Journal

All Roads Lead to Homer: Quest-Driven Novels, (Part 1)

I started these stories because I knew I had to write about my years on the road as part of another folk-rock band. What I experienced as an itinerant musician, traveling and performing with family members and lovers, gave me an education I couldn’t have paid for, an education that makes my time in an Ivy League institution pale in comparison. As Melville’s character Ishmael says of the whale ship he lived aboard for the span of Moby-Dick’s timeline, “It was my Yale College and my Harvard.” So was my Moby, the white fifteen-passenger Dodge Ram van we traveled within for the better part of the 1990s. 

posted September 30, 2023

Journal

Music

Nields

River Roads

Here’s the strange thing about me: I can completely forget I’m a musician until I arrive at the gig. It’s as though that part of me is a set of clothes for another season, kept in a moth-proof box in the attic, out of mind until the weather changes.

posted September 23, 2023

Journal

Barbie, Barbi and Me

…what woman born in the ‘60s could possibly resist a Gerwig/Baumbach treatment of that iconic, maddening, perfect representation of our twisted ideas of what girls were supposed to aspire to be?

posted July 29, 2023

Journal

Among Other News, Bob on the Ceiling Released From Its Analog Prison 

I hadn’t played guitar in almost a month. I don’t need it in the studio these days because all we’ve been doing is adding background vocals. My daughter’s been playing…

posted March 2, 2023

Journal

Cat Person

It’s not so much that I’m not a cat personMore like cats are not Nerissa people.  All I wanted when I was fiveWas a pink-nosed kitten,Round blue eyes, milky breath,Needly…

posted November 17, 2022

Journal

The Co-Ordinates of One’s Address Depend on Which Alphabet One Uses

Given that Italian has a consonant/vowel ratio Of nearly four to one, it’s clear whyMost singers prefer Verde to Schubert.Which would you rather sing, O mia babbino caroOr Mein Sohn, was birgst du…

posted November 8, 2022

Journal

Kaleidoscope

Sir David Brewster invented it by accidentAn instrument with mirrors at polar endsAngling the glass against the lightKalos, beautifulEodos, shapeScopeo, to look at The Romans cancelled the Greeks’ KappaReplaced it…

posted November 6, 2022

Journal

Trash Day, Post-Halloween

This image has nothing to do with my post, but the cat insisted I needed to make it the featured image, and it’s a lot bigger than I am. If this is your cat, and you are mad at me for taking its picture, I will come to your house with cookies as an apology.

posted November 2, 2022

Journal

Poems as Secular Prayers

I always begin a writing session by reading a poem aloud. Like a prayer, a poem can connect me to myself, and to something deeper than myself, with spirit-imbued words….

posted November 1, 2022