Category Archives: Uncategorized

My friend Nicole Kornher-Stace, author of ARCHIVIST WASP, created this AUCTIONS FOR ACTION page.

HERE’S HOW IT WORKS:

We’re here to auction items (art, books, handcrafted items, baked goods, whatever!) to benefit the ACLU. Ongoing as long as there’s interest!

Here’s how it works:

SELLERS:

1.) List each item in a separate post under the “Sell Something” tab.

2.) Set a starting bid and end time, and whether you are covering shipping cost or the buyer will need to pay for it.

3.) When your auction is over, post that it has ended and contact your buyer.

4.) The buyer will provide a shipping address and proof of donation to the ACLU in the amount of the winning bid.

5.) If you are not covering shipping costs, you will need to get them Paypaled to you by the winning bidder.

6.) Ship your item as agreed upon with the buyer.

BUYERS:

1.) Bid on items in their own threads. Note what time your auction is ending.

2.) If you win, provide your shipping address to the seller.

3.) Make a donation to the ACLU (https://action.aclu.org/donate-aclu) in the amount of your winning bid and send the seller proof of your donation.

4.) If shipping costs are not covered by the seller, you will need to pay them to the seller separately.

PLEASE SHARE WIDELY and THANK YOU SO MUCH!

 

 

dismembered but still singing
the musician floats down sorrow river

even now
they retain their sense of glamour

maybe it’s the sequins, the high-and-lowlights
or reverb from a lav mic clipped to their rhinestone collar
(and this, all this
gore-caked now, glitterlessly blasé
from the surgical frenzy of that last great show)

the musician sings Ogden Nashish rhymes
to the melody of a dusty velvet aria
they are

unworried
about time signature, tradition
key change, coming in sharp, loss of lyrics
addled eggs

or
adulatory flowers
released in startled arcs
from the palms of a perspiring audience, like
a magician’s emaciated doves

mouth open, water lapping
they sing,
soundlessly

not even a laryngectomee’s wheeze through the stoma
not even that

but there is lipstick, at least
spotlight-bright
on that bloodless face

stylishly smeared

 

C. S. E. Cooney

December 6th, 2016

First of all, all I want for my birthday is . . .

. . . a concert featuring all my favorite monsters, myths, queens, and witches.

. . . performed by poets and actors and writers who happen to be my dear friends.

. . . wherein I get to sing songs I wrote, because WHERE ELSE DO I GET TO SING ‘EM??? (Just call me “Florence Foster Jenkins!”) 

. . . and give any proceeds from this concert to our local food pantry / thrift store / social services and education center, THE JONNYCAKE CENTER OF WESTERLY!

Not a lot to ask, I know!

And I wouldn’t have asked it of anyone. I wanted to give this to ME for a present.

To do that, I embarked on my ¡MEDUSA MIA! project.

Now, I know–not all of you (my, like, five dear friends who actually read this) can make this event.

Aaaaaand I admit, sheepishly, the out of pocket cost for this concert is daily growing steeper than I’d originally anticipated (especially because, since embarking on my plans, I impulsively finished paying off one of my college loans, thus decimating my savings account somewhat).

So!

If you (friends and family), MAYBE had been planning on getting me a LEETLE PRESENT, I ask you to consider instead . . .

SENDING ME BIRTHDAY MONEY AT PayPal.Me/csecooney!!!

I’ll be sure it goes to the CARE AND FEEDING OF ARTISTS, the RENTING of SOUND and LIGHTING equipment and the LABOR with which to operate it.

And I promise, anything leftover WILL BE DONATED TO THE JONNYCAKE!

If you LOVE GIVING PRESENTS but you don’t HAVE THE MONEY (a position I’ve been in SO MUCH OF MY LIFE), please spread the word on Social Media!

Here’s the FACEBOOK INVITE!

And thank you. Thank you. I love this singing, this making art.

I love this turning of songs into food for the hungry.

I have been wanting to blog, but Facebook has been a kind of time-sink this last month.

Since last I blogged . . .

• I won the World Fantasy Award for Bone Swans (had adventures driving to Columbus in driving rain Friday night rush-hour lower Manhattan and Jersey City traffic, with Carlos Hernandez and Jessica Wick; we split a hotel room with John O’Neill of Black Gate and writer Patty Templeton; I got terribly sick; gave a silly but heartfelt speech; had more adventures driving back)

• The elections (and fallout)

• I met Dr. Keramet Reiter, whose book 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement I narrated for Tantor, and which book I cannot recommend more highly. We had tea with her and her partner at the Russian Tea Room, and I attended her guest lecture at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at CUNY

• Leonard Cohen put out the flame

• I wrote this blog for Black Gate Magazine about Wolfe and Parisien’s The Starlit Wood

• I signed a contract to narrate the audiobook of Bone Swans for Tantor

• My roommate met Hillary Clinton at our local bookstore

• …The very bookstore at which I gave this interview, which was also in the paper

• My father, stepmother, and Gary Daigle also came to town to give a concert

• My beloved Hernandez got into Rich Horton’s Year’s Best 2017, with “The Magical Properties of Unicorn Ivory”—one of his amazing Gabi Réal stories

• My wonderful Patty Templeton got a job as Staff Writer at DGO Magazine (Arts and Culture columnist), all the way in DURANGO!

• Also, this amazing man read and loved Hernandez’s THE ASSIMILATED CUBAN’S GUIDE TO QUANTUM SANTERIA, and I wanted to show you:

So, you see. November. A mixed bag here at the Belfry. We try to keep active, to take our poison in small doses (we try very hard; we often fail), extract use from fury, remain kind when we can, and read a lot of Terri Windling blogs. Like this one, on DARK BEAUTY.

I’m not ready to blow up 2016, and I won’t be—until January 1st, 2017. (Although I did appreciate John Oliver doing it. As a musician friend of mine once said, about François Rabbath defenestrating his double bass: “It’s always funny when you throw something out a window.”)

The thing is, I saw people ready to blow up the year way back in January. All year long, friends have been figuratively blowing up the year, the month, the week, the day—things were and/or seemed that bad. But things have always been bad. If not here, then elsewhere. Everywhere.

This is all we have. And although I like fireworks and drama as much as the next person, I am going to wrestle this colossus of a year, this global darkness and local joy, this thing called 2016, until it shrinks to seed-size and is reborn as 2017.

2017 is going to be hard enough without us giving up on it before it begins.

So. It’s time to listen to some music. Cohen’s YOU WANT IT DARKER, Simon’s STRANGER TO STRANGER, S. J. Tucker’s MOVING MEDITATION, anything. Everything. Music will help. And food. And helping other people.

To that end, we’re doing a concert in December, and all proceeds will benefit our local food pantry.

Here’s the FACEBOOK INVITE.

And here’s the flyer:

And here’s the set list:

 

ACT 1: Classics

OVID’S “MEDUSA” (Christie Max Williams)

Song: Cootchie Cootchie, Medusa Baby

“WHEN I AM LAID IN EARTH” (Anne Flammang, Faye Ringel)

Song: Dido in Effigy

“MEDEA” MONOLOGUE (Miriam Mikiel Grill)

Song: Medea’s Dragon

HOMER’S “CIRCE” / Song: Circe embedded (Liz Duff Adams, Julia Rios, Dorian Mendez)

“THE JABBERWOCKY” (Kelsey Alexander, Carlos Hernandez, Shveta Thakrar, Eric Michaelian,Christie Max Williams, Jessica Wick)

Song: The Jub Jub

ACT 2: Contemporary

Song: Gentle Caliban

10 Minute Play: “BECALMED” (Miriam, Eric, Anne, Kelsey)

Song: Black Widow’s Waltz

“GOOD NEIGHBORS” (Jessica Wick)

Song: Foxgirl Song Cycle 1

“YET I BREATHE” (by Julia Rios, with Kelsey, Eric, Dorian, Liz, Christie, Jessica, Shveta)

Song: Lady Knight / Pale Lady

“In Lieu of the Stories My Santera Abuela Should Have Told Me Herself, This Poem” (by Carlos Hernandez, with Kelsey Alexander)

Song: Maggot

“NAGINI’S NIGHT SONG” (by Shveta Thakrar) / Song: Barrow Brine embedded

“LYSISTRATA” SCENE (Julia, Liz, Dorian, Anne)

Song/Parade: Lysistrata, Strut Your Stuff

It may be a song (sort of talk-singy, maybe, with a weird beat behind it), or it may be a poem, or it may just be this day’s doggerel.

But it was inspired by Kelly Robson on Facebook today, so here you go.

WISHFUL THINKING

by C. S. E. Cooney
for Kelly Robson

Those Pre-Raphaelite bros, they’d pose you so fine
Drown you in chloral and whisky and wine
But me when I model, I preen for Artemisia
My Rossetti’s a poem penned by Christina

Cuppa tea, grab a seat, turn on the TV
There’s President Wells (we call her “Ida B”)
Tonight watch that speech by H. Tubman, VP
Takes the stand in a hoodie, then takes a knee

Summer Olympics, they’re fencing with sabres
Veronica Franco versus Hypatia
But who gets the gold: poet? philosopher?
One feeds the other, a draw either/or

Hafta scoot to jiu-jitsu with Edith’s suffragettes
Then a dance at the Follies headlining Colette
Alight at a nightclub to watch Lady Day
In duet with Odetta–they’ll take us away

Now newspapers fill with our women in the stars
Nellie Bly on the fly reports back from Mars:
“Sor Juana Inès Debuts New Play Tonight!
We’ll be broadcasting live, at the speed of light…”

I CANNOT WAIT TO READ THIS!

Day Two of my Social Media vacation, and I am following in the footsteps of Amal El-Mohtar, who did much the same not too long ago.

In fact, I am the veriest copycat.

My father, a disciple of René Girard, might call this experiment an exercise in “mimetic desire.” (Actually, he’d probably say I was oversimplifying, and then tease me about it.)

See, I’d read Amal’s latest blog posts, which uploaded automatically to Twitter and Facebook–without her having to be present on either platform!–and I’d get all . . . wistful. And jealous! And restless. And confused.

All my old blog longing, which never really went away, was reignited. Recently, when I saw an exchange on Facebook wherein several people on the thread proclaimed, “I MISS LJ–and yet, here I am!” I nodded in abject understanding.

I’d Google things like “How to take a social media break” and then go ahead and post that day’s selfies, or whatever I was cooking, or poetic thoughts on the nature of the sunset (with iPhoto upload simulacra yadayada that could not do justice to the original anyway) and then, frantic I missed something of Extreme Importance in the Lives of EVERYONE I LOVED, I’d spend a few more hours scrolling, scrolling.

And reading any interesting or appalling news articles currently circulating. And circulating a few myself.

(I haven’t stopped reading the news.) (I think it’s important.) (But oh, the news.)

So, my will-power failing, I needed to know how Amal–who’s MUCH more a social media butterfly even than yours truly, C. S. E. Cooney, and who, moreover, is a self-proclaimed EXTROVERT–did it.

But I didn’t want to text her, because I figured if she needs a break from her 1 billion friends and fans on the world wide web, she probably needs a break from ME too. Better to just efface oneself . . .

NO COONEY THIS IS NOT HOW EL-MOHTAR OPERATES, I reminded myself (nicely) (but in ALL CAPS) (perhaps she has scolded me on this subject before?), and texted her.

SIDE NOTE:

One of the reasons I knew I needed to get off social media for a while was that, after nine years on Facebook, I was only just starting to get my first visceral inklings of what other friends had described to me over the years: that “loneliness in a crowd” feeling; a sense of being perceived as obnoxious, self-aggrandizing, boastful, vain; and a vague, hideous, peripheral, uncertain and uncomfortable feeling that a few of my loved ones–my friends–no longer really, you know, liked me.

Don’t get me wrong. Nobody was remotely unkind. I was still surrounded by loving, cheerleading, funny, thoughtful, beautiful people, doing their best in the world and for it.

But I had that feeling anyway.

It was time, I thought, for a break. Write letters, emails, text! Pull back. Lay low. Cultivate and curate what my father calls “fertile boredom.”

And so, yes, I texted my Amalface.

What’s more, I texted several other wise friends who occasionally take it upon themselves to vanish from their virtual public, and do it so gracefully that they really ought to be accompanied by glitterbombs, stadium applause, and the serenading of seraphim.

Instead, they blink out like candleflames, and reappear when they’re ready, casting their warmth and light a little farther into the darkness.

My friends Julia and Tiffany gave me great advice about deleting apps from my phone.

Now, Twitter? No problem. GOOD RIDDANCE! Twitter scares me anyway, and I was never any good at it. But I didn’t have a Facebook app. I signed into Facebook through Safari. So it was always there. Waiting for me.

“Sign out,” Julia advised. “Move the Safari opening icon into a faraway corner of your phone on a different page than your home screen.”

Make it harder to get to.

I did that, and opted out of my “automatic log-in.” I very seriously considered disabling my Facebook account for the month, but I do sometimes use it for business and arranging meetings, so I didn’t want to cut myself off entirely.

Voila! The thing was accomplished. (And look! Second blog in TWO DAYS!)

I did duck onto Facebook–but only via my laptop–once yesterday and once tonight, in case anyone had emergency private-messaged me.

Already I feel some of that twitchiness, that unhappy anxiety easing a little. Now is the time for deep quiet, and also for a more specific kind of outreach to my very fine and good and dear friends, to make reparations where I may, and when I may not, to gracefully concede that some distances have grown too great to sustain a meaningful friendship, and to acknowledge my part in that.

I want to leave you with this gorgeous thing Amal texted me about her own hiatus:

This beautiful calm set in.

Oh Claire I cannot recommend this enough…The cycles and brains space it has freed up…

I started READING BOOKS for PLEASURE instead of staring at the internet, and instead of insta-share dopamine cycles of gratification I . . . Yes, blogged more, with photos all in one place . . .

Something to return to and think about instead of just offering up for consumption and vanishment.

(Later)

Sometimes I just . . . want to be in a still place.

I, too, am searching for that still place.

I’m prepping a script for recording–23/7: Pelican Bay and the Rise of Long Term Solitary Confinement, by Keramet Reiter–and among my long list of things I need to research was the name Hannah Arendt.

I’d known of her, of course–for years. But not by name. I knew her by the phrase “banality of evil.” That’s been with me since childhood. There are so many things I should know already, but somehow have not yet learnt.

When I YouTubed her, trying to figure out how to pronounce her name, I found this speech. Which is breathtaking.

And now, I think, I must watch this movie.