I think something about writers that most people wouldn't realize is how it calls for so much time spent sifting through the past. Even the recent past has a charge, and a melancholy separation. Here I am writing about what happened in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago and it is so much more immediate to me than to anyone else who shared it; they've moved ( Read more... )

I made one of my late-night pilgrimages to the waterfront yesterday. Down North 3rd in front of the Death Metal bar that always has a hearse parked in front of it. At 3:30 a.m. the metal nation was out in force, all black t-shirts and black leather, even though it was dank, humid night. I wonder if Motorhead was in town ( Read more... )

Sleep is the brother of death.
               - Greek Proverb

Death's brother, sleep.
              - The Aeneid

I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death
              - Nas, New York State of Mind

One of the greatest has left the building.

I just returned from a writing assignment in Pittsburgh. The people I was writing about partied like rock stars every day and into the early morning. As part of the gig, I partied with them, generally not getting to bed until five or six in the morning. Along with the copious amounts of alcohol, I never had a regular place to sleep, and my partner ( Read more... )

‘On the Road’ at 50

By The New York Times

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"Published 50 years ago, “On the Road” still sells about 100,000 copies a year in various paperback editions, according to Viking. And while its era as a counterculture standard-bearer may have passed, it has far outlasted many other cult classics.

Viking is releasing a 50th- ( Read more... )

For the last month or so I've been working on a crazy story in Pittsburgh and have had limited email. I should be back to civilization by Monday.

This evening I came home from soccer and found my Polish landlady sitting on the stoop, wearing a black dress ( Read more... )

Used to be, I would listen to rock songs and their three-minute anthemic dynamics all the live-long day. But now, I find a steady diet of the jazz avant-garde much more pleasing to the ear. Archie Shepp and Mal Waldron this week.

I went to watch the Macy's fireworks at the waterfront on North 3rd. It was much more crowded this year, but I was able to pick my along wharf wall in front of the big white warehouse building. Sadly, the real estate moguls who have constructed a forty story 'luxury condo tower' on North 4th, had leveled the small wood that grew above the ( Read more... )