Days of the Dead: Making Good Art in Bad Times

Puerto Rico hurricane devastation: New York Times

How can a fiction writer continue to work in a made-up world when so many bad things are happening in the real one? Why should we even bother? This has been on my mind as I somehow manage to work on my next novel, despite the daily bad news.

First, a list of the bad things.

The mass shootings in Las Vegas terrorized our nation. But what's more frightening is how quickly people and the media fell into the trope of 'the lone gunman' because he was rich and white. 


By now, it's been forgotten, politicized, de-politicized, churned and turned from empathy to apathy. And the NRA remains as emboldened as ever. Gun sales, including gun shows only steps from the scene of the horror, have risen sharply. Since the, half a dozen shootings killed two, five, or more people, registering merely a media blip.

Only yesterday (October 31, Halloween), a terrorist rammed a rental truck into a school bus of disabled children in Lower Manhattan. Here in San Francisco, while Halloween is no longer officially celebrated in the Castro district because of a shooting rampage, yet another shooting took place nearby that night.

In politics, indictments have finally been doled out to Trump administration lackeys for Russian collusion in fixing the 2016 election, and yet the self-delusions and massive lies continue unabated, from The White House to the wonky-eyed press rep, to their official propaganda arm at Fox "News."

Literary Voices: an appreciation of Mark Merlis and William M Hoffman

Have you ever read a novel only to have the effect of it come back to you like a boomerang that knocks you in the back of the head until the tears spring out?

Such is the case with Mark Merlis' An Arrow's Flight. When I read it almost 20 years ago, I thought it was smart and brilliant. Since the author's death on August 15, I decided to reread it and find copies of his other three novels.

William Johnson wrote this remembrance for Lambda Literary Review. "Merlis’ writing cannily explored the emotional and sexual lives of gay men, in all of their messy, nuanced, and wondrous splendor."

In writing for The Advocate, author Christopher Bram wrote, "His books share a family resemblance: fine literary texture, a keen sense of gay history, a moral complexity worthy of Henry James, and strong sexuality."

 The Washington Post obituary covered his life, and includes this quote:

“I am, of course, a gay man whose... novels are swarming with gay characters,” he once told an interviewer with the website EchoNYC.  “And I have allowed myself to be marketed as a practitioner of a genre called gay fiction. But this is a commercial category, not an artistic one. I write, like anybody else, about how it is to be human.”

Meeting Sam Shepard in a Dream; lofty ambitions and gutted fish

   I met Sam Shepard in a dream last night, my last one before waking, on an open cement flat construction site with poles sticking up. It had been turned into a movie set where I was working on as Assistant to Something. 
   A crew man drilled a hinge on a doorway and it fell over.

   ‘One door, two people,” I muttered as if it were a common safety saying. 
   Oddly, actors rehearsed while hammers were banged on set pieces. 
    The director, finished arguing with someone, huffed off the construction site. Someone called ‘Break,’ and people sat where they were, took food out of lunch boxes.

   One man at the edge of the site/set seemed sad, without a lunch, in a red flannel shirt, rumpled jeans and boots, his craggy face looking disappointed, sitting with his back against a scaffold. I recognized him.

   “Hey, Sam,” I said, “Can I have a hug?”

   “Not a good idea,” he scowled, looked away.

   I knew he was dead, but figured he’d be bothered by my reminding him.

   “You know, thirty years ago, I directed a few of your plays.”

   He didn’t seem to care which ones.

   "I liked the monologues in ‘Action,’ I said. “They worked real good. Once the actor muffed his lines, but got around to it, made the point.”

   “I hate when that happens,” he muttered, looking around, realizing it wasn’t his set, his movie or his play. He didn't seem hungry, but glanced at someone else eating.

   “Hey, can I ask you–“

   Another crew man got up, tripping over Sam’s legs.

   “What was that?” he looked back.

   “That’s Sam. He’s dead.”

   “Right.” 
   The crew man seemed like he was trying to laugh, couldn’t see what he tripped on.

   “Well, better get,” Sam said, and leaped off the edge of the cement flooring, which had become a few floors higher above ground. He just stepped off and disappeared into the wind.

   The other crew man stopped, about the walk away, wavered. “But what did he–”

   “You saw him?” I asked.

   “Saw what?” he seemed confused by himself.

   “Never mind.”

     * * *

I think Sam would have appreciated that dream, since it felt like a scene from one of his plays. People feeling out of place, confused, stunned by the loss of their purpose, or knowing a dark secret, were part of his artistic style. 

Shepard's death has been well documented, and one of his first collaborators, Patti Smith, had some touching remembrances of the Pultizer Prize-winning playwright and understated film actor. Author Don Shewey wrote about being Shepard's biographer years ago, and how the playwright was in a way his alter-ego.

Actually, those plays I mentioned in my dream to dead Sam were preceded by my small production of poems and prose pieces from his first collection, Hawk Moon.  As a sophomore at Kent State University's Theatre Department, I enlisted some actors and musicians to join me in performing most of the collection, with live musical interludes of Rolling Stones songs and other music.

Pride People in the Press: my interviews with singers, actors, dancers and artists of note: 2015-2017

Cazwell and his dog Elvis

I've long wanted to pen a blog post with mention of all -or most- of the talented LGBT artists and straight allies I've had a chance to interview.  

But I've been so busy doing the work, and editing others' interviews, that I didn't have the time. And now that the Bay Area Reporter's annual Pride issue is out, I'll get this underway.

Yes, it's a bit of fame-chasing, but since it's part of my job, I feel justified to reshare these favorite interviews, particularly since our website has different links for each article (updated 2018).

I've got about 30 years of interviews to go through. But I'm going backward from this year, since it'll take me longer to find the older ones, many of which are not available online. So, here goes! 2015-2018.