As David Byrne cries in "Born Under Punches": 'I'm catching up with myself!' Below are some things I am catching up on, myself, after recently launching a world premiere in West Virginia's capital city which was fabulous and exhausting to birth.
Read More
Here are some snapshots, hipshots and night shots, from wandering the highways, byways, and lifeways of the world through which my iPhone moves, in the small towns, small cities and hills of West Virginia.
Read More
A couple of eightysomething artists refuse to stop being wonderful, while the capital city of West Virginia pays colorful homage to the passing of another master artist.
Read More
On the way to a jam in the Appalachian outback, I pass the House of Prayer Full Gospel Church. Wait—are there 'partial gospel' churches out there?
Read More
One apartment complexity; one bridge I once ascended; one very black Tuxedo Cat; one father-son rolling encounter; one dulcimer dude; and one fencing match in the green, green hills of Earth.
Read More
The only sounds I hear while standing at the foot of the silos is the whip and whoosh of occasional traffic on W.Va. 2, a trail mix of various birds charting out their personal space in song, and now and again the wind whistling through the portals of these abandoned legacies of a pre-industrial rural heartland.
Read More
From where I recline in my living room right now in the West Virginia exurbs, I hear the tree frogs rasp outside on a starry night, clinging to the scaly bark and branches of sycamore, pine, and maple trees on our property. Time to think of something other than the news ...
Read More
About the night I never slept with Allen Ginsberg and the interview, song and music video this yielded after our encounter deep in the West Virginia hills in 1983.
Read More
“You know ... ” the doctor says, leaning to speak into the young man’s ear as the song proceeds. “The bodhran was first used by Irish clans as a battle drum. It gave a steady rhythm for Celtic warriors facing conflicts. Warrior time.”
Read More
Looking this way and that, high and low, up and down and all around on a recent walkabout in downtown Cincinnati: A Photo Essay
Read More
"Let the boys have the damn song." How "Over the Rainbow" almost didn't make the cut for "The Wizard of Oz." A look back at a "sacred" song in the American canon, on the occasion of a down-and-dirty music video version by the boys.
Read More
Here's a conversation with God about the whole idea of God. Raising the possibility that everywhere you turn can be an occasion for exclamations of 'Lo and behold ...'
Read More
What do you get when you mix a relentless avatar of sustained outrage with epic bad actors in pursuit of money over lives? An American journalism hero in West Virginia, is who.
Read More
Who, pray tell, / was Mr. Brainwash? / Did Andy Warhol know? / These questions / agitate my head, as / my light goes red to green ...
Read More
Lakes and oceans talk to us in a language we don't understand with our cognition, but with our bodies. To be more specific, with our very cells. You might say it is the soothing language of negative ions. Here, try it ...
Read More