“Dream of Sailing” is a short poetry-film set in a faraway hospital where the narrator, recently returned from war, imagines a life at sea. But will he ever leave the confines of the infirmary?
Thanks to everyone who played a part in creating this film.
I’m looking forward to checking out a screening today of “This is Where We’ll Build the Labyrinth” at the Balboa Theater in San Francisco as part of the local short film collection at the Another Hole in the Head Film Festival (1:30pm, PST).
My film is also playing on Dec 9 at the 4 Star in San Francisco with a group of animated shorts.
Can’t make it to SF? That’s okay, you can see the film online later in December at the official website of the Another Hole in the Head Film Festival.
I took a short break from making a new album last week (more about that later) to record a new spoken word piece called “THE MISSING BOOK.”
Huge thanks to Jules Leyhe (music), Nico Sotomayor (video), and Danielle Goldsmith (audio engineer) for bringing the video to life.
Recorded at Tiny Telephone Oakland on August 22, 2023.
We’re hanging out for a long weekend in Bastia, the second biggest city in Corsica. Our hotel, A Casa Reale, is on the second floor of a building dating back to 1700. Napoleon once stayed here. Flaubert once dined here. Yes, that’s how we roll.
The hotel is beautifully renovated, though every piece of furniture, except maybe the coffee machine and the toaster, are relics of bygone eras. The piano in the common room looks like something Mozart might have played (if he ever came to Corsica). Everything about this place oozes history, except for the plumbing, thankfully.
A Casa Reale is in the old town, thirty minutes from the airport. Our taxi driver gestured toward the horizon at one point to tell us we could see Elba on a clearer day. He also apologized for the traffic and for driving us through an ugly industrial area. “We’ll arrive somewhere nice soon,” he assured RL in French.
When learning where we’re from, he erupted with a massive “Sannnnn Frannnnnciscooooo,” sounding like something a soccer play-by-play commentator might howl when his team scores a World-Cup-winning goal.
Upon arriving at Flaubert’s hotel (that’s what I’m calling it now), we uncorked the complimentary bottle of Corsican wine and gazed out at the view of the port from our room. For dinner, we found our way to a restaurant called Grazie Mille. I’m no foodie, but the pistachio-encrusted sea bass with limoncello-soaked orange slices was fricking amazing.
Praise be to Neptune that we were inside the restaurant when a prodigious hailstorm began to pelt the cobblestones where Flaubert and Napoleon once walked. Grazie mille, indeed.
It’s morning now. The rain is gone, and I’m sitting on the terrace at A Casa Reale, watching a ferry depart for Sardinia. A church bell signals the hour, power tools chip away at the concrete at a nearby renovation, children laugh and play on the narrow street below, and the wind whips off the Tyrrhenian Sea, causing the clothes hanging from a line on a building across the way to flutter and dance.
Our first stop today will be the tourist office to figure out a plan for the next three days, though I’m happy to sit here and watch the clothes dry in the sun.
Thanks to the San Francisco Arthouse Short film festival for naming “Then Came the Firestorm” as their Best Covid Film for January 2023.
It seems like it was so long ago when I ventured into the empty city streets with my iPhone to film scenes from another world. But wait… it wasn’t another world. It was our world, wracked by the pandemic that lingers still.
Only 371 shopping days until next Christmas. Dinner isn’t served. But Breakfast and Lunch are always available. Get ‘em while they’re hot at your favorite online bookseller. Bite-sized literary morsels for the brain are good for the holidays or anydays.
Earlier this year, I travelled to the Southern California desert in and around Joshua Tree National Park. I was inspired by two places in particular, Giant Rock and the Integratron sound bath, to write a narrative poem called “Giant Rock” and turn the poem into a short animated film.
Special thanks to John Vanderslice for the soundtrack, Antoni Villacreces for the animation, and Jacob Winik for audio mastering. I’m starting the process of submitting this strange little trip of a film to festivals now. Wish me luck.
You can check out the trailer here.
A martial arts literary magazine. Such a great idea. Thanks to Clinch for including my “Tales from the Dojang” in their new issue out today. My stories are based on my many, many, many years of teaching taekwondo to kids (and adults, too).
Six String Communications. Ten years in business and counting. Thanks to everyone who’s played a part in keeping this little editorial engine chugging up the hill. I appreciate it. And for anyone looking for a seasoned writer, editor, ghostwriter, scriptwriter, proofreader, all-purpose-editorial-collaborator, please keep me in mind. Here’s to the next ten. Woohoo!
This just in … my new short, short story “Giant Rock,” inspired by my recent trip to The Integratron, has been accepted for publication in Bright Flash Literary Review. Thank you to them. And, yes, aliens are involved, as are baby quails, a giftshop saleswoman named Venus (who looks like Marilyn Monroe in “Some Like It Hot”), and a talking bobcat.
