I don't know what happens to a culture when its performers and artists are dropped from the invitation list. Totalitarian regimes have kept a pretty tight rein on them, brought them into line, turned them into shills for what prevailed. Other kinds of regimes have turned them into decorations, sidelines, cartoons. Artists, not lawyers,...

You could call it your life. You could. Life's not answering to that, though. Life's not even listening. I've written a few books, but I'm no writer. Writers as I imagine them probably gather a life together that serves the writing, or tolerates it. Or they go without one, so they can write. That's not...

War is hell, the trustworthy adage goes. Most people who've been don't talk about it much. Most of our language can't do it justice. That says more about our language than it does about war, maybe. These days are something like war, I'm guessing. No enemy of the usual kind hunts us down, no matter...

Update: July 15th, 2020 The heat of the last week is southern gothic. It's biblical - which is often times much the same thing. Storms are promised, loom in the distance, don't come in. We're challenged by now to keep what we've nudged into being alive. That's how it goes with plans: You make them,...

This is from the invocation that has kicked off every Night of Grief and Mystery that Gregory Hoskins and I have done over the last few years. Seems to fit these days and nights, too. Recorded my part here at the house. Hoskins did his stuff at the studio in Guelph. https://youtu.be/3YSnYUGKHfI

Let’s say you’re in lock down, because you were ‘exposed’. Or maybe it's because your boredom has succumbed to your concern for the common good. So, whaddya mean, “Let’s say you’re in lock down”? No, no. You’re in lock down. You’re looking out the window, at the sight of nothing new. No? Then that’s the...

I've been asked hundreds of times to sign personal copies of Come of Age, and I'm glad to do it. More than glad. I see to it that each inscription is very close to prayer, outright. Not always a prayer for something, mind you. Rarely that. Just as often it is a prayer to...