Talk20

Alright, I know I’ve been a little delinquent about writing regular updates these past two weeks . . . but all those posts from the box had me a little blogged out.

I want to sincerely thank everyone came out to Talk20 tonight. There was a great turnout, ten very interesting presentations, and I think we all had a wonderful time. For those of you who haven’t heard of Talk20 before, it is a global event that has been held in cities around the world. Ten people present 20 image each, and talk about each image for 20 seconds. My presentation this evening was titled, “My Crazy Parents.”

If you weren’t able to make it, here are some highlights:

“On July 19, 1969, my twenty-one and twenty-two year old parents were married in a small Catholic Church on the Air Force base in Langley, Virginia. They had met on a blind date, and my mother tells me she thought that my father was a complete idiot, that he was too short, and that she swore she’d never go out with him again.”

“Idiot or not, there was one thing that set my father (far left) apart from all of the other men on his Air Force Base – he was, literally, a rock star. Just after graduating high school, my dad had joined the ranks of a Cleveland-based rock band called The Outsiders. Their hit song “Time Won’t Let Me” topped the charts in January of 1966.”

“Shortly afterward, my father was forced to leave the group when he was drafted during Vietnam. But his stint with the United States Military didn’t steer him away from the reckless lifestyle he had started while touring with the band. This photo documents that fact, showing my dad’s attempt to drink six beers in one sitting, from a glass he that reads ‘I Bet You Can’t.’”

“In the mid-seventies, my parents got jobs in Michigan, where they still live today. A few of their close friends moved out to Santa Barbara, CA, where this picture was taken. When asking my mom about this photo she said, ‘I think we were looking for something to do, and somebody had a pistol. So we went to the mountains and shot guns.’ When I asked my father what he was shooting at he said, laughing, ‘It may have been electrical equipment, or snakes. I think the jury’s out on that one.’”

“Back in Michigan, one of my parents’ favorite pastime became motocross racing. They often used their orange Volkswagen Super-Beetle, which you can see in this picture, to haul the bikes. A raucous party pastime was, ‘Let’s See How Many People We Can Fit in the Volkswagen,’ which involved taking out the seats, piling eight or more people in the back, going off-roading, and rolling the car downhill so that the windows popped out.”

“My parents had a grand-total of five motorcycles, and this is my mother on her bike, cigarette in hand. She tells me that the best place to ride was out in the country, in the gravel pits and on the dirt service roads that led out to long lines of electricity towers.”

“My father tells me that, no matter what anyone says, motocross racing was a contact sport. He has countless stories of all the ways that people would try to run him off the road - ‘country boys,’ as he calls them, getting vicious, kicking, and shoving. The most serious injury he ever sustained was when he was pushed off the edge of a cliff and knocked unconscious.”

“My dad says that at that time, they were young enough to handle that lifestyle - to walk off cracked ribs, sprained wrists and ankles. ‘You just drank a little more,’ he says. But after a while the racing life got a little draining, and my father convinced my mother that it was time to sell the bikes before they got seriously hurt. My mother told me that when Dad made her sell her bike, she cried.”

“October 31, 1984. Halloween. I remember, as a child, seeing a slide show my father made of pictures from this Halloween party. It was scored to the tune of the Pointer Sisters hit “I’m So Excited.” What I only realized recently, while putting this presentation together, was that these pictures were taken exactly 9 months and seven days before I was born.”

“The fun ended on July 4, 1985 when, in the middle of grilling for a Fourth of July party, my mother’s water broke two months early. She left to go to the hospital and when the nurses told her she wouldn’t be able to leave the until she had her baby she replied, ‘YOU MEAN I HAVE TO STAY HERE FOR TWO MORE MONTHS?’”

“After I was born, the thousands of slides that document my parents’ crazy adventures together went into storage, until this year, when my father and mother pulled them back out so that we could collaborate on a creative project. Over the past few months they have cleaned and digitized hundreds of photos and shared the stories behind them with me. I am thrilled that I have had this opportunity to learn so much about what their lives were like before me, and glad to share with you a little bit about My Crazy Parents.”

Really, I had a blast putting this presentation together. Many thanks to my mother and father, for all of their help and for sharing their stories. Everyone commented on how AWESOME you both are (which is true), on how it seems like we have a great relationship (also true), and how Mom is so pretty (also true . . . in fact, she might be the prettiest . . . other than Derya).

In other news, I found out today that I have had two more poems accepted for publication in Hotel Amerika, a wonderful journal that I am thoroughly excited to be in! I’ll let you know when that hits the shelves.

Bunches of new music are being listened to in preparation for this month’s music blog, which should appear this coming week. More recent favorites include Grizzly Bear’s new Friend [EP], Sigur Ros’ latest double-disc, the soundtrack to the forthcoming Dylan film I’m Not There, Scout Niblett, and even though I never really got into them before, the newest album from Iron and Wine.

I think the four of us have all been working hard over here in ArtJail, and it’s a good feeling to be in such a productive environment. I’m working on a couple of collaborative projects, getting close to finishing the poetry anthology, and I’m still formulating this diagram project, which has involved reading more about recycled culture, open-sourcing, graph theory, sifting through art history, theory, and criticism, and a fascinating book titled Graphs, Maps, Trees by Franco Moretti (thanks, Ray, for the recommendation). I also think I’m going to have to spend some serious time figuring out Flash and web design. Can anyone out there teach me? I’ll cook for you, do your dishes . . .

For fun-reading, I just started Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and some more Sontag essays I haven’t read yet, and I’ve been looting the public library’s collection of contemporary poetry in search of stuff I like . . . I’ll let you know when I find something.