I’ll be part of the lineup for Profane Illuminations, a day of talks at NYU organized by Mark Pilkington of Strange Attractor Press. I’ll present my talk “Music from Elsewhere,” discussing and playing music attributed to fairies, trowies, banshees, aliens, spirits, and angels; as well as music from alchemists, occultists, Cathars, cryptographers, secret societies, and dreams. Other speakers include Erik Davis, Peter Bebergal and Gareth Branwyn, Amy Hale, Kristen Gallerneaux, and Dave Tompkins.

It’s on Saturday, April 27, at Einstein Auditorium (34 Stuyvesant St., at 9th St., between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), NYC, and it’s free. The talks run from 12 to 8 pm; I’ll be on at about 3:30. More info here.

Upside-Down Stories is now available from Black Scat Books!

Charles Cros and Émile Goudeau were quintessential Bohemian poets of the 1880s. Cros also experimented with the phonograph and color photography; Goudeau founded the Hydropathes, who met to declaim poetry while not drinking water. Cros and Goudeau’s only collaboration was a series of five exuberant stories published in 1880, which satirized such hot topics as divorce and capital punishment with bawdy humor and wild flights of fancy. All five stories are included here, plus four solo stories by Cros that complete the series, translated and annotated by Doug Skinner. These dense and nutty gems will surprise you!

You can find it on Amazon, or from Black Scat Books.

My talk on anomalous music, “Music from Elsewhere,” was recorded by Morbid Anatomy, and is now available on their Patreon site, here. I’ll be doing another talk, with different music, April 27 at NYU, as part of the Profane Illuminations series organized by Strange Attractor Books.

An experiment: a stereo picture in gouache and ink. As usual, you can click to enlarge.

Some sketches of Aunt Dodo, for an upcoming comic strip.

The Muses give me some poetic advice.

THE MUSES SPEAK

If you write about your feelings,
We will throw potato peelings.

If you start to air confessions,
We’ll urge psychiatric sessions.

If your work becomes too earnest,
We’ll suggest that it be furnaced.

If your work becomes too solemn,
We will turn our spinal column.

If your yawp becomes barbaric,
We will mock you as hysteric.

If you opt for sentimental,
Our attack will be ungentle.

If your work is understandable,
We will punch you in the mandible:

Life is never comprehensible;
Finding sense is indefensible.

The idiosyncratic poet and cabaret performer Maurice Mac-Nab had a short but appreciated career in Paris in the 1880s. He was known for his deadpan delivery and limited vocal range; it was said of him that he could sing only three notes, but each was flawless. My translation of his poem “The Fetuses” is a paraphrase respecting the formal constraints of the original: tercets that alternate masculine and feminine rhymes. It’s rather long; here’s the beginning of it.

THE FETUSES
(Maurice Mac-Nab, 1886)

Some large, some little, some bizarre,
And some quite normal, here they are,
Each in its own transparent jar.

You see a few who, smiling sweetly,
Hands laid across their bellies neatly,
Were born into the world discreetly.

And then again, some seem to jeer,
Their gaze aloof and cavalier,
Although with eyes that will not clear.

And then still others, folded double,
Appear alarmed that you might trouble
Their blissful alcoholic bubble.

Their faces may look dissolute,
Their bodies soft as rotten fruit,
But still, the fetuses are cute,

As they rock gently in aquatic
Security, serene, phlegmatic,
So tranquilly aristocratic.

And notice every little nose,
As swollen as a blooming rose:
From all the drinking, I suppose.

For barred from glory, love, or choosing
Whatever makes our lives amusing,
They pass their days in constant boozing…

The Best of Le Scat Noir is now available! It collects memorable gems from the online journal edited by the ebullient Norman Conquest, in a large, full-color trade paperback. I have a number of pieces in it, as do many others, to wit: Paulo Brito, Paul Kavanagh, Erik Satie, Samuele Bastianello, Alice Pulaski, Pink Buddha, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Jason E. Rolfe, Eckhard Gerdes, Harold Jaffe, Tom Whalen, Darlene Altschul, Madalina Tantareanu, Sheila Pell, Samantha Memi, Opal Louis Nations, Alphonse Allais, Francisque Sarcey, Carla M. Wilson, Terri Lloyd, Mercie Pedro e Silva, Georges Hugnet, Norman Conquest, Paul Rosheim, Carol White, Michael Leigh, Nile Southern, Mantis Man, Tom Bussmann, Edward Lear, Mark Axelrod, Adao Iturrusgaral, Jim Johnson, Rick Krieger, Pippa Anais Gaubert, Rebecka Skog, Frank Pulaski, Jim McMenamin, Gail Schneider, Franciszka Themerson,  Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, Italo Calvino, Tom La Farge, Theodore Carter, Nick Frost, Farewell Debut, Quixote, Robin Wyatt Dunn, Allan Bealy, Angela Pankosky, Brett Stout, Uwe Taubert, Iacyr Anderson Freitas, Desiree Jung, Andy Koopmans, Jim Meirose,  Russell Helms, Peter Payack, Adrienne Auvray, Gelett Burgess, and Eugene Ivanov.

You can find it at Black Scat Books!

A cheerful little song about antisociality. I often performed it in the ’90s, with Carol Benner playing a lively pizzicato obbligato on viola.