happy snow days!

Happy snow days, everyone!

I'm finally out of this snowstorm thanks to some mysterious entity who cleared my driveway. Okay, I think it was just the neighborhood association thing, but I like the idea of a kind-hearted soul who goes around clearing people's driveways.

Anyway, I'm now repatriated in Appalachia, having moved back to Virginia. It's exciting and strange to return as an adult to a town that has so many memories of childhood and adolescence embedded in it. Especially adolescence--I can almost taste the nights of endless driving my friends and I used to do, this one overpass we'd always stop at, the mix tapes we'd make.

Not that any of that is all that different from how I spend my time now, of course. I've fallen off the radar a bit lately since VenusZine (and VenusZine.com) have sadly shut down and the music writing has been slow elsewhere. I want to do more of it, though, so if anybody can suggest a place to which I could contribute, I'd be glad for any recommendations.  I do have a couple short stories coming out soon (one in Ocean and one in Nate Pritts' awesome H_NGM_N) and a batch of poems in slantpoetry, so I'm glad that I'll at least have something to show for myself.

No job yet here, though I've been watching an impressively semi-professional amount of Hal Hartley movies. Can that be a job? I think Amateur is my favorite so far, though I also really like Trust and The Unbelievable Truth. I have sadly little to recommend in the way of reading--books are playing the part of Things to Be Unpacked right now--but I'm looking forward to reading A.S. Byatt's latest novel soon. 

C'est tout. Enjoy the winter, wherever you are.

Giving in, Reading List, Marshmallow Fluff

I just gave in. I'm on Twitter now as erinlyndal . We'll see what comes of this. Feel free to add me.

Hope everybody is having a fantastic Friday. It's started to feel like fall here, and aside from slightly autumnal walks down the bike paths, I'm in denial.

Lately I'm reading an odd mishmash of books. The poetry I keep reading is:
Practical Water by Brenda Hillman
Sea Change by Jorie Graham
Tales of Horror by Laura Mullen
Figured Image by Anne-Marie Albiach

The poetry I'm writing is, well, um... At least I'm becoming acquainted with the many viruses of the honeybee, which must count for something.

Nothing interesting going on this weekend aside from a Marshmallow Fluff Festival of some sort. Yes, that kind of fluff. One wonders just how much they can do with it, but I expect I'll find out if I go.

broken and entered

So I got robbed yesterday. Somebody broke into my apartment, door kicking and all.

I live in the most random place for this to happen.

When I got home, I was tired and just took a nap. When I woke up I went to get my laptop and it wasn't where it always is. I started berating myself for being so absent-minded and right then there was a knock at my door. A police officer. This is when I noticed other things gone, my camera, my emergency cash.

My guitar must have been too big, thankfully, and my theremin too puzzling.

I can't believe my laptop is gone. I can't believe all its words are off somewhere else. I can't believe somebody kicked in my door just to take my things. I can't believe someone else was there. I found myself getting angry at my cat for not acting more freaked out. I was terrified all last night, heart pounding when I got up to go to the bathroom.

Today my landlord and maintenance man are reinforcing all the doors.

I wish they could give me my safety back. I wish they could give me my computer back.

I don't know which one I want more.

Seeking Co-Editor

Hello all--

hope everybody is enjoying the humidity, which has been sponsoring some rockin' hair over this way.

So I've decided that I want to put together a lit journal/thing/endeavor of some kind--at least for a single issue--and it'd be more fun to have a partner in crime. I don't think it'll be too time-consuming and I'm very open-minded about it; it'd just be nice to have someone whose tastes complement mine and vice versa.

If you'd be interested in getting involved, send me an email: erinlyndalmartin at gmail.com .

Thanks. :)

remembering the rockies

I was just reading something about Sigur Ros and had this lovely memory. Six years ago, I was flying from Milwaukee to Albuquerque before taking the Greyhound out to Taos. I'd stayed up all night in order to make my early-morning flight and couldn't sleep on the plane despite having been up for thirty-some hours by then. I had a layover in Denver, which meant flying over the Rockies, something I'd never done before. I was listening to Sigur Ros in my haze of sleep deprivation when the Rockies came into view. I just remember staring and starting at them as we flew between wisps and there was that perfectly alien soundtrack to the whole experience. 

I'd like to say I rocked Albuquerque that night, but really I just went to the best $32 hotel room I've stayed in and fell asleep for many, many hours.

This has me thinking about Taos now. I stayed at a hostel there called the Abominable Snowmansion. You can stay in teepees there if you want! I was staying in the girls' bunk room, which was empty but for me.  I just remembered that I helped the hostel owner's mom plant a garden, and I wondered if what I planted there ever grew. She did my Vedic astrology chart that night for me and I typed a letter that she dictated to John Kerry (this was when he was running for President). I'd come to Taos for a lot of reasons, but I actually found most of my satisfaction there at the hostel, having those deep but transient conversations with whoever was around, playing Chopin on their old piano. I went with some folks there to a warm springs (I think it was called Stagecoach Springs) that used to be a popular natural bathhouse back in the day. We worked our way through a case of Tecate with our feet in the water. It was a good day. 

before I forget...

I put up a page about my band bio writing services (and similar stuff). 

http://elmpublicity.blogspot.com/

I really enjoy writing for musicians, and I like to think that I give a quality product at an affordable rate in a timely fashion. 

Listen to me getting all corporate.

sushi in empty escalators

Tonight I went out for a first date, which was also the first time I'd had sushi (well, just the vegetable sort, if that counts) in far too long. Lately I like taking the subway because they've been remodeling one of the escalators in the stop nearest my house, Davis Square. I keep meaning to take my camera so I can get a picture of the escalator roped off and gutted of its stairs, which are piled up against a wall near the Charlie Card machines. I'm always moved by images of transition like that--once, in Tuscaloosa, they were resteepling a church, and I remember the eerie gray-white of the steeple stretched across the ground on a foggy, full-moon night. 

Despite the many hours I spent at the coffee shop today, little writing was accomplished. I updated my resumé and worked on a piece for the Albums of 1999 retrospective that PopMatters is doing, but that was the low height of my productivity. Later I had a wonderful conversation with someone fantastic who's helping me (hopefully) find funding sources so I can leave my job and write and publish and travel for a few  months. She's much more connected than I could ever hope to be, and I'm grateful for her help, wherever this takes me. 

Now I'm in the liminal space between taking the sleeping pill and said sleeping pill kicking in, which always makes me feel this quiet sense of urgency despite the fact there's nothing I must do now but curl up with my cat and fall asleep in my new sundress. 

Press Envy! Micachu! Kittens!

Reading the homepage of my friend MC Hyland's Double Cross Press has me drooling and wishing I were cool enough to print stuff as well as write it. She talks about searching for the right materials and appearance for each project in a way entirely evocative of the search for perfectly matching form and content that I always go through in poetry. 

A while back I was interviewing Micachu (of Micachu & the Shapes) and I told her that I first listened to her album because I heard she was a fan of Harry Partch, the 20th century composer/madman (what was that story about leaving a knife in somebody's pillow?) and creator of instruments. In fact, many of his pieces can only be played on those particular instruments, so to recreate them,  you must obtain or manufacture that instrument and learn it. In a way that's the height of pretension but also the height of creativity. Micachu says she sees it as starting with nothing and ending up with something, as really really being involved with all parts of writing a song. 

Artful presses have a similar effect in literature, I think. Is the other alternative creating our own language for all of our work? Or are there other manners I'm missing? The medium (in a web v. print way) plays into this, of course, as well as the actions one forces a reader to take in order to absorb or experience a work. (I.e. mouse-clicking, page-turning, unfolding, scrolling, etc.) Perhaps this is me looking for yet another path in which to extend my level of control-freakness over things I write.

Onto the topic of kittehs! Every now and then I think of "getting a kitten for my cat." I usually don't go farther than that once I realize the flawed logic of that idea. But last night I found myself browsing the "kitten personals" at my favorite local animal rescue place, which is where I got my beloved Dart. I was tempted by a couple cute faces but I know it's not the right time for a new pet. But I wanted to recommend them anyway. If you're in the Boston area, you can't go wrong with The Kitty Connection. They do a really good job of matching cats with owners--they'll tell you if a cat hates kids or dogs or people or whatever so you don't have an unpleasant surprise--and they even let you return your cat within a certain amount of time if you didn't get the right one. Now that's what I call quality!

Dart wants me to add that his personal said that he was the loviest cat you'll ever meet and likes to be held like a baby. Obviously, it worked on me and turned out to be totally true. 

Gratitude, Brothers Quay, Jenny Owen Youngs

Hello all--

After realizing how many ridiculously fantastic people are out there on the Internet (perhaps more than I quite knew were in the world), it seems more important to keep in touch with strangers. Hopefully, May is being kind to all of you. May and I have been struggling; it's been a rough patch, but having friends to see me through is wonderful. I'm grateful to you and looking forward to meeting those of you in person who I've only met through text so far.

Boston is finally warming up. The other day I went to the Coolidge Theatre for part of the Coolidge Award festivities--this year the Brothers Quay received the award, so we got to watch their short films and commercials and then there was a Q&A. I hadn't seen their Eurydice retelling, one of their more recent pieces, but it was lovely and haunting but in a less cute-creepy way than most of their work. 

I interviewed Jenny Owen Youngs after that for VenusZine.com. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in an interview. She's hilarious and genuine, and I hope she gets to be super-famous and spoiled rotten by the world. Today I'll hopefully be writing that up, turning in grades, and copyediting a few more pages of the next Big Shot. Hopefully I'll work on some fiction while there's still natural light. I mean the sun, not the beer. But I would drink Natural Light while working on fiction. I'm not sure what it would do to the stories, but I've had worse influences.

xoxo

Hello!

This page is more or less a placeholder until I get around to making a website. I wanted there to be some way for people to get in touch with me if they've encountered my poems, music journalism, or anything else.

If you'd like to recruit me for something (reading, publication, copy-editing gig, Cutest Kitten Contest Judge) or just say hello, I can be reached at erinlyndalmartin at gmail dot com.

xoxoxo Erin