A drowsy little piece for piano, recommended for nap time. The title comes from Keats. Thanks, Keats.

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This little verse can be found in The Doug Skinner Dossier, available from Black Scat Books. Poor Milt! MILT Milt wandered down the dusty street, And felt his life was incomplete. He lifted up his troubled gaze From all the city’s bustling ways, Its squalid fights and sordid trysts, And saw a mountain in the […]

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I’ve written a number of pieces for viola and keyboard, mostly because the violist David Gold is willing to play them. I plan to write one for each letter of the alphabet (“A Grim Reckoning” doesn’t count). So far, these are the titles: A Grim Reckoning Doze Kibosh Lullabilious Nocebo Onus Parget Qualm Respite Stint […]

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In 2012, Norman Conquest kicked off the Absurdist Texts and Documents series at Black Scat Books with his illustrated adaptation of Alphonse Allais’s story Un drame bien parisien. The original limited edition is now out of print. He has just republished a new expanded edition, with an introduction and notes by Doug Skinner. You can […]

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My translation of Alphonse Allais’s book The Squadron’s Umbrella is available from Black Scat Books.

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Merde à la Belle Époque is now available from Black Scat Books! Doug Skinner has chosen, translated, and annotated a choice selection of scatological texts from Paris’s Bohemian heyday. The texts range from 1883 to 1902, and include poems, stories, a play, a rebus and a letter. You will find Alphonse Allais, George Auriol, Georges […]

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“Molecular Breakfast” was a 1978 collaboration with dancer and choreographer Helen Dannenberg.  Its ingredients included music, dance, pedestrian movement, sign language, speech, and found material.  Here’s the first page of our notes (including a demonstration of the difference between a Brooklyn and mid-western accent), and a review.  My, it seems long ago.

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A brief round, featuring a martyr.

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If you draw a picture of yourself in the sand, it probably won’t last.

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He’s very mischievous!

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