A little anthology of my writings I put together. Art and cover design by Heather Balchunas
It’s my first book. I’ve had this idea for at least a decade: Writings that straddle the line between fantasy and nonfiction. This is the realization of that notion in glorified chapbook form. Each of these stories has one foot in the “real” world, one foot in… well… some other world. Some stories lead with the real foot, some with the fantastic foot.
Preliminary reaction has been enthusiastic, and to be honest, I’m quite proud of this work. People really seem to like that Heather Balchunas cover, too!
It’s 60 pages of my prose (with a little bit of poetry mixed in) and you can get it for 10 bucks plus 5 more for postage and handling. I have a venmo account, or you can send me a check made out to Diane Griffin and your mailing address to my mailing address, which is:
Broadcast From the Brain Radio POBox 176 Montague, MA 01351
eMail me at dianenmrk@gmail.com for further details for how to get this via venmo.
I’m also discovering that some people like their copy of the book signed. If you would like me to scrawl upon the title page of your new book in my terrible handwriting, let me know. I’ll be glad to do so. There are only a few copies left of this first printing, so get yours today!
The only reason I didn’t buy the tour T-shirt was that they were unremarkable, if not ugly. I wish they had been as good as this show was.
My brother and I have made a point of going to see concerts since he’s been here in Western Mass. We’ve seen some good shows, and not a single stinker among them. We’ve been to mostly prog rock, since that’s my current interest – as stated before, it’s music I feel no urge to pick up an instrument and try to play but it still excites me about the aspect of music that has always motivated me most, which is… how do I put this… ensembleness? Is that the best term? I dunno, but it will do for now – and Michael is cool with it, but this year we’ve tried some non-prog options. We saw Gang of Four on their “goodbye” tour, Beth Orton in September, and on Saturday night we saw PiL, and finally learned that it actually is pronounced “pill.”
This was one of the rare occasions of late where there was an opening band, in this case a high-energy quartet operating under the name “Plague Vendors” who were mixed horribly but managed to thrive on their own determination. Lead singer guy did a creditable job: charismatic, athletic, channelling the band’s megawatt energy like a kyber crystal. The music was uptempo, loud and raucous, and muddily mixed. Couldn’t really pick out the bass sound at all from the muddy morass that included it, the kick pedal, and the general low-frequency moan the room has naturally. What’s with all of these terrible, terrible venues of late? People think you can just put up a stage inside of a cavernous garage and a good sound man will be able to sort it all out. Not really true, unfortunately. After the show I went online to hear some of what their music really sounds like, and I’d class them somewhere between the MC5 and the Brian James era of The Damned with a faint frisson of psychobilly mixed in. All in all a good set despite the disadvantages.
As we were driving home from Boston after seeing this show, we listened to Can’s Tago Mago, with the understanding that it’s one of Lydon’s favorite records. In the aftermath of the previous night’s set, one can easily identify it as a major influence on PiL. While the two musical experiences are quite different, a focus on groove and trance ties the two together. My brother commented during the PiL show about “march after march” referring to the rock-steadiness of the beat from song to song, and I clearly hear a kind of hup-two-three-four-ness in Jaki Leibezeit’s drumming (accents on the two and four, of course!)
One of the main aspects of hearing PiL live that I looked forward to getting was the overall feeling of them as a working unit. So much of the band’s recorded output seems disparate, with different lineups and seemingly entirely different compositional approaches that I wondered how they were going to build a cohesive sound out of all of the seeming chaos. They managed it quite well. Recent material sat quite comfortably alongside a two-song sequence from Metal Box, “Rise” from Album merging seamlessly into an extended improv bit that touched on other of their songs and bits from outside their own ouvre. All told, it was a deeply layered soundscape built into a dub and post-punk framework that was both contextually related to the music that existed through the band’s formative years and an explorational quilt of impulses and unexpected influences.
And over and above everything else, there was John Lydon. My comment to Michael at the time was “Shatner vibes,” which I came to because there’s a huge amount of commitment and confidence there, driving through the limitations and the quirks to make a whole personna that is both iconic and… him. There was a related feeling between the two stylistically, and some important differences, too. At the same time you could see them both working within the Shakespearian hero framework, Shatner has more of a “man in the grey flannel suit” mainstreamness, where Lydon is reaching for something shamanic.
In discussing the show afterwards, I stated that Lydon is the best-ever lead singer who can’t carry a tune, and I think that’s right. He works in the groove, he reaches for moments of connection, and he gestures into the infinite. He was absolutely the focus of the entire experience and he took us someplace magical. He doesn’t sing so much as he chants and encants.
In sum, this was a fabulous evening, and a singular experience. At the end, standing on stage in a line with the rest of the band, John said something I never would have expected to hear from him. He called the other members of the band “his best mates.” That felt true and I found it touching, coming from a guy who has spent so much of his life at war with the world. It made me happy for him.
Please consider liking and commenting on this post. Subscribe if you can – it costs you nothing (you no longer have to have a wordpress account to like or comment) and clicking on the buttons helps this site thrive!Also, do be a dear and share this post with those you know who might appreciate it!
But I do, in fact, have a prose chapbook coming. The central idea of the book is straddling the line between fantasy and nonfiction. It occurs to me that this is a very postmodern concept… But the fantasy genre is, at its best, incredibly postmodern.
The book is 60 pages of my writing (well, probably more like 50-some pages! I used negative space in formatting this book for the grace I could get out of it) all of which stands somewhere on or very near the line between nonfiction and fantasy. There’s tall tales, lyric essay, memoir, auto-fictional storytelling, shadormas (a shadorma is a Spanish haiku-like poetic form,) and even a recipe.
Oh, and did I mention (no, I did not!) that it has a GORGEOUS cover designed by Heather Balchunas?
And really, that’s what I most want to show you right now. Here’s the cover of my new book…
Gorgeous cover art by Heather.
The release date is October 24th, and the book will be available from me or through this website exclusively. Further details are forthcoming. Watch this space.
Interior layout’s done, I’ve seen a mockup of the beautiful cover Heather Balchunas is doing for me. I’m very excited to share this object with you! I am planning to have copies with me when I read at the North Quabban Garlic and Arts Festival later this month, and following that, you’ll be able to order it online from this site (the price will be ten bucks) or if you see me around and about, I will likely have copies to sell with me.
I’m resisting making an ebook, for probably silly reasons, but that’s how I’m going to roll here. I much prefer physical media anyway. I think there’s something powerful about being able to hold an object in your hands, and to feel a connection to the maker of said object through the thing itself.
The book itself will contain 10 short pieces — three poems and seven stories — all on some point in a spectrum between nonfiction and fantasy. It comes out to 60 pages total, not counting the cover. My last bit of work to do before committing it to print is to make a copyright page, and that should happen in the next couple of days, I think.
And then it’s off to the printer. And then, if all goes well, you can get yours from me!
this is an early draft of the cover, printed out and “filed.” Photo by me, artwork by Heather.
Because even though I don’t really play music much any more, I still think of myself as a musician
I stopped playing music over a decade ago. Honestly, I stopped playing gigs another decade earier than that. The reasons for it were multitudinous, but came down to a few overarching concerns, some having to do with transitioning my gender (voice dysphoria) but others going to the simple fact that playing out was getting to be nothing but a grind, something I had little passion for… essentially, it was burnout. I went through a number of years when I didn’t even listen to music, preferring to just enjoy the ambient noise of life.
I’ve definitely returned to music appreciation now. I used to do all of my retail therapy at the record store. I’ve redeveloped that habit. A couple of years ago, I decided I wanted to have a working turntable again. I now have that, and I’ve just about tripled my vinyl collection since doing so. I’m considering a moratorium on buying new stuff, just so I can spend some time with the things I’ve picked up and decide on some favorites. I mean. I do have favorite things, and I’ve written about a few of them on this blog, but there are things I’ve filed away, having listened through them once or twice, that I want to make time to pull out again and listen on repeat, because that’s how you get things into your bloodstream and make them part of your internal soundtrack.
So I’ve been thinking about whether I should get back to playing music. I have no real interest in reconstructing my solo act. I was so tired of the lack of interaction with other players, of endlessly repeating the same songs in rehearsal and at gigs. One of the things I prefer about writing is that you compose, you perfect, then you move on. That’s not what playing music is like.
But it would be fun to have a group of humans to get together with on a regular basis and treat music as the social interaction it’s meant to be. I’m sure I would enjoy it, as long as it was somewhat low-key, done for fun, and kept away from the crazymaking that is also so much a part of being in a band. One thing I’d need to do to get back to playing is to update my equipment. Some of that is only worth doing once you know what sort of music you’ll be playing (some kind of rock music for me, but even that carries lots of variables) but I do find myself looking at various basses and guitars – mostly basses – that it would be nice to have and play.
My top three basses to get would be a Stingray, a Thunderbird, or (and?) a Mustang.
My top guitars to get would be a Les Paul, a Martin 00, and a Mustang.
All except the Martin would be red with a black pickguard, ideally.
But the fact is, I don’t have any reason to buy any guitar. I have guitars. I have worked hard to retrain my creative impulses towards writing, for reasons listed above as well as a few others I’m not going to bother listing here.
There’s nobody around who is interested in making music with me. I’m not really pursuing it. It’s OK. I’ll enjoy music as a consumer/spectator, and keep putting my energy into writing, which suits my life and my interests better.
Please consider liking and commenting on this post. Subscribe if you can – it costs you nothing (you no longer have to have a wordpress account to like or comment) and clicking on the buttons helps this site thrive!Also, do be a dear and share this post with those you know who might appreciate it!
