Speak Spell

New strangeness out in Witness. More things forthcoming.

Listening:

Scratch Acid, Greatest Gift
AFX, Chosen Lords
Masta Killa, No Said Date (first half is brilliant, not so much the rest)
Pierre Fournier, Six Bach Cello Suites
Timber Timbre, s/t
Simone White, I'm the Man
Bill Withers, Just as I Am
Leonard Cohen, Live Songs
Mixes by Linger & Quiet
Demdike Stare, Symbiosis

Listening + Reading, pt. 2

Girls, Album
Johnny Hartman, I Just Dropped by to Say Hello
Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks
Atlas Sound, Sheila (single)
King Sunny Ade, Juju Music
Cass McCombs, Catacombs

Charles Jencks, ed., The Postmodern Reader (Huyssen, Hutcheon, Harvey)
This months 1000 word stories for the Sinkhole story group

Saw Doubt recently (film) and thought it was quite good. Same with I've Loved You So Long. Tried to watch My Beautiful Laundrette (Daniel Day Lewis) and got through it by not paying much attention.

Also trying to revise+write a few newer things . . .

Alabama

Yoww Yoww Yoww, pt.2

May is Short Story Month, and EWN, Ninth Letter, and others have been running a really fine series dedicated to writers' takes on particular works. I feel really grateful to have had Brian Kornell, assistant editor over at Ninth Letter, post an incredibly generous piece on my stories "The Cortege," which was part of Mississippi Review's issue on literary magazines, and "The Countrymen," featured in the 5.2 issue of Ninth Letter.

Also at Ninth Letter are pieces on Dan Chaon and Keith Lee Morris, who I've been fans of for some time. If you haven't yet read The Dart League King (Tin House, 2008) or Among the Missing (Ballantine, 2002) go out and grab them. Both rich, beautiful works.

Here's Jorge Ben. For springtime.

Yoww Yoww Yoww

Night-Sea Journey by John Barth

"Perhaps, even, I am drowned already. Surely I was never meant for the rough-and-tumble of the swim; not impossibly I perished at the outset and have only imagined the night-sea journey from some final sleep. In any case, I'm no longer young, and it is we spent old swimmers, disabused of every illusion, who are most vulnerable to dreams."

Listen

Un Dia by Juana Molina (really amazing)

Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective (yes)

Uproot by dj/rupture (yes yes)

Solo by Henry Grimes (i don't have this yet but am imagining its greatness)

Geodaddi by Boards of Canada (revisiting this)

Headz 2A and 2B which is part of a Mo wax collaboration from 1996 that features early dj shadow, dj krust, peshay, air, and a lot of other folks.

Santa as Bill Pullman as Fred Madison

Why is santa hurting that saxophone?

Rap semi-Nostalgic Quote of the Day

Run up in your crib like my name was Search Warrant