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Episode two, as I find my groove with the new podcast, includes a short story called Dog on the Beat, an answer to a Ferlinghetti piece called Dog. 

My piece was called Dog on the Beat and it ran in Bark Magazine in print several years ago:

Lawrence Furlinghetti ran freely in the street. He wrote no poetry in his head, planned no conversations with middle management. His deadlines determined by stomach and dark, he sniffed the world for adventure and followed no schedule. He was no watch dog.

The sidewalks and alleyways padded under and away behind him, scented for friends to know his passage. His leg lifts and paw touches each a gentle mark for the finding.

Lawrence Furlinghetti ran freely in the street. Ginsbear and Corso ran with him for a bit, near noon beneath the near-stopped sun, but its quiet overhead arc saw them off to elsewhere, amiable in parting, all the wags and pants strewn wide and away.

Joy of action bundled him on, all soft and shiny for the admiration of the bitches, claws clicking on pavement. This city home, this cubist construct no disguise for a world he knew and always would was just a ball, all grey and tall, honked laughing to him in the language of modernity.

Lawrence Furlinghetti ran freely in the street, the big and small of sky and scraper, ants and scraps about him uncompared. Fast food wrapper trash drew salivating want from deep cavern muzzle snuffle, tongue hung long for bonus sense of dream taste desire.

The fast and slow of cars and crosswalks filled him to the jowls, flopping with each step past perfumed skirts and nicotine trousers over leather luscious shoes. No. Bad. No shoes. No. Bad dog.

Onward, turning blocks to territory Lawrence Furlingetti ran. Freely in the street he grinned and strangers, some, said, “handsome boy!” or “come, boy, come,” but on he ran, dismissive of their rescue fantasy offers, their new dog hopes, their hero dreams of gratitude and hugs, a child in happy tears. Others, fearful, gave unneeded space, seeing teeth projected danger, rage, a rabid temper rigged to twig, averted eyes and Lawrence in his breathing chuckled dominant in his world and trotted off, trotted on.

He ran his beat, about the glass glitter neighborhood and past the out-pushed stoops where pungent lady smoked and paperback boy read, stretched and high and lounging across three steps. Both knew him well, if not his name, and casually greeted him as he passed. He’d stop some days for pets and scratches, let them talk, trade love for love, but not today.

Lawrence Furlinghetti ran freely in the street, tight dodging through the light-stopped growl of traffic, overheating in the summer slowdown. Horn bleating herds of chrome and plastic called for order some deep-gene want drove him to impose but he would not shout nipping at the heels of all the world to stay in close. He knew the impulse of his ancestors, not as an imperative but as a gentle touch of history, a soft and comforting voice barking back across millennia. The great, great granddogs, working with the two-leg shepherds, bringing flocks to shearing, cattle for the milking or the slaughter, touched his ruff through tufts of time. As happy in their work as he now in his liberty, they urged him on, unenvying, supportive, beying songs of immortal love that echo down the ages. So, running on, he let the traffic course its way, unchased and uncontrolled.

Lawrence Furlinghetti ran freely in the street.

The turning orb pulled shadows long and only for a moment he lay, sheltered from the warm, paw cradled face flat down in shade. Then up again, he made the final turn for home, where bowl and bed awaited, boy brother and tall parents, their laughter his joy.

In safe again, and hearing glow box murmur on in voices familiar but unknown, he sensed the trepidation, rising fears, concerns too big for him to hold, of broken worlds and post-apocalyptic presents, he lay to listen, to make soft sounds of comfort should any of them pause to care.

Tomorrow he would race again, and every day the air allowed. In twitching dreams, as in his love-blessed life, Lawrence Furlinghetti ran freely in the streets.

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A podcast is born.

I've recorded the audio book of The Modern Depression Guidebook and realized that I now have the technology to do this with ALL my books. Now, as the recording awaits approval by the company that will release the reading across the audible literary platforms, I've decided to begin pre-releasing the book a chapter at a time for my Patreon supporters.

Then I realized I could turn the whole thing into an ongoing podcast for people who dig podcasts but don't want to subscribe to my Patreon.  Which I totally get! So each one will drop here first and then, two weeks later, will be available to podcast listeners wherever podcasts are found!

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So I never got to work this out on stage or really find out if there were jokes in it worth exploring. I DID keep writing jokes at the top about why I was allowed to write and sing the blues even as a cisgender male Jew who can pass for a regular white guy if he could just learn to keep his big Jewish trap shut. I think there's something usable in that joke for somewhere. But I was using it as an explanation for why I am allowed to sing the blues... and also as a way of secretly telling people that I was trying to do blues.

Once I realize my own deceitful subtext, I have to expunge it from the show. Once I know my subtext lives in discomfort around the material or the performance of the material, it's time to pull it out of the show until it's further developed and understood.

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We're down to the nitty-gritty, the terrifying crap. This is what the Patreon is for, letting you see (and hear) the stuff in development.

In this performance of the new solo show, I come very close to performing the musical story-telling show I wrote. This is very exciting. The beats are all there. The stories and songs come in the right order.

Two important jokes got lost entirely. Several jokes that I've done for years I screwed up for no reason except that the focus of doing a performance via ZOOM messes with the focus. You can sometimes see the audience laugh but there's no sound from them at all. Also, I was focusing hard through a slight delay echo coming back at me throughout.

I need to find a musical director who can both give me the vocal training I need and help me build the multiple musical dynamics I want to create. The tentative guitar work for LOOK AT ME, but I want THIS NEXT RENAISSANCE to play like a Rock Anthem at the end and I just don't have the confidence and technique to let it build. This is partly because I can feel myself holding my voice back for fear of -- you know -- ruining everything by being out of tune and proving all the people who told me I couldn't sing correct.

Anywhozle, it's coming together. I know the songs. I can perform them in front of people (better, I think, than I can perform them in front of small images of people alone in my office). I make fewer of the verbal blunders and fuck-ups/and/fixes-on-the-fly with each run through.

We're starting to book some live gigs and so far, the response has been extraordinary. I expect people to look at the piece as a work-in-progress when I do it in small spaces for little audiences. I expect them to approach me with notes and I brace myself for the ego blows as which those come in the moments after a performance. Thus far it seems as though the piece is, as Parker Bennett said, "ambitious and affecting."

I got an e-mail after performing segments of it at the THROCK a few weeks ago. Apparently one of the jokes keeps running through an audience member's head on a loop like a song. Do you have any idea how proud I am to have written a joke that does that? Like a song!

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Here's the audio recording of the piece published in Medium, through my newsletter and now, elsewhere publicly through this Patreon page.

I have to keep the audio for patrons only because otherwise there are some weird publicly-release rights issues as I submit it for radio play and podcast licensing and so on.

The most exciting thing about this recording for me is that I think I've learned to use my office-based recording set-up to get audio-book quality recordings. (I'm having this recording assessed to that end.) If I'm right about this, I can save a WHOLE lot of money and time by getting to work on MERLYN'S MISTAKE right away without finding a studio!

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