Deficiency Cordons

I have no real post, mostly because we seem to have entered the dread summer-reading-lull and I just spent some much needed time laking and subsequently drinking in the lake while laking.

This is the first thing I wrote after leaving the lake.

deficiency district of New Hyborneo taking in the Slazer-Silico brine. like the water made naneuro-flesh. work the grav-skids.

you’re on the ocean for 47 hours. thank the runner-lids on your eyes that you stayed awake when the technalgea surfaced

I'm reading Neuromancer and Povel simultaneously.

Waking Weekend Wanderlust?

Go here:

Friday in gear

then go here:

Saturday, no bear.

You'll see me, but I won't see you.

Say it to make it true

Again and again and again in recent months I have been noting the need for oration to make a more forceful comeback, which is I hope going to be, as I have said, a purpose of this blog. I'm hoping to as much as possible present writers who give strong readings, and I continue to be more concretely convinced of this necessity and of how much can be learned and imparted through it.

The lecture I attended tonight was a prime example of a speaker's much needed taking of a class in public speaking. While the presenter, who I shall hold anonymous (I'm building, not tearing down after all), was competent, insightful to a point, and exceedingly familiar with the material (as was I), I could not help but feel that his combination of largely rudimentary points could have come across more strongly if he were an effective orator.

Now while I suppose on some level his being a scholar may allow for the less than evocative presentation, his confuddlement (confounded + befuddled) at the slow egress of the audience as he pushed into his first and then second hour is less avowable. Perhaps this is simply my infamiliarity with NYC free lectures, but you begin taking up that much time without being compelling beyond the subject matter then there are going to be folk walking out. Just the way it is. Thinking about some of the readings I'd seen in the last few years which really made me into the oration-fascist I am slowly becoming: Sam Delaney, Jessica Hagadorn, Leslie Lee, , Thom Metzger, Greg Pardlo (some of the those the blog was not timely enough for), in comparison to the reading tonight, I saw too that there is a lack of completeness in poor oration.

Too not have spent the time going over, even once inside your head, that which you plan to vocalize to an audience, you are not considering the reader/listener as a component in your work. You are leaving out the notion of audience and at that point everything you write becomes an exercise in self-satisfaction. Thinking back on it now, this was one of my greatest dissatisfactions with open-mics: that a majority of the work, and the entire purpose of readings, was an endevour self-gratification.

So please, take the time, read it outload. Stand in front of the mirror, hide under blankets, go off and find a cave behind the house, just pop those lips a bit (or as my brother likes to say, "lick some spit").

Straining the exogenesis

Well this certainly got away from me. April got away from me, and May was supposed to be the turn around, and now somehow it's June. That's the crazy old world for you, spinning away toward the infinity you don't have the stamina to reach.

But enough of that, can't waste too much time on it, not if I am actually going to make it to a reading at some point here. I've been investing in the culture never the less, even if I haven't put in the face time.

Before my recent prolonged computer fast, I had gleefully downloaded a number of pdfs of Chain past issues in order to leisurely enjoy the multitudes of voices the thick journal provided. Many of them clocked in well over 200 pages, so to download them for free and enjoy them without paper cost was of course satisfying.

When my computer crashed, I lost these and numerous other pdfs I had downloaded, and when I got back up and running, I begin seeking the pdfs out again. Reaching the chain website, which I had not readily linked to on yours truly, I wondered about for a bit. Looking at the pages, trying to find out if Chain Links was near to launch, I discovered the archives page, which I don't think I had come to before, and I suddenly realized there was a tiny bit of karma involving itself here.

It seems the editors were not offering the pdfs for free. Carefully explaining the rationale, they had put up the pdfs on an honor system, asking that if anyone chooses to download that they then send compensation.

I had downloaded like 8 of the issues.

I had never sent them a dime.

My computer crashed.

The site says no one has ever sent them a dime, let alone the $10 they ask for.

Since I got the compy back up and running, I downloaded issue 10. I sent them $10 and hopefully the universe will spin a little less wobbly on its axis.

I also recommend issues 3, 6, and 8, just on personal preferrence.