Metro-North Eastward, from the northside platform, Stratford, Ct

 

the last train by j.b. mcneely

Tomorrow, I go to get the keys.

Then the prodigal officially returns to the Upper West Side.

75th and Columbus, up two streets.

The frame store is still there, but Bernard has retired

The Chinese/Argentinian restaurant persists

and the framed painting of my master's ki remains

Return to training and the circle is complete.



     And so, the weed-hopper, returns to his first teacher, M. Crevani, student of Heshiki Sensei, 72nd Street Dojo, Matsu-bayashi, karate-do. Those were my garrot years in the city that never sleeps when I first began my training in the art of the fist some thirty years ago. (Not really a garrot, no. On the second floor of four-floor brownstone on 73rd Street, except that when the third floor shower was used, it rained in my kitchen.)

These are the years that I am told now that I will look back on with fondness. Perhaps, in a Proustian sense, it can almost be, whatever I make of it and such is the fragility of memory. These pages, these pages of my 'Burn This' years, of theatre on the sleigh, sleight of hand, slight of mind.



Joe McNeely as Lee Harvey Oswald
The Sixth Floor
The Douglas Fairbanks Theatre



Hard now to remember the time when I was that thin. Those were the years of training. Long stretches of framing, bartending, waiting, and the occassional audition or show, sometimes even under union contract.  Princes and assassins.. Henry V and Lee Harvey Oswald. And those were some venues. Henry V, off-Broadway, 42nd Street, Theatre Row;  The Sixth Floor at the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre.

Yes, back in the day when I strode down Broadway and everyone took me for a star, or was that just my imagination...running away with me.


Bob Hall directed. Founding member of The New 'Rude Mechanicals'. After this performance, I did a small role in A Midsummer Night's Dream, a cameo in the Scottish play, during which I found my love, the mistress of my heart, and then Prince, nay King Hal. Then the theatrical career kind of trailed out. Had an audition for Joyce's Ulysses, but traveled to the West Coast instead. Turned down a paying gig, to play the wordiest mother-f#%$er, William Shakespeare ever wrote.

And there in, lies a tale,
a tale but for some other time...
The story of the audition
the breakfast, the walk in the park, the I'll be looking into these eyes for the rest of my life.

january 21-22, 2012
arbor street
office of audioevolution, llc

Saturday, white morning written pages to the tune of a favorite concert (Koln concert by Keith Jarrett). All elements of the writer's trade at hand: smokes (though that must be done outside, and more on that later), music, the empty page and my fountation pen. Now, I could delay things immensely, as I used to in days past, to stop and take out my camera to show you pictures of all those elements, but is it not better that I leave it to your imagination.)

Words, words, words, the immortal character intones.

For him a mockery

For me an incantation

Interruption...

Off the shovel snow, and now the wife is gone. The house is mine.

Light them up. We will handle the storm of fury on her return. She is off to saturday sessions, listening to people. They share grief, pain, addiction, withheld feelings, hidden secrets, longings and desires whilst I grasp at

What is it that I grasp at?

Answers to unsolveable questions

forgiveness of past sins

the torments of personal failings

Scattered thoughts

a few gems to preserve on paper

while the rest sink like stones



first snow at Kilkare cottage

Looking out o'er the middle ocean
a three year hermitage
there were many words, words, words
written on the pages of the countless journals
Someday, soon I shall gather all the shards
and piece them back together
bind them, marry them
and it will be a song of creation
soon forgotten.

"Dissecting Gum" by Ariel

Post-Production by Jobe Jr.



*A commentary update from the audio publisher regarding A Disorder Peculiar to the Country


Monkey Mind*

 Update: January 19, 2012
It is my understanding that Ken Kalfus has been at work on a new novel. Of course, anyone in publishing already knows this, but this blog is not written for the likes of publishers marketplace and publishers weekly, but for the lonely audiophiles who straggle on to this site in the wee morning hours. The traffic that comes to this site is mostly myselfto write, my mother to see what else I might have said about her, or my father, sister, or nephew; and audiophiles. The confusion, audioevolution.com versus audioevolution.org.

"Audio Evolution,. heh that sounds cool, I need some new stereo equipment."__audiojoe

Original post March 2007

Ken Kalfus's post 9/11 novel, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country was a 2006 National Book Award nominee. A sly satire (dark) black comedy of war, terrorism and conjugal strife. Audiobook Details Author Interview

I first read this novel in manuscript when I was still the acquisitions director for Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC, now known as Macmillan Audio. Little did I know at the time how few the degrees of separation were between myself and the author, Ken Kalfus. I would come to find out later, that the book was dedicated (in part) to my wife's college roommate and that the two of them had attended NYU with the author. It is indeed "a small world after all." Published in contravention of all the accepted axioms of audio publishing (big first print, marketing budget and simultaneous with the hardcover). Why? Because: the novel spoke to me.

I found in it a voice that crystallized my inchoate concerns, thoughts and feelings post 9/11, especially about the direction the country was heading in its aftermath. As a nation, I believe that we responded to 9/11 with our collective hypothalamus, determined to avenge the stain upon our nation. We set reason aside, then our founding principles, and finally, our morality. There is nothing we have not sacrificed to achieve victory in the war on terror, nothing, not habeus corpus, due process, nor civil liberties. We sacrificed it all in an illusory quest, not for freedom from terror, but for freedom from the fear of terror. And all we have after four years and billions of dollars is more terror and more fear of terror as we sacrifice more and more of our freedoms. A black comedy, indeed.