PLAYING AND READING AT PLAN-IT-X FEST

 

This year's PLAN-IT-X FEST, a diy-punk music and more festival in Bloomington, IND., will take place on June 21st-24th, 2012. 

I will be playing songs on June 21st for the 'local's only' show w/ a full band (ostensibly named Great Health) at the Bishop along with Toby Foster, Madeline Ava, Canadian Tuxedo, Lioneater, Erin Tobey, Closet Burner, Pink Houses, Inky Skulls, & Pleasure Blade.

I will also be reading poems on June 24th, the last day of the fest, at Rhino's at 12 p.m. Here's the full schedule of everyone who is playing:

I'm also organizing a Poetry in Punk reading the morning of the 23rd at Boxcar Books to coincide w/ the fest. More details later.

Come hang out in the town that I (we all) live in. It's quite magical.

DIE KINDER TAPE

 

Die Kinder, a musical project I am a part of w/ Kari Jørgensen & Ryan Eilbeck, released a six-song tape at Skylab Gallery on May 5th in Columbus, Ohio.



Download the songs for free HERE (or direct zip file here)

OR if you would like a physical copy of the tape via mail, paypal $4 (ppd) to richardwehrenbergjr at gmail dot com.

OR get in touch at the same email address for other ways to get the tape.

Reach for the strange fruit.

ZINE WORKSHOP NOTES

On Monday, March 26th, Penina Gal and myself spoke to a feminist studies class of middle and high school students from Harmony School in Bloomington, Indiana about ZINES at Boxcar Books. Subjects we touched on included: the general history of zines, the poetic history of zines, the punk history of zines, the comix history of zines, the feminist history of zines, the subversive nature of zines, the urgency of self-publishing, famous zines, anti-famous zines, infamous zines, sexy zines, zine libraries, fests, archives, punk, house shows, diy punk, feminism, Monster House, poetry tours, and community.

Below is the outline I would glance at occasionally to gain my bearings when my thoughts had flown off course:

CHICAGO ZINE FEST 2012

I'll be in Chicago this weekend tabling at CHICAGO ZINE FEST for MONSTER HOUSE PRESS & BOXCAR BOOKS.

Come visit, please.

NOTES FROM DECEMBER-JANUARY

people in the future will have books or e-files of their text conversations and e-mails similar in idea to a compiled book of letters today

a collective of individuals is what we desire

so much hidden beneath our outer appearance and it's terrifying what lies there

humans as food for other species as a strange, unfathomable idea; esp. since assumption of human centrality posited (mostly) by christian faiths assumes otherwise as these ideologies inhabit and inform to a greater extent our basic and underlying assumptions and expectations since we learn what we should assume and expect from day one

if you are a dad and you are looking at yr children what do you think about when you do

seeing cars i think are my friends' cars all the time

elk's lodges' humming w/ christmas gatherings, hurrying around cleveland in cars that aren't mine

paucity of snow and cold as damaging / obfuscating to my understanding of this time of year; feel spacey dreamy not real but okay

a mass w/o the smearing of individuality is what we desire; this smearing / loss why communistic things usually fail

i would be standing before a river, think, you

children w/ both parents last names as new thing / style (to me)

if i go through some miraculous thing w/ you, we will be closer

if i share enough time w/ you, go to places w/ you, we will be closer

feeling of being unable to break through something, go for it fully, despite a complete desire for it

both/and thought as preferred to either/or thought

all we will never know, my mother's stories and processes, a stranger's heart, how the lives around us have unfolded or not

all yr life you may try to keep things from going away from you

what does it mean to live somewhere and nowhere, to be able to be alive anywhere, to be aware of the world and not

i love many people

there's nothing to get

THE SNOW, THE COLD

December is a month of transformation for me. January too. They mean snow. They mean cold. They signify the incipience of the ending of the circle that is a year. Again, we have ridden the circumference of its course. I try to measure what the accumulation of events in the context of a year mean, what they stand for and constitute and the scale breaks, the ruler snaps.

Last January (2011) I was sitting in Buckeye Donuts in Columbus, Ohio and overheard a man tell another man that he wasn't sure if he was going to make it through the winter. Both men had conventional winter hats on and were blowing breath into hands recently relinquished of their gloves. The man who was listening at first assured the man who was speaking first that, indeed, they would make it through the winter—with some beer and football and a little getting-together, yes—they would make it through. For whatever reason, his words stayed with me that day. Out of every conversation you overhear most get sent to (what I like to believe is) the equivalent of a trash can or external hard drive for a computer—recoverable, but (probably, eventually, inevitably) forgotten. Not like yeah, man, we got it bad. Winter... And not that I find savior-like warmth in beer and football. Far from it. But there is something to be said about the snow, the cold.

We cold-snow-blessed Midwesterners of a certain latitude get something that those non-snow-cold-blessed don't. An endurance. A promise. Some combination of sadness/fatalism amalgamated with joy/carefully-calculated will. We have to get through something. There are distinct obstacles to our days. We use moments of time to tie a scarf, shovel a sidewalk, pull on gloves, or blow breath in our hands—moments that we might otherwise use doing other things. We take time. That's what December directs me to reflect on. Time. We slow down. What we assume about traveling through our days gets deconstructed. We follow our breath and feel warmth so much more fully.

In our hibernation of sorts we have dreams that tell us who we will be when it's time to wake up. And we do wake up—in March or April or May—changed inexorably, punctuated by the seasons of the Midwest.

NOTES WRITTEN WHILE TRAVELING FROM CLEVELAND TO BLOOMINGTON

people from my hometown commenting on my appearance / my weight

reading my mom's texts, how formal she is in them

certain anxieties about writing manifesting

do my parents think proudly about how they have 'made' me

do you think there is something larger than you out there

not good at thinking of a specific for a category, but if you give me a specific i will tell you what it means

majority of people don't want to critically assess and deconstruct the stuff of their lives

cousin's baby 'making eyes' and riding a rocking horse, we say 'see ya later' to him and wave

old friend who works at a nuclear power plant in painesville, ohio now

very normal people who feel trapped but don't want to admit it are the majority of people in america

guy with chief wahoo tatooed on the back of his head at the bar

college girls returning to my hometown to dance with the old guys at our town's bar

girl next to me on plane comments on the 'ugly browness' of a river we fly over, i say 'humans' in response

missing someone like you can't help it, always

there are planes in the sky at all times

get warm fuzz feeling from stewardess pouring my coffee, placing a napkin on my thigh

my mum saying all her kids are a crapshoot w/r/t getting married

lots of people on this plane who used to be little kids sleeping like them again

guy next to me talks about stocks and bloomington business and multi-million dollar companies

the reproduction of the relations of production...

dead chicken pieces between heated up wheat thirty thousand feet in the sky

some guy spouting rhetoric about deserving

everyone was once a tiny animal who learned to read signs

'truth' is out there and people want it now, now, right now, got to, now, okay

do you think that we should try so hard