This is from 2010. Spoiler alert: I never wrote the piece for Bkish. I was too busy writing my own vernacular work.
Reading Oscar Wao, I could follow most (not all) of the Spanish…at one point the notes I was writing as I read started ending in Spanish, too.
But I understood all of the fanboy vernacular. All of that Jack Kirby Source Wall Fourth World Ringwraith stuff.
I’ll probably do a longer post on this at bkish, but I am really impressed by this book.
Jonathan Fitzgerald and David Session still do many things, but I don’t believe Patrol is one of them. I don’t believe the site has been updated since 2015, which is perhaps around the time David started working at The Daily Beast and Jonathan began a PhD program, though I’m not exactly sure. The piece linked below is tied up with my having become around the same time a contributor to The Huffington Post. Those days were like the wild west. No one knew how online publishing was going to work out, and we were all doing lots of things for free. Prospecting, really.
I have a new article at Patrol Magazine today. It’s about indie music and faith.
Thank you, Jonathan Fitzgerald and David Sessions, for working with the piece and publishing it.
A follow-up from a few days later in 2010.
Looks like my “Open Letters to the Radio” were read by some people. Now that Civil Twilight is following me on Twitter, I feel like I should expand on my comment from last week. I was mostly making a joke about those vampire books and movies. I actually didn’t know civil twilight was meteorological (?) term, and I’m assuming there’s an intended double-meaning about the piss-poor state of civilization. It’s a cool concept. Just not a great name. Thanks for the follow!
Other letters answered this week: a couple rejections from non-paying fiction venues for some experimental things. I have a good feeling about some other pieces currently making their way out there in the world.
This is from 2010. It’s kind of funny. But if you want to do almost anything well, you need healthy sleep. Knowing that is the difference between my late and early 30s.
if it’s quarter to 4, I must be writing an essay about Bob Dylan in one window and an essay about postmodern ontologies in another. check.
Not mentioned when I wrote this post originally? It was also my 30th birthday. Almost a decade later, we still have books.
In the course of looking for a cover image of They Don’t Dance Much, I came across Book Worship. You need to check that out, especially if you’re one of those people who isn’t made sick by the (looming?) death of book-as-object. I get sad about the death of cassette-tape-as-object, so you can probably figure where I come down on totally paperless publishing.
Book Worship reminded me of this awesome Flickr set I found a few months ago. There’s something about this mid-century design aesthetic that makes me want to write better.
Bkish.com no longer exists. I don’t remember anything about whatever this essay was. I’m guessing from context it had something to do with James Ross and Flannery O’Connor. I was reading a lot of Flannery then. I should read her a lot again soon.
My first contributing post is up at Bkish.com. Check it out. By the way, The Habit of Being is pretty good so far.
Dear Civil Twilight,
It’s a shame about your name.
Dear David Byrne,
You really, really do sound like Robin Williams. That’s not a critique. Just an observation. Sort of like how somewhere in my mind, Tom Hanks and Billy Joel are the same person. I don’t think that’s just because of “My Life”s role as “theme from Bosom Buddies.” You never did any work for Mork & Mindy, did you?
Isn’t it strange that Mork & Mindy was a spinoff of Happy Days? Did you know that the guy who wrote the “Happy Days” theme song (not “Rock Around The Clock”) also wrote “Killing Me Softly” and that he wrote it about Don McLean? Sort of brings everything into focus.
Dear Gorgeous Sixties Love Song,
You know who you are. Please stop.
Dear Freebird,
I want to apologize for getting out of the car before you were done this morning. I was in a hurry and wasn’t thinking. You deserve better. I can be better.
Chris Cocca 