Yes, Joe, I am jealous as fuck every time you blog about your fucking home gym. I used to be a monster, goddamnit! Now I'm a brain in a fucking bucket.The time has come once again. Hey, everybody! At 7:30 on January 13, I'll be reading at Pegasus Books at 2349 Shattuck in Berkeley for Lip Service West, the series of edgy readings run by Joe Clifford.
Edgy. Heh-heh. Edgy is not the word for my piece. It is probably the single harshest, most emotionally brutal work I've ever done, and are you at all familiar with my range? It would be easy to point at subject matter like suicide, gore, and necrophilia as the reason this is such an ugly experience, but I like to think that those elements are finally subsumed in larger, more disturbing questions of morality, identity, and obsession. I'm proud of it, I will stand by it, I am not ashamed of what it portrays even if I am disturbed by myself.
But this one is a serious motherfucker. It hurt me to write it. I had to dig deep into things I'd really rather have left forgotten or unthought. There are laughs. There are even a couple of funny laughs.
But there are reasons people tend to describe my work as if it were violent crime rather than art. You want to know the truth? I think the main reason Joe Clifford is using this? I suspect a certain clinical interest. I think he wants to see what it does to an audience. For scientific purposes.
So come on down on the thirteenth, and be part of science!
