Posted on

The Book Lives Three Times: How Seneca Got Reading Wrong by Getting It Right

You finish writing a book and the manuscript sits there, cooling on the screen like bread pulled from an oven. It is done. It is no longer yours. This is the part no one tells you about authorship: the moment the final sentence locks into place, the book begins its first death, because it has stopped being a living negotiation between you and the language and has become, instead, a fixed object. A thing. The writer’s relationship to the finished text is not unlike the relationship a parent has to an adult child who has just walked out the front door with a suitcase. You made this. You cannot unmake it. You are, from this point forward, irrelevant to its survival.

Continue reading → The Book Lives Three Times: How Seneca Got Reading Wrong by Getting It Right

Posted on

The Westborough Crusaders: The Trilogy That Took Forty-Four Years to Earn Its Novels

Some work waits for you. Not patiently. Not the way a dog waits by the door, loyal and uncomplicated. It waits the way a diagnosis waits in a family’s bloodline, silently present, expressing itself in symptoms you do not recognize until you are old enough to understand what your body has been trying to tell you. In 1982, I was sixteen years old, living in the Midwest, and I sat down and wrote eight episodes of a television series called The Westborough Crusaders. I did not know I was writing the first draft of a trilogy. I thought I was writing television. I was wrong, but I would not understand how wrong for another four decades.

Continue reading → The Westborough Crusaders: The Trilogy That Took Forty-Four Years to Earn Its Novels

Posted on

Dan Auerbach Locks Down Dr. John

I am a big Dr. John fan.  I love his piano.  I’m crazy about his voice.  In his latest album, Locked Down, that dropped on April 3, 2012, Dr. John strangely fades away a bit as Black Keys producer and performer Dan Auerbach places his hands on Dr. John’s keyboard.  The result is a bit of a disappointing mishmash of a previously undeniable musical identity:

Storied musician and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Dr. John–Mac Rebennack–will release LOCKED DOWN, a startling album that marks a significant departure from his recent efforts, on April 3, 2012. The new album, produced by The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, will be Dr. John’s first for Nonesuch Records.

It’s an entirely new approach for the iconic Dr. John, featuring as it does his collaboration with Auerbach and a band of young musicians Auerbach hand-picked to make LOCKED DOWN at his studio Easy Eye Sound in Nashville. “It was way cool cutting this record with Dan and the crew he put together for it,” says Rebennack. “It’s reel HIP.

Continue reading → Dan Auerbach Locks Down Dr. John

Posted on

The Problem with One Set Plays

In addition to the awful reality that One Act Plays are ruining the Modern Theatre,
one set plays are killing off any and all theatrical design aesthetic and that deathly trend cannot die soon enough.

Continue reading → The Problem with One Set Plays

Posted on

Know the Muscle

Beware of “The Muscle!”  Know “The Muscle!”  Fear “The Muscle!”

Continue reading → Know the Muscle

Posted on

How to Kill a Joke: Did You Bring a Towel?

Today I will give you a perfect example of: “How to Kill a Joke.” 

Bring a towel.

Continue reading → How to Kill a Joke: Did You Bring a Towel?

Posted on

The Nature of the Producer

The nature of the producer is to provide money for a creative project and manage the schedule for getting things done.  The best producers are invisible.  The producer’s essence is felt, but their being fades into the background to support the vision of others.

Continue reading → The Nature of the Producer