M.O.A.C.

Recorded live at the Middle East Corner in Boston on April 26, 2017.  The Reverend Kevin P. O’Brien, The Droimlins, Duncan Wilder Johnson and Jim Healey were also on the bill.  

It’s Been A Long Time That I Should Be Far From Here

For many of us in the KGB, infiltrating the 1970s punk scene was one of the USSR’s most successful experiments of propaganda to date.
–Alexandrei Varennikovic Voloshin

Three weeks Tommy boy…
–Hero Constituent

The problem with Creative Nonfiction? I’ve addressed it before. The transparency I strive for on here-the bare ugly, it can scrape too close to the bone. Couple that with the fact I’m out of material most weeks and it’s a real dilemma. I know you tune in exactly for this high wire act and I’m thankful for it. Sometimes the only way to get the world off your neck is to build a column of words, 600 high, with venom or in reverie, frame it neat and fine and nail it to the fucking wall. Some people need to be kissed off and the dead should stay buried. Now take all these rules and tell ‘em to the Boss because deadline trumps all. It’s become obscene. We all know about the ones that she hates, and my feelings about the blog are either inside or outside of 20% of them I can be proud of, while the rest are metaphysical bowel movements. For the times when the tide was high and rising, and I managed to get my arms around the thing and send it home, I’m thankful. For your devoted readership, 50+ a week, I’m thankful. But Brother Charlie is right, it’s been surgery on myself without anesthesia, dirty laundry&tears, whining, poems about my dick size, old rivalries roustabouted and new enemies found. In short, it’s fucked but the fix is in. The die is cast and it’s for the fans and a Christian jerkoff on Instagram who learned a valuable lesson about retaliation when engaged in battle with an east coast Pisan.

There’s been much ado about the firing of James Comey this week and I’ve heard enough. When a news story reaches fever pitch, without any answers to the 5 Ws, I find it best to tune it out, put on the latest episode of the Broad Street Breakdown and get horizontal until the sun goes down, maybe take to the streets like some Black Irish manbat or just fall asleep with my clothes on and wake up grizzled and unnerved in a dead Confederate palace to the sound of blowers blowing or club music shaking the rafters at 8 in the morning. It’s a fucked life but I can’t complain. Truth is, this is as good as it’s ever been-but, don’t hate me, it’s not good enough. It’s been a long time that I should be far from here, which should sound familiar to anyone reading this blog on the regular. It’s become my mantra. After all these weeks banging my head against the wall, something had to give and it wasn’t the wall. Being in between isn’t fun anymore. I’m stuck. I come at you every week because I said I would and my word is everything, but the message is the same.

Another constant is my oversight, a deathly modesty that will soon have me forget that I’m 4 cites closer to achieving my goal of 12 new markets by 2018, that I’ve nailed a few venues on the east coast and should be heading out again in July and October. The MAMU is maybe half assembled, certainly amassed, and will be fully operational by the end of the next credit cycle. I sharpened my latest story onstage at the Middle East Corner last month, and gave ‘em the blades at the Poetry&Ptamale Party at Malvern last Friday. Things are moving, even if I’m not. I’m just getting sick and tired of assuring myself of that every week. I need to either make some big moves or be sure that I’m doing the leg work and research for those big moves to go down without a hitch.

Thank you for reading. This blog hasn’t really lived up to its potential, it’s not what I intended it to be. It’s become something else, though-and it’s always a release. I know some of you check in here for the Real, something true and raw in the hall of mirrors that authenticity has become in the New Century. It’s nothing short of a miracle that in writing this blog I’ve been searching for it, that burning beacon, and you read me for just that. That, my Brothers and Sisters, is the power and beauty of creation.

Ab Irato,
Trainer

Won’t Stop

…to live outside the law, you must be honest…
-Bob Dylan, Absolutely Sweet Marie

It’s a good thing I don’t care about what you think then, isn’t it?
-Your Writer on Facebook this week

Last week on Writing On The Air cohost Martha Louise Hunter asked me where I get the time to do it all.  God bless her.  We were talking about this blog and how 600 words a week is the least I can do if I’m going to call myself a writer.
“Of course there’s Letter Day,” I told her and cohost Joe Brundige, “and I’m posting a poem every day for the month of April celebrating National Poetry Month.”
I told them that All in the wind was book 2 of the 10 that will be published through Yellow Lark Press, beginning with September in 2015 and ending with a collection, as-yet-unnamed, in 2025.
“10 books in 10 years is great, a fine goal,” I went on.  “-but I’m only making up for lost time.”
Brother Joe and I share a symmetry, and experience the joy of communication that can happen between two stringently honest people.  It took appearing on the show twice for me to realize-I am doing the thing.  It’s good when that happens, as opposed to the slave driving I’m usually doing with myself and the crippling feelings of despair anyone reading this blog is, by now, all too familiar with.

I finally booked Boston.  I’ll be speaking at the Middle East Corner with the Reverend Kevin O’Brien and bussing down to Philly the day after, for the Philly release of All in the wind.  Joe and I recorded an episode of Chillin Tha Most at the mansion last week, and it should be on the net next Thursday.  Last week was the kind of week I’d like to have every week, with gigs and radio appearances almost every day.   I kept on pushing till the light of day.  Which is heaps different than the life I’m living in my head, where it’s never enough and I’m only a day working coward.  What’s next is complicated but simple in terms of intent.

I’m quitting this gig.  Moving out to the east side.  Minimizing.  Scaling down.  I’m not sure how it will look or how to even vaguely monetize poetry and the spoken word-but I’m full of ideas and already making half my imminent rent with the gigs I’m already playing.  It’s strange to be striking out now but hardly unlikely.  I’ve long since abandoned anything resembling the common tropes of being an American.  I don’t have any kids, don’t even have a girlfriend.  But I’ve got a passion for media and all forms of communication.  I hope to get further invested in print and broadcast media.  Before I fly out to Beantown the MAMU should be fully assembled and my next purchase will be a touring vehicle.

It took me a while to wrap my head around it.  I had to keep it to myself and it made me resentful.  I couldn’t talk about my plans on here, there was some bad blood about me leaving but there doesn’t have to be.  I’ve started paying my taxes, I got a new dentist and a healthy line of credit.  Everything is moving as it should.  My next venture will be some time researching topics for the blog, so’s to avoid the kind of soul searching pap and whine that she hates and can appear on Going For The Throat when its weekly deadline is on my neck.  Your ideas are welcome, as are paying gigs-do you have a story for me?  Can we find a way to pay my freight so I can come to your town, speak and play?  Please chime in, in the comments below, or drop me a line at: jamesmichaeltrainer@gmail.com.

This east coast jaunt will be a short one but I’m thrilled to be sharing the stage with the Reverend Kevin O’Brien, Duncan Wilder Johnson, The Droimlins, and Jim Healy in Boston.  The Philly release of All in the wind is stacked, with award winning poets Charlie O’Hay and Lamont Steptoe reading.  By the time I go back to work I’ll have played at least 3 shows on the east coast, sold some books and burned hundreds of miles.  I’ll be exhausted, which is how I like it, and plan to be in the coming months.  Into it, no stops, full bore.

See you on the East Coast motherfucker.