Gossip [&] the Devil

I’ll be honest. I haven’t submitted to anything print in a long, long time, save the Columbia Poetry Review (who have a history of rejecting me, but I’m hopeful this time). I’ve felt like writing but nothing decent is hitting the paper. I think I’m getting out the dust and mold before the clean work comes. Cracking my creative bones.

In the meantime, I conducted a short interview with the rock photographer Lisa Johnson the other day, which I’ll post later when it’s closer to the release of her collaborative effort with wiL Francis, Flowers + Filth. Lisa has shot some of the biggest bands in history, captured chaos all across warped tour, but I won’t get into that until the write-up. I have contacted wiL as well, but since he’s just had a baby I’m not sure his schedule will allow.

I was fortunate enough to see U2 and Muse in Dallas this past Monday. Two iconic and epic bands, for separate reasons, together in the same huge, tin room. The show was a trip for my birthday back in April as well as my roommates way of getting me to see U2 since she’s been singing their praises since I moved in. I’ve never seen Muse before and what I walked away with was yes, they’re very good performers but because you can tell they do the performance a lot. They played “Map of the Problematique” which was the only song I’d asked for and they didn’t play “Knights of Cydonia” which was the only song I asked not to play. So it was a win all around.

U2 was pretty unbelievable. Everyone said Bono was a priest and I’m inclined to believe them after what I saw. He’d say “raise your hands” and you’d think you were in church. There was a man next to me so enraptured I’m not sure the smile left his face the entire show. At one point Bono quieted the entire band while the crowd sang “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and I wondered, as I mumbled along with the believers, how that must feel to have so many thousands of people say your words back. How could that ever get old? I saw sisters, brothers, boyfriends, girlfriends and parents hugging each other during various songs. The crowd didn’t have a mean bone in it’s body, they just wanted Pastor Bono, The Edge, Larry and Adam to deliver them from real life for two hours, where they could hug and feel safe doing so, where a smile didn’t come barbed with guilt. Since it was their “360 degree tour” their big pile of “space junk” went around the arena so there wasn’t a bad seat in the house.

Not in dallas, but you get the idea. No clue who took this. Email if offended.

The acoustic “Stuck in a Moment” with Bono and The Edge was a personal highlight for me, where I discovered The Edge had a very nice singing voice and that the song resonated with me in such a way that I was forced to tears. But, as he evangelized, “it’s just a moment, this time shall pass.” I’m sure I’ll write more about this later, but I thought I should at least mention it since it impacted me in a way I”m not used to.

After the show a marathon 8 hour drive home because of concert traffic and we landed back in Tulsa at 8am, just in time for my roommate to go to work. I’d ask her occasionally if it was worth it. She always said the same thing: “Yes.” If you can answer “yes” to those question about the things you do in your life, regardless of what comes, you’re headed in the right direction.

Orphans:

I know it’s been a bit since I’ve had brand new work posted online. Well I’m about to break that cycle. As most of you know I’m a big fan of writing and reading flash fiction – it’s a genre I’m still new to but am learning, with the help of criticisms from editors and peers, rapidly how to shape a 1000 word or less word picture.

I currently have a new flash fiction piece entitled “Living Under Glass” featured on Troubadour 21, which is a wonderful site marrying art and poetry, for “writers in the 21st century.” It hosts a plethora of poetry, photography and short stories, providing a home to many artists under one impressive roof.

“Living Under Glass” is part of my “Big Brother Billy” series, in that Billy comes home to his younger sister and a number of short fiction pieces ensue. Each piece isn’t linear and isn’t meant to tell a story in and of themselves, but rather a back story is to be gained from their peculiar and semi-incestuous interactions. I started them back in 2007 and so far I’ve only had one real champion of that series but I’ve always felt it had more to say. According to the short story editor and the executive editor for T21, they do too. So expect more from the series shortly! For now, check out “Living Under Glass:”

“Living Under Glass” on Troubadour21

Help me become a “Readers Choice” by getting my view count up! If you know anyone that might enjoy semi-rockstar inspired, image heavy works, direct them my way Orphans!

It seems I jumped the gun but again, like so many times in my life, it took another artist saying it better before I could say it myself.

There is a reason I’m unafraid to ask you for money. This is because artists like Amanda Palmer were unafraid to do it first.

Artists preserve culture, make you feel like you belong, provide just the right word when you feel like giving in. They relax you, make you hate them, irritate you and you’ve likely spent much of your time telling an artist to “get a real job.”

To that I say “fuck you.” You try preserving a culture/time/emotion/moment. Ha.

Since I do not blindly suck on any artists tit without question [no, not even Corgan], and while I’ve taken my issues with some of the things Amanda’s been doing these last few months, I will argue for this blog. It is essential and correct.

WHY I AM NOT AFRAID TO TAKE YOUR MONEY

When you’re done reading, I ask you again, despite the looks and with an open heart.

From “A Smallish Request I” R.I.P. 2009

Whether or not you buy my work the fact remains that it costs money to make/publish/print. I have no problem shelling out money to make art. It’s an investment, it’s what you do. You don’t get that investment back. I am, however, sick and medications I’m required to stay on cost me about $800 a month. This makes art difficult to get into your hands. Any donation, no matter the amount, will receive a button AND sticker upon request. Every dollar will be put towards my medications until I get [modern.orphan.designs] up and running. If you haven’t heard I lost my job due to health reasons and, being in the state I’m in, assistance is being slow to respond. To those of you that have already donated, thank you. Whatever love my black heart has to give, it’s yours.

See the right sidebar for donation details. Thank you. <3

My new favorite poster:

Taken from: http://avalost.blogspot.com/

If you’ve read half my poetry you’d know why. Namely “My Own Lord Henry,” and half of what ended up in The Rough Chronicles of Bipolar Romance.

Image stolen from Itinerent.

My If All Goes Wrong flier next to a handful of Metro wristbands. I'm still a fangirl at heart.

I’ve been away for a little bit and during my hiatus the Fall issue of Common Line went live! This issue features my article, “If All Goes Wrong (And How to Come Back When it Does),” on The Smashing Pumpkins DVD If All Goes Wrong–an article I’m quite proud of and Kerry Brown, who worked sound on IAGW and even won a Cinema Audio Award for his efforts, has endorsed it on his Twitter! Kerry is currently in the studio with Billy in Chicago, so if you’ve got a Twitter account and want to stay updated, click their respective links. Or keep up with their in-studio blog here. It’s a feel good, hippy-full-to-the-brim-with-God time over there.

I was lucky enough to catch one of one-day only screenings of the DVD that happened to be playing in Tulsa, OK at the Circle Cinema. I will say first and foremost I wasn’ t expecting it to be as good as it was. It is far and away one of the least painful documentaries I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching. However, one of the things that hit me hardest during that screening and the subsequent times I’ve viewed it, is what appears to be the lack of heart in the lyrics. The music has so much soul and power but the lyrics just seem to be suffering, hummed along because they match a tune, the time machine in words like “tarry” and “morrow” creeping it’s way to capture us all and take us to Victorian England where we’re all fucked up on opium and racked with syphilis. It’s like he’s given all his blood to the instruments and left none for arguably his most important one: his voice. I say that only because Corgan has made such a big deal out of connecting to the “kids” and fans, plagued with that desperate need to be needed, wanted, not abandoned. To do that you must ask them to stay and I didn’t find many of the lyrics that moving, save many of what ended up on the American Gothic EP. I’m not the only one who thinks so.

It’s one of my greatest worries with this new album, Teargarden by Kaleidyscope. I don’t care if it’s about the tarot, God, fucking your best friend’s model hot under-age sister or remembering why you make music but, as a fan, I want to connect and want no part of the process to go ignored. By now Corgan and Co. have been in the game long enough to know how to divide their time, but that’s just my opinion and admittedly I’ve only watched a very few videos from their short lived Spirits in the Sky run featuring Dave motherfucking Navarro.

This reminds me that I’ve yet to post part the 5th and final part of the adolescent jetset you’ve no doubt forgotten about by now. G[&]D started taking off so fast, interviews, submissions, acceptances, rejections, books, merchandise, touring…the story got lost in the shuffle and that’s a terrible disservice. But I’m going to post it out of principle. The end of the story must be told. This story was arguably what helped start what Gossip [&] the Devil is today, the jetsetting ways, the deep-seated desire to tell my muses thank you and a first-hand, adolescent account of the power of the humanities and their ability to change the course of someone’s life forever. The ever-inscribed idea that art cannot die as long as we keep making it.

For you, Billy.

Bedroom. One of many.

To recap: [part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4]

The cops called my mother and threatened to take us to juvenile detention if we didn’t know anyone in the city. I’m sorry, where are we exactly? oh, Topeka. What time is it again? 2 a.m., fabulous. We had gone west across Kansas instead of south, toward Oklahoma. The cops were going to tow the car, we were going to jail. We cried. You’d think I would have been dead from dehydration, I’d cried so much that day. I asked them if I could take my autographed stuff to jail with me, then asked if they would at least hold it for me until I got out. Again they said no.

I thought I was going to die. All this work and trouble, taken from me.

By a sheer stroke of something perverse, my mothers boyfriends ex-wife’s current boyfriend just happened to live in Topeka. I didn’t know him and my mother only vaguely knew him but we agreed to let him come get us if that meant no juvenile time. He arrived and we parked the car near a 7-11 and I rode in the passenger seat of his pickup truck, sniffling and clutching my treasures. Things were going to be fine. Just fucking fine.

He made us breakfast in the morning while we waited for our parents to come and get us. Some fried potato concoction. I slept on my backpack all night–my stuff wasn’t going anywhere without me. By the time our parents arrived I was so fucking annoyed with his dogs and his ramble that I could have walked back to Oklahoma myself.

My mother grounded me and his father grounded him. We weren’t allowed to see each other for 2 weeks and I had to pay half of his court costs, of which he had to come all the way back to Topeka to pay and show for court. However, his court date just happened to be on the same day as an Insane Clown Posse show in Lawrence, so we had a friend who was going take us up there and it actually ended up turning out quite alright, for all the fuckery that had ensued.

Living room, l'orgie sonore.

This whole thing set the stage for what was to be the rest of my life. My little brain trying to wrap itself around these huge ideas and theories, the notion of a “concept album,” philosophies and angles, feeling so educated and intelligent, analyzing lyrics and pondering, with intensity, the meaning of the universe inside certain songs, other fans around me doing the exact same. Our own club of outcasts, fighting against the big, bad cock rock world, all so young now that I look back on it. Other girls with braces, pimple faced academic bowl boys, budding hipsters and eventual college graduates. It felt good, felt right. I was miles away from home in a faraway kingdom about to receive my reward for being so faithful to the throne.

This was our home. Not the demons we all ended up crawling into bed with that night, or the next night, or the next. The familiar feeling that the person behind or in front of you knew exactly what you were talking about as soon as the words left your lips. Anymore I’d likely greet the same sort of situation with a more jaded eye, having lived a little more, knowing now that I was probably mistaking complexity for pretension and so forth. But at the time it was like our lives were only beginning and we were witnessing the creation of an entire universe built solely for us to inhabit and occupy for the next generation to come along and be saved too.