I Want You to Understand How I Feel

Rilke didn’t have the Internet like I do

Roger Clinton

Oh man http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv7BDoXe82o

Roger Clinton Sings

Gobble Gobble

 

 

Thank You, A Class, And A Book

I just know I saw these curtains in the background of The Wire!

THANK YOU

First of all I’d like to thank all the hosts and all of the people that came out for my living room shows. That was a very exciting 10 days for me. I’ve confirmed that my predisposition for anxiety is by no means improved by traveling alone – I was hoarding gas and non-perishables and water, convinced that a party at Olive Garden was staring me down.

But those shows were really such a pleasure to play. I hope if you came out to one that you enjoyed it as much as I did. Thanks to Adam in Westland, MI; Jessica and her folks in Akron; Stephen in Rochester; Kevin in Boston; Natasha in Williamsburg; Eric in Flatbush; Maeve and Jake in Philadelphia; Jared in Baltimore; and Tara in Pittsburgh. It was very kind and generous of each of you to open your homes to me and my people.

A CLASS

And now that I’m home for a little while I’m preparing for a class I’ll be teaching this spring at The University of Chicago’s Graham School of Continuing Education.

If anyone in Chicago would like to spend 4 weeks workshopping your Experimental Fiction with me, please sign up. It’s Thursday nights, February 14 – March 7. It’s open registration and details for enrollment are here:

https://grahamschoolapp.uchicago.edu/offering.php?oi=6454

 

AND A BOOK

And finally, still sorting out the potential release of my second novel Let Go and Go On and On - an endless and  soul-crushing process which will hopefully all fall into place soon (fingers crossed.) But in the meantime, I think it’s safe to announce a different book forthcoming in 2013 – All Over and Over: Make Believe Tour Diaries, 2006. A shocking expose indeed into the lives of four grown men living all wrong. Details soon.

Upcoming Shows

October 31 – JOAN OF ARC COSTUME PARTY at Township, Chicago. With The English Softhearts and The Blasted Diplomats. $7. 9pm.

 

JOAN OF ARC (SOLO) ——-LIVING ROOM TOUR

November 1 – Westland, MI

November 2 – Tallmadge (Akron) OH

November 3 – Rochester, NY

November 4 – Boston, MA (Sold out)

November 5 – Brooklyn, NY (Sold out)

November 7 – Brooklyn, NY

November 8 – Philadelphia, PA

November 9 – Baltimore, MD

November 10 – Pittsburgh, PA

Advance Tickets NECESSARY for all LIving Room Shows – Available here  http://www.undertowtickets.com/

November 15 – Joan of Arc (Full band acoustic) at Comfort Station, Chicago. With Spectralina and Dr. Herndoctor. 7pm. Free.

The Visceral Realists

My new band has gone bandcamp! Check it out.

http://thevisceralrealists.bandcamp.com/track/topeka-fugue

http://thevisceralrealists.bandcamp.com/track/they-dont-know

http://thevisceralrealists.bandcamp.com/track/maine-guy?permalink

http://thevisceralrealists.bandcamp.com/track/white-men

We’re named in tribute to the inspiring tradition of maybe half-imaginary artistic movements, assuming the right to jump in on their lineage. And Melina apparently based the “V” in the logo on Picasso’s nose in a self-portrait.

We’re juggling way too much other stuff at the moment – new JOA and Owls probably coming out before this gets fully realized, not to mention some other weird collaborations – but hopefully shows will be happening sooner than later.

Lie Back and Enjoy It

Chicago Film Archives http://www.chicagofilmarchives.org/ invited Jessica Bardsley and me to make a thing. So we made this.

Weird Tour late October / early November

Oh yeah, have I mentioned this thing?

Joan of Arc (Solo) Living Room Tour

Tim Kinsella will be touring as Joan of Arc (Solo) in November and is excited to try something new: acoustic Living Room Shows. We need your help! We are looking for people to host Living Room Shows on the dates listed below…

Milwaukee – Thursday October 25
Madison – Friday October 26
Minneapolis – Saturday October 27
Iowa City – Sunday October 28
Cleveland Area – Friday November 2nd
Boston – Sunday November 4th
Pittsburgh – Saturday November 10th
Central Ohio – Sunday November 11th

Please get in touch if you want to host a show. We’ll make this as easy as possible for the hosts. All you have to do is let us borrow your living room for a couple of hours and in return you’ll get 5 free tickets for friends and our eternal gratitude.

Here’s how it works.

1. You have a house or loft space that can comfortably and safely host 35-45 people. A place with a big living room, finished basement or other indoor residential space would be ideal. There needs to be enough parking nearby and your neighbors should be cool. It would be a huge bummer if someone called the cops because of all the extra cars and people coming to your house. You probably should not do this if you live in a small apartment with a bunch of uptight neighbors or a cranky landlord.

2. The shows will not be open to the public and no tickets will be sold at the door. We will pre-sell a set number of tickets for each show on our website before the show. Be realistic on how many people your place can hold. We need to know how many tickets we can sell in advance. Ticket prices will be $20.

3. We will provide you with a detailed list of everyone who will be coming to the show. This way the host won’t have to deal with money and will only need to check people off the list as they arrive.

4. The host gets 5 free tickets for the show. If you have other friends who want to come to the show you can direct them to the link to buy tickets on-line.

5. The shows usually start at around 8pm. We’ll ask people to arrive around 7:30pm. It should be over by around 10:00pm. We’ll make it clear to everyone that they should be out of your house by 10:30pm.

7. You don’t need to provide any sort of sound system. All you need is a chair for Tim to sit on while playing and some kind of ambient lighting like a floor lamp.

8. Your home address will not be published on the web and only given to those people who purchase tickets.

9. The shows will not be promoted or advertised anywhere except our websites.

After reading all of this and you are interested please send an e-mail to:bob@undertowmusic.com and adam@undertowmusic.com

Please include a photo of the space where you would like to have the show and put “Joan of Arc (Solo) House Show” and the city where you live in the subject line of the e-mail.

We’ll review all requests. Once we have a routing figured out we’ll be in touch with people in the towns we are able to work into the schedule.

Thank you for your interest and support.

Bob + Adam

Only person on the bus for over 2 minutes!

Third biggest city in The Homeland. Yet still – Friday afternoon, 1:30 pm downtown – I was entirely alone (except for the driver of course) on the #56.

Sorry the video isn’t longer. But if you wanna look on the bright side, it’s kinda crazy that I could videotape something on my phone at all! Even if it is this short.

I was the ONLY motherfucker on the bus! For more than 2 minutes! In the middle of the afternoon!

I felt like The Donald Trump in his important stretch limousine.

I felt like how I imagine the Aborigines must feel on a Walkabout.

I felt like one of the lost Russian cosmonauts.

Man, wish you could’ve been there . . .

 

Fucked With by Drunk Off-Duty Cops

OK. I will report these events as plainly and accurately as possible.

This happened and I walked the 50 feet back to the bar I live in where a dozen of my friends were hanging out for our man Dean’s going away party, but I couldn’t even tell anyone this happened because it seemed so insane to me that I thought no one would believe me. I sat and ate my tacos in silence and split.

I bounced into the taco stand around 9:30 on Monday night to buy a couple tacos. I was excited. I’d been a little anxious all day that I needed to figure out how to make a little money and I’ve been a little bummed out that I can’t motivate myself to work on getting my new songs together and then I got an email offering me a little money to get some new songs together. This prompted me to get another couple hours of revision-work done on this writing I’m wrapping up, so I was feeling good – two extra hours of work I wasn’t expecting to get in today.

So, feeling great, I hop across the street like a happy goddamn carefree fucking bunny. Four men stood in there. The place is very, very tiny. Five men hardly fit unless they are all aware of granting each other some space and these men made it clear immediately that they did not deem me worthy of granting space to. They wouldn’t step aside to allow me to order. Three of the men were obviously together and they all knew the fourth guy who was alone. That fourth guy was taking to the woman behind the counter about being a cop. The other guys looked very much like cops – white guys, flat tops, clean, militant-preppy. Those three had obviously been drinking. Their eyes were flushed red and their voices were loud, their gestures broad and obnoxious.

They all got quiet when I entered and stood around me, looking me up and down. I said, “Excuse me” to step up to order and none of them moved. The shortest guy, real arrogant, coming up to barely my nose, pressed up very close to me, his chest puffed out and his face up close to mine. He said, “Hey you were downtown the other day.”

I was surprised and said, “Excuse me?”

“At the protest,” he said. “Downtown.”

We stood almost twenty blocks North and twenty blocks West of OCHQ. I don’t know why I would’ve possibly stood out to this guy. There have sometimes been as many as thousands of people there at once. I’ve been there about six times out of the 32 days it’s been happening and none of those times has been longer than a couple hours. So I’m hardly drawing attention myself there and probably just should’ve said no.

But my goddamn Catholic upbringing – of course I think of St. Peter denying Christ three times before the cock crows and that means that I can’t back down from some bully at the taco stand. So I said, “Yeah.”

Then I stepped past him to order. They all stood close to me, silent, while I ordered. I asked a couple extra questions about the Super-Nachos I had no intention of getting to buy myself a little time. I was looking for any sign from the woman behind the counter that she recognized something was happening, but nothing. And we have a little camaraderie. I’m in there a lot. She comes in Rainbo sometimes and we talk. But nothing.

“Vegetarian Tacos” gets a big laugh from my audience. They repeat it a couple times – “Vegetarian!” like they’d never heard anything so funny before.

I step back to the wall after ordering and the asshole short guy steps up close to me again.

“So how’d that go for you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“How did it go for you downtown? Did you get what you wanted? Was it a success?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. By this point, surrounded by four men: three of them obviously drunk, all of them obviously cops and at least one of them obviously looking for a fight, I was very nervous, aware that I was shaking a bit and my voice was wobbly. So I said, “Yeah, I think it was a success as a day, but obviously the changes people are out there looking for are bigger than one day can accomplish.”

“What are you all doing out there?”

“Well I couldn’t speak for everyone.”

“You!” At this point his voice rose and he pressed up even closer against me. The other guys were all listening close, smirking. “I want to know what you were doing out there.”

I was very nervous, but really wanted to articulate this in a non-divisive way, a way that wouldn’t provoke him and might help him understand that the protests were as much on his behalf as everyone else’s (the rights of right-wing thugs to intimidate people must be preserved!)

But mostly I was just so fucking confused. Why me? I guess he just figured this is a neighborhood in which people that might go down there live? And I look like one of those people maybe? My fashion sense can hardly be described as conspicuously smash-the-state. I’m a pretty low bar of non-conformity to get them frazzled. Shaven, my tattoos were covered, my hair washed. No one would mistake me for a surly teenager. So this must be happening to a lot of people?

But what the fuck grownup bullies another grownup? I just couldn’t believe it was happening.

I said something about standing in solidarity with people protesting systemic injustice. He looked incredulous. “What is that? Systemic injustice?”

I shrugged. His friend, a tall ugly goof laughed and said, “I don’t think he knows why he was down there.”

I shook my head and this was the weirdest part. I said, “No, I can explain exactly why I was down there, but I’m afraid you guys are about to hit me, so that’s why I’m too nervous to speak well. I think I’m about to get beat up.”

It was a weird thing to say, but now I realize that what was even weirder was that none of them were taken aback or looked surprised when I said it.

The short guy said, “I just wanted to take my wife for a nice evening downtown and then we get off the Blue Line at Jackson and there’s this angry mob. You don’t think I was afraid of being hit?”

I laughed, “Well you don’t need to worry about those people.”

“Well, how would I know? You can’t explain to me what everyone was doing down there.”

This guy was the self-satisfied ruddy face of the future storm troopers that I’ve been dreading ever since Bush’s stolen election over a decade ago. I just repeated myself. “I was there to stand in solidarity with those protesting systemic corruption.”

“Who do you want to see out of office? The incumbents?”

“Not just the incumbents. It’s systemic.”

“So you’re protesting all those who serve the public?”

“No, not those that serve the public. Those that serve their own interests at the expense of the public.”

“And you know? You know who that would be? What makes you think you know anything?”

I shrugged. He’s right. What the hell do I know? I thought of my sign I’ve been carrying and mustering all my strength to concentrate and be articulate in the face of the bully, I said, “Well, for example I’m very concerned about environmental devastation and I’m afraid that unchecked corporate power allows the destruction of the environment to continue. That is an example of a systemic problem.”

He shrugged, seemed to give me that one. You can’t argue that it’s probably not a bad idea for the earth to continue.

His friends got their food, got bored with me, realizing I wouldn’t be provoked into an argument, stepped out with their food. Other people continued to walk in and the short guy insisted on continuing this conversation around them. Everyone else stood silent and tense, occasionally glancing at me sideways to see how I was dealing with being stared down and taunted.

I asked him, “Why did you ask me that?”

He said, “I’m just curious. I want to understand what’s going on down there, what you people think you’re doing and you look like maybe I saw you down there.”

I nodded.

There were thousands of people last Saturday, hundreds most other days. If it’s been going on 32 days that’s over 750 hours, of which I have been present for about maybe10 hours total which would be what – one-and-a-half percent of the time? I wasn’t one of those brave enough to get arrested.

So there is no conceivable way that this asshole actually recognized me from being down there. This is just an example of the kind of person that grows up and wants to be a cop? A bully.

It’s been a long time that I’ve been jumpy about those that have a more confident step than myself. Are they that afraid? So afraid that an off-duty cop can just press anyone on the street and play dumb to the fact that he’s being intimidating? And if they are this shaken by a bunch of peaceniks standing around chanting and banging on rubber buckets – if they are so defensive against that, then how can anyone doubt the lengths that they go to behind the scenes to maintain power?

And of course, I realize as I do my best to report the facts accurately here, there is nothing – not a single thing in his words that is officially anything more sinister than one citizen making conversation with another while they both wait for tacos.

However, if it was really nothing, why was I shaking and too nervous to talk for half an hour after that?

When my food was up I grabbed it and walked out. The fourth guy, their friend they’d run into, didn’t step aside so I could reach for my food. He told the woman behind the counter that he was dreading Halloween, but at least he’s a sergeant now, so it’ll be a little bit easier.