Victor D. Infante's Blog, page 189
October 29, 2010
October 27, 2010
Morning Thoughts
***
Haven't had time to really reflect on our recent trip to New York and our reading for Mike Geffner's Inspired Word series. And I'll admit, it was a little odd, reading in NYC and not knowing a lot of people in the room (although the fabulous Corrina Bain showed up.) But then, that's part of the reason I asked after the gig in the first place. I'm always curious when I hear a buzz about new readings, and indeed, always think it's a good thing when people add a new vision to the mix. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, but the effort is always worthwhile.
The Inspired Word works, and indeed, works in a sort of old-school way that I can appreciate. Three features that night (myself, Lea and Gemineye), an open mic which was open to everything (but which was mostly poetry, with a little stand-up thrown in) and a nice feeling of community. The reading has a good spirit, and all-in-all, it was very much worth doing.
NYC is a funny place to read. I never see it as a moneymaker (although, to be fair, people say that about SoCal, and I always look at them quizzically, as I always do well there. But then, I know the terrain.) Recent gigs in Cobourg, Ontario, and Jaffrey, New Hampshire, netted far more, dollar wise. If you want to make money, you either do big college gigs (if you can get 'em) or go out and read to older, book-buying audiences with disposable income. (Which is my general strategy. Slower, but it gets you there.) You don't read in NYC for money. You may read in NYC just to keep your profile up, and I'll admit to some of that.
Mostly, I just like reading in NYC to read in NYC. I always find the energy level exciting, and I always feel more plugged in tot he world when I'm there, whether it's at the Bowery Poetry Club or a new reading like this. New York is exciting just for being New York, and that's a truth that's not changed in decades. I find it's always worth coming down and seeing what's happening there with my own eyes.
So mostly, I guess I have a love affair with the city, and truthfully, I find it reveals itself to me more with each trip. this trip we visited with friends Dorinda and Scott in Staten Island, which is not a part of the city I've spent time in. And as always happens when I spend time in a new part of the city, I find I have to reappraise how I see the city. Staten Island, for all the jokes about The Wu-Tang Clan or The Situation, is actually a fairly nice suburban community, resting a ferry ride -- with a fabulous view of the Statue of Liberty -- away from Manhattan. But, and this is important, Staten Island is New York, too -- another facet in that amazingly complex place.
I doubt I'll ever live in NYC. I like my space, and frankly, I don't believe I'll ever make enough money to make it comfortable. I like my big, cheap, New England apartment. But I'm always drawn to New York, and probably always will be. I find it fascinating, and the more I explore it, the more I find. Can't wait until I return.
October 25, 2010
WeirdPolitick -- Halloween Edition
Sure, some of the GOP candidates out there are a little frightening. Christine "not a witch" O'Donnell, Meg Whitman, Carl Paladino, Sharron Angle etc. And then there's Salon's roundup of the scariest would-be congressman, which includes, as they say, one who may have dry-fired a gun near his ex-wife and another may have gotten away with murder.
All in all, it's a pretty disturbing bunch. And at least some of them may end up in government. But ... is it going to be a landslide. I don't know. The numbers don't seem to add up to me, and indeed, the whole thing seems familiar, like I've seen it before. And then, I realized that I had. In 1982.
Yes, I suspect there's a sort of reverse Bradley effect going on here, that polls are reflecting fear and anger, but perhaps not actual voting patterns. That's a gut feeling, and I could be terribly wrong, but I'd be treating any race with the tea party involved with a 3% to 5% handicap right now, especially as most so-called independents are fiscally driven, yes, but also not prone to being swayed by rhetoric. They seek competent, short-term economic fixes, and are easily put off by both right-wing and left-wing sideshows. Moreover, and this is where it all seems familiar, it seems in fashion right now for people to talk up their anger with Democrats, but I find most of it, when push comes to shove, seems to be deflected a bit when it comes to one's own congressional representative. When push comes to shove, I'm not sure the most crucial voting blocks are interested in creating more conflict in Washington and instituting more instability into the political system.
Still, only a fool wouldn't take the Tea Party stuff seriously, and the GOP will certainly make some gains, but one also suspects it's influence is slightly exaggerated, and I'd be looking at those polls a little more skeptically.
October 24, 2010
Home Again
October 21, 2010
Morning Drive-By
1.) Planning music for your Halloween party, but having trouble getting past "The Monster Mash"? Here's a few recommendations in my What You're Listening To column.
2.) More interesting tidbits about the potential Globe sale. Seems like an interesting guy behind the move, and I have to admit, I'm definitely curious.
3.) Rest in Piece Ari Up, of the Slits.
Okey-doke. See you in NYC.
Concrete jungle that dreams are made of ...
Mike Geffner Presents The Inspired Word
featuring Gemineye, Lea C. Deschenes, Victor D. Infante
One and One Bar & Restaurant (downstairs Nexus Lounge)
76 East 1st Street
Manhattan, NYC
(212) 598-9126
7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010
Venue is 21+; 12-slot open mic open not to poets and spoken word artists but fiction/nonfiction writers, comedians, monologists, singers, and musicians.
***
Yes, there's evidently an investor group looking to buy the Boston Globe, and consequently, the Telegram & Gazette. No, I don't know anything more than you do.
***
I've been dilettante in blogging about what a wonderful time Lea and I had reading at MindFull books in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Such an amazing little bookstore. And it had a bookstore cat! (Which is important.) VERY glad Brandi MacDonald invited us up. Great, attentive little crowd. Felt amazing.
Read a lot of the new stuff, such as "On the Outside," "Sixteen Was the Year" and "Toxic Waltz," and they seem to be going over well. May well reprise them in NYC tomorrow, if the room feels open to them. They're odd poems -- part of a series, and probably headed for a round of edits. It's vulnerable territory, writing about adolescence and a lot of the less-than-fun things that shaped the decisions, good and bad, that lead me to where I am today. Looking back at adolesence is a lot like looking across to the other side of a fire. That's where all the scorched earth is, and you can still sort of feel the flames.
It's different, though, when you look back at it from this side of 30. It all seems so long ago. The big traumas I've written about over and over again, of course. In a lot of ways, writing about my father's murder is almost easy at this point. Almost. It's writing about the big, obvious thing and it's big, fairly obvious impact. But the smaller cruelties of youth? Oof. Even beginning has been rough. I take it one poem at a time, and I take it slow. Just see where it all leads me.
After Steve died, writing about that journey from awkward youth through Rocky Horror, punk rock, poetry et al seemed almost a compulsion, and I have to admit, the recent media light on the suicides of gay teenagers has made it feel even more necessary. I'm not gay, but I don't think that particularly matters in this instance. I was sleight in my early teenage years, and even now still have effeminate mannerisms and a trace of a lisp. I was geeky and interested in culture. That I was attracted to girls seems almost beside the point when looking back at those years.
Was I bullied? Sure. I recall the insults, I recall being beaten up. But what seems amazing is how far away it all seems now, like I'm looking at it through a cloud of smoke. I've long let go of most of that, and in a lot of ways, I was lucky. I found my tribe of friends, found a place to be. a lot of kids don't find that until they're well out of high school. I was lonely at 14, with only a handful of friends. By the time I was 18, I had a full life, to which high school was only tangential.
"It gets better." That's the catch phrase of Dan Savage's worthy video project. And it IS worthy. But I don't know if it's so much that it gets better as it is that you get better, that you learn how to withstand the cruelties of other people, learn to see their weakness for what it really is. If you're very lucky, you learn how to greet it with a modicum of pity, cultivating kindness in your heart. Not for their sake, but for you own. Because there's some serenity in that. And I confess, I wrestle with that one to this day. Even now, I confess there's a part of me that always wants to lash out at something, and writing that makes me realize that maybe I haven't let go of as much as I think I have.
It's a process. But the important thing to learn, and what makes Savage's project so important, is that you don't have to be alone in it. Eventually, you find friends, fall in love, and yeah, sometimes you have to do both over and over again. Eventually, you can move on -- go to college, move to the city, wherever your road is taking you. But in the meantime, it's good to know that other people have gone through what you're going through, whether it's through someone telling their story on YouTube, or through someone writing a poem that gets heard at the right time.
Pain touches pain. That's the single, most fundamental element of art, and the thing that's probably most easily lost track of in the bustle of it all. I don't know if my poetry has ever saved a life, although sometimes I suspect it's failed to once or twice (and that line of thinking will drive you down some impossible rabbit holes if you let it, let me tell you.) But that's not the point. Some of these poems, these scattered messages in bottles, inevitably will. We never know which ones, and really, it doesn't matter if it's mine, or yours, or anyone's in particular. It only matters that someone's does.
October 19, 2010
RIP Jack Powers
Jack Powers, the founder of Boston’s Stone Soup reading series, has died at 73. For nearly 40 years, Powers worked to bring poetry from the academy to the people. At Stone Soup readings, poets of every stripe shared their work, their opinions, and their stories.
From the Boston Globe:
Years before poetry slams made open mike nights fashionable, Mr. Powers insisted that poetry should be an event, something to add to each week’s calendar.
“He really did devote his life to keeping poetry as part of the public discourse, and he did it with great verve and enthusiasm,’’ said poet Gail Mazur of Cambridge. “He wanted to gather everyone into the performance of poetry. In that way, he was a little ahead of his time.’’
Also recognized for his philanthropy, Powers was known to give away his own coat or gloves to those in need:
Personal note: I'd only known Jack casually, and to be honest, I never really knew where I stood with the man. He gave me one of my earliest gigs on the East Coast, in 1996, and then I didn't see him again until last year, when he came to my second Stone Soup feature. The first time I read there, he barely acknowledged my presence, which is always odd. The second time, he wasn't capable of speaking anymore, but bought my book and seemed very pleased with my reading. I don't think I understood the man at all, but I have to admire the sort of cussedness and force of will that can keep a reading running for that long. There are damn few like that in the world. I hope he's resting in peace, and pray that his friends and loved ones can find some comfort in the work he did for the art and for his city.At various points during the late 1960s and ’70s, Mr. Powers founded a free school on Beacon Hill and started free suppers for the elderly in the same neighborhood. He helped launch free concerts on Boston Common and taught remedial reading at the Columbia Point housing project, where he also organized a food co-op.
“I’m very solid on volunteerism,’’ he told the Globe in 1987, “because the extraordinary weight of problems that visits the modern industrial society can’t be met with dollars alone.’’
***
October 12, 2010
Drive-By Blogging
Yeah. Been busy. Lots of projects on my desk, right now. Trying to cut a short story from 12,000 words to 6,000 (ick). Trying to finish a series of poems. (less ick, but still hard). Trying to outline a new project (shhh!). Getting out and about, too. Made it down for Sam Cha's surprise birthday party, which was fun, and of course, I saw Lea read at QVCC the other night, with all sorts of great music. Awesome, but I've been out too much, lately, and am trying to buckle down and work more. Which made me miss Matt Gallant at the Asylum Sunday, and John "Survivor" Blake at the Gerund Monday. Many apologies, but I have a whole mountain of things on my desk that need addressing.
Of course, Lea and I are reading at 7 p.m. Saturday at MindFull Books & Ephemera, 29 Main Street, corner of School Street, across from TD Bank, Jaffrey, NH. No rest for the wicked ... (Oh, like I qualify as wicked anymore, if I ever did ...)
***
I used to have standing features on this blog, such as "Political Quote of the Week!" and "Victor Reads Janice Harvey So You Don't Have To!" The features come and go as my interest in them fades. For instance, Janice Harvey's been pretty good lately, so I've not felt the need to poke at her. (And Lord knows I prefer reading her to Gary Rosen. But then, who doesn't?) The political quote of the week ... yeah, I guess I was just burned out on politics for a while there, and let it go. Maybe that one deserves a comeback, before we lose all this wonderful talk of witchcraft, masturbation, Nazi cos-play and the like.
One imagines that "regular features" on this blog will remain totally capricious, until the end of time or I develop an attention span, whichever comes first. Any recommendations, either new or classic? Must entail relatively little work, as I'm already busy.
One thing I've been itching to bring back actually never (to my recollection) appeared in the Infante's Inferno blog, but rather made its sole appearance in the "Infante's Inferno" column I used to write for ICT: "Worcester's Scariest People," a blatant rip-off of my compatriots back at OC Weekly. Should I bring it back, in blog form? The last time had me setting a local publishing baron's political campaign to song, got me in trouble with the mayor, and won applause from the city manager (who obviously had a better sense of humor than the mayor.)
Whattaya say? Worth bringing back? And who would you nominate as Worcester's scariest people?
October 7, 2010
Media-A-Go-Go
But still, it's an interesting time for media, hereafter referred to without quote marks, a time where news and publishing businesses are trying to get a handle on a quicksilver future. And here's the truth: Everybody's guessing. The slick suits at newspaper corporate offices who are reading analysis and devising paywall strategies; the indignant bloggers ranting and raving that those paywalls will never work; Both the proponents and critics of AOL's Patch.com; the comic book companies turned movie moguls who are trying to figure out how to restructure for the future. Everybody. Certainly, I suspect some of them are on to something, such as former Soft Skull Publisher Richard Nash, who is putting forth some really interesting ideas about publishing books, or Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, who thinks NPR and the Daily Show are really the shape of media to come, but in that, he really hits on the fact that, at their core, both are actually fairly traditional news organizations, in their odd ways. Only the presentation changes, the sense of style. Underneath both is a devotion to facts.
Stewart always seems so horrified when people point that out, but even he's quick to point out his team's devotion to fact-checking and research. Fact-checking and research seem underrated qualities, these days, but I think, slowly, people are shaking off the psychedelia of media that comes at them from all angles constantly, and beginning to look for more grounded news sources. Certainly, it seems people are getting tired of the antics of the likes of Rick Sanchez, James O'Keefe, and the Fox anchors who bought a Weekly World News story about the LA police buying jetpacks. Maybe there are reasons why Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity is catching on so quickly.
But nonetheless, there is a confusion when we talk about all of these things, about news and punditry, art and entertainment, print and Web. I don't think the average person knows where one begins or ends, and why, and to tell the truth, I'm not sure anybody knows. It's the big thing everyone's trying to figure out. It takes time. If, as the Guardian's Charlotte Higgins writes, everything is connected, and that the arts have a delicate ecosystem, perhaps, too, that ecosystem extends out throughout the so-called media. And perhaps all of it is out-of-whack.
I don't have answers. Wish I did, but then, I'd likely be a richer man. You don't have answers, either. Please don't insult us both by saying otherwise. Just enjoy this time, this crazy, mixed-up moment of possibility. These are the cultural moments you look back on and marvel at, when everyone is throwing their wildest ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks. It probably won't be this crazy much longer. Another few years, a decade maybe, and some sort of order will probably emerge. It'll all likely seem staid. That'll be a relief. But it'll also be kind of a shame.
***
Other things of interest lately:
*There's a great piece up on The Geek Feminism Blog about connecting with female characters in geek television, centering on Dr. Who's River Song and Torchwood's Gwen Cooper. Really good read.
*Former Nov3rd columnist Phil West is writing for the Huffington Post! His first post is a riveting piece on Bristol Palin, Dancing with the Stars and the mid-term elections! (Oh, and the Nov3rd archives are here, for the moment. Hopefully will be back up under their old URL soon, but it's taking longer than hoped.)
*Am absolutely captivated by the brewing ICT vs. Lew Evangelides feud. It really speaks to my lowest, most prurient insticnts, but I really can't look away. Forgive me. I am only human. (Of course, if a certain column that was allegedly spiked at a news organization I don't currently work for that won't be named here were to run, things would be even more entertaining. Sigh. My delight in chaos will inevitably be my downfall.)
The Week Worcester Tried to Kill Me
The next person who tells me there's nothing to do in Worcester may get punched in the throat.
Lately, I've been overwhelmed with places to be and things to write about. Today's TWSN, for example, recommends a gazillion events, including shows by Indian Idol winner Amit Paul, the John Lennon tribute at Ralph's, Sevendust, Cha-Cha Connor and Dr. Nat, Papa Roach and more. I'm more than a little saddened that it's unlikely I'll make the Lennon tribute, as I have a personal engagement. (Had a bit of fun asking local musicians about their favorite Lennon tunes, though.) Also, my "What You're Listening To" column is back, although brief for lack of space and time, with the very cool band, Southbound Outlaws, who are also playing this week. Busy? Busy. But no rest for the wicked, as Lea's performing Friday for the second Worcester Poetry and Music Showcase, along with Sound in Stone, Rodney Tucker and Aslan King, at the Qunisigamond Village Community Center, 16 Greenwood St., Worcester.
Of course, I don't think it'll be as exhausting for me personally as the previous week was. Seriously: this was the week Worcester tried to kill me. That it tried to kill me with awesomeness only makes it worse.
Last Friday, Lea and I made it out to see the Loomer play at WCUW. I've seen the Loomers many times before, of course, and lead singer Jon Svetkey was the first musician I interviewed for WoMag a million years ago when I was writing for them. Was a little sad that the room wasn't packed, but the band was the tightest I've ever seen them, and all in all, it was a great show.
Saturday found us at Clark University, listening to jazz musicians William Parker and Cooper-Moore. I'll admit, I had ended up at this one because I had an inkling that Tony Brown was going to kick off the program, debuting the mysterious long piece he had been working on. And he did, and it was fantastic, but I was totally unprepared for just how amazing these musicians would be. Watching them play was hypnotic, and the whole damn thing rattled things in my chest I didn't even know were there. Sometimes, when you encounter art that's largely alien to you, it shoves your head into a paradigm shift. I think I'm going to be haunted by that show for a long time.
Sunday, Mindy Nettifee came to town, and I think a lot of the crowd that came to see her at the fairly last-minute secret-ninja Kitchen Sessions might have gone through a couple paradigm shifts of their own. It's no secret I think Nettifee is a spectacular writer, and a magnificent performer. There was some awareness of her out here -- a few folks had seen her at Nationals before, or when she's read in Boston -- but by-and-large, I don't think most of the crowd knew what they were in for. I think there may have been a perception that she might be cut from the same mold as a lot of other touring slam poets. Certainly, her understated stagemanship, her wry wit and sparkling imagery, her crystalline vulnerability ... I think these all blindsided many in attendance. In a good way.
I was also happy to revisit the the Kitchen Sessions format, and in Megan Thoma's capable hands, the show felt like a Kitchen Sessions should feel: warm & welcomign, good-natured, vibrant and ringing with good poetry. I know there hav ebeen other Kitchen Sessions rolling around, and I've bene unable to visit them, but this, for me, was the real deal.
Mindy also had a last-minute gig for the Dirty Gerund Poetry Series at Ralph's, and -- with an almost entirely different set -- managed to again whallop the crowd. There was also a great musical feature by Cha-Cha and Nat, previewing their show tonight at Nick's. I've caught them performing before, and always enjoy it, but putting Cha and Mindy on the same stage just lent the whole evening and amazing energy. I was buzzing for hours afterward. Which was problematic, as I had to work the next morning, and had missed a lot of sleep that week. Mostly, I've been knocked out for the past couple days, recuperating from exhaustion and unable to even think about going out. But all-in-all? It was so worth it.
