Tuesday, April 19, 2011

PT-Dubs, Y'all - or - You Gotta Minute To Make Me Famous?

I am a musician. Tomorrow I am jumping in a car with four other musicians of equal or greater value and am driving to New York City to play some shows and lose some money. Yes it will cost us money to go there and play, but we are dedicated to the cause and because the cause is just, we are just going to go. THAT IS NOT THE POINT. The point is that the band I am in, Paper Thick Walls, or as I call them, PT-Dubs, has been nominated as one of The Deli Chicago's Artist of the Month. This is where you come in. Please go to the following website and listen to the nominated bands. They are all good. Then vote for us. Even if you don't want to vote for us, even if you think we suck, which we don't, just do the right thing and vote for us. Vote for us because I won't have any leg room for sixteen straight hours as we drive halfway across the country to play in the terrifyingly big city of New York. Vote for us because we just dumped hundreds of dollars into tee-shirts, posters, buttons, stickers, Tupperware, beanie hats, and booking agents and don't have a dime left in the band account for gas money. Vote for us because Eric, one of the co-writers and the guitarist and singer in the band, gets bad gas after eating road food. Vote for us because Jacques Réné snores. Vote for us because I will drive all night, there and back. Vote for us because of the cute little mutt puppy I want to get when I return to Chicago is cute and fuzzy (and I don't know anyone who can resist a cute and fuzzy mutt puppy asking you to vote). Vote for us because I will be blogging and vlogging from the road. Vote for us because of this photo right here.
Vote for us because this is one of those childhood dreams that I've never wanted to let go of, to be in a band of friends, a band of talented musicians, and tour the land, playing dive bars and lounges in towns I'd never thought I'd find myself in, meeting strangers and making them dance and smile, sleeping on floors and staying up all night, burning the candle at both ends to light up the stage, smiling and singing and slamming my fingers against the strings until my face hurts and my voice is raw and my fingers are ripped to shreds, and then packing it up and doing it all over again the next night.

This is what I get to do with Paper Thick Walls. This is what makes me happy. Please do me a favor and be part of it. Thanks. PT-Dubs, Y'all.

http://chicago.thedelimagazine.com/
Artist of the Month is in the upper right corner.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

The Death Of A Reader

The Death of the Reader
Kerrin McCadden


I have not read a book since my divorce,
or, I have been a bad reader and have read
books, but have not finished them, or, I may
or may not have read some books, but only
those I read as a child, and those to my son,
or, I have picked up books in order to love
them, but have been unable to. I have loved
so many books, and by that I mean novels,
those books that are to lose oneself inside,
to hide in a duck blind, to hide behind a door
with an axe, to hide in a tree with a friend,
to crush a birdnest in the fist to watch the
smallest shells fall through the sunlight, to
pick up a gun and fire it by accident and
kill my ten year old twin, my father
running through the tall grass like he is
under water, I have never seen him run
so fast. Even hiding in the farmhouse,
fantasizing about a floor that can be hosed
clean. Mostly, though, the duck blind,
and being caught there, my long dress
having trailed the mud, and later my death,
there, in the second floor bed, my eyes
two awful things, my death a black thing.
This is the tenth poem I have written about
my death, or at least the death of the reader,
or at least the death of the reader who cannot
read books, only poems. A poem can break
your heart in the short term, and over and over,
in the same way, and in others, the shards falling
through the treelimbs to the pasture below.
This is the heartbreak I am after. Not the one
after the marriage, the long marriage, the forty
open acres of marriage, the fifty page ending.
Just the snapping open of a valve, the chamber
squeezing like a fist, the heart breaking like
a bird's egg, untended, desiccated, sparkling
in the evening light, so beautiful, so light
and diaphanous it almost doesn't fall.

© 2011 Kerrin McCadden

Kerrin McCadden was my high school English teacher. She had a profound affect on my life as a student, as a writer, and as a person. Find more of her poetry at failbetter.com