Do you believe how many people were there? Me neither! I don't want to outgrow Minás, I just want them to put on an addition like my parents did even though theirs leaks air. I had just awoke/awakened (and at the time I would have been even more unsure of the correct verbiage) from an epic nap, which is the part of my Friday Routine that enables anything close to the emcee-ing of Show&Tell, and the heat and the crowd and the surreality of it made me feel very close to everyone there.
Aparna Jonnal
O Aparna. You magical doctor god of a human, with your frizzy hair and polyester, your long fingers and beautiful mouth that is beautiful in the classical way but moreso because of what comes out of it--observations at light-speed and the love running through all things like science, or vice versa. Aparna makes you feel like you are intended, and perfect, and a treasure. You can imagine my delight at a) her agreement to do Show&Tell because of these qualities + a giant brain and b) her not being at Artist but one who sees the cracks and talks about them and fills them in with deep appreciative thought.
Aparna read us her essay on determinism vs. free will, as her equally wonderful and yet very different husband Dave NeSmith presented substantiating evidence in the form of magic marker drawings on newsprint. Aparna elucidated the belief that insofar as we are "destined" and simply set, we are also (because of that causality and the frontal lobe that has developed within it to some degree) able to appreciate it. Maybe. I think she would say that our changing is of course destined as well, and that change is allowed within set-ness. She is probably coming from a more recent biological type of determinism, and of course there are arguments to be had (Uranium comes to mind). Questions arose about class, and basically Aparna said just be nice, we are blobs with inertia, and how lucky for that. She presented a new equation to us, which I will ask her for and re-post here since I'm doing a bad job re-telling and when I hear "quantum mechanics" I put on a brave face and rip off the band-aid all at once and have to take a nap not out of boredom but out of anxiety that mirrors the vastness of the universe and my lack of understanding of it.
Geoff Becker
It's funny that I've gotten to know Geoff Becker more by babysitting his son than through writing/music channels, because he's a great writer who won the Flannery O'Connor Prize and also a talented musician as we all saw and heard at S&T. He's married to my old (she's not old) painting advisor who I now would call my friend, and I would also call him my friend, because their four-year-old is my very good friend who lights up my Sundays with quotable observations and clear brown eyes. I am humbled that Geoff and Nora trust me to spend time with their child, so I feel that gratitude. He is easy to be around. How many people do you know like that? Probably not many. In their dining room they have a giant painting that Nora did of Geoff holding a very large dog.
So he told the story of his 1983 (not 1981!!) Martin HD-35 guitar, which really was a story about a union mafia that came in and scared everyone off and beat him up when he had no health insurance. There was legal stuff and in the end he received an accidental check in the mail from the hospital, for $900. He had always wanted a nice guitar, so you know what happened of course. He played a fingery tune that he wrote, which was tenuous in its evident difficulty that made you keep rooting for him, then he told his story, then he played "Alcohol" by the Kinks. My very favorite part was his voice, which was somewhere between Tom Waits' and my Grandfather's in the tub (the former in tone and the latter in delight).
Chris Mason
Chris Mason is kind of famous and I'm not, so what can I say about him that hasn't been said? I guess it doesn't matter if it's been said, because things aren't less true the more they're whatevered. It's not like we're good old friends, but I feel such good old things for him anyway. Part of it is awe because he has done so much, Tinklers, Old Songs, books including the upcoming HUM WHO HICCUP, famous poet collaborations/friends, etc. but mostly it's because he is so kind and brilliant. He is one of my very favorite poets. He is also a special educator, and he really means it, so we have that in common.
Chris brought his rock collection that he thought maybe made him sick, so he also brought hand sanitizer and didn't let us touch any of the rocks. He wrote poems to some of the rocks, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one wishing I was a rock for him to hold up under the lights and woo and pine for all at once. Possibly my favorite was the poem to the absent panspermia meteor rock, for obvious reasons. Actually now that I think about it, my favorite part was when he had rocks in his pockets (or just talked about having them there??) that he jangled around and asked us to imagine in our own pockets; he said that he originally wanted to give us rocks to do so with, but of course he didn't want to cause a public health epidemic and all. This is what I like about him so much--what he does is so outwardly benign and even awkward at times, and yet profound and crystallized; imagine rocks in your pockets when the rocks are right there; imagine panspermia when it's impossible. You know what's funny? In this picture he looks like part of one of Nora Sturges' paintings--she's married to Geoff Becker, above.
And finally, Adam Robinson
I think I met Adam Robinson at Transmodern like three or probably four years ago, when I did a collaborative piece with t-shirts. Mine said, "THINKING ABOUT DEATH OR FEAR" and the other two shirts said, "SAME". Adam and Dave NeSmith collaborated with me. Adam either told me or I later decided that he was thinking about his dog Thunder. I remember thinking that they were both very handsome. Narrow House put out his book, and he is also one of my very favorite poets. Right now my favorite poets are him, Chris Mason, Walt Whitman, and Eileen Myles and CA Conrad. Adam is a very masculine non-masculine person. He runs Publishing Genius and put out a book for me that we made potato-print covers for on my floor.
Adam Show&Telled his bloody shirt, police report, and phone from the time he was almost mugged in Baltimore, I think on North Avenue or Redwood Street. Some kids tried to bang him for his new phone, and hit him with a Snapple bottle, but he was like "no way" and got away. Many people ignored him until someone nice decided to stay. Like me, one of his skills is being really, really good at lack of follow-through (watch--I'll probably never write another blog entry) and he never mailed his shirt and police report to the winner of a preorder contest, and so he meant to call the guy who won at S&T and make him answer a trivia question to get the shirt (unfair). Well guess what? The guy didn't answer, and neither did Adam's mom when he tried to call her. So trivia happened and I think Bob won the shirt? But Katie and Chris got this amazing question right:
What city name can you rearrange to get a homonym for another country?
See if you can get it and I'll tell you if you're right. Bob's question was:
What book/gospel of the Bible are the Beatitudes in? and the answer is Matthew. I think.
I can't wait to see how long this is on the page.
ps when I said "I remember thinking that they were both very handsome" above, I meant Adam and Dave, although I'm sure Thunder was very handsome at well, but I'm about 75% sure she was a girl dog.
pps! Minás himself played for us on his lyre that used to be a wall decoration. It was magnificent--rhythm going in and out, scratchy sounds, a kind of harkening.
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