False Autumn

https://videopress.com/v/3Wlmy9Kn?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true We had a false autumn over the weekend. I spent both Saturday and Sunday morning at the Blue Bottle cafe on the corner, sitting at a table under a tree (oak? sweetgum?) in the back of the graveled patio. These false autumns are almost more melancholy than the actual one that comes a month … Continue reading False Autumn →

Popeyes

The big struggle of my day is now stopping myself from buying a chicken sandwich at Popeyes. Work is catastrophically boring now ... and I mean the pure existential reality of being a 56-year old man at a job. My actual job is pretty good. But it's still a job. And I've been going to … Continue reading Popeyes →

Delta Village in Tallulah

I was working on a song with a line about the world being upside down and kept picturing an actual room turned on its side. It hit me that I was picturing a fun house at an amusement park I went to when I was a kid. Delta Village. In Tallulah, Louisiana. There was an … Continue reading Delta Village in Tallulah →

Can I Upload My Soul?

Everyone seems to think we’re close to being able to upload our brains. Or, at least, I feel like every time I watch any show or movie set in the future, it’s taken for granted that consciousness will eventually be transferrable. Moveable. Now in the age of computers … with “digitization” … the idea is … Continue reading Can I Upload My Soul? →

The Real

Notes from the early days of quarantine. Along with the virus, New York has been invaded by “the real” — an elusive concept. I was telling an old school New Yorker about an encounter I had at Coney Island once. Super hot day. Blazing midday sun straight above. My children were little. I was taking … Continue reading The Real →

Billy’s Topless

A MONOLOGUE This was back in the 90s, I walked into an ATM on 23rd and 6th Avenue and a man was sprawled out on the floor. “Here I am!” he shouts. “Here I am!” Two in the morning. His wallet was flipped open a few feet away from his open hand. He was looking … Continue reading Billy’s Topless →

Manhattan Academy

It's one of those days at work where I'm absolutely paralyzed. Hogtied. Brainfreeze. I can't do anything. So what do I do? I go to Google Street View. I take a drive in my childhood neighborhood in Jackson, Mississippi. Take a look at the old house. There it is. There's the lawn I mowed a … Continue reading Manhattan Academy →

Cedarstone

We had a big field behind my house. Somebody twenty years before then grew soy beans out there. But now it was just a big field covered in tall grass. It was a great place to fly kites. The remnants of the old rows made the ground a little uneven as we ran to get … Continue reading Cedarstone →

Dickie Honey

For about twenty years, until his death in 2006, I was good friends with a writer named Richard Atcheson. He had an impressive career with some big magazines as an editor. I came to know him when he was older and adrift. He sat around his apartment in the nude chain-smoking and talking, talking, talking. … Continue reading Dickie Honey →

The Magnolia Under Glass

THE MAGNOLIA UNDER GLASS Lobutcha, Mississippi - 2003 Okay. Guess I should say something. The traffic outside sounded like surf. A maid was pushing a squeaky cart down the hall. Someone was filling an ice bucket. Suddenly she twisted from beneath him, ran into the bathroom and slammed the door. The rings scraped and the … Continue reading The Magnolia Under Glass →