I wouldn't call it a replica - we just used one of the coins that were made on stage.

For the record, Ida brought that one to the table. Jenny & Kristin made, or had made, the candles and bandanas, among other things I'm forgetting.

how it's going

Fleur Jaeggy, Last Vanities, trans. Tim Parks. 7 concentrated tales of birth, death, shame, and spite. "Aside from rotting, there's little flowers can do, and in this they are not unlike human beings." Even less levity than her boarding school novel; makes R. Cusk look warm and maternal. #readin26.

Jim Thompson, Recoil. Needed a change of pace. A patsy ex-con, multiple femmes fatale, moral rot in City Hall. Violence. Doesn't transcend the noir recipe w/ the fateful dread of Killer Inside Me or Pop. 1280. Polito's bio confirms that the denouement was atypically upbeat for Thompson. #readin26

Muriel Spark, Aiding & Abetting. Why write fiction speculating on Lord Lucan's fate 26 yrs post-disappearance? No idea, except for Spark's interest in dissecting evil. Not 100% linear, but unusually focused for her late work; nearly a chase novel. The ending's both too weird and too pat. #readin26

Sebastian Castillo, 49 Venezuelan Novels. Not fake reviews of fake books, but micro-narratives that read as capsule novels; i.e., less Calvino/Bolaño, more Edson/late Tate. However Venezuelan it all is, it was more my bag than his recent, well-rec'd novel. "I voted for a bat, and it won." #readin26

Why do you hate meat?

I agree -- and the fact that Byrne wrote fairly unusual chord progressions at that stage (up to Fear of Music - see "Air" and "Electric Guitar") gave her something to work with.

I'll track one down. I almost always enjoy odds & sods albums (if I like the band). I've long wished there were one Squeeze release that collected the b-sides from their best years.

I didn't even know about the album.

I may make some general recs once I've finished her final 2 (short) novels.

Have you read others? I liked it, but it isn't one I'd start with.

Muriel Spark, Reality and Dreams. A filmmaker replaces the writer-protagonists of other late novels; comic plot involves infidelities, disappearances, disguises, but ends w/ a pointedly pointless death. By 1997, aged 79, Spark is less concerned w/ novelistic furniture than odd sidebars. #readin26

Mary Jo Bang, The Last Two Seconds. Unlike 2007's Elegy, this 2015 collection is impersonal to a fault; also portentous (title refers to Doomsday Clock), fairly opaque, and often ekphrastic or overtly "literary": an effective sequence collages Woolf. Serious, but hard (for me) to warm to. #readin26.

Wanted to make it to this one, esp. Berish, but couldn't.

Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, trans. R. Pevear & L. Volokhonsky. Reread after 20+ years b/c of an LRB podcast, and to compare w/ Magazine's "Song from Under the Floorboards." Appreciated, even in translation, the artfully disordered style and overall inconclusiveness. A good wallow. #readin26

Listen | KSPC 88.7FM

Hey, I'll be playing jazz/improv/new wave/sound poetry on kspc.org/listen/ today (3/16) at 10-11 am, and tomorrow (3/17) noon-1 pm. The shows will be archived for a couple weeks thereafter.

Rick Barot, The Galleons. 2020 collection of 2-3 p. poems, largely imagery-driven; per title, migration and colonial plunder are leading concerns. Pros: homely, more subdued than dazzling, suspicious of epiphany; see "The Flea." Cons: distich form gets samey, a bit unmusical/prosy overall. #readin26

Muriel Spark, Symposium. Includes dialogues on love, yes, but also crime, madness, wills, plus satire on a Marxist convent (C of E, not RC, which concerns Stark more than politics). Witty, w/ a dark ending, but diffuse; her signature prolepses and flashbacks may not add much this time out. #readin26

John Corbett, A Listener's Guide to Free Improvisation. What it says on the tin: Chicago impresario/label head's defense of the genre & intro to what to listen for (interaction)/what not to (songs, a beat), esp. live. Not technical; unsure it'd sway doubters, but that's hard for any music. #readin26

Muriel Spark, A Far Cry from Kensington. The rooming-house mise en scene recalls The Girls of Slender Means; the narrative voice, Loitering with Intent. Not her most ambitious book, but among her kindliest w/r/t judgments of character, yet still savage on hack writers and their publishers. #readin26

I've seen some video work that Warn and Davin did, maybe 25 years ago - I know if it's the same as what's on this tape, but I wouldn't know what to say about it either. Pretty out there.

Lesley Chow, You're History: The 12 Strangest Women in Music. Treats TLC, A. Banks, N. Minaj &c, yet feminist leanings run second to a general grain-of-the-voice pop/R&B-timism favoring timbre and texture over so-called literate songcraft. Uneven prose and pacing, but a worthwhile polemic. #readin26

good bridge

No, isn't great, but yes, it's waffle parties all the way down. There are a lot of "productivity"/coaching apps designed that way too - I think a lot of it stems from the "Tiny Habits" model of a psychologist w/ the unlikely name of BJ Fogg.

Ever do Duolingo?

I'd prefer to hear the originals of Chains and Honey Don't - and Chumbawamba's extended rewrite of Her Majesty.

Kyla Houbolt, Becoming Altar: New & Selected Poems. A kind of wisdom literature: lean, mostly short-lined lyrics on water, animals, planting, "Time and Change" (inc. death) + prose poems to refresh the ear. Some newer poems are more antic, but overall, RILY WCW, Ammons, dare I say Snyder. #readin26.

with more guitar pedals