PHONOGRAPHY: Writing In Sound

A man obsessed with time builds a house that's a giant clock.

Finally you can watch the entirety of "IMMUNE!" now released in all 4 parts (plus a prologue) at: www.immunethefilm.com   Part fiction, part narrative, part superhero origin story (kinda), part personal narrative, part graphic novel, the film takes a deep look at the reasons we all might want to believe in superheroes, and the dangerous places we end up as we get lost in the world of fantasy. "a unique take on film as self portrait"Official Selection of the Chicago Underground Film Festival.

Blind people playing baseball?  Yeah.  That's right.   All you need is a ball that beeps. (photo credit: "baseball" by theseanster93 via flickr creative commons)

The alternate title for this was going to be the Isaac Hayes-esque "Girl, I Wanna Get You In My Belly Button T-Shirt Hole" but the mp3 title field wouldn't fit it.  But now that you know that, I mean, c'mon, aren't you curious....? 

Because this is a much longer piece than I normally produce, and because in writing it, it naturally broke down into seven distinct parts, I wanted to give the listener the option of listening to the piece as a whole or to each section individually. So I created an enhanced podcast, which allows you to interact with it the same way you do a CD. You can jump forward to the next track or back to one you want to hear again. Also each track has it’s own chapter title and individual artwork. The only downside is that not every portable music player can handle an enhanced podcast (sorry) so I had to make two separate ones.

This project started because I was interested in the hundreds of towns around America that have been evacuated and then purposely flooded in order to make reservoirs. In many cases, the streets, the buildings, still exist underwater. When droughts happen, these town resurface and the people who lived in these towns often come back to see what’s left of their old homes. To me, this was a very powerful image. I saw it as such a perfect example of the idea that “you can never go home again.” As I started researching I kept finding all these different parallels between water and memory, between water and time, in mythology, psychology, physiology, in the great floods, and icebergs, in swimming pools, and ancient rivers. It began to feel like maybe the reason water kept appearing as a metaphor for these things, was because it spoke to a basic human connection between the two. That maybe somewhere in the nature of water itself, we could find the nature of the human mind. (((NOTE: This piece is a slight departure from my earlier work. The piece is written less as a monologue and more like a transom of ideas set to music that I've written for it. It’s separated into 7 different sections, like tracks on a record, each with a different perspective on the relationship between water and memory. So to that extent it should be listened to more like a music album with narration instead of lyrics.)))

I mean, seriously... The piece is 3 1/2 minutes. With a title like that, do I really have to write a description to convince you to listen to it? (Non-fiction?)

Ryan Scammell finds some pages from a young girls' diary (?) in the closet in his apartment building. He reads us something she had written about the deaf man who lived across the street from her and what happened when she finally tried to talk to him. (Fiction)

When a woman finds the wind-chimes she made in 8th grade shop class, she calls an old friend to talk about the thing they did and why she still can't forgive herself. If you're interested, please visit the website for information about the origins of this piece.

As a special Thanksgiving episode, this is a story about fathers, sons, the woods, and the never-ending quest to figure out what it means to be a man. (Non-fiction)

One of a series of short-short pieces about things lost and things found. A couple receives a letter from a friend who has been dead for almost a year. (Fiction)

We like to believe that we have control on our lives. That we can sculpt perfect moments around us. That if we put ourselves in the right setting with the right people everything can be everything we want it to be. A few weeks ago, two of my best friends, Nell and Pete, came in from out of town for what started as a perfect weekend. But as the weekend got closer to the end, and as we tried to hold on to that perfect moment, things spun out of our control when the forces of nature and of life changed everything. (Non-fiction)

Or: How not to commune with foreign cultures. -- I lived in Australia for seven months in 2003 and 2004, almost half of which I spent travelling in a car with my friend Dave and a german girl named Susanne. This is a story about an experience I had at a beautiful place in Litchfield National Park called The Buley Rock Pools. That's actually a picture of Dave at the Buley Rock Pools to the right. This piece was originally published in a literary journal called Storyscape at www.storyscapejournal.com. (Non-fiction)

What it means to be 20 years old. (Non-fiction)

There's a million ways to fall in love, and a million ways to fall apart. Sometimes all it takes is an email. (Non-fiction)

Liza Minnelli is downing red wine in her tour bus. The stagehands all together look like a Judas Priest cover band. Coney Island is a Ferris Wheel slowing to a stop. Andy Warhol! Incubated babies! Lawsuits! Lions in flames! It all comes together at a Liza concert in 2005. (Non-fiction)