ship of fools; his balanced poetic meditation on the “orderly arrangement” of our world.

Fogged Clarity contributor Jim Rioux discusses music and meaning with songwriter Guy Capecelatro III.

Guy Capecelatro III records four tracks for this exclusive session.

*Accompaniment provided by Jim Rioux.

1. Caves
2. Something Like a Door
3. New Bed
4. Biology Teacher

Rachman’s debut novel, which follows the reporters and employees of an international English-language newspaper in Rome, is really excellent. I read this book in two all-night blocks between midnight and six in the morning while almost constantly breastfeeding a week-and-a-half-old baby who has her days and nights very confused. So, I was grateful for such an enjoyable distraction. (My new daughter is awesome, but being awake all night is not my favorite life activity.)

Each chapter of The Imperfectionists offers an intimate glimpse into the personal life of someone from the paper, with short vignettes in-between that piece together the story of the paper’s original founder and publisher, Cyrus Ott, and the subsequent takeover of his son, Boyd, and then grandson, Oliver. The full realization of life in Rome falls a little short, but otherwise the chapters feel mostly complete and self-contained. They could almost stand alone as short stories, but they leave just enough untold that in order to get the full richness of the work, each chapter needs the others in order to be completely satisfying.

What I like the most about this novel is that it’s not beautifully written and is still absolutely great. (Which is not to say that it’s not well written, just that there was not a single point when I read a sentence and then stopped to think, Wow, lovely.) My favorite pieces of writing are usually ones that successfully create a strong story through gorgeous prose (think Karen Russell or Lorrie Moore), but Rachman’s book somehow doesn’t need pretty sentences—his more straightforward narrative is realistic and humorous and that works even better for the particular story he’s telling. The novel is entertaining, engaging, interesting, hilarious, and heartbreaking all at once, and this supplies plenty of momentum to keep the reader turning the pages.

Rachman’s writing is impressive in how much sympathy he manages to elicit for each of his characters, not all of them likable, especially when each has a relatively small space in which to develop. The chapters devoted to Arthur Gopal and Craig Menzies are especially heartwrenching, and I found Hardy Benjamin and Herman Cohen to be two of the most enjoyable protagonists. Truly though, each chapter is excellent, and Rachman’s account of journalism and the newspaper business is approached in an honest, relatable, and unsentimental way that I think greatly serves his book. The ending feels anti-climactic and thus a bit unsatisfying, but this is not a criticism of Rachman’s writing, since the conclusion of his novel is both realistic and appropriate. All in all, this was an incredibly great read.

Read it? Leave some thoughts below.

Rocky Votolato’s resonant voice and rich songwriting make his latest release, “Television Of Saints,” worth well more than one listen.

~ Launch Pop-out Player ~

“Different Fleshes” Albert Goldbarth
Hobart and William Smith , 1979, 0-93488-00-0

Just last month I reviewed B.K. Fischer’s Mutiny Gallery, a novel in verse. Some research I was conducting sent me to another title: Different Fleshes, another novel told through poetry, written by Albert Goldbarth. Goldbarth is a two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Yet, Different Fleshes was not one of those two books. So, why go back and review a little celebrated 33-year old book?

Barbette was an American female impersonator, aerialist born as Vander Clyde in 1899. Barbette attained great popularity throughout the United States and in Europe, particularly in Paris in the 1920′s and 30′s. After historically bewitching performances, the makeup enhanced, pale skinned Barbette would dramatically doff her wig revealing that she was a he!

In 1926, Jean Cocteau wrote an influential essay on the nature and artifice of the theater called “Le Numéro Barbette,” an essay celebrating Barbette as an exemplar of theatrical artifice—the artist sacrificing everything for art. Cocteau commissioned a series of photographs of Barbette by the Surrealist Man Ray. And, four years later, Cocteau cast Barbette in cameos in his first film Le Sang d’un Poete. The cultural trail is rich. Barbette may have been the inspiration for the 1933 German film Viktor und Victoria, which features a plot about a woman pretending to be a female impersonator whose gimmick was removing her wig. Sound familiar?

This gimmick was later referenced or employed in a French play by Jean Poiret and a later French movie entitled Le Cage au Folles (1978). (The French made two sequels in 1980 and ’85). In 1982, Blake Edwards came out with his American-made movie Victor Victoria. In 1993, New York based performance artist John Kelly, under commission from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, based his piece Light Shall Lift Them on the Parisian-celebrated Vander Clyde. In 1995, Victor Victoria became a Broadway show. In 1996, The Birdcage, the American remake of the French Le Cage au Folles, was released. This celebrated entertainer’s story is also told in the play Barbette, written by Bill Lengfelder and David Goodwin and presented in Dallas, Texas in 2003, with Joey Steakley portraying Barbette.

It is very easy to lose Goldbarth’s 1979 novel told through poetry amidst all the other work Barbette has inspired, as Vander Clyde seems to have spawned an entire cottage industry– odd for a man of modest beginnings and endings.

In 1899, Vander Clyde was born in Round Rock, Texas, a remote and unassuming town in central Texas, a few miles from Austin. After his almost-two-decade craze in Paris, things changed and Barbette returned to the United States where he worked as an artistic director and aerialist trainer for a number of circuses and as a consult on several films. One particularly notable gig: he was hired to coach Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis on gender illusion for the 1959 film Some Like It Hot. (One cannot help but wonder if he and Marilyn Monroe might have met.) In 1973, he died, his body was cremated, and his ashes were interred in Round Rock. Today, a simple gray granite stone marks his grave.

*

Goldbarth’s Different Fleshes is a crazy quilt of reportage and poetry. The Texas outlaw Sam Bass and a host of European and American artists living in Paris are featured: Cocteau, Stavensky, Chanel, Picasso, Chagall, Modigliani, Soutine, Brassaï, Joyce, Stein, Hemingway.

Paul Christensen, in “How to Read a Poem,” one of his chapters in West of the American Dream, mentions:

Barbette … violates the stereotype of the Texas he-man; a frilly drag queen swinging above a nightclub audience of the demi-monde was not exactly ranch material. But the poem is funny, even hysterical in places, and puts Hemingway admiringly on the same bed with Barbette in a bedroom rendezvous replete with ironies to keep the Hemingway scholars scratching their heads. (p. 191)

All appear to have left somewhere to find their place in an early morning sunrise of Paris, a city which celebrates feminine valiance. All appear to have admired the moon. All appear to have attended the Circus and admired the aerialists and considered the performing gorillas. All appear to have asked themselves questions about Beauty and the Beast… and––being artists excavating the human condition––about the human beast, in particular.

Of the process of writing this book, Goldbarth said:

Everything not true to verifiable fact I’ve hoped is true anyway to a verifiable spirit—keeping in mind Lily Tomin’s character Edith Ann: “… and truth can be made up, if you know how.”

(From “Notes/Acknowledgements”)

Writing a non-fiction book through poetry presents many demands. Goldbarth enlists verifiable facts and succeeds in creating a novel through poetry. Different Fleshes is worthy of discovery of a new audience or a revisit by an already familiar one.

“Let him
study the colors of Vander’s lotions. In Paris,
remember Paris? Then everyone
sleeps. I mean everyone, Like ‘em or not.

Look up. It happened this way. And
some of them slept with Clock-in-the-ribs,
or Brick, or Billfold, or Plasticine.
–But I mean my friends, vulnerable and raw.

*

Everybody with a heart was looking for a skin.

(Final passage of the novel.)

“Elise. God, Elise. What’s happening?”

“The nurse said you were awake.”

“Elise, I don’t know what’s happening.”

“You’re in the hospital.”

“Why am I in the hospital? Why are you standing so far away?”

“Your car was hit while you were in transit from Sacred Heart to, well here actually, so all’s basically well that ends where it was going to end. You’re driver dropped his cellphone or something like that.”

“Am I all right?”

“The doctor says you’ve lost some memory.”

“But I’ll be okay? Wait, why was I at Sacred Heart?”

“The cancer.”

“Who’s cancer?”

“Your cancer.”

“I don’t have cancer.”

“Yes you do.”

“Will I be all right?”

“No. They expect you to pass on pretty soon here.”

“I’m dying?”

“Yes.”

“But when did I get cancer?”

“You were diagnosed ten months ago. Maybe nine. Your chart will probably say.”

“And I’m dying?”

“You’re dying.”

“Where are we?”

“The Brindle Valley Hospice.”

“Elise, this doesn’t make any sense.”

“No, I guess it wouldn’t.”

“Why do you keep looking at me like that? It makes me feel so alone. Why do you look at me like that?”

“This is a strange thing to tell you, Alan.”

“What is?”

“We hate each other.”

“What?”

“We divorced, Alan. We hate each other now. Have for a while.”

“No we don’t.”

“Yes we do, Alan.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“You will.”

“No I won’t.”

“Yes you will.”

“Do you hate me?”

“Well, yes.”

“But I don’t hate you.”

“You will.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I know.”

“Please, I don’t know what’s going on, but please just don’t look at me like that, Elise.”

“I’m sorry, Alan. I forgot how to look at you any other way.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to get a coffee from the cafeteria and make a couple phone calls. Let you think.”

“But you’ll be back?”

“What time is it?”

“Please, Elise. I don’t know what’s happening.”

“All right.”

“All right?”

“All right.”

…

“Elise.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad you’re back.”

“Okay.”

“How is Oliver?”

“Mr. Erikson backed over his legs with his pickup. I had to put him down a year ago.”

“God. Why’d you have to say it like that?”

“You asked how he was.”

“I know I asked how he was, but why do you have to be so cruel about it?”

“I wasn’t being cruel, I just wasn’t being friendly.”

“Why can’t you just be friendly?”

“Because I hate you.”

“But I don’t hate you.”

“You will”

“Am I really dying?”

“You’re really dying… It’s getting late.”

“Will you come back tomorrow?”

“Alan—”

“Please. You don’t have to like me. I’m just not ready to be alone yet.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes, okay. I’ll visit you tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Ellie.”

“You’re welcome… Don’t call me Ellie.”

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t call me that anymore.”

“I don’t?”

“No.”

“Couldn’t I start again?”

“No.”

“All of his legs?”

“What?”

“Mr. Erikson ran over all of Oliver’s legs?”

“All but one.”

“Which one?”

“What difference would it make?”

…

“I was afraid you weren’t coming back.”

“I said I’d be here, not that I owe you anything. I’m not coming back again.”

“You won’t come back?”

“This is a pretty nice place.”

“I won’t see you again?”

“Really: flatscreen, trees outside your window. I even like the wall color. If it weren’t for your bed and all the tubes in you I’d think this was just a bedroom. I’m sure you have more channels; you don’t need to watch infomercials.”

“I know.”

“No remote?”

“No, there is one. All the other channels terrify me. Shows I’ve never heard of, celebrities I’ve never seen, and, God, the news. It all makes it harder to pretend this isn’t happening.”

“I guess it would.”

“But I’ve seen this infomercial before. I’ve listened to this man and I’ve seen this knife sharpener. I’ve seen this part before; he sharpens his credit card and cuts a tomato with it. It’s…familiar. Do you have to stand so far away?”

“Listen, Alan, I can’t be here all day.”

“Couldn’t you just talk to me, Elise?”

“Not all day.”

“Why did we divorce?”

“Because we started hating each other.”

“Why?”

“That’s my phone.”

“Who is it?”

“I need to take this.”

“Oh. Okay.”

…

“Who was that?”

“Who was who?”

“Who were you talking to on the phone.”

“Greg.”

“Greg who?”

“Greg Paulson.”

“Oh. How is Greg?”

“He’s good.”

“Good… What’d you talk to Greg about?”

“Dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“Dinner.”

“Why’d you talk to him about dinner?”

“Because I’m having dinner with him.”

“Why are you having dinner with Greg Paulson?”

“Because he’s my fiancée.”

“What?”

“I—”

“What are you talking about, Elise?”

“Alan—”

“Fiancée?”

“Yes.”

“Well what the fuck, Elise?”

“A lot has changed, Alan. Everything’s changed.”

“Everything and you.”

“And you.”

“No. I didn’t. I’m right here.”

“Then you’d been gone for a very long time.”

“Well, I’m back now. I’m here now.”

“What does now matter?”

…“You changed your hair.”

“Yes. New stylist.”

“She charge any less?”

“No.”

“Huh. I don’t like it.”

“All right.”

“Are you sleeping with him?”

“He’s my fiancée.”

“Christ, Ellie.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Am I seeing anyone?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh… Think it’s possible and you haven’t heard about it yet?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh… Greg Paulson?”

“Yes.”

“Did you leave me for him?”

“Yes.”

“Christ… Were you sleeping with him while we were married?”

“Toward the end.”

“Christ, Ellie.”

“Don’t call—”

“How could you be so cruel?”

“I only started sleeping with Greg after I caught you sleeping with Nina. Not that it matters anymore.”

“What?”

“Not that it matters anymore.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“How would you know?”

“Because I know I wouldn’t do that.”

“Well, I guess we surprise ourselves.”

“I wouldn’t have.”

“I found you with her. I found you with her in our house. Dumb bastard.”

“Nina Buchanan?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh… Did I say why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“I don’t know.”

“We hadn’t been intimate for some time. Not since the miscarriage.”

“Miscarriage?”

“Not that it matters anymore.”

… “What are you thinking, Elise?”

“I’m not thinking anything.”

“If you hate me, why’d you come?”

“The hospital called me. You still have me as your emergency contact.”

“But why did you come?”

“I don’t know. Do you want me to leave?”

“I didn’t say that. You know I didn’t say that.”

“All right.”

…“You hate me now, but you loved me once. Didn’t you? You can’t pretend we weren’t ever in love.”

“I think I always hated you, I just didn’t know it yet.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Just like you hate me right now, only you don’t know it yet.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“But you do and you ought to after all the things I’ve said to you.”

“You couldn’t say anything to make me hate you.”

“How would you know?”

“I just do.”

“Remember how you found out I was sleeping with Greg?”

“No, and I don’t want—”

“I called you on the phone while I was sucking his dick.”

“Stop it, Elise. Please—”

“I said, Do you hear this, know what this sound is?”

“Please, Elise. Stop. Please stop.”

“You hate me and you should.”

“I don’t want to. God, I don’t want to.”

“When did what we want ever matter?”

…

“You really don’t remember any part of it?”

“No.”

“None of the bad?”

“None of it.”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“A Saturday morning. You were wearing my old Race for the Cure shirt and it’s so big on you. The sleeves cover your hands.”

“I threw that shirt out two years ago.”

“And we were reading the paper at the dining room table. You’d finish section A and I’d finish B and we’d trade like that until we’d read most of what was worth reading.”

“I liked that table.”

“From the kitchen window we saw the silhouette of an airliner crossing a stretch of open sky and you said to me, Will it be our turn soon? I asked you what you meant and you said, Will it be our turn to take a flight soon, go away? And I said, soon.”

“We never took that flight.”

“I said soon I’d take you anywhere, all the way to China. And you said you didn’t want to go all the way to China. So I said, Tahiti then. And you said you didn’t want to go to Tahiti so I asked you where you wanted to go. You said you hadn’t decided yet.”

“Disneyland.”

“What?”

“Before bed that night I told you I’d decided Disneyland.”

“Really, Disneyland?”

“Yeah. What are you smiling about?”

“Nothing. It’s— I mean out of anywhere in the world.”

“So?”

“It’s just cute. That’s all.”

“Well you’d think it’s childish eventually. We never went and when I asked you why you told me it was a stupid thing for a full-grown woman to cry over, not going to Disneyland.”

“I don’t feel like I’d say that to you.”

“Well you did.”

“I’m sorry, Elise.”

“It’s ok. Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

… “Do you love him?”

“Greg?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes.”

“And he loves you.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose I should say congratulations or something.”

“No you shouldn’t.”

“I want you to be happy, and I guess, at any rate, I’m dying.”

“You don’t want that.”

“For Christ’s sake, Elise. Would you stop telling me how I feel.”

“I’m sorry.”

“All right.”

… “What are you feeling then?”

“I’m just waiting to wake up. I’ll wake up and you’ll be there and I’ll say I had a horrible dream and you’ll tell me everything is all right.”

“It’ll be over soon enough.”

“I guess you’re right… I’m sorry I said I didn’t like your hair. It looks nice.”

“Thank you… It’s getting late.”

“Elise?”

“Yeah.”

“Could you do something for me? One thing and then you can go. Never see me again.”

“I could go right now.”

“I know you could, that’s not what I meant. I just—could you just do something for me? Not for who I became, but for who I am right now. For the me that has always loved you and always will.”

… “One thing. But only for you. Not for you.”

“When you leave, will you tell me you’ll come back?”

… “All right.”

“And will you pretend it’s Sunday morning? Would you pretend we don’t hate each other yet?”

“Okay.”

“And would you come close to me.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“And then I’ll leave.”

“Yeah. But you’ll say you’re coming back?”

“Of course I’ll come back, Alan.”

“You will?”

“Of course I will. Did you think I’d leave you here?”

“I’m sorry, Elise. I’ve been so confused. I thought—”

“It’s okay, Alan. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“I was so afraid, Elise.”

“It’s all okay now. I’m not going anywhere. Besides, who’d take me to Disneyland?”

“But you have to go now?”

“I have to go now. I need to feed Oliver.”

“And then you’ll come back?”

“What’s gotten into you? Of course I’m coming back.”

“I love you, Elise.”

“I love you too. Now go to sleep. I’ll be with you when you wake.”

“But what if you’re not?”

“Then you haven’t woken up yet.”

The great American poet joins Ben to discuss his life and craft.

Berlin-based duo Daniel Franke & Cedric Kiefer created this digital ‘moving sculpture’ using the recorded motion data of a real dancer. In order to collect this data, the dancer was recorded with three separate depth cameras (Kinect). That data was then then imported into and manipulated by 3D rendering software to produce what is a truly beautiful and truly modern work of art. View the ‘making of’ video below to learn more about Franke and Kiefer’s cutting edge process.

Making Of

View more of Franke’s work here.

View more of Kiefer’s work here.

Music: Machinefabriek – “Kreukeltape”

Dancer: Laura Keil

Angular and striking, the precise and seemingly mathematical works of Roberto Mollá are beautiful in their simplicity.

View more of Roberto’s work here.

Benjamin Evans

Executive Editor, Fogged Clarity

• Bruce SmithBruce Smith is the author of six collections of poems, most recently, Devotions (University of Chicago, 2011), which was nominated for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His fourth book, The Other Lover (University of Chicago, 2000) was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, The Best American Poetry Anthology, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, The Partisan Review, The American Poetry Review, and many other journals. Essays and reviews of his have appeared in Harvard Review, Boston Review and Newsday. He has been a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship as well as twice receiving grants from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Arts. Four Poems From His Series, Thinly Sealed
• Robert WrigleyRobert Wrigley has published eight collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Beautiful Country (Penguin, 2010). His poems have appeared in many journals, including Poetry, The Atlantic, Barrow Street, and The New Yorker, and were included in the 2003 and 2006 editions of Best American Poetry. Wrigley’s honors and awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Idaho State Commission on the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation, as well as a Poets’ Prize, Kingsley Tufts Award, J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize, the Frederick Bock Prize from Poetry magazine, the Wagner Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Theodore Roethke Award from Poetry Northwest, and six Pushcart Prizes. From 1987 until 1988 he served as the state of Idaho’s writer-in-residence.Calendar
• Anna Karenina
• The Scholar
• Bruce SniderBruce Snider is the author of two poetry collections, Paradise, Indiana, winner of the 2011 Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize, and The Year We Studied Women, winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. His poems and non-fiction have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Southern Review, Ploughshares, Gettysburg Review and Ninth Letter, among other journals. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow, he has been writer-in-residence at the James Merrill House in Stonington, CT as well as at the Amy Clampitt House in Lenox, MA. He currently lives in San Francisco and teaches at Stanford University.My Grandmother Shoplifting at the Pick ‘n Save
• The Afterlife of Roadkill
• Someone Knocks On A Door In The State Where I Was Born
• Adrianne KalfopoulouAdrianne Kalfopoulou is the author of two poetry collections, most recently, Passion Maps (2009, Red Hen Press). Her essays and poems have appeared in Web del Sol, Hotel Amerika, WLT, and the Beloit Poetry Journal, among other publications. She is on the faculty of Hellenic American University, and teaches in the creative writing program at NYU.The History of Too Much

• Adam MartinakisAdam Martinakis lives and works in Athens, Greece. His work has been featured in numerous art portals, books and magazines including Book of Creation, 3d artist magazine, 3ds max bible 2012, evermotion.org, cultureinside.com, artlimited.net, digart.pl, thisiscolossal.com, mymodernmet.com, bulkka.com, embrosyst.com, fuctart.gr and others.Digital 3D Art
• Laurent CrasteLaurent Craste is a Montreal-based artist and sculptor represented by Galerie Sas.Sévices (Abuse)
• Andrew HolmquistAndrew Holmquist is a Chicago-based artist and alumni of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.Paintings

• Adam ArcuragiAdam Arcuragi is a folk singer and guitarist from Atlanta. Since 2006, he has released four albums, including his most recent: Like a Fire That Consumes All Before It… He has recorded studio sessions for both NPR and Daytrotter.Like a Fire That Consumes All Before It…

• Scott HightowerScott Hightower is the author of three books. This fall, Self-Evident, his fourth collection stateside, is forthcoming from Barrow Street Press. Early next year, Oases/Hontanares, a bi-lingual book, is forthcoming from Devenir, Madrid. Hightower teaches as adjunct faculty at NYU and Drew University. A native of central Texas, he lives in Manhattan and sojourns in Spain.reviews B.K. Fischer’s Mutiny Gallery

Jasper James’s double exposures humanize the cityscapes of Beijing.

View more of James’ work here.

Damien Jurado's Maraqopa

I am wary of sincerity.  Is it because I am incapable of appearing to possess it even if I feel possessed by it?  I joked with a friend recently that I am capable of competing with almost anything but the hint of sincerity.  Its place in art necessarily troubled given that by definition the creative act is an artificial one, a construct by which feeling is enacted and/or elicited—sincerity remains misunderstood.  And yet it is undeniably present in certain works, despite cynics like myself.

Damien Jurado makes songs that miraculously conspire against their own forms, as if by some sleight of hand their very components disappear in service of unforeseen inevitabilities.  His voice, for instance, a highly honed instrument, even as it cracks plaintively at times, never appears to fuss with itself.  But there is nothing Zen here, no studied transparency in the service of anti-lyricism.  The voice is pleasantly dry yet capable of a wide range of feeling—the result an unperturbed elocution of complex affect.  The opener, “Nothing is News,” for instance, though soaked in psychedelic references like much of the album, using plenty of effects on Jurado’s usually unadorned vocal delivery, never quite betrays the sum of its parts, even as the noodling electric guitar soloing would normally be cause for some concern. If anything does dominate this impeccable 36-minute mix (if not Jurado’s whole catalog), it’s a kind of defeated desire—one could argue a desire for fully actuated expression, a desire we are blessed as listeners that this singer wisely allows to remain unfulfilled.

Guy Capecelatro III's North for the Winter

Guy Capecelatro III’s voice beguiles guile in its own reedy and muted pluck.  Like Jurado, he is best as a storyteller, his rhymes in songs like “Switch” tripping deftly over themselves, stumbling into the lives of his characters, as if onto a stage the world had built for them.  Capecelatro’s world is “something you can’t say/ though you’re in it every day;” he tallies the world’s absurdities like collected wooden figurines in an unadorned vitrine, pieces of lived experience you lift from the world and finger smooth “until you’re out of it” (”North Dakota”).  An artist to be treasured and, frankly, appreciated far, far more than he already is.

Andrew Bird is the least sincere of his fellow songwriters.  I would argue, in fact, that his brilliance comes from a constant struggle to subdue his insincerity into seemingly effortless forms.  His superior musicianship would be too easy a place to start, perhaps.    Yes, he’s impressed the likes of Yo-Yo Ma with his playing, and his whistling chops are unrivalled, but I look more towards his lyric sensibilities for possible explanations of his complex relationship to sincerity.  Put simply, he’s a clever Bird, this one.  Perhaps, irresistibly so.  What separates this album from his previous, Noble Beasts, though, which seemed a barrage of ideas, is a patience that allows each song the space to find its own unique shape. His phrasing here is typically flawless, and he is full of all the same tricks; the difference is that the magic arrives without introduction; it simply saunters into the spotlight and moves along coyly, leaving us wanting more.  He also does something lyrically I don’t think I’ve heard before: he not only leaves rhymes hanging to be fulfilled unexpectedly in the next line, but he even leaves some of them unsung like shadow-rhymes—preferring a calculated silence, which one could argue is, perhaps, the only real sincerity.

They Went On--Who's Afraid Of Richard Dreyfuss?

Another finished RPM Challenge and more shameless self-promotion!  I’m currently listening to Damien Jurado’s new album  Maraqopa and Guy Capecelatro III’s North For The Winter.  Lovely songwriting on both counts–two troubadours who’ve honed their songs to the white heat of a packed ice ball.  The 2012 music reviews are on the way.  Lots of good stuff dropping this year.  Stay tuned.  Per usual, I’d love any feedback about They Went On’s Who’s Afraid of Richard Dreyfuss?

Adam Arcuragi’s, “Like a Fire That Consumes All Before It…” fuses grit and lyrical eloquence to create an accomplished collection of deeply resonant songs.

Sorry, streaming albums are only available during the month they are featured.

Canadian artist Laurent Craste juxtaposes tools of destruction with precious porcelainware. Vanity is stabbed, hacked, beaten and bruised.

View more of Craste’s work here.

Athenian Adam Martinakis is producing some of the most tasteful digital art we’ve seen to date. In the digital realm, strong concepts are often diminished by the medium itself due to a lack of warmth, soul, texture and the like. These beautifully rendered landscapes, however, prove that a skilled artist is just that, regardless of medium. We are foregoing our typical slideshow presentation in favor of this video from the artist himself.

View more of Martinakis’ work here.

“Mutiny Gallery” B.K. Fischer
(Winner of the 2011 T.S. Eliot Prize)
Truman State University Press, 2011, $18.00

B.K. Fischer’s Mutiny Gallery, a novel in verse, is an act of earnest imagination. In a period when much poetry is thin- I biography, it is refreshing to come to a first book that is provocatively metaphoric and hearty… and with a personae, one surmises, set apart from the author. The premise of the book is rather simple: a mother and her son are escaping — fleeing “domestic peril.” –– and, in so doing, are engaged in a U.S. cross-country road trip. Tanks of gas are burned; bridges are burned –– and unintentionally preserved; nightmare museums are the temporary stops. What emerges in the deeper kinetic landscape of the novel is not so simple:

Dreams she is naked with a lover but can’t
find a place to be alone––a hotel room laden
with noisy sleepers, a sliding door opening

at an intersection, a wall dissolving into
a department store where she crouches
among the racks, grabbing something…

She lights a cigarette, her first since
she snuffed out her sworn last
by the wheel of his stroller outside

a bodega in November 2001…

Surely a seedy love scene is coming up,
a cheap fling, except she is traveling
with a chaperone too young to leave.

She fingers a key ring, only free
to take a peep, a body broken down
into boxes: ridge of a foot, glans.

(“Exotic World Burlesque Museum”)

There are passages of disintegration; and passages of assemblage. Intimacy seems to collapse down to sleepy arms wrapped around a sleepy neck. New zones of risk have to be navigated. Even without the father’s violence, there were intrinsic problems in the original landscape:

…Take your chances with the big city, take
this ticket out of Gambrills, where all there is, is a divided

highway with a median-strip Taco Bell and a sand quarry….

She wanted to talk about kitsch and the str(i/u)ctures of faith,…

but her advisor leveled his gaze at her chest throughout the defense.

Too bad about those other girls, such promise but they turned out
to be bourgeois opt-out suburbanite incubators come home

to roost and lost their edge. That won’t happen to you, will it?

(“Museum of Bad Art”)

There are also intriguing passages of description; often in what, in any other situation, might pass as nonchalant aside. There is nothing nonchalant in Mutiny Gallery:

Claire is the only one in the museum. Max has run off to the
bottom of a hill to poke around in some rocks. A rotating fan
pushes a cabin smell across and past her, across and past.
Folding chairs stacked against one wall suggest that perhaps
the room is still used for a congregation or at least a group.

(“Church of One Tree”)

There are poignant poems about being dogged by poverty, living near the edge, ever on the go. The aromas are odd mixtures of where the two travelers are, where they have been. Time moves forward and backward. Snippets of memories, moments of panic, innutritious snacks, and serendipitous flashes of graffiti fill the voids where more meaningful textures and continuities are missing. There are simply wisps of race, faith, class, and cultural identity. Lost and Found become unclear designations. A peacock, popcorn bucket, mosaics made from torn bits embroider the day’s tapestry:

At natural Bridge, he…
trotted down sixty steps before the ticket-taker
sent him back up, short by $7 to see the arch.

He thinks about
the Alamo and what would have happened had it
never been avenged. No state of Texas, the USA
a thinner-bellied creature with Louisiana and Florida
at its two front paws.

(“Killing Time Museum”)

Besides the emotional spaces that are opened and collapsed, the poems are carefully lined and well made. Metaphors are thoughtfully introduced, listed, returned to for development. Fischer is masterful with pacing, ruthless, and skilled.

She is tired.
Paid it all: tuition, dues, tolls.
Where the hell’s
the deus ex machina?

(“American Precision Museum”)

Mutiny Gallery, is so worth the read, and leaves us looking
forward to more from B.K. Fischer.

Benjamin Evans
Executive Editor, Fogged Clarity

• Stephanie ElliottStephanie Elliott graduated from the City College of New York where she won numerous awards for her writing. Her work has appeared in Confrontation and The Healing Muse. Swaddled

• Jonathan WellsJonathan Wells‘ first collection of poems, Train Dance, was published in October 2011 by Four Way Books. His poems have been published in The New Yorker, Alaska Quarterly Review and The Paris Review Daily, among other journals. Sledding Out
• Home Is Not One Heart
• Scott HightowerScott Hightower is the author of three books. This fall, Self-Evident, his fourth collection stateside, is forthcoming from Barrow Street Press. Early next year, Oases, a bi-lingual book, is forthcoming from Devenir, Madrid. Hightower teaches as adjunct faculty at NYU and Drew University. A native of central Texas, he lives in Manhattan and sojourns in Spain. “Follies”
• The Zeppelin Field at Nurnberg
• Amy LemmonAmy Lemmon is the author of two poetry collections: Fine Motor (Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Press, 2008) and Saint Nobody (Red Hen Press, 2009) and co-author, with Denise Duhamel of ABBA: The Poems (Coconut Books, 2010) and Enjoy Hot or Iced: Poems in Conversation and a Conversation (Slapering Hol Press, 2011). Her poems and essays have appeared in Rolling Stone, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Verse, Court Green, The Journal, Barrow Street, and many other magazines and anthologies. She is currently associate professor of English at the Fashion Institute of Technology.1965
• Jean KaneJean Kane teaches English at Vassar College. Her fiction and poetry have been published in American Short Fiction, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, and Indiana Review. La graffeta d’amor
• Much Later
• John M. AndersonJohn M. Anderson teaches at Boston College. Featured in both Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, he has new poems in Poetry Northwest, Spillway, Tuesday: An Art Project, and Crazyhorse – plus a canyonland chapbook, Dictionary Quilt (Pudding House, 2007). His manuscript Alamos: A Chain Reaction is a ghost story in verse about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. Peter Oppenheimer Hearing the Who…
• Some Version of Late Peter Oppenheimer…

• Guy LarameeGuy Laramee is an interdisciplinary artist whose work has been seen and heard in Canada, United States, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan and Latin America which includes some 15 solos and more than 20 collective shows. The Great Wall
• C.J. PyleCJ Pyle is a Chicago-based artist represented by the Carl Hammer Gallery. Illustration
• Greg DunnGreg Dunn is currently working on his PhD in neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. He spends his free time creating works of art inspired by his doctorate work and classic Asian art. Neuroscience

• Justin Robinson and the Mary AnnettesJustin Robinson is a Grammy Award-winning violinist who played with the Carolina Chocolate Drops before beginning his latest project, Justin Robinson and the Mary Annettes. Thus far, the band has released the full-length album Bones for Tinder, along with the E.P. Precious Blood.Bones for Tinder
• The Fogged Clarity Session

• Andrew HudginsAndrew Hudgins is the author of eight books of poems, including Saints and Strangers, Ecstatic in the Poison, and most recently American Rendering: New and Selected Poems. He has been a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, won the Harper Lee Award, and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. the renown poet discusses his work

• Scott HightowerScott Hightower is the author of three books. This fall, Self-Evident, his fourth collection stateside, is forthcoming from Barrow Street Press. Early next year, Oases/Hontanares, a bi-lingual book, is forthcoming from Devenir, Madrid. Hightower teaches as adjunct faculty at NYU and Drew University. A native of central Texas, he lives in Manhattan and sojourns in Spain.reviews Neil Shephard’s collection, (T)ravel, Un(T)ravel

View more of Holmquist’s work here.

Alexandra Fuller, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight           

It’s taken me awhile to write this review. I wanted some time to reflect on this memoir before commenting on it. In this book, Alexandra Fuller (“Bobo,” as she’s called throughout her childhood), recounts her experiences of growing up in South Africa with her parents and older sister, Vanessa. Her story is interesting, but I can’t say the same for the writing itself.

One of my goals this year was not to be quite so snobby about what I consider good literature, or at least to judge others less about what they deemed to be quality reading material. In my mind, part of this goal includes me not seeing a whole heap of merit in writing a bad review. At the end of the day, I’m just one reader. I’ve yet to publish a novel. So, you know, what the hell do I know anyway?

This book came highly recommended to me by several friends, and the premise is certainly promising. I learned a lot about South Africa, which Fuller successfully paints as simultaneously magical and terrifying with exactly the right dose of a child’s perspective. The characters are all also worth reading about; the least interesting, honestly, being Fuller herself, though she’s got a lot to live up, particularly in comparison with her fascinating mother, Nicola. Fuller’s mother is a beautiful disaster of a woman, a spirited alcoholic with a love for dogs who can’t quite seem to find her footing in an unforgiving country she loves fiercely. She is one of the most vivid and captivating characters in a book that I’ve come across in a long time.

There are places where Fuller’s writing is indeed lovely, and as someone with almost no background knowledge about South Africa in the 1980s, Fuller’s story is engaging. The issue I had with the memoir, mostly, was that the book itself didn’t hold up to my curiosity about her life. I would love to get a cup of coffee with Fuller. I’d love to go to a lecture and hear her talk about her childhood. But the parts of her upbringing and her family that were the most interesting somehow didn’t translate exactly right on the page—something felt missing while I was reading. It was possibly one of (or a combination of) these things: There were too many historical details in some places, or historical details without the proper context, or the order of the short chapters felt somehow inadequate, or there were places where I felt like I needed more information or that I didn’t have enough, and the story seemed to drag because of it.

Fuller also writes about her mother’s alcoholism and the death of several siblings without offering much reflection on these topics. I understand the inclination to avoid heavy-handedness or to steer away from memoir-writing-as-therapy, but I do think that memoir (over fiction) has a taller order to fill regarding at least some type of reflection on the events or experiences being written about, and in this way I felt the book also fell short.

Those concerns aside, there was certainly still much to praise in Fuller’s writing, and to follow Nicola through the eyes of Fuller as the family moves around Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Malawi, and Zambia alone is worth the read.

If others have read this book, I’m very curious to hear your thoughts on it.

They Went On

After having one of my songs featured on the first 2012 RPM podcast (I’m about twenty minutes in, the penultimate piece), They Went On (an odd moniker for a one-man band, I know) is glad to be done with the first draft of ten songs.  I’ve already cut one song and look forward to doing more tinkering, deleting, adding, etc… before the deadline at the end of the month.  Thanks again for the support.  Comments always welcome and appreciated.