Our babies make their way in the world with or without us. Somewhere not here.

Sorry this took me so long to get situated. But here it is, our madness from the DCAWP. Enjoy.

Divination in DC I from M. Bartley Seigel on Vimeo.

The first two flights of the [PANK]/Annalemma/Mudluscious reading in Washington DC, from February 3, 2011. Features readings by Brian Oliu, Molly Gaudry, Steve Himmer, Matthew Salesses, Brian Allen Carr, Amber Sparks, Salvatore Pane, Rob Roensch, Mathias Svalina, J. Bradley, Sasha Fletcher, and Mary Miller.

Divination in DC II from M. Bartley Seigel on Vimeo.

The third and final flight of the [PANK]/Annalemma/Mudluscious reading in Washington DC, from February 3, 2011. Features readings by Mel Bosworth, Matt Bell, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, xTx, Andy Farkas, and Tim Jones-Yelvington.

When I leave work traveling north on Highway 50 over the bridge I see the same billboard each day. “Heaven or Hell: Where Are You Going?”  It’s a ridicules question. Hell is eighth grade. Or if you’re a writer, it’s having no time to write.  

Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Hell is other people.”  

I don’t sleep. Have I ever mentioned that? Someone I know recently suggested I treat my insomnia by lying in bed at night and imagining I’d won the lottery. Apparently this conjures feelings of joy opposed to panic. So I thought I’d try it. I took some hardcore sleep medication and then imagined I’d won the lottery. Furthermore I asked myself, what would I do with all that money? The obvious and most honest answer is buy myself time to write. I’d keep Stephen King’s schedule. Write every day but Christmas and my birthday. Of course, I know writers who don’t have to go to jobs Monday-Friday and stay home and write all day and still complain about it. Like their lives suck. We’re human beings. We’re never satisfied.

I used to play this game when I’d ask writers if they could attend a cocktail party with twenty other writers, living or dead, who would those twenty other writers be? I love that game. But I think the majority of writers I’d invite would be dead. That’s weird. I also worry some of the writers I’d invite wouldn’t like me. That’s troublesome. Like high school when I loved that boy Shawn who didn’t love me back. One night I ran straight into traffic screaming, “Shawn, why don’t you love me?” I could have been hit by a car, a near melodramatic teenage tragedy. Some days, I’m still that girl.

I’ve got a new writer crush. Her name is Antonia Crane. I’ve many reasons to love her, one being her subject matter. I relate to Antonia. She feels like a sister. Does that make sense? She discusses topics like sex and death honestly. Everything about her, stunning. I also have a crush on that actor, Bradley Cooper. New development. I really didn’t think much of him until I began to dream about him. Now I dream about him all the time. Why him? I mean what is about him? I read somewhere when we dream about celebrities we’re in fact dreaming about someone we know. In other words, Bradley Cooper represents someone I know in real life, and I must really like this person, because all these dreams about Bradley Cooper involve having sex with him. 

Of course, I’ve read sex dreams have nothing to do with sex. So why do I orgasm? Weird. I also suffer moments in which I want nothing more than to do a shot of Southern Comfort  and then blow Scott Weiland. I can’t help it.  

Kerry Cohen asked the other day if she could interview me for an essay she’s writing for Salon that’s about parents who write erotica. She’s wrestling with the question, “Is it irresponsible of parents to write about sex?” Yes. It’s also irresponsible of us to have sex dreams and masturbate. What the hell? Kerry is one of the smartest women I know. And she’s a parent who writes about sex. I understand there are people in the world who think erotica is a terrible thing and people who write it should go to Hell.  We’re poison. I don’t even use a pen name. I’m crazy. What depresses me most is the majority of folks who’ve taken shots at me for writing erotica haven’t even bothered to read my stories. People love to feel offended for no reason. So popular these days. Anyway, it’s a mistake to think I write about sex. I don’t. I write about people. They have sex. Big difference.

“Galactic tides will end our lives - Taking us down in the moonlight”
The Dears – Galactic Tides

There are some masses, immense and greedy. I try to stay away from them, stay away from their gravitational field. Otherwise, the closer I get, the more I will change; the more parts of me will change.

Sometimes there is destruction. Some tides pull hard enough to rip you apart.

1. Back in August Anis Shivani published a half-baked and perfectly dissmissible essay on the Huffington Post called The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers. There were responses to this, of course, there was handwringing, all of it equally half-baked and forgettable and happily, for my part, forgotten. Until, much more recently, like yesterday, Jason Jordan self-confessed to his nursing a bit of an obsession over Shivani’s article over the last six months and blogged his own much abbreviated version of the overrated, whittled down to 5. In a matter of hours, John Madera blogs a take down of Jordan’s take down over at Big Other. Facebook and twitter madness ensues. At the same moment, my wife posted as her status update “the children are bickering.” The children she referred to are 7- and 3-years-old. Ahem.

2. People like what they like, or they don’t. Some people have big platforms, some little. Some opinions are grounded in reasoned argument, some in jealousy, some in rage, and some are just off the cuff expressions of a mind with a little too much time and technology on its hands at any given moment. Some opinions come with experience or erudition or some other form of pedigree or power to back them. Some don’t. Some opinions are important. Some aren’t. Some are gratifying, others hurtful. We know this, right? And we know it’s our job to sift through all it like it’s somehow all equal because we also know there no longer exists any authority in whom we all look to, all share, all trust to help us in the task. We like what we like and we believe what we believe, damn the evidence, and it’s our right to broadcast ourselves regardless of how little we have to add to the conversation. Fine. Here we are. Huzzah for us.

3. But when it comes to cultural consumption, particularly with books and authors, why do we waste our words writing about what we don’t like when there’s so much that we do like that needs our attention? Why do we insist on rabidly spotlighting the already overrated and overhyped? Isn’t that bizarre? Do I really need to learn about a bad book that I shouldn’t read? Do I really need my attention drawn to a poorly written blog post that I shouldn’t link to? Have you ever arrived to a party to have someone run up to you all excited and say, “Hey, man, come over hear and listen to this asshole tell a totally boring story!” No, or at least I would hope not. Can we, instead, allow the bad to slink away to die its quiet death in oblivion (we do this with most books and authors already, don’t we? so we’re already good at it). I’m not saying we should all just be a bunch of Pollyannas and cheerleaders. Madera points out that he’s hungry for insight, criticism, and rigor and I am, too. But being hungry for something is a lot different than serving something up and I, for one, am growing tired of the former and wishing for a little more of the latter. Tell me what needs to be seen, read, heard, if you’re so damn smart. Tell me what you’ve found that’s awesome because I probably haven’t found it yet myself. Tell me something I don’t know, something I need to know, because I’m sure I don’t know much. I need you. I love you. Stop leading me astray.

1. Back in August Anis Shivani published a half-baked and perfectly dissmissible essay on the Huffington Post called The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers. There were responses to this, of course, there was handwringing, all of it equally half-baked and forgettable and happily, for my part, forgotten. Until, much more recently, like yesterday, Jason Jordan self-confessed to his nursing a bit of an obsession over Shivani’s article over the last six months and blogged his own much abbreviated version of the overrated, whittled down to 5. In a matter of hours, John Madera blogs a take down of Jordan’s take down over at Big Other. Facebook and twitter madness ensues. At the same moment, my wife posted as her status update “the children are bickering.” The children she referred to are 7- and 3-years-old. Ahem.

2. People like what they like, or they don’t. Some people have big platforms, some little. Some opinions are grounded in reasoned argument, some in jealousy, some in rage, and some are just off the cuff expressions of a mind with a little too much time and technology on its hands at any given moment. Some opinions come with experience or erudition or some other form of pedigree or power to back them. Some don’t. Some opinions are important. Some aren’t. Some are gratifying, others hurtful. We know this, right? And we know it’s our job to sift through all it like it’s somehow all equal because we also know there no longer exists any authority in whom we all look to, all share, all trust to help us in the task. We like what we like and we believe what we believe, damn the evidence, and it’s our right to broadcast ourselves regardless of how little we have to add to the conversation. Fine. Here we are. Huzzah for us.

3. But when it comes to cultural consumption, particularly with books and authors, why do we waste our words writing about what we don’t like when there’s so much that we do like that needs our attention? Why do we insist on rabidly spotlighting the already overrated and overhyped? Isn’t that bizarre? Do I really need to learn about a bad book that I shouldn’t read? Do I really need my attention drawn to a poorly written blog post that I shouldn’t link to? Have you ever arrived to a party to have someone run up to you all excited and say, “Hey, man, come over hear and listen to this asshole tell a totally boring story!” No, or at least I would hope not. Can we, instead, allow the bad to slink away to die its quiet death in oblivion (we do this with most books and authors already, don’t we? so we’re already good at it). I’m not saying we should all just be a bunch of Pollyannas and cheerleaders. Madera points out that he’s hungry for insight, criticism, and rigor and I am, too. But being hungry for something is a lot different than serving something up and I, for one, am growing tired of the former and wishing for a little more of the latter. Tell me what needs to be seen, read, heard, if you’re so damn smart. Tell me what you’ve found that’s awesome because I probably haven’t found it yet myself. Tell me something I don’t know, something I need to know, because I’m sure I don’t know much. I need you. I love you. Stop leading me astray.

Before he died, my grandfather once told me that everyone is supposed to stick to one thing in life. One thing. That, he said, was the secret of life.

He was in advertising, my grandfather, but you’d never know it. He was a crusty old man, face lined like an old, leather saddle. Always wore a cowboy hat. Sometimes my brothers and I would be playing in the field when we saw him, out in the distance, riding in on his horse, heading over for a visit after a hard day at the office. He was a quiet one, not much for small talk. He always had this mean, stern look about him, as if part of his job involved killing people. One time, I asked him, “Kill anyone today?” He just gave me this look and said, “Day ain’t over yet.” Then he pulled on the reins of his horse, whispered, “Yah,” and took off to roundup some strays or something.

One thing you should know about my grandfather is that he was a big outdoorsman. He wasn’t too fond of the city, or people from the city, whom he called ‘slickers.’ No, he preferred the country. Sure, he loved his office job, but he loved a campfire even more. More times than not, when I picture my grandfather’s face, I see it reflecting the shaky luminance of a lick of flame. Once, while camping, my grandfather was sharpening a large knife when I decided I’d play a little harmonica. “Put that away,” my grandfather kept telling me, but I played on. He looked at me, raised his sharp knife before him, as if he could see me better through its blade. Then, after a couple beats, he sat closer to me, angled back his head and started singing some song about tumbleweeds that I had never heard of. It was a beautiful, beautiful moment, especially considering how I thought he was going to kill me.

Did I mention my grandfather actually met Billy Crystal once? Well, he did. In fact, Billy Crystal was at my grandfather’s funeral.

I like to think that if it weren’t for my grandfather, I wouldn’t be in advertising. He taught me almost everything I know about the business. Sure, it’s changed a lot over the years, but some things have remained the same, and that’s where his wisdom comes in. For instance, we were out roping cows one day and grandpa was talking about creative briefs, how they usually lacked the information you actually needed. He was saying, “Sometimes, the job jackets have absolutely no information,” when it suddenly occurred to me that roping cows was silly. Why not just walk up to it and put the lasso around its neck? So I climbed off my horse and did just that. “Now what’s wrong with that?” I said. Then grandpa whistled loud as a steam engine and the cow took off, dragging my body over the hard ground for what was probably a mile, although it’s hard to say because I blacked out.

There was also the one time he and I were delivering a baby cow right there in the field when he looked up at me and said, “Your portfolio is everything.” Then he got up and shot the mother cow.

My grandfather was a legendary ad man, to be sure. But to me, he was just Grandpa. Grandpa Dave. Or, as we liked to call him, Curly.

Actually, you know what, now that I think about it, I’m getting mixed up between my real grandfather and a character in this movie I watched last night. I think part of the reason I got it all jumbled up is because of this dream I had that involved both the movie and my grandfather (did you ever have one of those dreams?). But no matter. I think I’ll remember my grandfather this way anyway, because, really, I hardly knew the guy in real life. All I know is that he was in advertising for a little while and that he was halfway decent in it at best.