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ashtrayfloors · 1 year

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There is so much, so much to say. So much, these days. And I’m sleep-deprived so this entry will be a haphazard list rather than a well-thought-out piece of prose, but I need to get some of this down because there’s just going to keep being more and more and more.

—The last day of March I dressed up in a very queer-punk getup to attend the Queer Youth Assemble rally in Kenosha. I put my harness on along with my other undergarments, and over that I wore tall black boots and a loose, long black dress and my leather jacket that has studs and appliqué roses on it (the one I always describe as cowpunk-meets-Kathy Acker). I did elaborate eye makeup and darkened my wispy lil’ mustache with mascara, and went to the rally. And a bunch of my cishet ally friends were there, and a bunch of my queer and trans friends were there, including my crush Shelley. (Shelley is a pseudonym and yes, I did christen them that in an homage to both Mary and Percy Byshe, because they are goth and a poet.) All of us were in our Most Gender finery, complimenting each other, and Shelley looked super hot in their leopard coat and cat’s-eye glasses. After the rally ended due to rain, Shelley and a few other folks and I went out for beers and nachos and I can’t tell you how good it felt to be Out and Queer. In fact, our waiter (gender neutral) said they had wanted to be at the rally but couldn’t make it due to work and they thanked us for going and said we all looked ‘hot as fuck.’

—It got warmer as the day went on, rained more, then the fog rolled in, then thunderstorms, then back to just rain, and it was warm enough I was able to leave the window open overnight for the first time this year, and I could hear the rain and the trains.

—April first it got cold again, and the wind returned, and it was not my lover, this was brutal bitter asshole wind. I ran some errands, including meeting up with K. to pick up the Joe Strummer piece I commissioned him to do for Ali’s birthday. And then I had a bit of the sads, because the kids were cranky and I was PMSing. And because I was thinking about M., how it’s now been 18 years since he died, and how it still hurts that I can never tell him how much he meant to me. But I wrote some poems and took some selfies and then I drank a little too much wine and listened to W/IFS, like I do when I’m in my feelings.

—And the two days after that were kind of crappy, I was still sad and cranky from PMS, and stressed about the upcoming election. But I did some voter outreach stuff and wrote more poems and did some painting and ate dark chocolate and drank tea.

—Then election day, and despite the storms (including hail!) Wisconsin turned the fuck out, and the election turned out the way I had hoped, and I am so relieved that my state overwhelmingly voted against the right-wing extremist judge and that my town voted against the MAGA freak mayoral candidate. And P. and I had amazing sex that night.

—And the next couple days were mostly about packing for a trip to Door County, and more poems, and more sex. And there was more rain, more storms, but also warmth, and bits of sun and butterflies, and the greening grass.

—Two days before Easter, we headed north. Everything was muddy and brown and we saw e a lot of birds—hawks and herons and wild turkeys. There were road snacks and road silliness. We saw a truck that said Lubenow on it, and we figured out later it had to be someone’s last name (like Luben-ow), but it was like “got it, looks like Lube Now.” And at the rest area we usually stop at there’s this big Wisconsin tourism sign that’s supposed to look like a license plate, and it says LUV R AG (as in Love Our Agriculture), but again, because of the kerning and design, it looks like Luv Rag. So P. and I were making jokes about how Luv Rag sounds like the name of a band of sleazy middle-aged dudes trying to cling to their ‘80s hair metal days, and I said: “Thank you! We are Luv Rag, and this is our new single, ‘Lube Now!’”

—We were up there for five nights, 4.5 days. It was less stressful than staying with my parents usually is, and except for the first half of our first full day there, the weather was great. I ate a ton of good food and stayed up late writing most nights; found out about a sonnet contest I’m going to enter. P. and I got to go out, just the two of us, several times. We went out for drinks a few times; got to sit out by the fire pit at Door County Brewing Co. and listen to a great folk musician who goes by the name of Hunter Gatherer. (I already liked him cuz when we first arrived, he was playing a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” and then a bit later he was introducing one of his originals and said: “This song’s about running from the cops.” And I liked him even more.) Other times we just drove around the peninsula, or went hiking in Peninsula State Park and exploring our favorite tiny old cemetery. Our last full day there, we took the kids swimming (in a pool, not the lake—it’s still way too cold for that!), and I hadn’t been swimming in years and I had forgotten how much I love it, how at home I feel in the water, like that’s where I belong, like that’s where my body works the way it should.

—We arrived home to the daffodils and violets in bloom and everything even greener, buds on the trees, more warm weather, and there were days of childlike joys and nights of adult pleasures. Days of playing hopscotch with C. and reading endless books, of iced coffee and shooting hoops and watching the backyard birds and squirrels. One evening, we even got to grill for the first time this year, and make s’mores for dessert. Nights of drinking a bit, and hot sex, and staying up late writing.

—Then it got cold again, and it rained, then snowed. Yesterday I felt really bad for the first half of the day. Partly cuz of the weather; gray and cold and gloomy and it was hard being cooped up inside again after that week of warmth and sunshine. Partly cuz I was sleep-deprived (the kids have been waking up hella early lately.) Partly cuz fucking everything was making me cry. I dunno, I was having weird-bad gender feels, and also feeling uninspired/unmotivated writing-wise, like ‘oh, I made it through the first half of NaPoWriMo, but I think I’m tapped out now.’ And maybe a bit of that ol’ pre-Mercury Rx shadow period creeping in there, bringing up old issues and feelings—I was missing my good old bad old scumbag days. The days of freight hoppin’ and basement shows and circus freakery, and dumpster diving and busking and long bike rides across cities, of wheat paste and graffiti and stick n’ pokes and sleeping out, under the stars, giving myself over to scary thoughts, & omens, & excess. The days when most everyone I knew had a clown act and a copy of the Crew Change Guide. I made a cup of tea and lay in bed watching Netflix for a while. First I watched the “Beyond the Binary” episode of Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness, and then I watched Mae Martin’s new comedy special, Sap. And of course both of those have to do with gender stuff (at least in part), and both of them talked about growing up queer/GNC and having such a hard time and turning to drug abuse and other self-destructive behaviors, even though they were white, middle-class kids who were not kicked out by their parents. And I was like, oh hey, me too. And both shows made me cry, and it was good cathartic crying, but I still felt like shit afterwards. So then I started thinking about some ways to bring back some of the less-destructive aspects of my scumbag days back into my life, and I was still feeling sad, and then I decided to check in on the contest results of the WB Yeats Poetry Prize and the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize.

Both of them said they’d announce the contest winners on their websites sometime in or after March. The Yeats Prize said it would also contact the winners directly; the Ginsberg Prize said no such thing, but I assumed they would. Starting in mid-March, I was checking both sites every few days or so, and obsessively checking my email/snail mail. And nothing, nothing, nothing. The last time I’d checked the sites was April 3, and yesterday I was like: “Well, it’s been two weeks, there must be some news by now,” and I was assuming I would go on and see the list of winners and my name would not be there and maybe it was a bad idea because I was already feeling so crappy, but then I was also kinda like, well, I might as well get all the bad feelings out of the way at once. But still, on both websites, the most recent winner’s list was from 2022. And then, I shit you not, like eight minutes later, P. brought the mail in and handed me an envelope. Return address: The Poetry Center At Passaic County Community College, One College Blvd., Paterson, NJ. Location of the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. My hands shook as I opened it. And…I fucking won! Not first, second, or third place, but I don’t even care because one of the poems I sent them (the one that is probably, in my opinion, among the best poems I’ve ever written, but also one of the riskiest) received an Editor’s Choice Award! And it’s gonna be published in the Spring 2024 issue of the Paterson Literary Review, and I’ve been invited to participate in the awards ceremony/reading there, next February.

I don’t even know how to express how much this means to me. Professionally, but also personally. Like, first of all, New Jersey is such a huge part of my personal mythology. I was conceived in New Jersey! So many of the people who have meant the most to me, personally/artistically, have New Jersey roots! Like Allen Ginsberg! And Jack Terricloth! And Bruce Springsteen! And my witchwife, Penny! And also just, well, I mean god, Allen Ginsberg. For better or worse, the Beat Generation and punk rock have been the most enduring influences on me/my writing, starting at a very young age, and Allen Ginsberg is definitely towards the very top of that “beat + punk influence list.” I just. Can’t. Fucking. Get Over It. Can’t quite believe it! I keep touching the letter they sent me to remind myself it’s real. (It’s on the Poetry Center’s official stationery, which is on beautiful, thick, creamy paper.) I keep blowing kisses at my framed photo of Ginsberg, one where he’s sitting at his typewriter, writing a poem.

—So yesterday evening, P. and I dropped the kids off at my folks’ house for a bit. We went to pick up takeout dinner for everyone, but also got to have a celebratory whiskey while we waited. And I stayed up late last night. First, I wrote a poem—guess I wasn’t totally tapped out, after all. Then I was just awake scheming and planning (and wishing and hoping). About immediate future stuff, like this year’s vegetable garden, and going through my books to find some to donate to the library’s book sale. As well as the positive scumbaggery I can reincorporate into my life—I remembered that I bought myself that stick n’ poke kit last year, so soon I’m gonna give myself a new tattoo; and I started thinking up ideas for a poetry wheatpaste project. And then—travel. I still wanna travel a bit this year, but I think I’m gonna keep it mostly midwest. Then, next year, I’m gonna head out east again finally, after all these years, for the awards ceremony, but I’m gonna try to book a mini-tour around it, and there will be old friends and new friends and old haunts and…yeah. I am so fucking ready.

—And today I’m sleep deprived, again—I was up late, and the kiddos once again got up stupid early. But I don’t even mind. I got some writing done and listened to some podcasts and oh, tomorrow I get to go see Bikini Kill. I’ve been waiting for this concert for over three years (from when I first bought the tickets in December 2019, before it got postponed many many times due to CoViD), but I’ve also been waiting for this concert since I was twelve—from when I first heard Bikini Kill, and wanted to go see them, but then they broke up before I got the chance. (And yeah, I saw Le Tigre a couple times, and that was fun, but not the same.) And there’s a lot of stuff going on right now that teen me and early-to-mid twenties me would be super stoked about—like the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize, like seeing Bikini Kill, like stick n’ pokes and wheatpaste and travel plans. And that feels kinda great; showing my younger self that I am still rocking that shit at my advanced (haha) age. And just overall, things are so good lately. There is so much joy, even in the mundane. Even the bad shit doesn’t seem as bad as it did for a while, because in these past four months I have proven to myself that my life isn’t over, that I can still do rad shit, that I can still experience beauty and joy.

#ashtrayfloors #dear livejournal #also once again i don't feel like obsessively tagging this so:#i guess general cw #for food and sex and alcohol mentions #plus brief mentions of weird gender feels and drug abuse #and pms #plus some bragging #but this is generally a really positive entry

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yakultstanreblog · 1 month

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I ain't scared, I just thought I might get the most best answer this way..I'm wondering what poet or poem you read (or were read in your childhood) that had you looking for more and aspiring to write your own? If it was a traumatic event, I feel you there. .it can really help to read a complete stranger's words of pain, when they harmonize with our own. I admit, I have only read a couple of your poems but I love your voice, keep on keepin on ☮️ 🕉 💛

HAHA DW I LOVE ANONS <33333 I encourage it.

HONESTLY no poetry inspired me to write poetry (IRONIC) I thought I hated poetry!!!! I’ve written many things since I was a kid but always been more of an essay kinda dude..I attempted to read poetry a few times over my lifetime and mostly it made no sense to me..I thought it was just a bunch of pretentious ppl flexing their advanced vocab (which honestly I lack bc of a whole other story I won’t get into and maybe I was just jealous) - the only time I wrote a poem was back in final yr of highschool lit class when my brain was malnourished af and writing it made me want to kms plus I had major imposter syndrome (and then my lovely grandma went and sent it in to a poetry magazine without me knowing and it got published and still I didn’t think poetry was for me) only in more recent times I no longer have access to a psych who I can send weekly 3000 word emails to and I needed to do something so that I would stop driving myself completely insane bc I also live alone 4hrs from family and no friends so have noone to save me but myself so I started writing every day on wattpad like a digital diary entry(today was day 118 in a row) then I started to see others who had written poetry and combined w the fact that I’ve come very far over the yrs in terms with perfectionism (as in not needing to be) I found myself in a place realising that poetry didn’t have to be “good” and that I could just make it work for me. I could just write for myself. To get things out (even tho it’s only like 5% of my mind). It didn’t need to look impressive for others etc like what I used to think poetry did… so yeah basically poetry is just my budget therapy now and a tool to prevent me from ending things :))))) everything I write about (so far, at time of writing) is from real life experience and I love using it as an outlet to say the things that wouldn’t be taken so well if they were said out loud.. cause everyone has some sort of darker side whether they are exposed to it or not and whilst I do hold onto a lot of hope I love being able to have an outlet to get the rot out of me or at least create something with it so it’s not completely useless and all consuming. ALSO I think it’s cool that poetry allows you to turn your words into art. I’ve always loved art and ppl consider me arty or whatevs but I can’t draw or paint (well - not that it matters) so this is kinda something that comes more naturally to me! (I’ve only been writing poetry for 4 months now so hopefully I can only get better)… AND THANK THE LORD in the meantime as I have come to write my own poetry I am now able to appreciate other people’s poetry, I can understand it more, I can be inspired by it, I can admire it. I get it now. Or at least I think I’m starting to get it…. But to answer ur question l wouldn’t say it was a singular traumatic event which inspired it but rather a combined experience of like 20 genuinely traumatic events combined with being neurodiverse & a lifetime of various mental illnesses which I wouldn’t say are all treated etc. and quite honestly having read NOTHING in the past which resonated with the depth of my own experience so I thought you know what I know I can’t be the only one feeling this, I’m gonna try write my own! If I can’t read it I’ll write it and hope I can be that for someone else I guessss

SOZ FOR RANT IDK HOW TO STFU AND THANK YOU FOR READING A FEW OF MY POEMS AND THANK YOU FOR THIS QUESTION ILY HAVE A LOVELY DAY <33

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v01d3nt1ty · 1 year

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"Didn’t I tell you

you are a fish do not go to dry land

for I am the deep Sea." - rumi

(from GoOD Mornings with CurlyNikki)

oh to be able to express like rumi!

or to be spoken through. or however it works.

this hit me bc i am deeply connected to the ocean. my *happy memory* go-to is the beach, the pacific ocean, *my* ocean. my fav colors are like soft teals, pastel aquas and blues, deep ceruleans... so yeah i'm a mermaid but not like... not like the commercialized version that everyone buys into. if i die tragically, i want it to be by drowning in the ocean.

wtf was my point.

anyway it brought me into that sharp awareness of being. and it's like peace & love & comfort & oneness & vibing...

idk, it was cool.

i also really love language. i hate it, but i love it. i hate that we need it, it's so clunky and awkward. there are a lot of words to remember & what if you get them wrong or forget them or put them in the wrong order? (hello, autism. 👋) i used to write poetry, realized i sucked at it & stopped.* i've always been deeply interested in foreign language, even tho i do not have the attention span to learn any. (i took one yr of spanish and 3 of french tho, that was fun. tried to take german... studied japanese w a new-at-the-time friend who has been a friend for like 10yrs or more.) (also i really love.... intentionally arranged sound? & i love variety. so i basically just love the way languages *sound* even without the meaning. don't get me started on accents...)

but i think my deep appreciation for language comes from being neurodivergent, being frustrated at being misunderstood all the time. being afraid to speak up too much bc my thoughts didn't align w what i was taught. my instincts going exactly counter to what i was being told all the time. so i probably developed this desire to be able to correctly assemble and arrange the most appropriate words for any given situation. the right & wrong things... so much to remember.. omg so boring, so tedious.. no wonder i hate everything. er.

so. yeah. no one asked for my psychology, but there u go. i never told u to read this, it's ur own damn fault.

*so this is a memory story. there are two, actually.

the first is, when i was in 5th grade, so around 9 or 10, i wrote this poem & it got printed in The School Newspaper (!!! omg such a huge deal!) anyway, i had this memory, & vaguely remembered some of the words. then somewhere in my 20s, i found the paper & read it & i was *amazed.* it was phrased perfectly, didn't even rhyme, was pretty deep esp for a 10 yr old. i *cannot* remember exactly how it went, but if i posted it with no context, u wouldn't think it was by a little kid. idk how i *lost* how to do that. probably by trying to Be Good and follow rules.

the other is when i was in hs, probably a senior, probably 17. so i listened to a lot of 90's alternative & grunge, as one did back then. (98.5 KOME, i still remember 😂 i wonder if any of those tapes are still good?) so i wrote a poem that was probably heavily influenced by the lyrics of the time, smashing pumpkins, REM, nirvana... and i was v proud of it. idek why i thought showing it to my family was a good idea, but i did. & my grandma goes "this [part] doesn't make any sense. what does it mean?" and i'm like "it isn't supposed to mean anything..." anyway it crushed my lil soul and i had to Follow Rules again. bc how can i know how to People if i don't do things the way People do things?

oh wow that's sad. poor young me. *hugs lil me*

why do i share my trauma.

idfk. maybe so one day, even one person will feel less alone.

byeeeee

#tl;dr #personal #neurodivergent #rumi #introspection #don't even bother #ocean

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rawrmeansilyindinosawr · 1 year

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nauseous Bl0WF1sh

i hav bronchitis again n moi fwend chris says it cuz ima “chronic smoker.” Whatever dat meanzz !!!!?

uMmmmummmmUmmm Ummmmm.!! moi ribzzz hurt from coughin N i had a Wasian hot doc prescribe meH a genZ pack for the nxt 6 days .! i Think she was in luv wif meh cuz she was lik ….”Soo ur feeling sick????🥺🥺🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺” n She wrote me 2 doc notes n encouraged meh to R3st … <3 heart eyes.!!! Im sniffly n BORED.!!!! N my breath smells like arabic coffee. =] i wanna learN how2 Read tha groundzz so i Kan c my future n how my wife gonna lOok Like. I dink she will hav freckles . ?

my new Profesor baggie is my old Hello kitty Crossbady bag i used in lik 3rd grade n i Loveee my mommy for saving it for me.!! Idk how it didn’t wear n Tear or iDk how i Didnf break it already at dis point cuz my Mummy calls me “a power puff girl”.!!! (aka i Alwayz broke everYth1nG growing up… the fridge, bathroom sInk, etc.)

iPhone journal entry 03/01/2023

5:39am on the L train bak home holding a tray of rly bad pasta i ated half of but left tha rest on the train Cuz i forgot n was mad .!!!!!

“the man sitting next to me on the subway smells like microwaved bean and cheese burritos and everyone that commutes at this time wears black and grey and navy. shades of it at least.

i hate when people stare at me. but they do. and i feel like i look mean for a reason. maybe discreetly i want people to be afraid of me. or to make their assumptions. i want to be judged and complain about it. to feel alienated all over again over and over and over again.

why do people wear their wedding rings so freely in this city? or do we really just care far too much about our presentation, myself included.

why am i always counted as second best. or why do i feel as it from the people who make me feel first and last at the same time.”

:-[ SIMP!!!!11111 >_<

my students keep asking me if i identify as an “emo” and a “e-girl” .! N asking if i am a bOy or A gUrl. lolz.!! my Ex situationship is now back to being my current situationship aagain cuzz um he may or may not hav written mEh a poem about fisting me on Queer craigslist which i frequently check N it was romantic . soo We had a closure convo at this Coffee shoppe n i brought a puppy who was tryna fight sum kid there n it wuz awkward n sad n Wonderwall by oasis was playing so obvz it ended in seggs.

i May or mAy not have Snuck into a homeless shelter to hav Sex the other nite cuz i felt Like it . Wrote a poem ab it !.!!

“

twin size mattress

spiky shy seductive fingers

sugar dissolves with heat

and turns golden brown.

caramel kisses on my mouth

u blew weed smoke into

sorry i freaked out.

but we play the system well

i throw ur jacket down three flights and three floors

u say when

and i’ll go

we don’t need a car to go somewhere only we know “

YEAZZZZZZZ SOOOOOOOOOO i had alottaaa weirdOo dreamzz sleeping dere.!!! dreamt of gettin strapped DOWN on a fire scape then also of a blowfish tht kept frowing up itself over n over again til it died then ppl ated it.! Then had a dream i wrote a poem w all my students in spanish n i was teaching a poetry class ssomrwhere Not in America lolz.!! iimm missing the rly Kute bedazzledd “0Bama” beanie i saw at domsey N didn’t buy . it’s been aB 2 months since i saw it dere . Anyway.! security at work was using bathroom n the toilet seat Rn slammed down on his Dick while he was peeing and he just screamed “DAMN WHAT da FUQ WHAT DA FUQ .!!!” :-]

i luv walkin around chinatown w my friendzz n gettin milky T n finding Hello-kitty jumperzz n pjs at F21 >.< n twinkz fashion show at Dallas Bbq wuz kute n i still get kinda shy ab ppl takin moi pix.!Then we danced to music w moi speaker outside afterwards n Then went w group of pplz we just met to a seggs shoppe. Then we tried to find an el bano 4 meh to pee in n may hav accidentally said” fukk” in front of 2 many babies. Then went 2 somewherenowhere n got Vip-ed cuz we r Kewl n hot n do k off each otherzz nailz lik paris hilton n Nicole Richie n cuz starz r BLINDzz.!! theN may or Not hav been on E from 1pm-6am n lost the Spikezz to our bracelets N our gauges in our ears .!!!i luv Kuddling w moi fwendzz post club tho n napping then goin out again.!! N finally bein able to climb up 2 the top of the skate ramp 2 sit dere n why do ppl smoke crack at substance abuse sk8 Park .? mayB cuz it’s called substance abuse :-p ??? hehe duh!!

soooo I ordered dinn from “Miss dongs burgers” cuz trans girlsss hav the sexiest cocks<33 n ordered soft shell crab burger N omfg her crabzz were yummy.!! LOLZZZ im thinkin of the cuRse of curves lyrics while singing another song “ ur beautiful ‘ by james blunt with strangers at a sexy bodega off broadway n also Crying cuz i lost my second pair of reading glasses again and also buying a kids babyPhat shirt even tho it’s a 5-6 size shirt cuz i like the print n Now family dollar sells baby phat beanieZ. ??? i luv living in the wick!!<3

all three of us gave ourselves black eyes on the same eyeball .?!?! within a week apart.?!?! brujajajajajajajaja :-0 i yam Defeating anorexia day by day n it is so hard but i kant keep holding on2 it. N i wanna b able to eat at wei’s n cafe mogador w moi fwendzz n even doe my Ex who used to yell at meh at dunkin’ donuts got herpes from the falafel there i still enjoy eating at dat place .! i realized many thingzz keep me up at nite more than adderal n insomnia. Like pornstar nikki hearts n the old Lex logo. Blu lex logo wuzz shmexy. wrote another iphone note 4 dayzz ago ab how much i need time alone rn cuz i feel v overly stimulated n lik everything is jus2much , n how do we rly even communicate w one another when we don’t get anywhere w our actions.??

“talk talk talk

all we do is talk ,

but talking isn’t always communicating

and listening doesn’t always fix everything

days go by and u feel nostalgic for the nites u didn’t spend admiring the moon . n i lost my heart to get yours to get close to yours. never thought itd hurt this bad. and i’ll never try to dominate the conversation but im sorry if my voice escalates.”

moi wk wuz Kute those were my highlights .!! also helping w a styling pull for bobbi brown ^_^!!!.!!.!!!.!!! kinda excited to meet moi new they she therapist tmrw mornin n get Fixed (not bottom surgery but U kno, with electroconvulsion.)) i also defzz went on a reddit khole n joined lik 4 diff fourms which i kannot disclose cuz uh uh uh uh uHhHhhH yea 2 vulnerable but i changed my username to charlixcx1997 N now i kinda wanna change my name from ren to charli cuz it’s also unisex/andro AF n cute butt ANYWEYZZ yah wuld luv to continue to stay N chat n type n Talk but Yes i am busy brainstorming lesbian spring date ideazz like goin to Dock aznn eatery n eating oysterzz then picking flowers at maria Hernandezz then going 2 moi room wHile we turn the disco lights …. hide under blankies n analyze the lyrics to fast car by tracy chapman n then ask each other our fav pasta shapes then nail our hands together .!!!!<3<3 <3 <3 <3

Xxxxxx with xxxtra xxx,

ren<3

#personal #blog #mine #writing

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spotlightauthors · 1 year

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Marques Lewis

Marques Lewis was born in New Jersey and raised there until he was 12 years old. Marques’ parents, Dora and James Lewis, are out of Georgia. Marques and his family moved from Irvington, New Jersey in 1997 to Leesburg, Georgia. He attended Lee County High School and graduated from Darsey Private High School with a 3.0 G.P.A. Marques is also a college graduate from Albany Technical College. He has his Commercial Truck Driving Certificate. Marques began writing at the age of 7 years old. He wrote his first short story, Detective David: “The Missing Toy Boat.”

After taking a 15-year hiatus, Marques began writing again after discovering the author Zane and her writings. From then, his imagination took off. At 22 years old, Marques began writing plenty of short stories, poems, and encouraging women's self-esteem on social network sites. After gaining confidence, he began performing his poems at Chill Bar & Lounge at Open Mic Night. The crowd loved him, and he began performing every Wednesday. He appeared in the Dec. 10, 2010 and April 6, 2012 publication short poem book, “The Poetic Lounge Vol. 2 and 3”. His own poems “Weak” and “I Am a Woman” were selected. Then Marques decided that he wanted to write novels. Marques has since written many books.

Marques won 2013 “Best Selling Award” and was the runner-up for “Author of the Year” at One Karma Publishing Banquet in Alpharetta, Georgia. Marques has appeared as an extra football player in Sherwood Baptist Church 2nd movie “Facing the Giants” and played a detective in “Taken 3” and a role in a short story film “Double Life.” He appeared in “BlackAlbanyGA” magazine in October 2012 and was the first author in “Big In Da Street Magazine” rap magazine May 18, 2013 and many other magazines.

He was interviewed on W-ASU FM Albany State Radio station in October 2011. He has appeared on many other radio stations as well. He has appeared in Lee County Ledger twice, Southwest Georgian, Miami Times,” Strictly For My People” magazine, Citizen Times, Lincoln Journal, Cuthbert Southwest Tribune, and Albany Herald newspapers. Marques was a special guest on “The Good Day Morning Show” on Fox 31 in June 10, 2013. Marques was a featured author at Wellingtons and Wine at a Wine Tasting event in Albany, Georgia at Icons Bar Grill on November 23, 2013. On December 15, 2013 he produced his first play at his church (Church of God of Prophecy) “The Birth of Jesus Christ”. Marques has done many things in the community including giving kids back to school supplies. He has mentored many authors on becoming successful best-selling authors.

Marques Lewis has begun some new ventures in his life. Marques Lewis is now an On Air Personality on WZBN Praise 105.5FM in Albany, Georgia. He is also a "Content Creator" on TikTok with over 50,000 followers and he has recently started his new publishing company called, "Marques Lewis Enterprise."

Author Name: Marques Lewis

How long have you been writing? I have been writing since 2007. I can finally say that’s a long time.

Did you ever imagine that you would be published one day? No, not at all. In my middle school days, I couldn’t even write a decent paragraph. I knew writing was deep inside of me, but I didn’t want to take the challenge. Thank God, I did.

What made you want to become an author? At the time, I was focused on acting, but my mom got sick and I had to take care of her while my dad went to work. I started to see Zane write Erotica and I told myself I should write about sex because I love it. It was one of my greatest accomplishments.

How long have you been published? Since 2014.

How does it feel to be published? It feels amazing. When you see someone leave a review or tell you that they purchased your book is an amazing feeling.

Are you self-published or did you go through a publishing company? Why? I went through a company first to get experience in the business. If you don’t have the funds, it can help you in the long run until you get established.

How many books have you written? I have written 10+ books.

What is/are the name of your book(s)?

"Never Settle Never Again"

"The Side Chick Who Turned Into A Wife"

"A Fool For You"

“Detective Dan and The Missing Toy Boat"

"He Cheats Too"

"Dating Jordan"

What genre is it/are they in? I wanted to touch ever genre possible. Drama, Erotica, Romance, Christian, Children and more.

What do you feel will inspire others to never forget when they read your story(ies)? To understand the message in each book. For example, the book might be Erotica, but it will have a message in it. Each genre will have a message.

What's the hardest part about writing a book? The hardest part is getting to the finish line. You might have your idea of your book from top to bottom, but I can guarantee you that you might change something before you get to the ending.

What's the easiest part about writing a book? Lol, probably the title. Once you get the title, then you can find out where you are trying to head on writing your book.

Where can interested readers purchase their copy of your book(s)? You can head on over to Amazon or Walmart.

Do you have any future projects in the works? Is there a tentative release date? I am about to work on a Self-help relationship book. I can say Spring 2023 it should be ready.

Do you have any social media sites that you would like to share with my readers? Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and My Website.

#Marques Lewis #spotlight author #spotlight #author #featured author #featured

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tobiosmilktea · 3 years

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Heyy~hope you’re doing well!

Could you do a hc for Osamu, Akaashi and Sakusa whose s/o is really passionate about literature. You can almost always catch her reading, writing narratives and poems etc. Thank you, in advance!! Take care♥️

poetry and the muse w/ osamu, akaashi, and sakusa

— m. osamu

being atsumu’s brother and constantly being at his side for a good portion of his daily life, it’s really nice getting to spend quality time with you even if you’re both in your own worlds

you definitely weren’t as loud and rambunctious as atsumu when you liked reading all the time

if anything, it’s just one less thing to worry about when osamu knows you’d most likely be in the library after school writing until his practice is over

he’s never been one to likes to read, especially on his down time when there’s so much more he could possibly do, but when it came down to you he doesn’t mind

honestly, you’re writing is so intricate and well written and sometimes osamu has a hard time keeping up with your usage of vocabulary any hyogo native would never say on a normal day nor does he necessarily understand a lot of what your poems mean

you don’t mind explaining a lot of these things to your boyfriend as it’s not hard for him to grasp the concept

overall, osamu likes listening to just talk to him about your passion the same way you listen to him talk about this new recipe he found on pinterest or something

literally the first time you’ve ever slept over at his place, he made you read him a bedtime story as if he was a little kid

it was really cute and homeboy really did fall asleep to you reading haruki murakami

— a. keiji

akaashi would definitely think a trip to the library would be considered a date and you’ve never been so excited

there’s something intimate about being tucked up at a random corner of a public library, away from everyone else as silence and books upon books surrounded you two

sure, akaashi was not as big as a bookworm as you, but he liked having a good novel on him to read occasionally

every month your boyfriend would ask you for book recommendations to which you would text him a full on list of 10+ books for him to read next, but he only had the time to read maybe two of those on your list

your usual weekend dates with akaashi would consist of trips of the bookstore before going to the coffee shop next door where you two would read or talk for hours

both you and akaashi are typically on the quieter side of things and preferred each other’s presence over everything. there wasn’t an incessant need to fill in that void of silence where talking would usually fill in as having each other’s company is enough

he loves reading your pieces of writing

whether it’s an essay for your literature class or just a random piece of poetry you wrote while you were bored during math class, he would always read it

i headcanon that akaashi + dark academia aesthetic = *chefs kiss*

— s. kiyoomi

would most likely grimace at how dusty your large book collection has gotten the first time he comes over to your house

i can totally see sakusa dusting off your bookshelves and the cute knick-knacks along with it while you’re reading or writing

occasionally when you run into bad cases of writers’ block, your boyfriend is always there to help you gain ideas or inspiration even if it meant some time off from your desk and onto your bed lmao (iykyk)

unlike akaashi who actively tries to read your works, sakusa on the other hand only reads your writing when you ask him to

it’s not like he doesn’t want to read what you have written. he knows how talented you are, but he also knows that you might not be comfortable sharing certain pieces of work especially if they’re too personal even for him to see

sakusa has never been the kind to show his feelings so easily, often times he shows them by buying you copies of books you’ve been wanting for ages now

they’re all hard covers too so homeboy got money

will probably make you research about germs or something when you haven’t decided on an essay topic yet lmao

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu headcanons #osamu miya #osamu x reader #osamu headcanons #osamu fluff #akaashi keiji #akaashi x reader #akaashi headcanons #akaashi fluff #sakusa kiyoomi #sakusa x reader #sakusa headcanons #sakusa fluff

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thejugheadparadox · 3 years

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ok i talked abt rossetti + elizabeth siddal’s self portrait as part of my art history final 2 years ago and i am dying to know about christina. please

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI!!! i honestly barely knew anything about the portrait before seeing that post i would love to know more. i am so fascinated by christina georgina rossetti born 1830 died 1894, so she’s like ridiculously quintessentially victorian, she basically never knew another monarch. when she was a child she was angry and had a lot of tantrums, her and her brother the painter one dante gabriel were know as the two storms whilst their others siblings maria and william were known as the two calms (suuch classic irritating twee victorian fake middle class art family shit but i find it faintly endearing). she dropped out of school at the age of 14 due to a religious breakdown, and never went back. during and after that she was really fixated on christianity especially anglo-catholicism and its very specific doctrines. she was REALLY into it in a way the rest of her family werent (except her sister who became a nun i guess). she’d been writing poetry since she was very young, cus she’s from this eccentric art dynasty they played writing games as kids and shit - her maternal uncle was john william polidori who wrote the first published vampire story and was lord byrons doctor if that rings any bells? that relation specifically is sooo interesting to me bc its about legacy and who you are remembered as and whether youre noticed and also maybe youre gay? yk. i love it.

ANYWAYS. she was so into religion that it stopped her getting married twice. she was engaged to the prb painter james collinson for a bit but broke it off bc he reverted to roman catholicism and she couldnt be doing w that shit. she later got engaged to charles cayley and also broke that off for religious reasons! Or At Least Thats What They Say. she also turned down a possible proposal (ppl dont know if he proposed and the whole affair is a guess) from john brett, which she wrote a fun mean poem about called no thank you john. anyway she never married and she pursued lots of Things but none of them really went anywhere, she wanted to be a nurse w florence nightingale in the crimean war but got rejected, she worked with “fallen women” in her 30s and 40s. shes not one of those tragic figures who never knew fame while they were alive tho, she was pretty successful and released multiple collections. she was publicly antifeminist and declined to sign petitions in support of womens suffrage but wrote this one unpublished poem called from the antique that explicitly expresses her dissatisfaction with her limited life as a woman.

she got ill lots, as is classic for old timey lady poets, like emily dickinson style. she got depressed lots and after her dad died her family didnt have much money. she wrote a lot about inadequacy, as a woman and as a person and most often as a servant of god (every fucking poem ends up about jesus i swear to god it gets annoying). her brother was more successful and her sister was more devout and she never seemed to get the things she wanted and she never really had any friends, especially female ones. almost every time she was published, it was by her brother, william michael, who also published her works en masse after she died, and we have explicit sources showing both her brothers would tell her not to publish poetry they deemed out of character or unwomanly. i dont mean to entirely demonise them as the Bad Guys of the story but i find it very.... interesting that when u look at her poetry that is available but not officially published there are both feminist poems and a couple of pieces that coiuld be interpreted as love poems towards women. there are (admittedly pretty unfounded as far as i can tell) theories that even more of them existed and were destroyed, but i should say we DO know that there are missing poems and destroyed scraps that pique ones interest i will say!

ive read her collected family letters and what stood out to me is HOW ridiculously fucking boring they are. i think theyre hiding something.. i am fascinated by all of it. she interests me. i have some kind of parasocial relationship with her and i feel like her work is SO easy to translate to modern day and what ppl our age are writing about like she wrote what is essentially lonely notes app poetry about religious guilt and sexual repression and hating herself like. god i sound like those ppl who say dantes inferno is fanfic but i think about it a lot and i think about her a lot and i would recommend a lot of her poetry... if anyone wants specific recs do ask. to me its a story about hiding and repression and wanting to be good. jesus christ okay u did not ask for this but youre getting it. you made me start thinking about her again this is on you.

#yeah i am sorry about THIS my god #ask #thorinlesbian #christina rossetti

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chronicallylatetotheparty · 4 years

Text

Unideal Circumstances

AO3, LoganLight

Marinette manages to sign the love poem she wrote for Adrien.

But it doesn't turn out the way she expects.

"Can you believe all the horrible, thoughtless things you said to Ladybug!" Plagg laughed before swallowing his Camembert.

"You think it's funny, huh?" Adrien groaned, letting himself fall face-first onto his bed.

"What's the big deal? You've got so many cards from all these lady fans of yours, take your pick!" So saying, Plagg rifled through the pile of valentines. Grabbing a heart shaped card he threw it towards his holder.

Fluttering gently beside Adrien, he opened it. Eyes widening in surprise Adrien sat upright quickly. "Whoa, hold up. Someone answered my poem? But I threw it away!"

"Your hair shines like the sun, your eyes are gorgeous green.

I look at you and wonder your innermost thoughts and dreams.

Yes, your valentine I will be. Our love will be so true.

Together for eternity, my heart belongs to you."

A gasp escaped him as Adrien finished reading.

Plagg sighed in slight annoyance. "Well, anyone who writes as sickeningly sweet as you must be your soulmate."

"It's signed... Marinette!?" It was like a jolt of electricity shot through Adrien. The pleasant feelings elicited from reading her poem mixed confusingly in his gut with... something else.

"The baker girl?" Plagg thought she acted weirder than human adolescents usually did but he couldn't put his paw on why. Until just now. "Well, there you go. You can just date her and-"

"I can't date Marinette!" Adrien cried out. His hands went to his hair as he started pacing. The adrenaline coursing through him demanding that he do something.

"Why not? She obviously likes you and it's not like you're not available." Plagg pointed out.

"I'm in love with Ladybug!" Adrien could feel his heartbeat speeding up in a familiar and unwelcome manner.

Plagg snickered. "And how's that working out for you?"

Adrien shot a half-hearted glare at his kwami. He knew it was Plagg's nature to be contrary and that romance was a genuine mystery to the little being (even more than it was to Adrien). But sometimes Adrien wished he could talk to someone who didn't encourage a cheese centric hedonistic lifestyle.

... Wait. Adrien rushed for his phone, the act of searching for it calming him somewhat.

"What're you doing?"

"Aha!" Adrien pressed the only number in his favorites and held it to his ear. "Calling Nino."

"Hey, dude!"

"Nino!" Relief rushed through Adrien as his best friend answered immediately. "I need your help!"

"Whoa, what's wrong bro?" The joy in Nino's voice fading to concern.

"I-" The words stuck in Adrien's throat as his thoughts caught up to his emotions. He dropped onto his bed. "Marinette gave me a valentine..."

"Wait, really? That's great dude!"

His heart tried to jump out of his chest at Nino's enthusiasm. "No, it's not!" Adrien's voice cracked and he cleared his throat. "It means I'm going to have to give her an answer tomorrow!"

"Uh, yeah? That's how it works? She tells you how she feels and you do the same. Then you date and..." Nino's voice slowed as a thought came into his head. Alya said Marinette was always thinking about the worst case scenario. But he never seriously considered it. "Adrien? Are you... going to reject Mari?"

"..."

Nino felt the last of his excitement shift to growing unease. "But... I mean... The dudette's awesome, right? You could, I dunno, give her a chance?"

"... I'm not in love with her, Nino..." Adrien's voice was a whisper.

"That-" Nino swallowed. "Okay. Okay, so what're you gonna say to her?"

Adrien looked to Plagg, possibly hoping for some deeply buried wisdom to come out just when he needed it. Plagg shrugged, he still didn't seem to understand but he didn't tease Adrien further. Taking a deep breath Adrien made the only reply he could. "The truth."

"A-Adrien! Morning good! I-I mean, good morning!" Marinette groaned at her slip-up but resisted the urge to hide behind Alya.

"Hi, Marinette." Adrien rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to smile naturally. Not quite successfully. "Um, can we talk?" His eyes flickered to Alya.

"Don't mind me! I'll just catch up with Nino." Alya gave a discreet thumbs up to Marinette before making her way towards her boyfriend.

Adrien felt a pang of guilt as Marinette's too large smile softened.

"S-so! What d-did you want to talk about?" Marinette knew it was probably her valentine but she didn't remember if she signed it and wasn't going to bring it up first. Still, the expectation had her heart soaring.

Adrien licked his dry lips, eyes downcast. "Marinette, your an incredible girl and... I don't want to play around with your feelings. It'd be the same as lying to you. I don't want to do that. You... Your friendship means too much to me. I... I'm sorry but I don't feel the same."

As Adrien continued Marinette felt her stomach drop. Her brief, fleeting hope now a cold, empty space instead. "But... why do you think it'd be lying?"

Biting his lip, Adrien hesitated. "Because... Because there's someone else."

Marinette's eyes widened as her breath left her. "Who... Who is it?" she asked mechanically.

Adrien's hand went from his neck to his other arm, shoulders hunching. "I can't tell you."

The cold place within her seemed to spread its frost around her heart, every beat painful to endure. "I-I see." Marinette swallowed the lump in her throat. "W-well, um, thanks f-for telling me. I guess..." Turning, Marinette started walking away.

Instinctively, Adrien's arm reached out to her, mouth opening to call out Marinette's name. He wanted to apologize, to make it better, make sure she was okay. Make sure they were okay.

But he didn't have the words.

So, his arm fell to his side as she made her way to her best friend. Alya's glare and Nino hiding guiltily under his cap told Adrien she already knew.

Her discontent was an added burden on Adrien's shoulders. Even as the heat of Alya's stare softened as she pulled Marinette into a hug.

Nino walked up to Adrien and patted him on the shoulder. Taking his arm and steering him away from the girls.

"I messed up, Nino." Adrien gazed dejectedly at the floor.

"Nah, bro." Nino wrapped his arm around Adrien's shoulders. "You did the right thing."

"... Didn't you want me to ask her out?"

"I thought Mari would make you happy," Nino admitted. "But you told her the truth. Better that than a lie."

Intellectually, Adrien knew Nino was right and he held on to that knowledge. But it didn't make him feel better.

Alya showed up in homeroom just before the bell rang... Without Marinette. Ignoring Adrien's gaze she walked to her seat.

"... Alya-"

"Don't," she snapped and Adrien shrank back. Eyes softening, Alya replied in a gentler tone. "Just... don't okay? She needs time. She just needs time."

Adrien nodded and faced forward as class started. Marinette didn't show up that day.

On a secluded rooftop a crying Ladybug purified an akuma. Her heart may be broken but it was still hers. Her pain, not his. And Papillon would not have it.

Marinette stayed transformed despite her desire to hear Tikki's voice. Yo-yo at the ready.

But Papillon sent no more akuma.

Adrien crashed face-first onto his bed. He was so tired.

Plagg glanced at his Camembert before zooming close to Adrien's head. "Kid, if it bothers you so much why not give dating the baker girl a shot?"

Groaning, Adrien pushed his face deeper into the bed. He was so tired of answering that question. Or rather, ones like it.

During lunch his classmates wondered where Marinette was since they remembered seeing her in the courtyard. And Max, intelligent, helpful, oblivious Max pointed out it was the day after Valentine's. Suddenly, Adrien was the center of attention because apparently Marinette's crush was obvious to everyone except him.

With everyone being even more incredulous of Adrien not wanting to date Marinette than Nino was.

"Because," Adrien turned his head to level a look at Plagg. "I'm in love with someone else."

Plagg sighed and Adrien thought it sounded slightly less exasperated than usual. "Yeah, I know." Swooping for his cheese, Plagg offered it to Adrien. "Camembert? Nothing is better at taking your mind off your problems!"

Despite himself Adrien smiled softly at the gesture. "No, thanks."

Shrugging, Plagg swallowed it in one bite.

Letting out a sigh of his own Adrien flopped over and stared at the ceiling. "What am I gonna do about Marinette?" he asked no-one in particular.

"Eh, nothing you can do, is there?" Plagg grabbed the valentine that caused his holder so much worry and threw it with the others. He knew Adrien wouldn't, the kid was too sensitive about it. "It's like the blogger said, it just takes time."

Adrien wouldn't say that comforted him exactly. But it reinforced the knowledge that he'd done everything he could. "Thanks, Plagg... Do you think we'll still be friends after this?"

"I don't know much about human girls. But I don't see why not." Satisfied with himself Plagg went back to his cheese.

"Yeah..."

Adrien decided to call Nino once his thoughts were a bit more sorted. He was still new to this whole 'having friends' thing and they didn't really get a chance to talk after class. Adrien could really use his friend right now.

Since he might have lost more than one.

#adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #ml angst #unrequited love #plagg #nino lahiffe #adrien and nino #ml fanfic #ml fanfiction #alya cesaire #what if #ml au #dark cupid #ao3 fic #ao3 fanfic

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lesbeet · 3 years

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Thoughts on poetry and how you get students excited about it.

hmm unfortunately i didn't get a chance to do a ton of poetry while i was student-teaching last year, but i think for writing in general but especially for poetry, stressing that so much of it is subjective!

like yes there are Terms with specific definitions, but even then there are so few Correct Answers - in fact, one of the things i repeat ad nauseum as an english teacher is "there are no wrong answers, as long as you can prove it in the text"

i did some poetry with my juniors who really did not like me anywhere near as much as my freshmen did, and i remember them surprising me with a heated discussion about whether a certain line of a poem should be considered a metaphor or personification. make it fun. give them incentives.

i did a lesson on william carlos williams and after analyzing a few of his poems i had them spend the rest of class writing their own in his style, while keeping myself available to give feedback when they were finished. some of them were like "idk what to write about i don't get poetry idkkkk :(" and i was like "look around the room and pick something, and write about it" and one kid was like "haha ok i'm gonna write about this water bottle" just to be annoying and i was just like "ok! come show me when you're done!" and when he was done i gave feedback just as seriously as i did for the kids who wrote about things that were meaningful to them. and yknow what? by the end of class, that kid had written a poem about a water bottle that demonstrated the characteristics of wcw's style of poetry. and so did his friend who wrote about a sweatshirt.

another day we read annabel lee by poe. they'd already done the raven before i started student-teaching, so they were familiar w poe and had liked him enough to have a couple running jokes about him/the raven even though a few months had passed. after we read the poem and went over difficult vocab and analyzed the poetic devices, i pointed out a couple of seemingly innocuous elements of the poem that, interpreted a certain way, change it from a boring romantic love poem to a dark thriller about obsession. by the end of class they were engaged in an intense discussion about whether the speaker of the poem had ever even had a conversation with annabel lee, or if he was just an obsessive creep who liked to sleep in her tomb. lots of laughing and freaking out about how weird that is, but how ultimately it makes sense when you consider poe's other work

right before quarantine started i made a list of all the poems i'd read with them so far and wrote up an assignment for a debate: if only one of these poems could remain in the curriculum from now on, which one should it be, and why? i passed out numbered slips of paper to assign a picking order, and they got to choose which poem's team they wanted to be on (w a limit ofc). i gave them the order of the match-ups, and told them to build a case for their poem and against the other poem.

"but sefa," you might be saying, "how can you ask your students to prove one poem is better than another? it's so subjective!" but that's exactly the point. when you take away the pressure for them to reach a certain conclusion (especially for something subjective) they get to be creative and have fun with it. i had several students email me after quarantine started saying things like "i'm so disappointed i won't get to completely destroy carl sanburg's chicago and prove that annabel lee is the best poem of all time :("

long story short: trick them into thinking you're taking it less seriously. let them work through things and come to their own conclusions. tell them about widely agreed upon interpretations and ask if they agree. they don't care because they think it has nothing to do with them, even if they're writing their own poems. get on their level. make it funny. let them get heated. even if there's a right answer, let them discuss it for a bit before you give it away. give them a task they'll WANT to succeed at, and make it so that the task can't be accomplished without them applying the lesson content

it's like hiding vegetables in a little kid's mac and cheese. first you get them excited, and then the learning happens. the curriculum means nothing if their brains are turned off from the start

#this was so long wtf im sorry anon #writing qs

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1962dude420-blog · 3 years

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Today we remember the passing of Neal Cassady who Died: February 4, 1968 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Neal Leon Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s. He was prominently featured as himself in the "scroll" version of Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road, and served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in the 1957 version of that book. In many of Kerouac's later books, Cassady is represented by the character Cody Pomeray. Cassady also appeared in Allen Ginsberg's poems, and in several other works of literature by other writers.

Cassady was born to Maude Jean (Scheuer) and Neal Marshall Cassady in Salt Lake City, Utah. His mother died when he was 10, and he was raised by his alcoholic father in Denver, Colorado. Cassady spent much of his youth either living on the streets of skid row, with his father, or in reform school.

As a youth, Cassady was repeatedly involved in petty crime. He was arrested for car theft when he was 14, for shoplifting and car theft when he was 15, and for car theft and fencing stolen property when he was 16.

In 1941, the 15-year-old Cassady met Justin W. Brierly, a prominent Denver ducator. Brierly was well known as a mentor of promising young men and was impressed by Cassady's intelligence. Over the next few years, Brierly took an active role in Cassady's life. Brierly helped admit Cassady to East High School where he taught Cassady as a student, encouraged and supervised his reading, and found employment for him. Cassady continued his criminal activities, however, and was repeatedly arrested from 1942 to 1944; on at least one of these occasions, he was released by law enforcement into Brierly's safekeeping. In June 1944, Cassady was arrested for possession of stolen goods and served eleven months of a one-year prison sentence. He and Brierly actively exchanged letters during this period, even through Cassady's intermittent incarcerations; this correspondence represents Cassady's earliest surviving letters. Brierly is also believed to have been responsible for Cassady's first homosexual experience.

In October 1945, after being released from prison, Cassady married the 16-year-old LuAnne Henderson. In 1946, the couple traveled to New York City to visit their friend, Hal Chase, another protégé of Brierly. It was while visiting Chase at Columbia University that Cassady met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Although Cassady did not attend Columbia, he soon became friends with them and their acquaintances, some of whom later became members of the Beat Generation. While in New York, Cassady persuaded Kerouac to teach him to write fiction. Cassady's second wife, Carolyn, has stated that, "Neal, having been raised in the slums of Denver amongst the world's lost men, [was] determined to make more of himself, to become somebody, to be worthy and respected. His genius mind absorbed every book he could find, whether literature, philosophy or science. Jack had a formal education, which Neal envied, but intellectually he was more than a match for Jack, and they enjoyed long discussions on every subject."

Carolyn Robinson met Cassady in 1947, while she was studying for her Masters in Theater Arts at the University of Denver. Five weeks after LuAnne's departure, Neal got an annulment from LuAnne and married Carolyn, on April 1, 1948. Carolyn's book, Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg (1990), details her marriage to Cassady and recalls him as, "the archetype of the American Man". Cassady's sexual relationship with Ginsberg lasted off and on for the next 20 years.

During this period, Cassady worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad and kept in touch with his "Beat" acquaintances, even as they became increasingly different philosophically.

The couple eventually had three children and settled down in a ranch house in Monte Sereno, California, 50 miles south of San Francisco, where Kerouac and Ginsberg sometimes visited. This home, built in 1954 with money from a settlement from Southern Pacific Railroad for a train-related accident, was demolished in August 1997. In 1950, Cassady entered into a bigamous marriage with Diane Hansen, a young model who was pregnant with his child, Curtis Hansen.

Cassady traveled cross-country with both Kerouac and Ginsberg on multiple occasions, including the trips documented in Kerouac's On the Road.

Following an arrest in 1958 for offering to share a small amount of marijuana with an undercover agent at a San Francisco nightclub, Cassady served a two-year sentence at California's San Quentin State Prison in Marin County. After his release in June 1960, he struggled to meet family obligations, and Carolyn divorced him when his parole period expired in 1963. Carolyn stated that she was looking to relieve Cassady of the burden of supporting a family, but "this was a mistake and removed the last pillar of his self-esteem".

After the divorce, in 1963, Cassady shared an apartment with Allen Ginsberg and Beat poet Charles Plymell, at 1403 Gough Street, San Francisco.

Cassady first met author Ken Kesey during the summer of 1962; he eventually became one of the Merry Pranksters, a group who formed around Kesey in 1964 who were vocal proponents of the use of psychedelic drugs.

During 1964, Cassady served as the main driver of the bus named Furthur on the iconic first half of the journey from San Francisco to New York, which was immortalized by Tom Wolfe's book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968). Cassady appears at length in a documentary film about the Merry Pranksters and their cross-country trip, Magic Trip (2011), directed by Alex Gibney.

In January 1967, Cassady traveled to Mexico with fellow prankster George "Barely Visible" Walker and Cassady's longtime girlfriend Anne Murphy. In a beachside house just south of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, they were joined by Barbara Wilson and Walter Cox. All-night storytelling, speed drives in Walker's Lotus Elan, and the use of LSD made for a classic Cassady performance — "like a trained bear," Carolyn Cassady once said. Cassady was beloved for his ability to inspire others to love life. Yet at rare times he was known to express regret over his wild life, especially as it affected his family. At one point Cassady took Cox, then 19, aside and told him: "Twenty years of fast living — there's just not much left, and my kids are all screwed up. Don't do what I have done."

During the next year, Cassady's life became less stable, and the pace of his travels more frenetic. He left Mexico in May, traveling to San Francisco, Denver, New York City, and points in between. Cassady then returned to Mexico in September and October (stopping in San Antonio, on the way to visit his oldest daughter who had just given birth to his first grandchild), visited Ken Kesey's Oregon farm in December, and spent the New Year with Carolyn at a friend's house near San Francisco. Finally, in late January 1968, Cassady returned to Mexico once again.

On February 3, 1968, Cassady attended a wedding party in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. After the party, he went walking along a railroad track to reach the next town, but passed out in the cold and rainy night wearing nothing but a T-shirt and jeans. In the morning, he was found in a coma by the tracks, reportedly by Anton Black, later a professor at El Paso Community College, who carried Cassady over his shoulders to the local post office building. Cassady was then transported to the closest hospital where he died a few hours later on February 4, four days short of his 42nd birthday.

The exact cause of Cassady's death remains uncertain. Those who attended the wedding party confirm that he took an unknown quantity of secobarbital, a powerful barbiturate sold under the brand name Seconal. The physician who performed the autopsy wrote simply, "general congestion in all systems." When interviewed later, the physician stated that he was unable to give an accurate report because Cassady was a foreigner and there were drugs involved. "Exposure" is commonly cited as his cause of death, although his widow believes he may have died of kidney failure.

#february 4 #1968 #neal cassady #r.i.p.

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shemakesmusic-uk · 3 years

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This segment features artists who have submitted their tracks/videos to She Makes Music. If you would like to be featured here then please send an e-mail to [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you!

Bayleigh Cheek

Dallas native Bayleigh Cheek began her love affair with music at an early age thanks to her immersive upbringing. Both parents were in the music scene, exposing her to a variety of sounds ranging from psychedelic and folk to progressive rock and new wave. Some of her personal music influences include Patti Smith, P.J. Harvey, Radiohead, and Angel Olsen. Those influences led to the creation of her EP, Immortals, that was self-released in early 2020 which brought her DOMA nominations for Best New Artist and Best EP. Her latest single is ‘Release Me’. "This song is about what it means to realize you've believed a lie, or false identity of yourself, and the process of becoming free from it and knowing the truth,” explains Bayleigh. “Growing up listening to a range of genres, from psychedelic and folk to progressive rock and new wave, ‘Release Me’ opened my eyes to the world of synths and everything electronics can provide to create a whole new universe of sound. Taking something seemingly fun and cheerful on the outside, and revealing something deeper on the inside. Before I started writing my upcoming debut album, I decided to be more vulnerable, honest and raw. I've hidden behind surrealism, which is still a big part of my art and always will be, but in light of the pandemic, I felt I needed to really let myself be open and not hide anymore. I'm becoming the person I've always wanted to become, and art will always be there as gentle reminders." Listen below.

Bayleigh Cheek · Release Me

Cozy Slippers

Cozy Slippers have released their first new music since 2019’s single ‘A Million Pieces’ b/w ‘Will You Disappear?’ (Kleine Untergrund Schallplatten) and the band’s tour of the United Kingdom. Like everyone else, the Seattle indie band had to adapt to the challenges of 2020 and beyond. ‘When Will When Come?’ is the first release to come from a year’s worth of home recordings done by the band. “We started from scratch. We didn’t have any gear and hadn’t really thought about recording ourselves before. It was so great to escape the stressful outside world for a while by recording and meeting on Zoom to put it all together,” explains vocalist and bassist Sarah Engel. While the band couldn’t be in the same room at the same time, they made use of samples from their prior recordings in order to stamp their sound and personality on the song. “We did whatever we could to get this thing recorded. Some of the vocals I recorded into my phone while sitting alone in my car or late at night when everybody else was asleep. It was a challenge to find space to be creative and alone time to make the recording happen during the past year,” remembers drummer and vocalist Barbara Barrilleaux. The track was mixed by Dylan Wall (Versing, Great Grandpa, and High Sunn). Lyrically, ‘When Will When Come?’ is a plea from one person to another to embrace life’s messy possibilities -- to live before it is too late. Instead of participating in their own life, the subject of the song stares out a window and fantasizes about pink flamingos. “I remember the first time I heard Sarah singing the lyrics. I thought the idea of somebody daydreaming about traveling to see flamingos was weirdly sad. Flamingos look cool, but the world has a lot of other things I’d want to see before a bunch of birds. It seemed poignant to have such a relatively small wish and still be unwilling to make it reality,” recalls guitarist Steven Skelton. Listen below.

Cozy Slippers · When Will When Come?

Everstill

New York-based alternative rock band Everstill have released ‘In Your Dreams,’ their first single off their debut album, Longing. Singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sara Aridi (vocals, bass, guitars, keys) weaves her melodic guitars and haunting vocal harmonies with percussionist Luca Bertaglia’s pulsating drums to evoke sounds that are at once melancholic and euphoric. The group draws from disparate influences and genres including grunge, indie rock, jazz, metal, folk and more. ‘In Your Dreams,’ recalls artists like Warpaint, Wolf Alice and Chelsea Wolfe. Aridi wrote the song — something of a seductive plea to an unknowing crush — in 2015. A year later she met Bertaglia while playing in an alt-prog band, and the pair reconnected in early 2020 to bring her songs to life. They found themselves working on their debut album during the pandemic. Listen to ‘In Your Dreams’ below.

Everstill · In Your Dreams

No Lore

No Lore is unlike any other indie alt-pop duo. It all started when Manila-based visual artist Tita Halaman decided to make music out of her paintings and poetry with her brother Jerald. As an artist, she wants to elevate her audience’s experience by expounding the message of her paintings through the art of words and sound. No Lore’s goal is to continuously release a new song with a painting every month and to publish a book out of it. The band name No Lore comes from the concept of having no formal studies in visual art, music, and poetry. Both Tita Halaman and Jerald are self-taught and everything is D.I.Y. from ideation to audio and video production. New single ‘With Little Light’ is “a song about courage,” explains Tita. “I believe there is no such thing as complete darkness to a soul that thrives to seek for “light” everywhere. With all that’s happening these days, I hope that we can still see hope no matter how little it may seem. Hope prevails if we believe. I’m a visual artist here in the Philippines and my signature style is writing poems at the back of my paintings,” she continues of her creative process. “On top of that, me and my brother Jerald are also into music - we’ve been playing together and learning different instruments since we were kids. No Lore is our attempt to create a layered expression of our emotions. I’d say our songs are my art and poetry, but in sonic form. Every song is inspired by a specific painting of mine and the latter serves as the former’s cover art.” Listen to ‘With Little Light’ below.

Another Nguyen

Ngoc-Anh is a Vietnamese German independent artist from Berlin performing under the name Another Nguyen. She has just released her new single ‘My Friend’ which was entirely written, produced, mixed and mastered by women. She says of the song: “I wrote this song after a friend of mine opened up to me that her long-term partner was physically abusive towards her. Hearing her story was shocking because I had always perceived them as a very happy couple. With this song I want to tell my friend and anyone who has experienced intimate partner violence that "I see you" and "You are not alone". Listen below.

ANOTHER NGUYEN · My Friend

Noni A.

‘20s’ is the new single from the Berlin-based artist Noni A. Written in her bedroom and turned into a chill pop production by her brother, ‘20s’ talks about the aspects in your twenties that happen in the background but are not often addressed. 21-year-old singer-songwriter Noni A was born and raised in Prague in a German-Greek household. In 2020 Noni A. released her debut single ‘Losing Game’, an acoustic pop ballad. Currently based in Berlin, Noni dives into a different sonic direction in her new music. Inspired by the sound of Jeremy Zucker, Audrey Mika and Quinn XCII, Noni A. blends emotionally honest and unreserved lyrics with a clean and minimalist chill pop production. With her new single ‘20s’, Noni A. takes a new sonic direction. '20s' dives into the chill pop scene, including lo-fi elements, more samples, underlined by a strong beat. "I walked into my kitchen one evening and had absolutely no motivation to clean it,” says Noni A. “Apparently when you’re 20 that becomes a regular activity (cheers to my mom for letting me live blissfully unaware of this and cleaning up my stuff too). This realisation of my day-to-day life as a 20-something-year-old turned into the inspiration of '20s'. This song talks about all those things that everyone experiences in their twenties that happen in the background of our lives: moving out of your hometown, adjusting to life on your own, procrastinating (if you say you don't procrastinate, stop lying) and learning how to use your washing machine (in my opinion a straight-up mystery)." Listen below.

Noni A. · NONI A - 20s

Chrissie Huntley

One of Bristol’s most promising new artists, Chrissie Huntley has released her brand new single, ‘Supposed to Be’. Huntley decided to use the time granted by national lockdowns to her advantage. Collaborating with musicians across the globe and transforming her closet into a home studio, Chrissie has spent the past year equipping herself with a brand new body of work to return to the stage with later in 2021. ‘Supposed to Be’ is the first of a series of single releases set for release this year, and is one that the Brit School graduate holds close to her heart: “‘Supposed to Be’ is one of the first songs I ever wrote when I was a teenager and I just got dumped by the guy who I thought was supposed to be “the one”. I think we’ve all been in that position where you know that it’s over, but you just want to hold on and pretend just a little while longer…” Recorded in Bristol with upcoming songwriter and producer Laurence Fazakerley Buglass, the track demonstrates why Chrissie’s effortless vocals have had such an effect on her audience to date. Working with rising producers Jon Will, Gabriel Gifford (Harvey Causon, Maya Law, Lucy Lu) and Peter Beckmann (Gregory Porter, Laura Mvula, Marie Dahlstrom) to bring the song to life; ‘Supposed to Be’ is the perfect balance of collective ingenuity, creativity and talent... mixed with the exposed, emotional honesty that comes with having your heart broken. “... It’s a very vulnerable track I suppose. It was very raw at the time of writing and I never had any intention of releasing it- it was more like a therapy to me than anything else. But, seven years later and here we are! Releasing this as an introduction to my new sound seemed like the perfect fit, as it holds the part of me that first turned to music at a time where I was struggling, which went on to become the entire premise of my musical journey..." Listen below.

Karen Harding

Weaving enchanting melodies straight from the heart, Karen Harding crafts, intimate heartfelt tracks that help us become ones with ourselves. The kind of one-to-one soul conversations that dig deep into our hearts and wake emotions once thought long gone. She specializes in helping people shed away their insecurities and finally feel again in a special moment of true authenticity. Drawing from a lifetime of experience, the Melbourne-based singer crafts bittersweet melodies that move and inspire. She gorgeously crafts an entire experience with every timeless track she creates. The emerging singer has just released her debut track ‘I Didn’t Realise’. The heartbreak ballad talks on the struggle of an earth shatteringly painful breakup in a way so intimate it feels like we’re right there with her. It’s a reflective song that navigates us through every raw emotion during the healing process; from processing the pain to finally coming to terms with what’s happened. Truly a breath-taking journey that will leave you with a deep sense of wonder. The song was passionately penned in the peak of Covid-19 on a piano she played growing up. Like much of her music it came to her very organically. She had the chords already laid out and the words just flowed out of her soul naturally. It wasn’t created with the intention of being turned into a record. Rather it was a simple moment of self-expression based on the way she currently felt. The result is something deeply authentic that’s oozing in originality. She worked with acclaimed producer Josh Hennessy of Pivotal Music to bring the project to life. He helped add the magic to this simplistic yet innovative piano and vocal track. Listen below.

KarenHarding · I Didn't Realise

#submission saturday #bayleigh cheek #cozy slippers #everstill #no lore #another nguyen #noni a.#chrissie huntley #karen harding

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cannibalmutual · 4 years

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i’ve thought abt it for three seconds and i’m here to bring up the prospect of martin throughout pre and early tma writing letters to jon to kind of get his thoughts and feelings out of his head so they don’t eat him alive, all in this one journal he keeps in his bag bc it strikes him so often and the feelings almost feel like they’ll drown him if he doesn’t blurt it out right then and now, so he writes it.

u could call them love letters if u felt like giving them labels but martin doesn’t like to think abt it. they range from poems that describe his hands and how they move and how he imagines them cradling his face to absolute rage being poured out line after line at jon’s recklessness, how could he be so foolish and have such little care for himself, he’s gonna get himself killed and it’ll kill martin in turn.

when jon was in his coma the journal got so filled he had to get a new one, but as the months passed they slowed down. they were such a rare thing, in his time w peter lukas. at that point he’s been swallowed by his working w the lonely, so the frequency of all encompassing emotions for jonathan sims dropped drastically, becoming more like passing winds that barely registered than the storms he had been so used to for years.

that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen though.

every once in a while, however rare, he’d write an entry. oh who’s he kidding, they’re letters, every single one. he’d talk to jon through the journal, let every unspoken thought out so someone heard, even if it was a book of empty lines.

the letters when he worked with peter are the hardest to remember now. the one after jon had gone into the buried had been particularly horrowing, and thinking abt it now makes his skin itch and become too tight all at once. the fear the gripped him when he found out was unlike any he’d ever experienced, and the irony hadn’t escaped him that it didn’t even come from any specific entity. it was purely from his love for jon. but now....

now they’re sat on the couch in daisy’s safe house in scotland surrounded by lovely cows and quiet fields and a friendly village down the road. now martin feels so much all the time that he feels like it could drown him. but instead of writing down every thought of love and anger and fear and hope and yearning and love and love and love and love, he holds jon, and jon holds him, and he’s still drowning in it but he can also breathe for the first time.

jon does eventually find out abt the journals. martin tells him abt it, when one night over dinner they’re talking, so easily as it always is nowadays, and he laughs at the memory of jon accusing him of being a ghost. he let slip a comment of “i couldn’t help writing it down, i felt like my head was spinning for weeks any time i thought abt it”.

jon reads a couple, with martin’s consent of course. one from early on, way before jane prentiss, before their lives became what they are now, and one from his days during the coma. they fill him with so much love for martin, for the fact that martin wrote him love letters (no one had done that before, had done anything close) what seemed like almost daily for years and years, and even when the Lonely, the Lonely had hold of him, he still managed a few.

i can’t think of anymore but the love that these two hold in one another for each other makes me ache

#tma #the magnus archives #jonmartin #jm #jon sims #martin blackwood #personal

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daggerzine · 4 years

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Ray Farrell on music and his time at SST, Blast First, Geffen and many more.

Ray Farrell has had a lifetime surrounded by music. First as a fan as a young kid and then eventually working for a series of record labels. He’s obviously a fan first and foremost as you can tell by reading below. It also seemed like he was there at the beginning of some major music scenes happening.

I had met Ray very briefly at one of the A.C. Elks hardcore shows that Ralph Jones put on in Atlantic City in the Summer of 1985 though Ray doesn’t remember it (honestly, a bunch of us were standing in a circle and chatting so I’m not even sure if any proper introductions were done).

Anyway, knowing some of the record labels that Ray had worked for I wanted to hear the whole story. I contacted him and shot him some questions and he was more than happy to elaborate and let us know where he’s been and where he’s going. Take it away, Ray!

Where did you grow up?

RF-Jersey City and Parsippany, New Jersey in the 60/70’s. I have two younger brothers.

What did you listen to first…classic rock or stuff earlier than that?

RF-Rock wasn’t classic yet. My earliest memories of music are my parents’ modest collection of 45’s and grandparents’ 78’s. My mom had a handful of singles on Chess and Satellite (pre-Stax) that she said fell off a truck. We rented our house from a family connected to the mob. The records probably came from them. My mom and her sisters often sang Tin Pan Alley era songs at family gatherings. Harmony was encouraged!

Some records I heard as a toddler stayed with me forever. Lonnie Donegan’s “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor?” is a skiffle classic. Chuck Berry’s “Guitar Boogie” and “Last Night” by the Mar- Keys are still favorites. I remember being spooked by the overblown production of the “Johnny Cash Sings Hank Williams” e.p. on Sun Records. In the mid 60’s, my mom had top 40 radio on in the house unless my dad was home. When I was in kindergarten, a high school neighbor in our building babysat me for a couple hours after school a few days a week. Her girlfriends came over regularly. They listened to a lot of doo-wop, which I still love today. The babysitter and her friends taught me how to slow dance, even though I wasn’t nearly a full grown boy. J

My best friend in 7th grade was a Beatles fanatic and we immersed ourselves in decoding clues to the “Paul McCartney Is Dead” gimmick. That was a brilliant scam and a fun short term hobby. It was a deep dive into The Beatles music as a junior music detective. By the time I started buying records, The Beatles were on their way out.

I happily lived for many months on only three albums-

CCR’s “Bayou Country”, Iron Butterfly’s “In A Gadda Da Vida” and the Beatles “Sgt. Pepper.” I joined the Columbia Record Club. I got the first twelve albums for one buck. That was a popular scam. Those first twelve records shaped my taste because they were the only records I had. I didn’t know what to order but I chose very well in retrospect. After that, I bought a lot of records. I didn’t smoke, but many of my friends did. A carton of cigs cost the same as an lp- 5 bucks.

I learned in 7th grade that if I knew the songs that girls liked, we would have something to talk about. Girls loved Tommy James and The Shondells and The Rascals. I still do! I had a wider range in music taste than most of my high school friends. Everyone in my extended circle loved the Stones, Neil Young and the Allman Brothers. In a tighter circle we were into David Bowie, Lou Reed, Sparks, Todd Rundgren etc. I loved Mountain, Led Zep, Hendrix, Budgie, The Kinks, Alice Cooper, Sabbath. At first, The Stooges seemed too deep and serious for me. A little scary because I thought if teenagers felt like this all over the world, I’m doomed. I bought the album with “Loose” and played that song for weeks before listening to the rest of it. The girl next door had Iggy’ s “Raw Power” album the week it was released. When glam rock was happening in England, there was a weekly NYC radio show that played the Melody Maker Top 30 singles. I was fascinated by T.Rex, Slade, Hawkwind. I don’t recall if prog rock was a tag yet, I knew that I didn’t like songs that rambled on for more than 7 minutes. There were exceptions of course- some King Crimson, Yes, Mahavishnu. I was impressionable. Radio station WBAI hosted “Free Music Store” concerts with local acts. One show was a keyboard group called Mother Mallard that had banks of synthesizers on stage. They were similar to the music of Phillip Glass and Steve Reich, who you would only hear on that same radio station. I talked myself into buying their records, but it took years to comprehend them. I was too young to be listening to such serious stuff. I played soccer and ran track for a couple years. During meets at other schools, I made friends. At parties I heard Issac Hayes, Bohannon and James Brown records. Brown was all over top 40 radio. Rhythm guitar was my jam! Soul and funk records were best for that. I spent many nights listening to AM radio. The signal travels farther at night, so I’d listen to stations far away. It didn’t matter what kind of music it was. Some of my relatives had short wave radios. I was more interested in radio production than short wave content. The production quality has not changed much since then. It often sounds like broadcasts trapped in the ether for the last 30 years.

While I was in high school, it was common for local colleges to host rock and jazz concerts for low prices, sometimes free. The schools had to spend the money sitting in the student union coffers. There was a live music club in my town called Joint In The Woods. The venue began as a banquet hall that doubled as a meeting hall for Boy Scout Jamborees and the like. When it became the Joint, it was a disco. The first night of live music was a show with Iggy & The Stooges. The regular disco patrons were pissed! The guys were mostly goombah’s in Quiana print shirts and bell bottoms. Three or four guys smacked Iggy around after his set. Sure enough, he played Max’s Kansas City the next night as if nothing happened. Because of this club, touring bands were suddenly playing in my town. Badfinger, Roy Wood’s Wizzard, Muddy Waters. The NY Dolls were scheduled but didn’t show up. Springsteen was often an opening act. The N.J. legal drinking age had just lowered to 18. It was a great time. I was still in school, so I wasn’t staying out on weeknights.

I was determined to learn NYC music history by hitting all the Greenwich Village clubs and talking to the owners and bartenders. It didn’t matter what kind of music they specialized in- I was into the vibe. There were occasional scary nights parking near CB’s or jazz spots in that neighborhood. Folk music was on FM radio at the time. A high school friend booked a local coffee house called Tea & Cheese. Mostly locals and ambitious tri-state artists. Martin Mull, Aztec Two Step, Garland Jeffries. Some of Lou Reed’s touring band, The Tots, played there. I went to all kinds of record stores, mainly those that sold rock imports and cutouts. I was fascinated by the street level buzz of a record. In ’74, I heard dub reggae for the first time. The only stores to get that music were in Queens because there was a strong West Indian community there. It may have been the “Harder They Come” soundtrack that got me started. There was a “pay to play” radio station in Newark - WHBI. DJ’s had to buy their airtime. Arnold “Trinidad” Henry had a weekly show playing new calypso and reggae. He was more into calypso than reggae. A lot of calypso was political and comical. Arnold was fascinating! There was often a personal crisis he’d talk about on the air. My favorite incident was when he said that his life had been threatened during the program, so he locked himself in the studio.. Someone called the cops. They convinced him to unlock the door. He just wanted more airtime. Arnold played the first reggae dub track I’d heard- full dub albums were a new concept at the time. Most dub was found on the flipsides of reggae 45’s. One of the shows sponsors was Chin Randy’s Records in Queens. I trekked out there by train to buy my first dub records. That was a trip! Randy Chin’s family went on to start VP Records.

What was the first alternative/independent music you got into? How did it happen (friends? older siblings?)

RF-The term “punk” as a music style hadn’t been coined yet. I vaguely recall equating “punk” with the great “Nuggets” compilation or something Greg Shaw might have writ in Bomp Magzine. I didn’t identify labels as independent. I knew that if the label design was simple and the address was listed, it was probably a small company. There were plenty of record stores carrying obscure stuff. I bought import records from a few NYC stores. I took the bus in until I was old enough to drive. One store Pantasia, was up in The Bronx. I went there one Christmas eve day to get the import of the second Sadistic Mika Band album. The clerk talked me into buying the harder to find first album as well. He said it sounded like Shel Talmy produced it. I knew who that was and it was a revelation to talk to somebody in a record store at that level. That is what a record store should be! I read Phonograph Record magazine, Bomp and Trouser Press regularly. Patti Smith and Television self released their debut singles- those are the first “indie” records I bought, followed by the first two Pere Ubu singles. I remember hearing the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner” from the Bezerkley Chartbusters comp on WFMU and thinking that there must be more music like that. It was refreshing.

Seeing Patti Smith and Television perform at CBGB’s changed my life. I connected the dots. I had BÖC albums on which Patti had co-writes. She had a poem insert in Todd Rundgren’s “A Wizard, A True Star” album. She read a Morrison poem on a Ray Manzarek lp. She wrote for rock music mags with distinctive style. I read a brief story about her in the Voice and went to see her do her annual Rock N’ Rimbaud show. Shortly after that she and Television played CBGB’s for six weekends in early ’75. Both bands were really great. Patti didn’t have a drummer yet. Richard Hell was a big inspiration to me. He looked cool. He played bass like he just picked it up the month before. That was a new concept. Television changed bass players in the middle of the residency. Television was the first band I saw with short hair and they dressed like teenage delinquents circa 1962. The CBGB’s jukebox had a good number of 60’s garage records. In my head I conceived Television to be inspired by that music. Made sense to me- Lenny Kaye, who assembled the “Nuggets” comp, is in the PSG. When I went back to see Television headline, The Ramones opened. Seeing The Ramones again, Talking Heads opened. It seemed like the streak of seeing great new bands would not end. They were distinctly NYC sounds. They could not have merged anywhere else. I remember avoiding the band Suicide because I didn’t think the music could be good J. Bands like Tuff Darts, Mumps and The Marbles opened shows but I wasn’t thrilled by them. A CBGB’s band that doesn’t get mentioned much is Mink DeVille. They wore matching outfits like they were playing a low budget Miami dive in 1962J. The club still had the small corner stage. The p.a. was ok and the bands had small amps. The music wasn’t loud in a “rock” way. You could sit at a table right in front of the band. Although we consider the club a birthplace of punk, the club showcased local bands that had been around for a while. I think the club upgraded the p.a. once before building the big stage. I realized at that point that when a band was great or at least interesting live, the records were basic documents of the band’s sound.

What was your first job in the music scene/industry?

RF- Before realizing I wanted to be in the business, I hounded import mail order guys on the phone about non-lp b-sides and albums that weren’t released stateside. I was fascinated by the process. Why were some records not in stores even though they had local airplay? My dad did not listen to much music, but he had an army buddy that made a living in Al Hirt’s band. He came to our house once. He gave my dad a copy of John Fahey’s “After The Ball” album, which he played on. I liked his stories about the session man side of the business. Fahey treated him well. I was generally shy, but when it came to music I would approach anyone I thought I could learn from. I heard horror stories about the music biz in NYC but learned later that those were a mob related labels. At the time, I thought the entire NYC music biz might be that way. I planned to move to California anyway. In high school, I go-fer’d at local Jersey radio stations and talked my way into meeting a few top FM radio dj’s. I thought I wanted to be a professional dj, but my dad wisely talked me out of that. The itinerant radio jock life would not be for me. It was a racket.

In ’76, I took a long low budget cross country trip with my high school sweetheart. Along the way, I stayed in Memphis for three weeks with a cousin who was stationed at the Millington naval base. Got a job at a hip movie theatre that served liquor. I found Alex Chilton in the phone book and spent an afternoon talking with him. I wasn’t yet legal drinking age in Tennessee. It amused him that a fan showed up in his town who was not old enough to drink. En route to Cali, Tulsa, OK was on my route to find Shelter Records and studio , but it shut down and the label moved to L.A. At the time, Dwight Twilley’s “I’m On Fire” was a radio hit. I didn’t think there were still bands like that. Twilley was from Tulsa, but had moved to L.A. by that time.

When I arrived in L.A. I visited small label record company offices. A few offered me jobs or references. I spent two weeks crashing at the Malibu house of a distant family friend. I didn’t want to live in L.A. but I was encouraged by the opportunities. I got a job at the famous record store- Rather Ripped in Berkeley, CA.

Patti Smith told me about Rather Ripped before I left Jersey. In ’75, she and her band went to California for shows in L.A. and Berkeley. The northern Cali shows were set up by the store. She did a poetry reading there. This is well before “Horses” was released. I bought a couple records from the store’s Dedicated Fool mail order service. They had a monthly catalog on newsprint. Thousands of records in tiny font. Every record was described with a few words. This is 1976 and punk rock was just getting started. I worked as a prep cook in a charcuterie associated with Alice Waters’ famous restaurant Chez Panisse. The proprietor knew the record store owners. I wasn’t actively looking to work there, but I talked about music all day every day. They fast tracked me for an interview. Because of a scheduling mistake, Tom Petty interviewed me for the job. His first album just came out and “American Girl” was close to being a hit single. The band came to the store before a local show. Tom overheard the owner apologizing for not being able to do the interview, so he offered to conduct it. It was great. I knew all about his label, Shelter Records. I deliberately avoided talking about The Ramones and Patti Smith because punk was new and against the grain. At the end of the interview Tom told the owners that if he lived in Berkeley, he’d buy all his records from me. The store owner still had to interview me formally the next day, but I knew that I nailed it.

It was owned by two dynamic gents that were connected to Berkeley society and Bay Area journalists. They weren’t typical record store guys. They celebrated the 70’s in the moment. They held court with well known music scribes, musicians, dj’s. They were good friends of The Residents. Perhaps my strangest story is meeting The Residents with the Rather Ripped owners at a S.F. Irish bar that specialized in Irish Coffee’s. I had only recently heard of the group, so I was not cognizant of their marketing myth. At the bar, we were with our girlfriends and wives. One of the Residents tried to convince me and my gf to go back their place for a hot tub session. I laughed out loud and said “geez, what a bunch of hippies”! We didn’t go. In retrospect, I should have gone on the condition that they wore eyeball heads in the tub. At that time, The Residents rarely performed live, but they did in 1975 for the store’s birthday party. The early Bezerkley Records (Jonathan Richman, Greg Kihn) was distributed to stores through Rather Ripped. Their office was a few blocks away. At the store, each employee had unique music taste and expertise. Pop music was changing rapidly with a new energy. Some of us were tapped into it. We all had to know the key new releases in every genre because we were tastemakers. Major labels would beg us to do window displays for new releases. But if they could not find a store employee that liked that artist, it was no go. So, no Pablo Cruise window display. We weren’t against major labels, but we put a lot of energy into selling the ton of music that we loved. Our focus was on imports, indies, promos and cut outs where we could get a good price mark up. We had a rare record search service with customers all over the world. We’d find rare records through trade-ins and by combing record stores all over the state.

There were a few import distributors, but they weren’t hip to many small run U.S. independent releases. That was understandable because bands didn’t often press enough records for a distributor to get excited about. In other words, why spend half your day hunting down records that were only pressed in small quantities. Just as they start selling, you’re out of stock. There gonna sell a hell of a lot more Scorpions’ picture discs! As always, some distributors financed exclusive re-pressings of records that had momentum. The only way to get records like Roky Erikson’s “Two Headed Dog” single or The Flamin’ Groovies’ “You Tore Me Down” 45 was directly through mail order. I wrote to label addresses listed in Trouser Press and fanzines to buy direct in order to sell them in the store with no competition. Major label sales reps didn’t prioritize us because we didn’t shift bulk units of the hits. However, we were so plugged in to the lesser known artists that we were a good place for record companies to try and start a buzz. We could swell 50-100 of a record that all the other stores sold a handful of. Bands showed up at the store while touring. Springsteen bought Dylan bootlegs from us by mail order. Patti Smith’s manager Jane Friedman used the store as a home base when Patti and John Cale came through the area.

Berkeley is in the East Bay of the S.F. bay area. A few months after starting at Rather Ripped, I realized that the city had a rich music scene well before punk /new wave started. There was Fantasy Records, a well known jazz r&b label but best known for CCR; Arhoolie, Solid Smoke, Metalanguage; the contemp classical labels- Lovely Music and 1750 Arch; folk and blues labels like Takoma and Olivia. Of course, bands like Chrome and others started labels to release their own music. Ralph Records was started by The Residents, and they began signing bands. Rather Ripped was also a center for improv, electronic and meditation records.

In ’77 or ’78 I joined the nascent Maximum Rock N Roll radio team. This was well before the magazine. In the early days there were weeks when we didn’t have enough new punk records to fill the two hour weekly show. Tim Yohannon was all about energetic, real rock n roll, so he filled in the program with records by Gene Vincent, The Sonics etc. BTW, Tim applied green masking tape to the three closed sides of every record he had. He gave me a Mekons double single he decided he didn’t like. It was in a gatefold sleeve that he sealed shut with his green tape! Sometimes he re-designed the cover art…never for the better. He made his own pic sleeves for 45’s that didn’t have them. Bands would stare at their own records in bewilderment. Tim was archiving the records of the entire punk and hardcore movement worldwide.

Eventually, Tim brought in Ruth Schwartz, and Jeff Bale as co-hosts- both great people. Jello Biafra was a frequent guest. Tim assembled the “Not So Quiet On The Western Front” lp and later organized syndication for the radio show. I remember hearing the first Disorder ep and thinking -this is the future! J It was exciting. But soon, most hardcore records sounded alike to me. It was like- “Do you want more fries with your fries?” I went to plenty of live shows without knowing a lot about the bands playing them. I was happy when the fashion trended away from jackboots to sneakers…getting a boot kick to the head in a stage dive could be brutal. I didn’t see a lot of skinhead violence at shows, but I know it was changing the scene.

San Francisco and Berkeley were important music centers, activist meccas as well as creative artistic and intellectual hubs. Yohannon had history as an activist. He identified with public protests for causes & social issues. For many teenagers, punk rock was a rite of passage. I think it changed a lot of kids’ lives for the better. The overriding message was to be civically aware of what is going on around you and what affects your life.

Tell me about your time at Arhoolie Records. Where was it located?

Rather Ripped’s owners had a falling out and the remaining owner just wanted to sell records and antiques with his wife. He moved it to a nearby city. Just before the store closed, he told me of an open position at Back Room Distribution, a division of Arhoolie. It was in El Cerrito, a small town north of Berkeley. Chris Strachwitz, the owner of Arhoolie is a legendary record man. He recorded many of his early blues albums with a tape recorder in his car. He owned the legendary Down Home Music store in the same building. Separated by partition behind the store was Back Room. It was an indie label distributor for blues, folk roots music. Rounder Records was still a new label at the time. I gotta admit, when Rounder issued The Shaggs “Philosophy Of The World’ I was in seventh heaven. I worked primarily for the distributor, grooming to be a sales rep but I spent a lot of time in the store. At first, I didn’t yet relate to blues and country music. But there were a lot of touring artists in those styles making a living. It was a strong network of clubs, fans, radio shows and press that fueled it. The store had an incredible selection of obscure 50’s/60’s rockabilly and garage band comps. The Cramps were my favorite band at the time. The rockabilly comps mostly on a the Dutch White Label, were treasure troves of insane songs. My heart was in new music- whatever you wanna call it, punk, new wave, art music. That’s the business I wanted to be in. I used my time to learn more about distribution operations. The people that worked at Arhoolie and in its community were fun music heads. There were a lot of good musicians among them. It was a great time to live in Berkeley.

What was next, Rough Trade and CD Presents? Was that in San Francisco? I went to that Rough Trade store a few times and it was an amazing store.

I knew folks from Rough Trade UK because I bought imports from them to sell @ Rather Ripped. When they wanted to open in the U.S. they contacted me, but at the time the wage was low and there wasn’t enough space to work. I was interested in working in the distribution division, not the store. They speiled something about it being a socialist business. I stayed at Arhoolie for a little while longer. In the meantime, I was offered my own weekly late night radio show on Pacifica’s KPFA in Berkeley- same station as Maximum Rock N’Roll. I took over a show called “Night Sky”, an ambient music program. My interim program title was “No More Mr. Night Sky” until I settled on “Assassinatin’ Rhythm”. The station’s music director was a contemporary classical composer closely associated with avant -garde and 20th century music. A major segment of my show was for industrial, post-punk and undefinable music. I hosted a few live on- air performances with Z’ev, Slovenly and Angst among others. Negativland’s “Over The Edge” program started on KPFA around this time. KPFA was 100,000 watts of power with affiliate stations covering the Central Valley down to Fresno and Bakersfield.

When the time was right, I moved to Rough Trade’s U.S. distribution company in Berkeley. The record store was in San Francisco. We distributed a lot of British records sent by Rough Trade UK, often in small quantities. Rough Trade US was set up to press and distribute select RT and Factory records by Joy Division, ACR, The Fall, Stiff Little Fingers, Crass. It was cheaper and more effective to press in the U.S and Canada. I also distributed some U.S. labels but there was one Brit on the staff that hated most American music. On top of that, it could be a dangerous place to work. One of the staff was importing reggae records and weed from Jamaica to our warehouse. The local connection was shot on his porch shortly after he picked up a shipment! I was lucky to spend a few days travelling with Mark E.Smith of The Fall. He loved obscure rockabilly and garage band records. I was able to return to Memphis for a while to prep the first Panther Burns album for release. Tony Wilson of Factory put up most of the money to keep RTUS going. He was a brilliant character, but I learned from talking with him how not to conduct business. I often got sample records from bands that wanted distribution. Pell Mell’s “Rhyming Guitars” e.p. was the start of my long association with the band. I enjoyed selling records to stores all over the country. I learned about local scenes, records, fanzines, clubs and college radio stations everywhere. Making these sources connect for touring bands and record sales was exciting. Because Rough Trade is British, we had the benefit of connections with club dj’s. We pressed and promoted New Order’s “Blue Monday” single on a shoestring budget. For a long time, it was the best kept secret from the mainstream. I left Rough Trade for Subterranean Records ( Flipper etc) for a spell while working in a record store. The guy that put up the money for the record store ran guns to Cuba through Mexico. Thankfully, not through the actual store. I booked Cali shows for Panther Burns, The Wipers, Sonic Youth, Whitehouse.

Who owned the CD Presents label? I remember that Avengers compilation.

It was owned by a lawyer, David Ferguson. He had a recording studio as well. I didn’t understand why he wanted to run a label. He did not have an ear for music. But we did release a Tales Of Terror lp! He almost released a DOA album that I thought the band would kill him over. Many years later I got into a fist fight with one of David’s employees in a limo ride shared with Ferguson and Lydia Lunch. We fought through the window separating the driver from the passengers. I would love to recreate that for a film. Good times!

My main role there was to set up the first Billy Bragg record in the U.S. Billy’s manager was the legendary Peter Jenner and both were great to work with. They were using CD Presents as a stepping stone to a major label. In the meantime, I knew a few people at SST. Joe Carducci is an old friend. He was pitching me to move to L.A. and work there, but I resisted for a while. I had just met the woman that I knew would be the love of my life. I didn’t want to move to SoCal. Joe gave me an ultimatum. He sent three advance cassettes that convinced me to go- Meat Puppets’ “Up On The Sun”, Minutemen’s “Double Nickels” and Huskers’ “New Day Rising” That’s an excellent recruiting strategy. I later married the love of my life.

On the side I booked shows for bands I loved. Gerard Cosloy asked me to book Sonic Youth first northern Cali shows. I also booked shows for The Wipers and noise band Whitehouse

Was SST Records next? How long did you last there and what was that like?

I was there for three years. “How long did you last there?” sounds like I was biding my time :) I’m often asked about my time with SST.

Carducci hired me to do PR. That meant publicity, college radio, regional press. Video was a valuable promo tool. MTV’s “120 Minutes” program was a great way to promote our records.

In 1987 we put out more records than Warner Brothers. By that time, I hired people to help.

I’ve done a number of interviews about SST. If you have specific questions, shoot. I recall that my social life was almost entirely with my co-workers and bands on the label. I was nearly oblivious to music from other labels. I was a big fan of Dischord and Homestead. Metallica, COC, Voivod and the Birthday Party/Nick Cave were my non-SST staples.

I think around this time I had met you briefly in NJ at one of the Elks Lodge shows that my old friend Ralph Jones put on. Were you living in NJ at that point or just visiting?

You’ve mentioned that before and I don’t recall the specific show. I moved out of NJ permanently in ’76. I came back for annual summer visits to NYC, north Jersey and Philly. Some high school friends went to Upsala College, then the home of WFMU. On my first visit back in ’76 I met Irwin Chusid and R. Stevie Moore. Some high school friends were connected to Feelies before they took that name.

Was Blast First! next? I met Pat Naylor once and hung out with her at a show and she was really sweet.

Yeah around the time I left SST, the folks in Sonic Youth called saying that they had left as well. They wanted me to be involved with Blast First! in the U.S. I knew Paul Smith because he released their albums in the UK. Blast First UK released a number of Touch N Go and SST records. The label was a division of Mute which had a U.S. deal with Enigma. My job was almost entirely “Daydream Nation” promotion. It was so much fun to be able to go deep with one album. We issued Ciccone Youth shortly afterward, which augmented the overall Sonic Youth story. The only other active touring band was Band Of Susans and on a limited level, Lunachicks and Big Stick. It was only one year of work before Enigma cut Mute/Blast First loose. I went on Sonic Youth’s Soviet Union tour and I had a few memorable meetings with Sun Ra. David Bowie called a few times asking about recording studios that Dino Jr and Sonic Youth used. Bowie had a brilliant idea to record Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream” with Glenn Branca’s large guitar group. We tried following up on it but Bowie was immersed in Tin Machine and other projects.

Was it on to Geffen then?

Yes, Sonic Youth had good meetings with the label. I had recently met Mark Kates who was championing the signing. He suggested that I come in to meet the entire company. He brought my name up with David who said, “we need someone like that here”.

I had fleeting thoughts that working for a major was “selling out”...punching corporate clock. I wanted to apply what I knew on a larger scale.

What was that like, working for a proper major label? Was David Geffen still involved?

On my second day there, David called me into his office. He is down to earth, street smart. Like many of the best in the biz, he didn’t have an attitude. He had met with the Meat Puppets. He sensed that Dinosaur Jr. was important. I reminded him that I was not hired for a&r.

He said- “I don’t assign job titles. If you find something else you’d like to do here, you can pursue it ‘after 5pm’ ”. I found reissue projects like the Pere Ubu box and Raincoats catalog. I recorded a new Raincoats album. I signed Southern Culture On The Skids, Garrison Starr, Skiploader. I assembled and recorded Rob Zombie’s Halloween Hootenanny comp. With Sonic Youth, I pondered making records with John Fahey and Townes Van Zandt. After ten years, it was time to move on.

Tell us what you do now, didn’t you get involved with digital music at some point?

Geffen Records was folded into Interscope in 1999 and I was bored with the limitations of the business as it was. Digital music was gaining ground solely through illegal file trading on Napster. I knew there would be a major shift in the business moving to digital. I worked for the download site. eMusic.com, signing distribution agreements with labels. This was years before iTunes and YouTube. Major labels would not work with us because mp3 files are open source files that could be traded freely without control. They saw eMusic as a facilitator of illegal file trading. Like marijuana use leading to hard drugs! In the big picture, I knew that digital downloads weren’t “sexy”. But at some point, digital music would develop into something easier to track and use. We skipped the major labels. The bigger independent labels understood that digital music would be the future. It was a great place to be. I knew a lot of music, but I had no idea there were so many labels in every country. One label owner told me that I had the best job in the world. I knew that to explain this new unproven music format it could be an uphill climb. So I took the time to research label websites for song samples. That way I could find common ground with label owners. There’s surf music in Brazil? There’s a young female cellist duo in Prague that make energetic music? There’s archaic royalty rules connected to opera arrangements? Bring it on! It certainly changed how I listen to music.

It was a time when business rules and legal rights had to change in order to deal with digital income disbursement. For example, digital downloads could be sold by the song while royalty payments were based on album sales. eMusic was at the forefront of those changes. When iTunes launched, digital music was “legitimized”. Borne out of eMusic was RoyaltyShare which provides a royalty accounting platform for labels. It is now a division of The Orchard and I divide my time between The Orchard and RoyaltyShare.

Who are some current bands you are into?

A loaded question! I listen to a lot of new music. I spend a lot of time listening to records and cd’s in my collection. Of current artists, I really like Steve Gunn’s music. I listen to the projects involving members of Sonic Youth. Bill Nace, Kim’s partner in Body/Head is a guitar genius. Body/Head’s music is a cathartic experience for me. London is lucky to have Thurston Moore living and working there. I think the music they make separately is far more exciting that what Sonic Youth would’ve made if still together.

Lately I’m digging Melenas from Spain, Hayvenlar Alemi from Turkey. Quin Kirchner is a Chicago based drummer that put out a great jazz record in 2018 called “The Other Side Of Time”. I think he plays on Ryley Walker ‘s records.

Because I’ve spent so much time with the music of Sonic Youth, Branca and Rhys Chatham, I crave the occasional dive into instrumental symphonic guitar army and tonal stuff. Current favorites in that vein are Bosse De Nage, Pelican, Sunn O)))

Given the chance I’ll see any performance by Mary Halvorson, Ches Smith, Marc Ribot or Mary Lattimore.

It took me years to get it, but I’m now a big fan of Keiji Haino’ music. Dean McPhee is a British guitarist I really like. I just bought a couple of Willie Lane lp’s on Feeding Tube.

I research music history and the development of the industry. There are historical and social components of every type of music by culture, country, time period. I love stories about riots at premieres of new avant garde works. I read a book about famous classical composers in the 18th Century playing home concerts (salons) where people are talking the entire time…but they are paid handsomely for the performance. Streaming music sites and YouTube are vast repositories of music and cultural documentation.

Do you still make it out to many shows?

I go to two/three shows a month when I’m home and more when traveling especially NY/London. I start work early in the morning so I’m not out late often. I understand why people see less live music as they get older. I’m done with music festivals. The Big Ears Festival is the only Stateside event that might inspire me to stand for eight hours.

I always hear music by new artists that I really like. I don’t always go to see the live show. Sometimes I hear a new band that sounds like a band I liked 20 years ago. I wouldn’t deliberately see a band that uses another band’s sound as a template.

What are your top 10 desert island discs?

I cannot do 10. It’s 20 or nothing. If you say sorry Ray, it will be nothing. FineJ If I’m on an island, I’ll listen to the ocean waves and sounds of nature. If I’m relegated to a desert, I’ll listen to the blood coarsing through my veins.

Miles Davis- Kind Of Blue

Television- Marquee Moon

Peter Brotzmann- Machine Gun

Sex Pistols -Never Mind The Bollocks

Rolling Stones- Let It Bleed

Soundtrack – The Harder They Come

Billy Harper – Black Saint

Kleenex/Liliput- First Songs

Patti Smith Group -Easter

Hound Dog Taylor & The Houserockers- Houserockin’

Led Zeppelin- Houses Of The Holy

Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation

Elvis Presley- Sun Sessions

The Cramps- Songs The Lord Taught Us

Pell Mell -Flow

Procol Harum- A Salty Dog

Sibelius- Complete Symphonies

Lou Reed -Coney Island Baby

Meat Puppets- Up On The Sun

The Kinks- Kinks Kronikles

“Hmm....Flow or Star City?”

Any final words? Closing comments? Anything you wanted to mention that I didn’t ask.

I’ve been involved off and on with the artist Raymond Pettibon for a music project called Supersession. He has made records under this moniker before. This project began in 1990 and stalled for many years. We revived it a couple years ago. I play bass. Raymond wrote many pages of words and lyrics that he passed to the band, encouraging us to write music behind them. It’s different from Raymond’s other records because it is not improvised. Rick Sepulveda, our guitarist is a great songwriter and he wrote music for Raymond’s words. Rick sings a bunch of the songs because Raymond loves his voice. We did a NYC performance in November that was really fun. So now of course, I’m thinking we should play monthly in L.A. We are nearly finished with the album that we recorded at Casa Hanzo, the San Pedro studio Mike Watt owns with Pete Mazich. Raymond is a brilliant man; fun and inspiring to work with. When I practice with Rick, he’ll often break into a cover song deep in the recess of memory. Like John Cale’s “Hanky Panky Nohow” ,Kevin Ayers’ “Oh Wot A Dream” or the Doors “Wishful Sinful”. We may cover a Harry Toledo song. It’s a blast. I hope to have the album finished in July.

Tav, Bobby, Pell Mell and Ray

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afoolforatook · 4 years

Text

Thank you, Wellies

So. I’ve been trying to do both class work and working on wips and just nothing is clicking. So, I thought I should go ahead and do this post, that I’ve been putting off, because.....it’s next week y’all.... So here goes.

Here’s my original post, that explains what this comic meant to me four years ago.

And here’s what it means to me now. (this is really long, sorry)

Man, I don’t really even know where to start this. How to start to say thank you. To Ngozi, to all of you.... It’s not possible to fully express what all of you have been for me the past four years. What this story has been for me.

So many things have changed since I made this post almost four years ago.

So many things haven’t.

I’ve been way less active in the fandom since starting at SCAD, and I really was never that incredibly active to begin with, outside of my small group of friends on a discord server.

And at times I feel bad about that.

But it’s not because I don’t care about or need this community anymore.

Rather it’s because this community, this story, gave me the strength to keep moving, and now I want to keep doing so, and make something that might one day even barely begin to show my gratitude.

So until then, all I can do is say thank you over and over. I can never possibly say it enough.

But still I wanted to thank you now, and try to explain to you what this comic about hockey and pies has meant to me, one last time before it ends. So that’s what I’ll try to do.

It was surreal rereading this old post earlier this week. Reading

“I think I could write a book just of our history and everything leading up to now and the details of this whole event”

When I wrote this post four years ago, I honestly couldn’t imagine a future where I’d be anything other than incomplete.Or even a future at all. Everyday was just getting up and making myself keep breathing, keep trying to push towards something, even though I had no idea what that could ever be.

For the first year I wrote daily journal entries, telling Emma about what happened that day, screaming at the universe for doing this, trying to help my future self remember little things, because everything was so hard to hold on to.

Update days were always something nearly sacred to me. And really not even from a fan point of view. I don’t read them around other people. I sit somewhere quiet, by myself, and read slowly. Because they are little moments I try to share with her still. The only person I want with me when I read them that first time is her, in whatever capacity I can bring myself to imagine.

A few months after the crash, I found one of Emma’s Spotify playlists. She made playlists for everything; birthday and Christmas presents, mood playlists, friend playlists, monthly playlists.

This was her May 2016 playlist. Last updated May 16th. Two days before the crash.

That playlist was literally the only thing I listened to for months on end. 38 songs.Over and over.

And as I listened I started to think that, just maybe, some of these songs she put there for me.

West Coast; the song me and Emma would send to each other after high school whenever we wanted to let the other know how much we missed them.

All I Want is to Be Your Girl. I mean??

Slowly I found lyrics in every song that even if just in my own fantasy, were little messages from Emma, telling me to keep going, how to stay strong.

I was always looking for stories, books, movies, songs, anything about someone grieving the kind of loss I was. Nothing I found felt like it really represented me. If it was about someone young, it was due to suicide or violence or illness. If it was a car crash, it was about a parent or child. If it somehow fit my other demographics, it was never queer.

I felt totally alone in the exact manifestation of my grief. Like no one else could understand all the tiny details that seemed, to me, to make this all more and more cartoonishly cruel.

(though one of the most touching moments of my life will always be when Emma’s step mom, the only person in her family who knows about us, sent me a book about grieving a spouse. I cried for hours when I opened that.)

I didn’t have outside representation, support. But I had journals. I had Emma’s songs. I had poems and a handful of inktober drawings. I had my little update moments of connection. And I had so much to say.

Months, years, of isolation gives you a lot of time to examine your feelings, to question the meaning of things, to think about what exactly grief looked like to you and about how you wanted to live the rest of your life, as someone grieving a love.

And slowly I began to connect those thoughts to individual lyrics from Emma’s playlist and that helped me actually write all those thoughts out, organize them.

And that’s how The Mixtape Project started (I still hate using the word memoir. I had to find something else to call it). A book about us. About Emma. About all those thoughts I’d had so long to sit with. Structured around the songs from her playlist.

I remember the exact moment that I realized that Check Please was going to actively change my life. I was talking to my dad about it, about why I loved the storytelling, the characters, the art, so much.

I’d told him many times before. But it was always tied to Emma in a way, or to the reasons that I identified with Jack. It was always a little sad in some way.

But this time. This time it was just excitement. It was just a kid who has always loved words, gushing about a story that fascinated them.

And I realized. It was the first time I had been just happy, excited, in the months since losing Emma. I remembered all those ideas Emma helped me with in high school, how we gushed over stories like that. I remembered what it was like to just love something and want to create, just because it made you happy.

I knew I couldn’t go back to UNCA, and none of the other creative writing programs I had looked at seemed like they would fit the new person I was.

So, for the hell of it, looking for some idea at how to start my life over, I looked at Ngozi’s personal story. And there was SCAD. There was sequential art.

Now. I’d never ever considered myself an artist. I went to an art high school, I knew art kids. I was never one of them. But that sequential part? That. THAT was what I wanted. That was what I could still be excited about.

That was how I could pull the Mixtape Project together. The writing, the poems, the art, the music. Comics. Sequential art. A graphic memoir that played with the format. That was the project that kept me going. That was what I was working for. That was the first future I was able to see now that Emma was gone.

So, for the first time since literally elementary school, I took an art class (also took a mythology class at the same time, which really helped keep my art and storytelling tied).

I loved it. I was actually happy with my work, surprised by my work and how quickly I felt like I improved (I wouldn’t learn about aphantasia until I got to SCAD, and understand that that drawing 1 class had been so fun, and in a way, easy, because it was all direct observation, and that drawing from memory and imagination would be a much steeper learning curve for me.)

So, when the class ended I thought ‘you know, maybe some kind of art school could be a good idea.’

And then one of my life long best friends, a SCAD animation student, encouraged me to apply, to just go for it.

And I did. It was a long shot, I was sure. We couldn’t afford it. Why would I get that in that kind of commitment, debt, after 1 art class? It wasn’t logical. But it felt good. So I did.

And then I got accepted, and the initial excitement soon fell away, to me and my parents knowing that it really wasn’t doable.

But we went to admitted students day, just to see. And when we got home, both of my parents cried for a long time. The first happy cry in our house for over two years.

Because they had decided that they had to figure out a way to make it work.

Because standing in Haymans hall was the first time they had seen me excited about the future since Emma died. It was the first time they’d seen me feel like there was somewhere I was meant to be, that there was somewhere I could fit again.

So we made it happen. I’ll still be in debt for years, and it’s not necessarily something I’d wholeheartedly recommend to kids getting out of high school, that debt isn’t worth it for many people.

For me it wasn’t really even worth it exactly for SCAD itself, and you’ll have plenty of professors tell you here that really what you pay for isn’t the education but the networking.

But for me. For me it was worth it.

Because I wasn’t wasting away in my basement.

And I really wasn’t where I’d have liked to have been, ideally, before starting. I was a BRAND new artist. My portfolio for my application was solely my writing work. I hadn’t ever done anything more than scribbled fan comics in my sketchbook. I was coming in wayyyyy behind where most other people were. But I couldn’t wait to feel like I was good enough to be there. There was a strong chance that it was quite literally, a matter of survival. I was reaching a breaking point after nearly three years of isolation and grief with no outlet. The future debt was less of a concern than making sure I didn’t have a complete mental breakdown or worse.

Now, of course, it hasn’t all been easy or fun or happy once I got here. I’ve doubted myself, I’ve had awful weeks, months, been stressed, unmotivated, in pain, near burnout.

The first quarter I was absolutely miserable because I had literally no social life.

Because I was an agoraphobic 23 yr old, living with 17/18 yr olds fresh out of high school. And if I wasn’t careful, I’d dissociate so easily. I’d let myself believe that I was still a teenager fresh from high school. That the past three years of agony hadn’t happened. That I could call Emma and it would ring again. She would answer again. And that illusion was a dangerous pit to fall into.

And it wasn’t until this fall that my social life really started to improve, beyond one or two close friends. And even still, while it’s much better, it’s nothing like UNCA, like the tight knit family I had that made me identify with SMH and the Haus atmosphere so much.

But I was moving forward. Agonizingly slowly sometimes. But still forward.

And then last Spring quarter, just about a year ago, I was in Survey for SEQA. Basically comic book history class. And our final was a 4 page research comic on a comic artist we admired. So of course, I was going to do mine on Ngozi.

The comic was due at the end of the quarter, the end of May.

Now, that quarter was the first time I was actually in SEQA classes; Survey, and Intro.

And those four pages would be the first fully colored, refined comic pages I had EVER done. It was intimidating. I didn’t want to mess it up. Especially because this wasn’t some big name of some far off artist you would never have any connection to. This was someone who all my professors knew.

I ended up getting extremely lucky and had the chance to email Ngozi and ask if she’d be able to give for a quote for the project, advice for current SCAD students.

She replied to my email the weekend of the 3rd anniversary. (I then spent hours on a thank you email - because that’s who I am, I can’t not over analyze anything I’m sending to someone important - and then I managed to save it to drafts instead of actually sending it...something I would not notice until literally months later and be absolutely mortified about my apparent rudeness of never thanking her.)

I still am not really happy with how that project came out. I still had (and have) a lot to learn, and it shows. I have, in no way, become an amazing comic artist overnight. I wasn’t expecting to.

But that short email exchange, falling on that weekend; it felt special. It felt like some speck of proof that I was doing the right thing. That things could actually go well in my life again. That if I kept going, I might actually get somewhere that I wanted to be. That maybe I really could make The Mixtape Project happen, if I just kept at it here.

And then I found out that in the fall, Ngozi would be the SEQA mentor.

Unfortunately by the time I had all the details about how to apply, the quarter had started and there were only a couple of weeks before it was due, and the only pages I had even anywhere close to being portfolio ready were either my research comic or a few older Check Please fan comics, none of which I would even have considered putting in that portfolio (I’m not 100% certain it would actually have come across as sucking up but it sure felt like it would have). And despite my best efforts, it just wasn’t possible, with how slow I work and having to keep up with classwork, for me to get a portfolio ready in time.

That hurt for a while. I felt like I had this clear sign of perfect timing. How could I pass up that chance? How could I forgive myself for not doing everything I could to earn that experience? How was I not letting Emma down if I ruined this opportunity?

It took a while to get out of that negative thought spiral. But I did, and it’s still a bummer, but it’s okay.

And something that really helped?

In October, Ngozi still came to campus to give a lecture. And that would have been good enough; just sitting in on that helped me feel excited, encouraged again. But then, after the lecture (with my amazing roommate waiting patiently behind with me, to make sure I didn’t actually have a panic attack on the way home) I got to talk to her.

We all hope to one day get to talk to the people who inspired us, whose work we love, to tell them how much they mean to us. And yes, I was a little version of starstruck.

But that wasn’t why I was shaking. That wasn’t why I told her I was going to do my best to get this out without crying (and I did, I’m proud to say).

It was because I had the opportunity, while at the school that had given me a chance to start my life again, to thank the woman who was in all likelihood, one of the main reasons I was even still alive. If it had not been for Check Please I wouldn’t have had that good thing to keep sharing with Emma. I wouldn’t have found sequential art, at least not for a while longer probably. I wouldn’t have been able to finally picture a future I wanted to get to.

And I’ll be honest, I don’t remember 90% of what I actually said that night to Ngozi.

But I told her my story. I told her about Emma. About how Check Please was the last thing we got to share. I thanked her. And she was wonderful and kind and emotional and hugged me a couple of times, and even though I don’t remember a lot of what I actually said; it was something that will be one of the most important, affirming moments of my life.

I didn’t have a panic attack on the way home. I somehow managed to not cry until we were back to our dorm. But I was stunned.

Not even because of the amazing moment I had been able to have with Ngozi.

But because it hit me.

I was doing it. I was there. I had actually made it this far.

Somewhere that just over a year ago I never would have believed was possible.

A time when, two years before, I hadn’t even been sure I could make it to alive.

That weekend was my 24th birthday. And it was the first birthday since I left UNCA at 19, that I didn’t just hate the fact that I was getting older. That I was moving away from the happiest parts of my life so far.

Yes it still hurt getting further from Emma, putting another tick on the years that I got that she didn’t.

But I was actually finally excited at the idea of even having a future, let alone having an idea of what it could be.

February was a difficult month for me. I have another (entirely way too long) post about why everything that happened with RWBY and Fairgame was so difficult for me, but to put it simply; my hope for the future was shaken.

I was back in the toxic negative thought spirals I had fought for years to train myself out of.

I was seeing Emma, or her brother, or her mom, in crowds; something I hadn’t experienced since the first few months after the crash. I was in one of the biggest crisis moments I’d had since Emma’s death.

But I was more experienced than when I was 20.

It wasn’t fun, a lot of it probably wasn’t the ideal way to cope, but I did it. And I kept up with my work. I isolated more, but not completely. I made myself vent on snapchat or tumblr, and not worry about oversharing or annoying people, because it was either get it out or let it fester in my head. And I couldn’t afford to let that happen.

In mid March, I made a pitch packet for my comic scripting final.

It was for The Mixtape Project. It was hard, and nerve-wracking, and there’s still mountains of work to be done.

But after my initial synopsis (first of like seven versions, cause trying to put this thing in a good synopsis format is a nightmare) my professor told me that he thought my story had potential.

That he could see it being published. He suggested, knowing that I was planning on taking his advanced scripting course this quarter (hey remember how mid march was only a few weeks ago?? Huh?? wild), that I keep working on it, and see about taking it to Editor’s day (SEQA students’ opportunity to basically pitch themselves and their ideas to publishers).

Now, my professor is by no means an overly harsh critic, and is plenty supportive in general.

But I also knew that that was not just something he said to students all the time. That he meant it.

Editor’s Day (now online) is in mid May. The week of the 4th anniversary of Emma’s death, to be exact.

Everything is a mess right now, and I’m stressed and tired and scared and heartbroken (this will be the first time since I was 9 that I have not had Merlefest; the highlight of my year, and since Emma’s death; the last big happy thing before I plunge into the nightmare that is May).

Tuesday will come. Check Please will end. I will continue to support Ngozi and her work after Bitty’s story ends.

But it will be sad. It won’t be easy.

This thing that has been my tether to the most important person in my life, will still be there, but it will be over.

It will have a concrete end. It will no longer be part of the future I am pushing towards.

But I am a different person than the shattered kid who wrote this post four years ago.

I’m not who I was before Emma died. I never will be. I’d never try to be. I want Emma back more than anything. But that won’t happen. And as long as this is all real, I never want to pretend this didn’t happen.

That I didn’t shatter in a way that will never heal like people expect.

I’m still all those shattered pieces that wrote this post. Maybe a few have had the edges dulled, maybe I’ve lost a few, glued a few together perfectly, maybe picked up a few stray pieces that didn’t come from the me from before.

But I will be those shattered pieces for the rest of my life.

They won’t magically fuse back together. I work every day to hold them, to keep myself in some shape that resembles a functioning person.

Some days I fail. Some days, I am too tired to even try. Some days, I am so angry, I’d rather hurl the pieces at whatever power or fate or god or chaos decided that I got to live and she didn’t.

But those days pass.

And I learn how to hold the pieces better, how to avoid the sharpest edges, how to take care of the wounds when I inevitably cut myself on one, how to allow other people to help me hold them, how to accept that some pieces may feel safe and smooth and comforting but they are traps, illusions that are the easy way to do things, but not the healthy way, not the way that will help me achieve my goals.

That person, made of all those unholdable pieces, four years ago, was staying alive for everyone else but themself.

And some days I still am.

For my parents. For Emma. For all the other queer, mentally ill, grieving kids and young adults and just people, who are looking for the same representation I was, who feel as alone as I still do so often.

But some days.

On those really good days.

I’m alive, carrying all those pieces, just because I want to be. For me.

I want to spin around in the morning, singing along to my bluegrass spotify. I want to get excited over finally figuring out how to write that line that was giving me so much trouble, or finish that sketch that I never thought I could manage. I want to hope that despite how awful everything seems, there’s still a good future out there. It’s still possible to be happy some days.

I want to cry because I get to see Jack and Bitty get the happy ending that me and Emma didn’t.

And now, unlike that version of me from four years ago, when it ends, I will have things still.

Things that I have worked everyday to reach, to deserve, to hold out to people and say

“Hey, sometimes everything hurts and you know that things will never be what they were, and parts of you will always miss that. But there are still things you can find that hurt less, that ease the hurt, that teach you how to better hold the hurt, to stop trying to say it doesn’t exist or trying to get rid of it completely and hating yourself when you can’t. You can still be hurt, be irreparably broken in so many places, and still find the happy things. You are still worthy of love, no matter how broken you are. Your worth is not tied to how much you are able to heal. You are worthy of so much love, just because you are still here, no matter how many tiny pieces you are in.”

The thing is, I will still always have a future that includes Emma. Because I couldn’t tell you exactly which of my pieces are from her, but so many of them are.

There is no version of me, from here on to the day I die, that does not have her influence embedded in every piece.

These days I try to be a little kinder to myself. It doesn’t always work, but I try.

Because, to Emma, I was Bitty. I radiated that “thing”.

Whether or not I saw it in myself, doesn’t matter, because she did.

But to me she was the one who radiated.

And she is a part of me. She can’t radiate that “thing” herself anymore.

But I can, at least I can try.

Because If this person I loved and trusted so immensely, saw something worth loving in me? There must be something there worth loving, right?

And if she is a part of me for the rest of my life, how can I hate myself? How can I do anything but keep going so that, even if just in my head, a part of her gets to keep going too.

My family and friends joke that every friend group I’ve ever had calls me something different. And really it’s not a joke. In middle school I was CB #4 (that’s a long, terribly embarrassing, story). In high school I was Pond (and many variations there of: Pondala, Pondy, Raindrop, Puddle, you get the picture). At UNCA, when I came out as nonbinary, I started going by Auden. When I went home it was back to Meagan; Meagan always felt right with my parents.

With Emma I was always Meagan. We were Meagan and Emma. Megma. Meagan and Emma have online adventures!

After she was gone, Meagan didn’t really feel like me anymore. I loved Meagan, I missed Meagan, I wished I could still really fully be Meagan, and I’m okay still being Meagan sometimes.

But that real Meagan. The Meagan that was Emma’s Meagan. Doesn’t exist anymore. I lost that Meagan somewhere in that first night of screaming and trying to break my hand against the wall, so I could just feel something other than the agony of Emma being gone.

When I joined a Check Please chat group, a few months after the crash, we gave each other hockey nicknames. I was Farley.

My second quarter at SCAD, I started going by Farley. It stuck.

That’s who this version of me is. This new artist, still figuring things out, but still going.

I may not always stay Farley (other than ya’know artist ‘branding’. We’ll see) but that’s okay. Farley is who I need to be right now.

Farley is who will finish The Mixtape Project.

(because of two people mishearing both my nickname and last name I will, at least once in my career, use the pseudonym Fartley McFarmland and no one will stop me).

I can’t imagine what, who, will come after Farley, if anything.

But Check Please will always be a part of making Farley, and every future version of me, exist.

I could go on and on about how beautiful this story and these characters are, how inspiring Ngozi is, how genius her storytelling is, how powerful and important her work is. I could go on for days about all of that. But this is already so long, and I know that so many of you can go on about that probably way better than I could currently.

But, as many of my professors tell us over and over, only I can tell this story. My story. Emma’s story. Our story. And it’s one I plan on telling for the rest of my life.

And Check Please, Ngozi, will forever be the thing that made that possible.

So thank you. Those two words that are way too small to say it all.

Thank you.

Every fic writer

Every artist

Every rper

Every chat friend

Every shitposter

Every theorist or meta poster

Every fan

Thank you.

B. “Shitty” Knight.

Larissa “Lardo” Duan

Adam “Holster” Birkholtz

Justin “Ransom” Oluransi

John Johnson

Ollie O'Meara

Pacer Wicks

Jenny and Mandy

Nicholas and Jean-Claude

Coach Hall

Coach Murray

Suzanne Bittle

Richard “Coach” Bittle

William “Dex” Poindexter

Derek “Nursey” Nurse

Chris “Chowder” Chow

Kent Parson

Alicia Zimmermann

“Bad” Bob Zimmermann

Tony “Tango” Tangredi

Connor “Whiskey” Whisk

Denice “Foxtrot” Ford

Fry Guy

Georgia “Georgie” Martin

Alexei “Tater” Mashkov

Sebastian “Marty” St. Martin

Dustin “Snowy” Snow

Poots

Randall “Thirdy” Robinson

Jonathan “Hops” Hopper

River “Bully” Bullard

Lukas “Louis” Landmann

(I’m almost certain I had to have missed someone)

Thank you.

Jack “Zimmboni” Laurent Zimmermann

Thank you.

Eric “Bitty” Richard Bittle

Thank you.

Ngozi Ukazu

Thank you. For everything.

For having my back. I’ll always have yours.

Always yours,

Farley M.

#Check Please #omgcp #my person #my writing #meagan and emma have online adventures #-slaps me- you can fit so many confused emotions in this thing

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