Where Does He Find Time in the Day?

Last Night I Was a Child in a Drawer

A child alone in a field.
Mouth full of candy,
Mouth full hay,
Mouth full of flies and cherries,
with pits of white sands,
a desert of white hills
that roll like a child’s tongue singing.


A grey silhouette,
steps,
page by page,
slowly sliding iron-pressed feet across concrete leaves,

they ease over,

235,
236,
237.
he stops,
rests,
buckles the pages,
shelves. A tongue

slowly caressing the lower rim of a lip, a parking garage of movement,
ascension spiral,
dabbing, smearing, and ingesting
the last drops of cherry excrement sliding down
a face.
The streetlights have come on, and I am a child,
alone,
in a drawer

In Case You Missed It:

In case you missed it the new issue of Esquire is called something to the effect of "The Meaning of Life Issue." This issue features some young artists (musicians, comedians, actors, scientists, poets, etc.) who are grappling in an interesting way with this omnipresent issue. The front spread (as you can see below) is Alex Lemon. Awesome. Esquire published some poetry, and picked a damn good poet, at that. Maybe this is yet another sign that a depression isn't the worst thing in the world. (Is it just me or does it seem like there may be a little bit of a focus on the arts.) Either way it's pretty great that a magazine like Esquire is giving a good poet some attention.

InDigest One Year Anniversary Party Photos

Lech Harris moderately obscured by a microphone



Paul Engels



Crack in the Damn (Paul Engels, Ryan Thompson, and Dan Lehn) Photo taken by Omar Mallick



Peter Bognanni (photo taken from Minnesota Microphone)

I've Been Writing

Stuff I've written lately:

Art & Activism: An Interview with Ted Hearne
An Interview with John Darnielle (The Mountain Goats)
Tiny Mix Tapes Best Films of 2008
Review of Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid's NYC
Review of Cadillac Records

David and I just started InDigest 1207 at LPR
David and I also just had our One-Year Anniversary Party for InDigest in St. Paul. There will photos up on the blog soon. (It was also picked as a Rake Magazine Secret of the City/)


Friends:
Jess Grover, Brad Liening, Stephen Burt, Meakin Armstrong, Lech Harris, Meggie Elder, Ada Limon, Erica Wright, and J. Albin Larson all have new work up in InDigest.

InDigest Celebrates a Whole Year of InDigesting

There is a brand new issue of InDigest up online, right now!

We are celebrating our one-year anniversary by having some past contributors showcase some of their newest work.

Here is the scoop on the issue:

InPoetics:
New poetry from Stephen Burt, Ada Limon, Brad Liening, Meggie Elder, Jess Grover, and Erica Wright

InNarratives:
"The Town Secrets," an excerpt from a novel-in-progress, Kings of the Wild Frontier by Meakin Armstrong.

"Interior Illusions," an excerpt from a novella in progress of the same title by Lech Harris.

"Hunting Bambi," a new short story from J. Albin Larson.

InErratica:
In Blunt Force Trauma, a new column about underrepresented books and authors, columnist Joe Finck tackles the legacy of Jim Thompson, the classic pulp novelist.

In Bedside Stacks, Ashleigh A. Lambert takes on The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg by Geoff Herbach and Vacation by Deb Olin Unferth.

InMusic:
InDigest editor Dustin Luke Nelson interviews composer Ted Hearne, and John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats.

InGallery:
Paintings from Kara Hendershot.

Thanks, once again and always, for reading. We can't overstate how pleased we are to have the opportunity to publish new, interesting, and compelling work for just over a year now. And a special thanks to all who have lent a hand to make this past year possible. First, Dustin and I would like to thank Jesse Sawyer and Chris Koza, two of the founding editors of InDigest. This magazine would not exist without their presence in the beginning. And thanks to all who have given their time in some way or another over the year: Jeremy Smith, Reina Podell, Jay Peterson, Alex Lemon, Charles Greene, Ashleigh Lambert, Jess Grover, Ryan Thompson, Chris Thompson, Dan Wieken, and Neil Reiter - there are a probably a lot of people we are missing here, and we're sorry if we missed you. Suffice to say that David and Dustin are not InDigest by themselves, it takes a whole lot of people to keep this running. Thank you all. And thank you for reading.

David and Dustin
Editors, InDigest Magazine

Thanks for reading this blog, and InDigest, actually.

Literature Maps

I just saw this at Jim's Blog, and this is great, and fun, and maybe useful, I'm not sure, its late.

Literature Maps

I think it may not actually have a lot of uses, but it's really cool, and it goes well at 3am with a glass of wine and Four Tet. I recommend viewing in that fashion. If you do not have Four Tet on your iTunes, or a glass of wine handy, or maybe it's just early and you don't want to drink, I recommend doing it anyway.

Best Films of 2008

I'm a contributor on Tiny Mix Tapes Best Films of 2008. Go take a look, it looks pretty good.

Today

It snowed in Brooklyn yesterday. Finally feels a little bit like Christmas-time. 1207 starts in two and a half days. Awesome. The Wild just announced that Gaborik is back tonight. Torn about that. Kind of want him gone. Kind of want the Wild to start scoring goals. Kind of want their five game losing streak to end. New InDigest issue in a day or two. Have five articles going up places this week after a lull of feeling like I can't write. Vacation begins in two days. Saw Dark Dark Dark and The Antlers last night, both were awesome. That's everything I was going to write about in fragments. I didn't sleep till 2pm today either, which was a problem I had yesterday.

It was

Film Screening Tonight

I know I've posted this up before, but I thought I'd do it again. I have a film screening tonight at Intermedia Arts. It's a part of The Dance Film Project put on by Cinema Revolution. Should be great, a few short films, live performances, live music, a real cabaret of art. I don't remember details well, but you can find all the details on tonight's screening here.

My film is called "Alongside Sympathetic Neurons" and it's a collaboration with choreographer Mandy Herrick. If the whole film was still images, one part of it would like the picture here.

Best American Poetry

InDigest is about ready to release our anniversary issue. (Given, it's about two weeks after our actual anniversary, but what do you want from me?) We are very fortunate to have a great poem from poet/critic/blogger/professor/friend/all-around-good-guy-who's-way-smarter-than-me-and-I-remember-that-every-time-I-read-his-criticism-especially-the-great-review-of-Zot!-he-just-published-in-the-new-issue-of-Rain-Taxi Stephen Burt. This poem ("After Virgil" - a celebratory poem) is currently being previewed at the Best American Poetry Blog and you should go take a look at it. We're also very fortunate that the gust blogger over there this week H.L. Hix wanted to use this poem and that he had such nice things to say about InDigest over there at the blog. Thanks.

If you aren't familiar with the Best American Poetry Blog (of course you know the series, but) take a look at the blog, it's very good, and full of ways to lose yourself reading poems, interviews, etc. for far longer than your employer would probably find acceptable.

End of Year Lists

I have a real love/hate affair going with end of the year lists. I think it simplifies things and infuriates me, but it's also great when I see an album listed that I haven't heard and I might love. Then I feel inadequate, but that's ok, that's my own shit. But, not sure why, I just feel like it, I'm going to compile a whole bunch of these lists here, because I've been looking at them all morning. Mostly because I'm about to post my own list at Favorite10 this coming week, and I think most of these lists are cop-outs. Anyhow, here's a bunch of lists for people like me: you hate them, but look at the all the time and never tell anyone, unless it's on your blog, because that's impersonal and I don't have to own up to shit.

NOTE: This got silly and I've moved it elsewhere. To actually see this post (sans the snark ass comments that were here, go here.

Something about grammar that makes me mad.

I can be a grammar Nazi, I know that, and I'm ok with that. (Note: I am certainly not always this way, frequently a just ramble on this blog, but generally I am.) I subscribe to a notion that proper grammar should be noted, used and it should be a beautiful thing. In fact, that might be one of the best parts about grammar, it's beautiful, when used properly there is a beautiful aesthetic to it. But every now and then I come across some proper grammar that has a horrendous aesthetic to me, and that's a dichotomy that I don't think a whole lot of.

I came across this situation about a week ago, I had been rather sick for about a week and was struggling putting an article together that was long overdue (my accommodating editor gave me an extension). I was trying to say something to the effect of "the second band of the night, Ann Arbor, Michigan's Mason Proper,". (I know that's not quite correct punctuation there, but I wanted to be sure to include the comma I had after Mason Proper. Also that sentence isn't exactly what I wrote but there was the introductory phrase comma Ann Arbor comma Michigan's Mason Proper comma.) The comma use in that sentence is hideous. I hate it. Now I know I can simply change the structure of the sentence, but the comma use between city and state in a sentence is an ugly thing. I was further aggravated by simply trying to determine if it was even necessary to include Michigan. Were Mason Proper from Atlanta, New York or Seattle there wouldn't be much of a problem. Ann Arbor isn't really an obscure city, but it's also not Chicago or Minneapolis. It would definitely be necessary if I was saying Eau Claire, Wisconsin's Bon Iver. But I'm not. And I still think that looks wrong. But I've been told this is right. Maybe someone knows of something besides the Chicago Manual that would tell me I don't need the comma there. Because I don't want it there.

In the end this is all silly because I believe I just restructured the sentence to avoid the grammatical seizure I was having. Nonetheless, that's a horrible rule. The comma should evaporate in a sentence, maybe not, maybe it still makes sense, but I don't like how it looks, it's like stuttering over something that shouldn't be difficult.

Press play on the first video, wait for it to start, then hit play on the second video. It's so beautiful.

YouTube, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down

This just reminds me of being in college and drinking in a dorm room. Also "Tiny Dancer" is a fucking great song, so don't try to tell me otherwise. Elton John's version is probably a little bit better, but this is amusing. But this is the kind of stream of conscience association that continues to draw me back to YouTube this week. It's magnetic. I really only ended up looking back at this because I was reading about the announcement of the Grammy nominees and then I was reading about the show that happened after the nomination ceremony. I heard that The Foo Fighters cover Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" and that made me want to find that video, which I did, so I was writing this post and I remembered how Dave Grohl always seems to be covering something and then it lead me, mentally, back to college, when I loved this cover (now I think it's ok, but that's how it goes, I used to really like The Bronx too).



I still don't get this one but this was Rebecca Porte's GChat status (sorry for exposing any secrets this might be a front for). It's really funny, not that I really understand why it's funny, it just is.



This was left on my computer at my desk at work and I just keep watching it. It's not really funny. Nothing happens. But I keep going back and watching it again and shamefully laughing to myself.



And then (as another example of how this goes) when I was trying to think of a band I liked when college started, that wasn't too embarrassing, but just embarrassing enough to make my point, I came up with The Bronx, and a video popped into my head. So, I tracked it down and posted a link to it. Then I watched it. Now I've decided that the video is still really great. It's like a B-Movie in three minutes. Now I'm posting that.



As long as I'm posting videos you should see the new video for LCD Soundsystem's "New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down," it stars Kermit in New York singing, with James Murphy in his ass.

InDigest 1207

Introducing the
InDigest 1207 Reading Series
presented by InDigest Magazine and (Le) Poisson Rouge


December 19th, 2008
InDigest One Year Anniversary Reading with:
Lech Harris
Meggie Elder
TBA
Music by: Ryan Thompson & TBA
9:30pm
@ Coffee New Cafe
St. Paul, MN


January 7th, 2009
InDigest 1207 Reading Series featuring:
Ada Limon
Sam Osterhout
Jess Grover
6pm-10pm
@ (Le) Poisson Rouge
New York, NY

InDigest Magazine is proud to announce a new reading series, bringing
together new and established voices for a night of reading, drinks and
entertainment. In the first installment, poets Ada Limon and Jess Grover will be
joined by short story writer and humorist Sam Osterhout (of the Lit 6
Project) and special guests TBA. In addition to reading their own
work, authors will read the work of other authors who have informed
their work, made them want to write, inspired a moment of brilliance,
or showed them how they don't want to write.

Please join us at (Le) Poisson Rouge for these amazing writers.
Drink, listen, and be merry.

All attendees will be able to listen to the writers and enjoy the fine
gallery space, currently featuring artists Chuck Close & Devorah
Sperber, and join in the happy hour specials all night.

Prior to the first installment of InDigest 1207 we will be having a
very special One-Year Anniversary reading in St. Paul at Coffee News
Cafe. Featured readers will include Lech Harris and Meggie Elder, with
music by Ryan Thompson (more TBA). Please join us in St. Paul for a
celebration of one year of InDigest.

One Year

In case you didn't read my sad little post over at the InDigest Blog it's the one-year-anniversary of InDigest today. Just one short year ago we emerged from the afterbirth with our first issue. Though I've never really been someone who cares a whole lot about birthdays so that's really all I can manage to say on the subject, it's today. That's all. Make that two sad little posts today. What do you say on a birthday or anniversary about yourself? I can't think of anything reasonable to say, and it certainly isn't this, this is not reasonable. Greenzo out.

I almost feel sad for myself because I found this...

Flight of the Conchords to Debut Online

Season 2 of Flight of the Conchords is about to start. Whoo hoo. Even better: Season 2 (like 30 Rock) is going to debut online. Yay for Flight of the Conchords, and the world wide web, yay.

Some Good Things Happening

It's the anniversary of InDigest, and there are all sorts of wonderful things going on. It was a beautiful day in Brooklyn. Brad Liening has a really great poem in the new issue of FOU. InDigest has a big announcement that will saturate the internet later in the week. I'm going to see El Guincho tomorrow, and Tim Hecker on Friday (@ LPR). I have a film screening in Minneapolis on December 12 & 13. We're giving away a whole bunch of free MP3's at Favorite 10 this week. The Wild have won two in a row (without trying to jinx the 2-2 tie they have going with Colorado right now after the 1st UPDATE: Bouchard just scored at the start of the 2nd to make in 3-2 Wild). I read some great new poetry this morning in the newest issue of Jubilat. I finally saw Takashi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django this weekend (it was ok, about what I expected, an ok film, great aestheticaly, and Miike does some fascinating things commenting on the appropriation of culture in the modern world by recreating a film that Sergio Leone stole from Akira Kurosawa, and America subsequently claimed by way of Clint Eastwood).