Charles Martin's Blog, page 2

We At Literati Fondly Wave As Heathen Sets Sail For Distant Shores

Natasha Alterici is finalizing a major deal to move Heathen to a much larger publisher set to re-release Issues 1-4 in September. Though we are sad to see this amazing title leave our library, we are very proud to have helped Natasha’s bold and progressive story find an audience. The bad news is we won’t be printing anymore(the trade is already sold out!) The good news is Natasha will be bringing her editing team along and we are also in plans to release her dinosaur anthology later this year.

If you still want to help in the near term, support her Kickstarter for Volume 2!

So fear not! Heathen is off to conquer distant shores, but Natasha’s presence will still be felt at Literati Press for years to come.*

*Fingers crossed!

Why Islamaphobia And Xenophobia Will Not Cure America’s Homophobia

The Orlando shooting demonstrated the devastating consequences of elevating homophobia into mainstream idea. We’ve also talked about the danger of allowing easy access to firearms to individuals who have already appeared on federal watch lists, but cannot be legally denied the right to purchase weapons built for the exclusive purpose of killing humans. A troubling counter-argument to arise this week has been the redirection to examples of how much worse homophobia is in other nations(read: Middle East, Africa). Here is why focusing on the atrocities of some Islamic nations and cultures on the LGBT community is an unhelpful distraction to our current predicament:

1. The shooter lives in a state where homophobia is alive and well in the mainstream, non-Islamic community. Though ISIS inspired him to action, local politics helped shape and encourage his dangerous fear of the gay community.

2. Using military force on a foreign nation to alter their thinking is much more likely to intensify and justify their hatred. Our time, money, and effort is better served at home if we want to enact real, sustainable change.

3. There was a second terrorist plot that day targeting a Pride parade on the other side of the country. It was being planned by a non-Muslim. It was thwarted and potentially prevented an attack on the same scale, if not bigger, than Orlando. The gay community has a long history of enduring deadly homophobia and that hatred crosses racial, religious, and social lines. Focusing only on homophobia within the Islamic community is insulting to anyone who’s suffered hate crimes from other sources.

4. There are way more helpful ways to fight homophobia on American shores, even including these kinda creepy and predatory offers of free training at gun ranges, which might actually help knit our fractured society a little closer together.

Hear me out:

I am an advocate for registration of all firearms and a tiered licensing system for all firearms owners. I’ve even concocted a plan that I believe offers a sensible structure of regulation that actually enhances rights of gun owners, but puts into place a tracking system to slow the flow of firearms through liability starting with the maker. All that said, I think the LGBT community driving out to gun ranges across the country to take lessons on responsible ownership from more conservative-minded teachers could be an important outreach program for both communities.

Prejudice cannot survive proximity.

That is what is lost in our current, polarized society. We are afraid to cross the fence to get to know our neighbors and that mystery of how the other half lives breeds resentment, fear, and contempt. The Orlando shooter was reacting out of fear and an internal struggle of self. He resented the freedom represented in the gay community, was no doubt influenced by homophobia promoted online, but also in the state’s own political propaganda where hatred of LGBT was normalized.

Bombing another country won’t solve that no more than it will solve a confused, angry white kid from Indiana hoping to wreck the same carnage on gay kids in Los Angeles. Instead, a peaceful dialogue should open between conservative churches, mosques, and the gay community.

They do not need to agree. They need only to acknowledge the humanity of the other.

Pointing our ire towards immigrants and distant terrorist groups does not fix the hatred boiling within our own borders, but it may intensify that hatred.

So, if we want to fight homophobia, we must acknowledge these things:

1. Gun owners are not the enemies.

2. The LGBT is not the enemy.

3. The Islamic community is not the enemy.

4. The Christian Right is not the enemy.

5. Peace can only happen with all parties at the table.

6. More good will be accomplished on a day to day basis if liberals and conservatives spend time discussing superhero movies, football, the fall fashion season, or anything else rather than wasting time arguing politics.

7. We all deserve a chance to feel safe both inside and outside of our own communities.

 

 

The Mass-Shooter Was One Of Us

As the body count of the Orlando terrorist attack on a night club continues to rise, so does the temperature of the rhetoric spewing out from all sides. We are desperate to find the enemy, the underlying threat, the lair from which this monster arose.

American born and bred, as it turns out. New York, to be exact. This monster is one of us. His religion may be Islam, but his hate and the execution of that hate was our brand, our playbook. The land of the free and home of the mass shooter. Grab your gun and enact justice on the unjust world. It is in our movies, it is in our legend, it is America.

Immigration is irrelevant in this issue, yet it will be brought up. There will also be noise on gun rights, background checks, and other issues, but those are distractions from the core issue.

We feed on anger and alienation. From that foul stew, we produce killers. Throughout the day, across all social media platforms, voices will proclaim Islam as guilty. But it is not Islam or Isis that is truly to blame. It is our culture of intolerance. Homophobia is this particular flavor of intolerance and radical Islam was the prism by which that intolerance was focused to a deadly point. But mass shooters do not need Islam, nor Christianity, or any other ideology to kill. Religion only provides the excuse for the moral outrage to justify the act in their confused minds.

Ultimately, this is a man who felt impotent to control his world. So he bought guns and ammunition. He used them as tools to exert control on the world he chose not to understand. It was not Islam that warped his mind. It was the hate and intolerance that is intensified by our fractured, digital age that turned a family man into a monster. We did this to him. In every online encounter where we choose to dismiss countering ideas and cultures rather than embracing diversity of ideas and customs, we are feeding the hate machine that will continue to breed violence on soft targets.

So, what are the answers? Outreach to the groups we fear. Not to change them, but to understand them. This man feared the gay community. Now many in the gay community within Orlando will fear the Muslim community. If those groups worked to come together and break down the stereotypes that hold them apart, more will be done to prevent shootings in the future. There are ideological divides that can’t be solved by coffee and doughnuts, of course, but we should all work to be better neighbors. These shootings happen because disturbed individuals with high moral codes want to be heard and understood. Fear and derision is better than living without a voice. So, how do we help them find a peaceful voice? And by finding that peaceful voice, how to we maintain a dialogue where understanding and acceptance comes from both sides? I’m not sure, but that is a more helpful question to ask than many of those that will be posed by the media, politicians, and other benefactors of America’s obsession with vigilante justice.

RACE Dance Company & The Curbside Chronicle Present: Home

Home: presented by RACE Dance Company & The Curbside Chronicle

June 10-11, 2016 at 7:30pm

The Loft on Film Row

700 ½ West Sheridan OKC

Tickets are available online at tickets.racedance.com and at the door

racedance.com

Friday night, sixteen dancers will take their places along a wall of windows in The Loft on Film Row. The windows stretch over a hundred feet, and frame a breathtaking view of the city skyline. Beneath the cityscape, the dancers will perform fourteen contemporary, and occasionally interactive, pieces that explore the idea of home.

For the event, RACE Dance Company (the acronym stands for Radical Application of Creative Energy) is partnering with The Curbside Chronicle, an organization that helps homeless individuals transition into housing by allowing them to write and sell a street magazine. Curbside co-founder, Rayna O’Connor, joined by one of the magazine vendors, will be at the show to share how The Curbside Chronicle is helping Oklahomans rise out of poverty. The spirit of the magazine inspired Co-Artistic Director Brandi Kelley to choreograph a piece called Dignity; Curbside.

“I’ve always admired the dignity The Curbside Chronicle brings to people. Every vendor I have ever encountered is so happy to be working and proud of the product they sell. Their joyful presence is a fixture in the Plaza District. I can’t imagine not seeing these people around my city.”

RACE was founded in 2008 by dancer and choreographer Hui Cha Poos as Oklahoma’s first professional jazz, hip hop and contemporary company. Because of the diverse range of styles and themes RACE explores, Kelley found it difficult to condense the show into a brief elevator pitch.

“The pieces in Home are so different from one another that it’s impossible to describe the dominant mood and style without describing each of them individually. Many of the pieces explore what home means for Oklahomans that are frequently marginalized—the transgender community, homeless men and women, and those who have immigrated to Oklahoma from other countries. The show is also tied together by the choreographers—all eleven were either born here or have put down strong roots in Oklahoma as adults. We take ‘Keep It Local’ very seriously.

“The first piece of the evening is choreographed by Jeremy Duvall and is about the search for home. The final piece of the evening, choreographed by Destini Rogers, is entitled Coming Home. This last piece explores the love/hate relationship that many of us have with our home. The desire to leave, and the ways you are pulled back here. The love that you have for the people and place that shaped you. There’s an appreciation that we share for Oklahoma, just as we are deeply concerned with many things happening here right now, such as the heavy budget cuts to education and the treatment of the trans community.”

Describing a moment in the evening that she hopes will create a feeling of connectedness between the dancers and the audience, and between the audience and all other Oklahomans, Kelley said, “We hope we entertain, but that’s not where it ends. RACE is always searching for ways to create social awareness through dance. We want what we do to cause our audience to feel deeply, and to question what they know.

“That’s our job as artists.”

 

Past Scents: Tony Westlund

The scents aligned with this project are but a small sampling of the many vapors, odors, dusts, and oils that evoke memories of my father as he’d come home from a day at work, or in from out in the yard. Copenhagen has been a constant throughout the time I’ve been son to Martin Lee Westlund. There were times of Red Man, and Beech Nut chew…but the smell of Copenhagen could always be caught as I’d jump in his pickup for a ride to school, the auto parts store or to a wrestling tournament on drizzly Saturday mornings. I never asked when he started, and stopped wondering if he’d ever quit a long time ago. My sister found out the hard way about drinking out of pop cans you didn’t see get opened. Burnt Cedar. The kindling that started countless fires in our fireplace. After moving from Oklahoma to Washington state, we discovered to power and necessity of a good fire on a drizzly night. As soon as I was old enough to wield an axe, chopping wood and splitting kindling was added to my list of duties. My dad taught me how to reduce a large section of a tree into toothpick thin tinder, and I took pride in filling up a bucket or two before he got home. Chainsaw Bar Oil. A mild scent, but one that could be picked up on his clothes after a day harvesting firewood from alongside logging roads. A family friend who worked for a local timber company would let us onto private land after large swaths of trees were cut down. We’d make a family weekend of the yearly task, one day cutting and loading, the next splitting and stacking to dry. As a farrier for a decade and a half, my Dad became a well-known ‘shoer in the state of Washington. Trimming and shoeing horses-ranging in size from Shetland Ponies to Draft breeds, he’d skillfully hone and shape the hoof with nippers, a hoof knife and rasp before applying the shoe. In order to ensure a good fit, a hot shoe would be pressed into the bottom of the hoof, creating a plume of pungent white smoke that would encircle the scene, and cling to your nostrils for hours.

Past Scents: First Friday

6-10pm Friday, May 3

Closing May 30

An exploration of fatherhood, childhood, and the powerful connection between scents and memories. Whether your relationship with your father is positive, negative or non-existent, we form our earliest memories of our fathers partially because of a collection of scents. A bit of WD40… maybe the sunbaked leather in his truck, maybe the aftershave he wore on Sundays. This show invites 5 artists to create 5 large-scale, immersive pieces of art that explore the visual relationship with their father, and 3 signature scents to accompany their piece.

 

 

Past Scents: Jack Fowler

My dad owned and operated a truck stop, loaded his own shotgun shells, fix everybody’s cars, built cradles and beds and toys out of wood, and brush-hogged our shaggy acreage every two weeks with a tractor so old it looked like it was on loan from a museum.

All those hobbies take some space, and his favorite place to be in the evenings was the barn, a plain, metal building set among the pecan trees that housed all of his pastimes under one roof.

As a kid, I loved seeing the door open at night, the lights spilling out over the gravel. I knew he was in there doing something, and I was comforted somehow. I still have dreams about that barn.

 

Past Scents: First Friday

6-10pm Friday, May 3

Closing May 30

An exploration of fatherhood, childhood, and the powerful connection between scents and memories. Whether your relationship with your father is positive, negative or non-existent, we form our earliest memories of our fathers partially because of a collection of scents. A bit of WD40… maybe the sunbaked leather in his truck, maybe the aftershave he wore on Sundays. This show invites 5 artists to create 5 large-scale, immersive pieces of art that explore the visual relationship with their father, and 3 signature scents to accompany their piece.

Festival, Territorial Oklahoma, And Vengeful Rabbits.

Historian talk and release party of The Bloodied Past of Jingle Heimer, S.V.S.

7-9 pm Thursday

The Paseo Plunge

3010 Paseo

We’ve got a big week coming. Scratch that. We’ve got a BIG weekend coming. And I don’t use all caps lightly because it annoys my editor. Check it:

1. The Plunge will be participating in our very first Paseo Arts Festival running Saturday through Monday. It’s going to be a lovely weekend and this is the best arts festival in the state. Maybe I’m biased, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.

2. We will be hosting a talk on Thursday night with historian William Wedge of the Oklahoma Historical Society as he delves deep into the context of a series of maps and Harper’s Weekly illustrations tracing Oklahoma’s path from Indian Territory to statehood. The show was leant to us by the Melton Arts Reference Library and history buffs need to attend. William is like a living Google, but way more accurate and charming.

3. Release of Dorshak Bloch’s The Bloodied Past of Jingle Heimer, S.V.S. also on Thursday night. This informal follow-up to The Story of Ivan A. Alexander features the grim, yet hopeful story of a rabbit-done-wrong who sets out on a path of vengeance, then on a path of redemption. Illustrations by the amazing Bombs Away Art. If we are lucky, Dorshak may even do a live reading in the Bombs Away Art Gallery across the street!

If you haven’t been to The Paseo Plunge yet, now is the time. If you have, now is the time to come back. We’ve got big things afoot, so come help us envision the future of the district!

Oklahoma: What Happened To Our Gold-Plated Empire?

The Oklahoma Policy Institute recently sought out testimonials on the impact of the state budge crisis and, as I do with most homework assignments, I completely ignored the assignment and instead created an extended metaphor on the underlying issues of how Oklahoma got to this point. Entitled The City Built On Diamonds, the first of seven episodes was just released on Adventures In Stereo, a Litcast I created with composer Gabriel Gallear where we release 5-10 minute narrated stories set to an original score. For Diamonds, I decided to delve into my inner Shel Silverstein/Dr. Seuss to really explore the roots of Oklahoma’s infestation of invasive, poison-tipped politics.

Yet, as I further considered this state and the miserable week we just left behind, I think the real question we need to face as Oklahomans is why do we allow these self-inflicted wounds to happen? We can’t just blame our corrupt and ridiculous politicians. We put them in office with our votes or our decisions not to vote. So, why did we allow our political system to swing so far afield? And what will keep us from doing that again in November?

The best I can come up with is the also the reason that Donald Trump has defied the odds and won the Republican Presidential Primary. The problem is the American Dream. It has warped us, or rather we have warped it.

The American Dream was once the belief that, no matter your station in society, no matter your ancestry, you could cobble out a happy, sustainable life in this country. All it took was hard work and clean living. Being a white, protestant, heterosexual male also helped quite a bit, of course. I don’t think that dream is dead. A stable middle class existence is much easier to achieve in America than other places in the world.

But that is no longer the American Dream.

Trump, Tom Ward, and Jordan Belfort represent the new American Dream. Carnivorous bullies who wield money and power like bloodied axes, felling their enemies both great and small. We find our new warrior class in the financial, energy, and real estate markets. We find them in grand religious institutions. We celebrate their victories, even as it comes at the cost of our own well-being. The American Dream is the accumulation of wealth without moral restraint. The American Dream is us applauding multi-millionaires who stick it to the government by hiding their money overseas.

Yet, the government is us. It constructs our roads, it runs our schools, it protects our borders, it does the work that can’t be feasibly done by a for-profit company and that won’t be done by charities or non-profit groups. By sticking it to the government, our wealthiest citizens are crippling the institutions that maintain our infrastructures everyday citizens depend on. By sticking it to the government, our wealthiest citizens are jeopardizing millions of middle class jobs.

And we, the Oklahoma people, are now the servant class to these bullies. We hope that, by celebrating our wealthiest and most aggressive citizens, they will reward our loyalty with pity. Our politicians are servants too and, as long as voter turnout remains around 40% in Oklahoma, those politicians will not serve the people. They will serve the warriors who hold campaign contributions like daggers to the every politician’s neck. By large, Republicans don’t believe the nonsense they are sending through the legislature. They only believe it will get them reelected. And it does.

Of course our bridges are rated deficient. Of course our politicians are passing hate-filled legislation that won’t hold up in court. This is the promise of the Tea Party movement and the energy interests that backed it. They are winning the war for the American Dream by convincing us that our votes don’t matter, that the system can’t be changed, and that taxes are an affront on capitalism.

This budget crisis is self-inflicted because our modern political system does not reward long-term strategy. We are thinking only in election cycles, but we need to begin thinking in decades and centuries. We need to think about what we want the new American Dream to become. Is it gold-plated empires and financial inequality or is it the hope that all citizens from across the socio-economic spectrum have an opportunity to forge a healthy, sustainable, and productive life?

Our country has reached its tipping point and we will decide which way it falls in November. This election isn’t about Hillary/Donald. The real power will be felt further down on the ballot in the state and local contests. If we want to save our state, then showing up on election day is step one. Let me know if you need a ride to the ballot box.

130BPMEP By Jarvix Review

EP Release Party

Thursday, 7:30 pm

Sauced

2912 Paseo

Golden Hour

Friday, 10 pm

District House

1755 NW 16th

Evan Jarvicks(Jarvix) is a soft-spoken, earnest ukulele player and songwriter whose relationship with his audience comes out in almost every live show I’ve seen him do. In spite of his aforementioned reserved demeanor, his personality is always enjoyable and humorous, joking around with the crowd, inviting audience members to come up on stage with him, even going as far as to have them pick two chords and a time signature for him to craft a completely new song from scratch. His disposition, his connection with his audience, and his self-awareness is what defines him, and all of these traits crosses over onto his new project, 130BPMEP.

This six track E.P. is a parody of modern pop music that lets us know exactly what we’re getting into from the very beginning. The first song “4X4”, serves as a seven second intro to the first full length song “Club Sandwich”, where Jarvix, over a nightclub style beat, proceeds to list off the ingredients to a club sandwich. It’s a funny little parody of house music that puts Jarvix personality on display. Other songs like “Turn Up the Night (Whatever)” I listen to unironically because I think it stands on its own. Extremely autotuned vocals harmonize stack on top of each other in a charming and endearing way. Each individual vocal melody drills its way into your head and nests itself in your brain for the rest of the day.

There are a couple moments where Jarvix intentionally goes off the rails, like the final track “Cough Drop” (if you listen to it you’ll see how clever of a song title it is). Some people might see that song as going too far with its absurdity, but I think it was a fun moment Jarvix completely abandons earnestness and just goes for what he finds funny. This project basically functions as one long 15 minute song that doesn’t stop to take a break. The transitions between each song are smooth and make the project flow very nicely; nothing seems out of place. I really had fun with it and I got some laughs out of it. If you have 15 minutes to kill I would highly recommend checking it out on Jarvix’s soundcloud or bandcamp.  

Streaming Free: Complete First Season Of A Girl Named Winter

Adventures In Stereo is our new LitCast that features short fiction set to original scores composed by Gabriel Gallear.  The mission is to make literature more approachable by creating fun, experimental pieces for casual readers and listeners of all ages. This story is our take on all ages adventure and the primary characters are loosely based on three amazing young women who I’d trust with my own life if we were shipwrecked in a winter hellscape and beset on all sides by ferocious predators.