Darlene Conner, I'm calling you my Valentine because it's nearly February 14 and you're hella important to me. But I never had a crush on you; I just identified with you deeply (as, I'm sure, did scores of mold-breaking, sarcastic-but-vulnerable, masculine-energied young girls in the 1990s). Some of us were paying closer attention than others.... Continue Reading →
If y’all don’t know, I’m a pretty awkward bird. Not that I don’t hide it well on certain days, or up to a certain point. But to my mind, at least, awkward remains the default. Even now, a decade and a half into my career, well-compensated and provided with plenty of opportunity, I feel out-of-step... Continue Reading →
Legend has it that, in the late 1960s, the Wiggin sisters were pulled out of school by a dad who was under the influence of a fortune teller (and/or looking to get rich quick). Instruments were shoved into their hands in an attempt to mold them into a Walton-style family band called the Shaggs. They... Continue Reading →
Hades Sets It StraightThey think you shrieked as meadow opened wideand potentilla plunged in the dividefrom which dark stallions launched me up on airto drag you down, who picked the larkspur there.They think you squirmed with loathing on your throne,beseeched me weakly to be left aloneand promptly beat yourself about the head when faced with... Continue Reading →
I've made substantial strides on the next full-length, which is a concept album, if only loosely. It is typical of me, though, after leaping forward, to reflect a bit. At the moment my retrospection is fixed on the piece of music I'm most proud of from my last album. It's actually part five of five... Continue Reading →
My old classmate Brooke*, a visual art major, painted and pasteled the wings of fantastical butterflies. Exalted Tree of Life circulatory systems. Her own conventionally beautiful visage in buoyant soap-shimmering orbs. Her rainbow-age was as extra as Lisa Frank's, but more graceful. All of this was both her great endowment and her great curse."I'm trying... Continue Reading →
-It’s 2022 and I’m nestled right up against a prominent university, so… really?? (As someone who also works for a sprawlingly large and strategically opaque [to outsiders] entity, it would be fascinating to bust open the intricacies of the triage being applied to this situation, and the role of workforce-management-esque technology in determining it.) -I’m... Continue Reading →
Joan Didion. I don't know how it's possible that I don't know more about you, because every time I see part of something you've written, it slaps me around some in a way I find welcoming. It must have been a combination of rebellion and exhaustion: too many assignments, too many unwanted recommendations and feelings... Continue Reading →
Somewhere in the middle of my elementary school years, I was leafing through one of my mother's Famous Artists volumes and stumbled upon The Persistence of Memory. My eyes moved across it with dread as its sinister furnishings revealed themselves. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. "Is that...? It can't be. Why is there...... Continue Reading →
The Sold Kingdom 