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other than what we have come to expect a crowd in the bar goes ooh when they hear what the reading thing is colon a seasonal series that asks writers to interpret a phrase not easily translated into english ooh right comma so on with the readings then: Read the rest of this entry »

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Dear Internet:

I am writing all over you tonight. I hope you don’t mind. This letter is going to be about me.

We’ve been together for a long time now, or so it seems, and I still feel like we don’t know each other that well. Do you feel that way? Like a hurricane?

Joking about the weather.

Dear Internet. Do you ever feel like people won’t leave you alone? I bet you are feeling this way. And if you are anything like me … Read the rest of this entry »

When Michael Lewis was twenty-seven years old he gave up a career on Wall Street to earn a tiny fraction of his future salary to become a full-time writer. His employers, his father and his Princeton pedigree deemed him insane, but for Lewis the choice was clear: he wanted, more than anything, to write.

Today, he’s a best-selling author. Film adaptations of his books Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003) and The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game (2006) have starred Hollywood A-listers, his financial commentary has gone viral, and he’s penciled in on the White House calendar—to go behind the scenes with Obama on the campaign trail. All Hunter S. Thompson-esque allusions aside, Lewis is living the kind of writing life that makes heads spin even without the psychedelics. On Wednesday, February 29^th he spoke with Adam Savage at the Herbst Theatre as part of City Arts & Lectures. Read the rest of this entry »

I went to the Jarett Kobek event on Wednesday night at City Lights (Jan. 18), where he was explaining his book ATTA. I thought I might be at odds with the premise that Atta didn’t like tall buildings and that’s why he went through with 9/11, but I wanted to hear Kobek in person and maybe ask some questions. I did learn a few things about Atta’s background, with Kobek having done some research (which he admitted was limited), and I was willing to accept his opinion that a story by Martin Amis in The New Yorker (“The Last Days of Muhammad Atta”) was horrible, but eventually I was one of those who walked out—and there weren’t many there to begin with. I lasted over an hour, until he ended his presentation by giving it over to a woman in London reading from her book on Skype. This conveniently left no room for questions and answers (which may have occurred at the end of the evening, but I was gone by then). Read the rest of this entry »

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“This perpetual toggling between nothing being new beneath the sun and everything having very recently changed absolutely is perhaps the central driving tension of my work. Our now has become at once more unforgivingly brief and unprecedentedly elastic; the half-life of media product grows shorter still till it threatens to vanish altogether. Everything into some weird quantum logic of its own. The Warholian 15 minutes become a quark-like blink. Yet once admitted to the culture’s consensus pantheon certain things seem destined to be with us for a very long time indeed. This is a function in large part of the rewind button, and we would all of us, to some extent, wish to be in heavy rotation.” Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I caught the initial explanation of ITCH: Investing in the Creative Hunch.

Founder Todd Brown calls it “a pilot initiative of a new form of social-cultural networking. Connecting projects in theater, dance, music, literature, and visual art, the ITCH creates opportunities for the general public to participate in the behind-the-scenes of artistic production while increasing social networking opportunities in real time and space.”

Tonight, Brown and other project leaders will meet for a potluck discussion about the idea, overviews on some of the works-in-progress, and a casual meet and greet. You can read a profile and find out more info about the meeting here, but below are some soundbytes I particularly like: Read the rest of this entry »

(Evan Karp)

I made it to City Arts & Lectures for the first time this past week to see Miranda July in conversation with her longtime friend Julia Bryan-Wilson, and I’d like to share some of the things I heard. For those of you who don’t know (you probably know), Miranda is one of my favorite artists; if you don’t know why you should click here, here, here, here, and it’s not too late to go here.

“Yes, I wanted the solution to my script,” she said, “but also sort of to life in general, and it seemed better to talk with strangers than to just keep spinning in my own head and my sort of fictional world.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve said this so many times and in so many ways now, and this book says it very exuberantly, that influence is understated or concealed when it needn’t be, or that I’m the sum of my cultural responsiveness… Read the rest of this entry »

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The reason we have that sweet spot is that we want our students to be connected to and engaged with writers who are just at the next level above them. Because that’s who you’re really going to learn from, and who you really need to know, because those are the people you’re going to hang out with, those are the people you’re going to read and are the closest to what you’re doing. Read the rest of this entry »

The avant-garde is the people of the world. Never more in my adult life have I realized that the avant-garde is the people of the earth [than] now. No artists, no movement—art movement—can come that will be superior to this motion that’s happened with people all over the world to change the world. Finally. Finally and at last. I’m not talking to idiots. You’ve all felt this! You’ve felt it in your life—don’t tell me you haven’t. You’ve felt it many times in your life. You might have it good, but you’ve seen people eating out of trash cans. I’ve seen grandmothers getting cans so they can make a few dollars. Come on! And we’re supposed to be a society of fairness and democracy. Please! It’s not so. But now has begun a moment that actually is the democratic movement in the world. And that’s why I can only say as a poet I put my words in relation to that. That’s what the poet’s imagination should be.

— Jack Hirschman in conversation with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Selz at Meridian Gallery on November 4th, 2011.

The Q&A followed a couple of readings, which Ferlinghetti “was told to keep… short so we could have a good bullshit session.” The conversation dealt exclusively with the Occupy movement.