https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site Minor Works Mon, 30 Mar 2026 17:06:58 +0000 https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site en https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/Index Thu, 31 Mar 2022 13:51:20 +0000 Minor Works https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/Index https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/Wintry-Mix-by-deejay-KMAN Mon, 30 Mar 2026 17:06:58 +0000 Minor Works https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/Wintry-Mix-by-deejay-KMAN Wintry Mix&nbsp; by deejay KMAN ----- Sounds at 30,000 feet at the end of one year and at ground level at the beginning of another. Happy 2026! Let's imagine what society we do / don't wanna live in with dear John. "Would you want to live in such a society? I can't imagine wanting live in such a society." - John Cage on a society run like Glenn Branca's music "I much prefer the thinking of sorrow, of anarchy, of freedom from such intention. That's how I feel." - JC again - deejay KMAN, 01/2026 ----- deejay KMAN is a DJ based near Los Angeles, CA. He makes mixes when the season’s changes moves him. People who say there are no seasons there have never lived there. https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/The-Derrinlaur-Boy-by-Eamon-Fogarty Wed, 25 Mar 2026 14:06:19 +0000 Minor Works https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/The-Derrinlaur-Boy-by-Eamon-Fogarty The Derrinlaur Boy by Eamon Fogarty ----- Studying the transmission of culture, and of song in particular, prior to the advent of widely available recording and playback technology is a notoriously slippery fish. When attempting to trace the entwined lyrical and musical genealogy of a particular folk tune, one is often faced with unsolvable riddles and pushed towards speculative leaps of faith. Art is an inexact science and the factors which lead to this or that version of a particular song proliferating in a given territory or time period are even less easily indexed and measured than their analogues in the plastic arts. Archives containing the “material” of song (both sonic and textual) can serve as powerful tools in these efforts–even if only as timestamps and geotags for a given work’s circulation–but their limitations often end up raising further, more intriguing questions rather than yielding definitive, satisfying answers. Between 1937 and 1939 the newly established Irish Folklore Commission initiated an unusual project which made use of an as-yet untapped (at least in the field of citizen ethnography) demographic resource: children. The resulting archive, consisting of 1,128 notebooks full of folklore gathered by schoolchildren from their families, friends, and neighbors, is known as The Schools’ Collection (Bailiúchán na Scol) and can be accessed online in its entirety, including high definition scans and transcripts. It is an extraordinarily rich and early example of a community-engaged archive, and one whose “community” was essentially the entire republic. Although I am a musician, and primarily interested in song, I should emphasize that the Schools’ Collection is not a collection of music–far from it. It consists only of transcribed interviews and there is no audio element or musical notation. Songs appear as texts, with the occasional footnote indicating the tune or air to which the words should be sung. Denuded of their musical content, they are thus reduced to poetry, sometimes crude, sometimes sophisticated. Most of the notebooks are filled up by descriptions of regional folkways. Some examples of generic headings that appear across many of the volumes include marriage customs, festival customs, famine times, old sayings, landlords, local place names, faction fighting, cures, weather signs. Many headings are more specific, including a great number which refer to tales recounting fantastic local legends (telling of buried treasures or strange animals e.g. “The Boy and the Eel” “The Enchanted Cat.”) A more thorough investigation would be needed to trace the roots (shallow? deep?) of these various myths and legends. What is certain, however, is that there is a strange temporal flattening effect at work when arranging verifiable descriptions of concrete local history and geography alongside imaginative works whose origins (both in time and in terms of authorship) are less clear. I first learned about the collection on April 17th 2022, when I received an unusual email from the website academia.edu asking me to add an “academic paper” from “2017” titled The Derrinlaur Boy to my profile on their site. I have never used academia.edu before or since, but my understanding is that it scrapes the internet and tries to match extant academic papers to individuals with corresponding ‘.edu’ email addresses (I work for a university in California) in the hopes that the “profile” they’ve autogenerated can serve as a personal website for any academic who can’t be bothered to create one from whole cloth. <img width="2048" height="922" width_o="2048" height_o="922" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d54f0aa0962effdf7ad5048c3d8734eacaacaf4162fb3d6a4a90b3431aebfed9/academia.png" data-mid="246670668" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d54f0aa0962effdf7ad5048c3d8734eacaacaf4162fb3d6a4a90b3431aebfed9/academia.png" /> Obviously, the author of this “paper” was not me. I do, however, have a rather unusual name, and the coincidence of a song, specifically, being attributed to me by an automated academic publication aggregator was intriguing enough that I decided to look into it with a quick google search. The text I found is reproduced below: Eamon Fogarty. Derrinlaur Clonmel. I heard this song at home. The Derrinlaur boys went out one day. Along the road a strolling O, They met a Tin Lizzie1&nbsp;on the road forsaken and forlorn O, One proposed as the day was fine they'ed have drive by pillage O, They took the Tin Liz by the wiz and drove her towards the village O. With Micky Fogarty at the wheel a mechanic bold and daring O. The Lizzie sped as ne'er before down towards the village of Kilsheelan O. With Johnny Cooney from Lisheen better known as "Murphy" O, and Dinny Shanahan from Kilganey a drapers clerk a while ago, and Jinny Walsh from Lisheen was captured by Guard2 Malloy O, But one was missing from the crowd and that was famous "Scurty" O. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Air of The Bansha Peelers The song in question was in fact not even authored by “Eamon Fogarty” but was collected by him in the late 1930’s (2017 was probably the date of its transcription.) On its surface, it is about a group of men or boys finding an abandoned car and going for a joyride. It is full of proper names and geographical references that break the rhyme scheme and disrupt the meter. It is, objectively speaking, not a particularly good song or poem. It seems to be some sort of private parody of the more well-known song whose tune it borrows, probably written by a relative of my nominative doppelganger, the boy who collected it. And yet, I remained fascinated by it for reasons beyond the fact that it may or may not be about my great-grandfather getting arrested for stealing a car (more on this later.) I resolved to try to find a way to perform it–but first I wanted to try to understand what exactly was going on. Why was this song written, and why was it deemed worthy of collecting and preserving? The text relies heavily on references to real places and presumably real people, and one can’t help but get the feeling that there is something missing from the story. Among the questions raised: Was only one of their party captured or were they all arrested? If so, why? Who is this famous “Scurty” who wasn’t around for the day’s shenanigans, but whose conspicuous absence was deemed notable? Could he be an informer of some kind, responsible for the arrests of the others? To try to answer some of these questions I turned to the “air” on which it’s based: The Bansha Peeler, also known as The Peeler and the Goat. The “Peeler” in the title is another word for guard or policeman, and is a mocking reference to Sir Robert Peel, the Prime Minister of the UK whose enforcers were the forerunners to the Royal Irish Constabulary. A masterclass in absurdist political satire, the song tells the story of a talking goat who is arrested by a peeler on charges of loitering and (implied) prostitution and threatened with transportation3. The goat argues her case and accuses the peeler of corruption and extortion. According to some sources the song is based on an incident in the town of Bansha in 1830 when a goat was arrested for headbutting an officer, but it is also probably a reference to the practice among peelers of arresting farm animals for loitering or blocking traffic as a means to harass and extort fines from their owners. In the same way that you can learn a lot about a culture from its graffiti, I believe that a great deal can be learned about a people by listening to their parody songs, their schoolyard rhymes, and other popular bastardizations of culture in circulation. Unfortunately, I was unable to arrive at any concrete answers by comparing the text of The Derrinlaur Boy to The Bansha Peeler and its variants. One can detect thematic resonances–a healthy soupçon of contempt for policing, for example–but that is hardly a unique characteristic in the repertoire of traditional Irish music. While this version may be haunted by the satirical anti-establishment spirit of the song on which it is based, it is also worth noting that most of the lines end with “O” which probably made it easier to parody. Even if my examination of the Bansha Peeler didn’t answer my questions, it did confirm one thing: my suspicion that somethingwas indeed missing from the song as transcribed. The verses of the Bansha Peeler are organized in four line groups, with the melodic material following a strict ABCB pattern. The Derrinlaur Boy is a mere ten lines. Perhaps some material was intended to be repeated, but no indication is given to this effect. Rather, it is my suspicion that part of the text may have been omitted. A failure of memory seems the most likely reason, but it also seems possible that the informant was self-censoring for the sake of one Eamon Fogarty’s innocent ears, at the expense of another’s. Why was this text written, and why did both informant and interviewer deem it worth preserving? There is a long tradition in Ireland and elsewhere of composing songs in memory of people who are no longer around for reasons of untimely death (in factional conflict or at the hands of an unjust legal system) or emigration. I suspect the reason why people in Clonmel sang about “The Derrinlaur Boys” in the 30’s is that the boys were gone, never to be back in town again. I know for a fact that at least one of them left in 1910, because I have his immigration papers. <img width="1344" height="282" width_o="1344" height_o="282" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ab6173a433c47a021437fe3dc8389e95ca3fd8008bf86e92b82aa05023880d3f/micky.png" data-mid="246670669" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ab6173a433c47a021437fe3dc8389e95ca3fd8008bf86e92b82aa05023880d3f/micky.png" /> Or at least that’s what I’d like to think. There are some details that don’t quite add up. The Micky in the song is a mechanic. On my great-grandfather Michael’s petition for naturalization, his occupation is given as “laborer.” Of course this could be an example of the classic problem where an immigrant’s credentials aren’t valid in his new home, but I doubt it. More damning: the Ford Model T (Tin Lizzie) debuted in 1908, but would not have been widely available in Ireland until 1917 when Ford opened a factory in Cork. It’s not impossible that the incident in the song, if it occurred at all, could have happened between 1908 and 1910, but the window is narrow. Of course, this is all happening under the big assumption that there is any semblance of documentary objectivity in the text of a song collected by a child from one of his relatives approximately 100 years ago. It could very well be a case of real people being inserted into fictionalized events. As far as I know, my great-grandfather, who was by all accounts a thoroughly bitter and unpleasant man, left for “Amerikay”4&nbsp;not because he was running from the law on charges of grand theft auto, but for normal, boring socio-economic reasons: namely his oldest brother inherited the family farm, and he had no income of his own. The “Micky” in the song may be my great-grandfather, (perhaps emigration hardened the heart of that happy-go-lucky prankster) or he may be some other more distant relation. Someone probably wrote him into this song because they missed him. Contemporary listeners would have understood this odd scrap of hyperlocal cultural ephemera as a tribute to departed loved ones whether dead, “transported,” or merely emigrated. I hoped to restore some of that lost subtext in my reworked version of the song, which swaps the Tin Lizzie out for a stagecoach and transposes the day of the automotive joyride back to the era of the penal laws. It has been difficult for me to disentangle my fascination with decoding and rehabilitating this text from my own tenuous biographical links to it. I am generally suspicious of Americans who feel anything more than a fleeting connection to their white European “roots,” or anything deeper than a vague affinity for that proverbial “old country” they’ve never visited and whose language and culture they barely understand. It was only in high school when I began studying the use of language as a tool of empire and discovered the anti-imperialist writings of the Irish socialist James Connolly that I began to feel any kind of robust connection to the history of “my people” and to the dwindling ranks of those who are carrying on their revolutionary struggle into the present. I should clarify here that I do not mean the remaining handful of adherents to armed “physical force republicanism,” but rather a broader, more loosely defined Irish left that holds firmly onto that legacy of social democracy and anti-colonialism but is itself being increasingly sidelined as Ireland emerges as a Big Tech powerhouse (and tax shelter.) Back then, I desperately wanted to learn the Irish language for the sake of learning some rebel songs, but in those days Duolingo was a mere twinkle in some start-up founder’s eye, and the robust internet resources of today simply weren’t in place yet. My first encounter with Irish revolutionary history probably came from a dog-eared copy of Trinity by the literary propagandist Leon Uris which I found on the shelves of my childhood home and definitely read much too young–though it is also possible I watched “If It's Doomsday, This Must Be Belfast," the 1992 episode of Captain Planet wherein they attempt to tackle the Troubles, South African Apartheid, and the Israel-Palestine conflict in 23 minutes. In any case, echoes of the conflict were around when I was growing up, and it was merely up to me to glom onto them. In spite of my name, I didn’t grow up with strong social rituals around traditional music or storytelling. In fact, I didn’t even know the names of any of my great-grandparents until my uncle unearthed his immigration documents just a few months before I received the email from academia.edu that kicked off this whole “adventure.” I wonder how much of my obsession with this bizarre and generally uncompelling textual fragment stems from genuine interest in microhistorical research, and how much is a sort of genealogical narcissism fueled by (a) coincidence and (b) the very real cultural lacuna I feel with regard to the precipitous loss of artistic traditions thanks to several generations of enthusiastic assimilation. I have since recognized something about the longing I felt for a kind of identifiable Irishness that was different from (and more authentic than) the Bostonian mutation I grew up with. This urge to de-assimilate from the host and re-immerse myself in something that was “mine” by default (e.g. a cultural or political tradition that resonated with me) is as commonplace among later generations of diasporic populations as it is vulnerable to propaganda from nation states and other organizations. When I think of the recruitment of young muslims in France by ISIS, or the American Jews who head off to become settlers in the West Bank, I wonder if, had I been born a century earlier, I would have found myself running guns for the freedom fighters, or at the very least organizing loosely disguised fundraising benefits in the greater Boston area. Let me be very clear that I am well aware that the three quite distinct political projects I’ve cited above have vanishingly little to do with one another apart from their embrace of political violence. After all, the stated cause of the various earlier, pre-Troubles, pre-Republic, even pre-Free State strains of republicanism as I understood them was to establish a united, socialist Ireland free of religious discrimination–as opposed to a religiously homogenous caliphate or a nominally secular apartheid ethnostate–which to me seemed like something worth fighting for. Even still, the version of that history as I received it was simultaneously dated, biased, sanitized, and simplified, and it’s frankly ridiculous to talk about having “sympathies” with any movement that has been subject to so many ideological and tactical splinterings throughout its long tortuous history. If nothing else, the various fusions and fissions of -isms (nationalism, republicanism, socialism, secularism and their inverses) among the factions at various points along the timeline meant I learned something early on about what it means to be in a coalition with people you don’t fully agree with. When I was writing my history papers in high school about the Irish civil war I was essentially an armchair partisan struggling to see a clear path to a better world in my own time, and grasping for fragments of the past to justify my present day political leanings, which constituted a fairly bog-standard (pun entirely intended) yearning for social democracy that would be much more at home in almost any country except the United States. Modern Ireland is a far cry from what various idealists and revolutionaries envisioned over the years, but it does have a decent track record when it comes to being on the side of anti-colonial struggles. No country is perfect, and Ireland is not without its own homegrown fascists (the “Blue Shirts” of yore, and the anti-immigration and anti-asylum rioters of recent years) but no one remembers the songs of the Irishmen who fought for Franco’s Spain. The Irish have a knack for weaponizing their cultural resources, and so far history has seen these proverbial guns pointed squarely at the oppressor and colonizer. Though the repertoire and its interpretation may appear to be fixed by concrete historical facts, I have lived long enough to know that collective memory is its own sort of battlefield, and all of these meanings are subject to change. There is a line in the old rebel song “Oró, Sé Do Bheatha 'Bhaile” that popped into my mind in light of recent events: “Ag fógairt fáin ar Ghallaibh,” the last line of the song calls for “banishing [of] all the foreigners.” At the time the song was written, “Ghallaibh” which shares a root with the “Gaul” would have been understood to refer rather ironically to the British. Given the slippery nature of language, one could easily imagine (as I did) that the aggrieved “Ireland for the Irish” contingent might be heard singing the song today. But, as far as I can tell, the tune is so thoroughly associated with the liberatory legacy of the republican movement that it was in fact exclusively the counter protestors from left-wing parties like Sinn Fein and People Before Profit who could be heard singing it at recent rallies and marches. Once again I have to ask myself: is my interest in this song, its history, and this line in particular a result of the fact that “fógairt” (banish, disperse, cast out) happens to be the verb form of my own surname? Would my ears still have been so drawn to it that I felt compelled to look up the translation had I not heard those shared phonemes whose meaning inspired in me so much speculation about my own family history in the days before internet research? Does any of this actually have&nbsp;anything to do with me? In a recent SNL sketch, Irish actor Paul Mescal exclaims, “there’s only a few million people with that last name!!” in exaggerated astonishment at learning that an American tourist’s grandmother’s maiden name was O’Connor. That sketch, which is titled “What Irish-Americans Think Will Happen When They Visit Ireland” ably skewers an unfortunate side-effect of Ireland’s increasing reliance on foreign tourism to fuel its economy: a steady influx of clueless Americans eagerly searching for a pastoral wonderland onto which they can project their fantasies of an idyllic rural past. Thanks to centuries of emigration, the countryside they encounter is perhaps better suited to this end than most modern, industrial European nations. I myself held off on visiting my so-called “homeland” until I’d accumulated enough Irish friends and acquaintances through music-making that I was able to book myself a short tour, as if to say “Look at me! I’m different! I’m finding my roots in a genuine, non-problematic way!” As it happened, I wasn’t really that much different. I played some great shows with some lovely people. I went on some very pretty hikes. Though I stopped short of actually dropping in on the old family farm unannounced, I did meet with some distant relatives in Kilkenny who all looked eerily like my paternal grandfather. We had plenty to talk about too, because one of them happens to book a big annual roots music festival in town, and has very hip taste in spite of his age. I don’t think I would have been comfortable with any of this had it not been for the fact that months before when I’d first posted on Instagram about my discovery of and investigations into the “Derrinlaur Boy,” my friend Brigid Power in Galway commented saying she was delighted and surprised to see an American who was aware of and engaging with the Schools’ Collection. Her approval was validating. It may be cartoonishly optimistic to think that encouraging amateur archival research could put a dent in the scourge of ignorant tourists, but if nothing else, it could serve as a resource for those curious and self-aware enough to feel compelled to substantiate their tenuous claims of ancestral connection to place. To my mind, the beauty of the Schools’ Collection is that there are so many ways in. All you need is the name of a relative or a village and you’re off to the races. It’s easily searchable and thoroughly geotagged, and the material is just far enough away in time that even the most mundane details have a whiff of the antique, of a world lost to time. The very ancient exists alongside the relatively new, all transcribed in the same hand. At the time, there were parallel efforts at cultural preservation underway whose researchers were equipped with recording equipment, professional discernment, as well as prejudices about what deserved to be recorded and what counted as folk music. These are the sorts of cracks that parodies and minor texts tend to slip through. But isn’t the world more wonderful and enchanted when we recognize that we are the authors of our own mythology and that mythology is in a perpetual state of remaking? Such an extraordinarily dense and baffling artifact could only be the result of the immediate aftermath of a revolutionary moment. From the perspective of a researcher working several decades or centuries hence, the simple fact of a story or song having been recorded gives it weight. A local variant of a Child ballad with roots in the 15th century might sit on the page facing a ditty written by someone’s uncle to commemorate the opening of a tavern. There’s no gatekeeping, no scholarly insistence on any kind of methodological rigor: only the act of recording a cross-section of a culture at a particular moment in all its anarchic detail. It’s up to us what utility, political or purely recreational, we draw from it. Below is the full text of my reworking of “The Derrinlaur Boy”: The Derrinlaur boys went out one day Along the road a riding O They found an old wagon left on the verge Forsaken and forlorn O One proposed as the day was fine They’d have a drive by pillage O They placed their ponies under yoke And drove them towards the village O With Mickey Fogarty at the reins A horseman brave and daring O The boys sped on as ne’er before To the village of Kilsheelan O With Johnny Clooney from Lisheen And Danny from Kilganey O But the wagon’s spokes were splintered clean By the carbine of guard Malloy O “Your recklessness, I will chastise And thieving brash behaviour, O! Well bound to Queenstown you shall go Where you shall gain no favour, O! The magistrates will all consent To sign your condemnation, O! From thence to Cork you’ll all be sent For speedy transportation, O!” “Derrinlaur’s our dwelling place Where we were bred and born you know Though we never would thrash an honest face For defamers we’re obliging, O! No penal laws have we transgressed By deed or combination, O! You cannot steal what isn’t owned Or what has been abandoned, O!” “The consequence be what it will A peeler's power I'll let you know I'll handcuff you in all events And march you off to Bridewell, O! And Sure you rogues, you can't deny Before the judge or jury, O! Intimidation with your fists And threat’ning me with fury, O!” “I'll make no doubt but that you're drunk With whiskey, rum or brandy, O! Or you wouldn't have such gallant spunk To be so bold and manly, O! For you readily would let us pass If we had money handy, O! To treat you to a poteen glass 'Tis then we’d all be dandies, O!” May 2025 Special thanks to Thomas FitzGerald for his help with various factual and historical points in this essay, and for making sure I didn’t make a total fool of myself with my broad generalizations about Irish history and culture. 1Ford Model T. And yes, the band is so named because “Thin Lizzy” when pronounced with an Irish accent sounds like “Tin Lizzie.” 2Policeman. 3Deportation to the penal colony of Australia, a fate common among Catholics accused of relatively minor crimes under the discriminatory Penal Laws. 4This is not a typo, but rather a common transliteration of the old Hiberno-English pronunciation of America which appears in many songs in the Irish tradition, often ones which deal with themes of emigration and homesickness. ----- Eamon Fogarty is a New York-based composer, vocalist, and audio archivist originally from the state of New Hampshire. His work with the Discography of American Historical Recordings focuses on popular music from the 30's and 40's. He performs his songs regularly with his band around the New York area and beyond. https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/4-Poems-by-Gram-Hummell Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:42:15 +0000 Minor Works https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/4-Poems-by-Gram-Hummell 4 Poems by Gram Hummell ----- Red Eden π When I see groups of Guy friends out the museum, the botanical garden It makes me laugh, I don’t know why They will tell me about Nothin in particular Which is the sign I have not spoken to them in awhile I’m getting excited about this Neon monolith business I’m excited about the neon monolith I have to make Sometimes when I open A raw book of poetry I self-immolate reading “calloused hands” On the street There is a part of me.. Really hopes to overhear The new and vital secret Alpha Centauri Aberrant minds The American Educational System I pluck these out on the porch A kid skates by Padded up on blades I can’t even decide on dinner Or what to wear All children are innocent Because of their ignorance Everything is still.. so piss easy May data centers Befoul the air Surrounding the cloche Their souls reside Why am I &nbsp; &nbsp; venomous barb &nbsp; &nbsp; in a mammal Maybe, unfortunately I am dreamer, &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; actually.. Perfect Lives I sat down the sunset bench over Jersey City Everyone wearing athleisure stood up left when I lit a cigarette Except for this alo bro Wrenching the cigarette out of my mouth Scolding, ‘I don’t know if art should Be this ejaculate spurt prompted by a Brief contact with nature When you battle yr old habit of dereliction Invoke dreams May their residue dress the salad of yr experience’ A brief encounter with nature… Is this street nature? First, I’d have to find the bottom Have you ever seen a ripple Dark well, have you ever drank water without fluoride or microplastic The words come horrible, sputum and glottal stops They will all be throwaway lines until you find the poet attractive I lay down my life’s serenity I used to ride a garbage truck to school Yr email finds me erased I am finally free of my muse I hoist a scimitar from a casket of pearls The ruins of the Barbary coast end up smelling a lot like agave I flash it up to their throats and threaten them Menacing ‘I am at the zenith of my 30s’ Actually the coast smells like sandalwood and fish Enough 2am affirmations I’m not brave enough to paint figuratively My room is strewn with dead plants Casualties of my blackened thumb Asking tedious questions radically ‘These are the questions No one is asking’ I burn the candle at both ends I have to buy a new candle Pauline A spiritual healer tries to remove the plaque Her name is Perfect Gin Raven Moss She is sure it isn’t a curse Her heavy fall of black hair matted with flies She holds a séance for my love lemniscate Death visits me As a scorpion in a dream &nbsp; &nbsp; A visionary Not in some hot air complimentary way But one prone to seeking madness She intones, there is no reason to stay that long Where? On this island Scotch bonnet shell A baby’s annelid arms The sea makes them seem extraterrestrial I am a louse in the fourth world The colonizer of my own memories But soon, My summer goddess is returning From the island of sun and cats Sometimes long silences Pour gulfs between us And she would not speak Until consulting a book that listed out Every color And there was a point I coulda sworn I loved you Harvest in the theatre darklight your eyes pool black a deer. Guide you under your small umbrella into the neon there are magenta sparks illuminating now your eyes dark green. In a just time, a world out of hell smiling fairwife your arms so slender in your yellow shirt, you’d wear a sweater in summer a wetsuit in the sun, now tell me the dream. in the dream alley, she turned again. And in the way of dreams, animal light blurred any hard edges, the alley foreshortened into glances, escapes of air. In the unsaid, she beckoned, turning her back. She pulled down a rancid khaki skirt— there amongst the amethyst debris, cans, shadow brick pooled with lights from no source, revealing her hermaphroditism. in amongst these fantasies, it brought on a gauze, a humidity to swim It filled the throat like lukewarm broth. The gravity of an hour will build into a second passionless fear, shutting out other destinies &nbsp; &nbsp; now cease all question ----- Gram Hummell is a carbon-based lifeform&nbsp;and guitar player residing in Queens, NY. His most recent chapbook 100 Skys was published by Big A Little A press. https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/Journal-extime-selections-2025-by-Richard-McLaughlin Mon, 30 Mar 2026 16:31:20 +0000 Minor Works https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/Journal-extime-selections-2025-by-Richard-McLaughlin Journal extime, selections, 2025 by Richard McLaughlin ----- My idea for keeping a journal extime came from my engagement with the writing of Annie Ernaux, whose work, moving ambiguously between the registers of memoir, ethnography, and fiction, has been very significant to me professionally and personally. She lays out her ideas on such a writing practice in her introduction to Journal du dehors (1993, translated as Exteriors, 1996), though I guess some critic came up with the intime / extimebinary. Anyway, if a journal intime is the classic form of the diary, a book under lock and key that contains one’s innermost thoughts and desires, the journal extime is a radically different form of arriving at subjectivity, by means of a diligent reporting on the world outside: “I felt the urge to transcribe the scenes, words and gestures of unknown people whom one meets once and whom one never sees again; graffiti hastily scribbled on walls and erased; sentences overheard on the radio and news items read in the papers. Anything that, in some way or another, moved me, upset me or angered me” (Ernaux 1996). Already the line between recording and revealing that is key to documentary is blurred in the urge that Ernaux recalls, and in the frisson of the accidental encounter that triggers each entry. This is not the camera-pen as passive instrument, regardless of how flat and descriptive she attempts to keep the writing. Ernaux again, observing that she was writing a memoir far more true than one that privileges the “I” as conscious actor: “I realize that I have put a lot of myself into these texts, far more than originally planned – memories and obsessions subconsciously dictating my choice of words and the scenes I wished to freeze” (Ernaux 1996). Of course. As if any writing could be any different. But still, an important reflection on the ever-present hand invisibly guiding “intentionality.” “It is other people – anonymous figures glimpsed in the subway or in waiting rooms – who revive our memory and reveal our true selves through the interest, the anger or the shame that they send rippling through us” (Ernaux, 1996). What I love about Ernaux’s formulation is that shared space is the starting point for a coming-to-realization of one’s self, but not in the old guard cogito ergo sum. Instead, you are adrift in the past while navigating the present, traversing a Proustian scene where any detail could send you into involuntary reverie. Your specific details, the ones that make up your factic blueprint in the Sartrean sense, will, given the right set of circumstances and reception, trip you up like Marcel’s cobblestones at the end of A la recherche du temps perdu. Lofty ancestry, humble results? I certainly say “I” more than I’d like and deviate at times from the imperative to record in order to reveal. But Ernaux and Proust are good guides in this journey to relate a bit of myself through chance encounters with others. - RM, 1/17/26 ----- 8/21/25 About 6:30 AM, a morning in the height of summer. Better to get up early before it’s too hot to do anything, plus the added benefit that the baby is still sleeping (time to write, do other things on various chaotic to-do lists, sit for an hour on the toilet scrolling on social media or shopping). In the cafeteria that extends off of the lobby of the hotel in which I’m staying, there’s a TV strategically based at the corner of the L-shaped room. The sound is unavoidable, if not the picture, which can be deftly blocked by the listener turning their back to it. I wonder sometimes about this mandated audiovisual “layer” in public spaces, sort of like the canned music in grocery or department stores.1&nbsp;Here, it seems like a sensory deterrent against bad behavior, a means of keeping everyone focused on their meal / phones and not talking too loudly. The late-capitalist equivalent to the private magical thinking in childhood that a light left on or a TV / radio playing would keep the bad guys / monsters away. Anyway, the TV. As I try to read and take notes for a project I’m working on, the sound of the morning news broadcast keeps pulling me back in to listen. The cadence of the anchor’s speech, the rigorous structure of the different segments, the disconcerting (if one is unaccustomed to watching this sort of programming) tonal jump from the serious / fear-mongering to the playful, even within the same segment! To take one example – toward the end of the segment cycle (because, somewhat like the 24-hour news stations, these segments can repeat, I suppose to service viewers tuning in who wake up at different times, or to keep costs down / save time), there’s a “local color” story. Except it’s not really local.2&nbsp;I heard the story in snippets (paraphrased here): "Some campers got more than they bargained for on a recent stay near Lake Tahoe. 4 campers contracted the plague – yes, the same disease 25 million people died from during the middle ages [fact checking needed here]…” It was enough to make me turn my head and look at the B-roll that constituted the visual storytelling aspect. There was footage of chipmunks moving in and out of their burrows, interspersed with the refracted light of ambulances and the facade of a Tahoe hospital, then people moving about the interior of the hospital (presumably, the same one). It was a little hard to hear at this point but I believe the chipmunks were to illustrate that at high elevations, bacteria that cause the disease can be passed on from fleas that live on rodents. The anchors were quick to dispel any fears: “Don’t be alarmed, medical experts say that such cases, while rare, are regularly documented, with 7 new infections a year, and that patients are treated with antibiotics." The next part of the story to catch my ear was the banter between the male and female anchor to close the segment: M: "Imagine calling into work one morning, 'I can't come in today, I've got the plague!'" (faking a cough) F: (feigning alarm, putting out hands and backing away) "Stay away!" M: (chuckling) "And we can joke about this because the people affected are receiving treatment…" It was all too perfect, pat, an ironed-out fait divers&nbsp;grown stale by the sheer repetition of the genre. The anchors present a shocking / alarming fact, then immediately take the wind out of it by explaining, hey, we live in the modern world, we have antibiotics, not like those poor souls consigned to the oblivion of death rolls and the weakness of historical memory. To what extent is a story like this scripted? Even his joke and her reaction seemed straitjacketed by muscle memory and generic convention. I couldn’t help feeling like this type of story acts as a pernicious deflection for its target audience, which I would assume is retirement-age working-class people. Especially after a global pandemic that shut down economies and killed over one million people in the US ("the most of any country" according to Wikipedia), mostly in said audience’s age group. But also a deflection from everything else. A little, self-contained moment of frisson, where the feeling of being close to medieval terror masks the banal terror of contemporary life. So, a shocking tidbit to tell others, a little “color” to start the day, along with the first cup of coffee. ----- 8/27/25 Two character studies (and ancillary studies) at the donut shop. 1. A woman who stands out to me by virtue of her body language and movements, which in their stiffness and attitude suggest both a difficult life and a stop-motion bird, hopping and flitting from gesture to gesture. She's giving the counter ladies a hard time, taking too long to pay for her order. She keeps asking for more things, adding on, small complaints, “No not that one! It's black,” meaning burnt, presumably. 2. A man, from bearing, tone of voice, vocabulary, and peripheral vision, a white working class male in his 40s or 50s. "I think he was here before me," referring to me. The lady at the counter tries to explain, in her fast accented English, that I'm waiting for my order. "Hey boss," over her, "were you ready to order?" A courtesy overlaying a deep rudeness, slighting her because of her gender / race / lack of assimilation? Annoyed, I say in a flat voice, gesturing to the lady who has given him correct information, "I've already been helped." Me, to him: overeducated millennial liberal who never looks up from his phone. Him, to me: undereducated product of the culture that produced the headline-grabbing President and his gang of history-trampling miscreants. So we've "seen" each other. His order, a caricature, just like the one I've produced of him: a ham egg and cheese sandwich on a croissant "with extra mayo" (she finishes his sentence, he must come here often) and a Monster energy drink. ----- 9/21/25 Two women talking at a table on a restaurant patio. One of them shows a lack of confidence, an insecurity in her ability to "sell" an anecdote she’s relating or even an opinion she has. A few lines of her speech, recorded here: "And, like, whenever anyone says to them 'you guys look alike' they're like, ugh... They make a face." "I don't know, I feel like that'd be fun, to go to a [football] game. On a Saturday." A distraction from their chatter - a mother by the parking lot yelling at her two kids that slipped away, and who are playing in the car... The two women fall silent for a moment, analyzing, scrutinizing. As they stand up to leave, (gliding?) to the trash can to toss away a napkin and gather themselves, I confirm what became clearer in the course of listening to them. It isn't two grown women as I'd thought when I saw them in my peripheral vision as I sat down. Instead, it is a daughter, high school age, and her mother, wearing essentially the same style (the standard for women of this class and part of town): athletic wear, a hoodie made of synthetic sweat-wicking material, yoga pants, a zip-up collared long-sleeve shirt, form-fitting, speaking to their active lifestyle that cuts through all other situations. It makes sense. They had a mother-daughter dynamic - one solidifying the behavior, mental comportment, and speech of the other. One becoming the other to a degree. And suddenly, a gem. A young boy, suburban, secure, and obnoxious, plays on the sidewalk in front of the cafe tables. Property of the comfortable lilywhite family that has taken up outsize residence beneath the patio umbrellas a few tables down. Hopping despite the lack of hopscotch squares. Passing by, a man in black hoodie, black pinstripe shorts, calf tattoo, orange and black umbrella in his hand (Go O's). "Where you hoppin' to?!" he lets fly, with a perfect east Baltimore / waterfront white working class accent. Walks past, on his way to somewhere I know not. A frisson of recognition, or maybe better said: my grandfather who worked as a butcher his whole life, my no-good cousins, a whole side of my life hits me like a brick. So they're still here, the men who hung out in front of the dry-goods shops, amidst the ladies (and ladies-in-waiting) in yoga pants. ----- 9/23/25 A man wearing a strikingly sour smelling cologne, chewing something (not gum?) in an oblivious and irritating manner. The spatial organization of the shuttle bus seating means that another man is sitting at a 90 degree angle to him, in profile, perpendicular, and it is clear that the former man's noises are indeed irritating to the latter. Furtive looks from the victim, starting dead ahead, lost in reverie, the perpetrator. Or - a sudden familiar gesture, a look up and wave of the hand from the second man in direction of the first - are they traveling together? Confirmed. They begin speaking to each other a few minutes into the ride. Conclusion: I'd projected my own frustration at the lack of decorum onto the second man. ----- 9/27/25 Across from the restaurant patio where I'm eating lunch alone, there's a shop with a cutesy name that sells household goods. In and of itself, it would not be interesting in a neighborhood filled with boutiques catering to the young and the freely spending. However, the long wall facing the restaurant (the store is rectangular) is mostly ceiling-to-floor windows. Therefore, the effect produced is that of watching a movie on the big screen, like the apartment building scene in Tati'sPlaytime. People walk in, almost exclusively in pairs, as this is a neighborhood where couples descend as intra-city tourists to spend their precious weekend hours browsing, and circulate around the space as if projected two-dimensionally from a cinema projector. The space is narrow and long, and is made even narrower by another rectangular, a long heavy wooden table that nests in the center of the room and where much of the stores wares are placed. The placement is crucial, in terms of the socioeconomics of taste; instead of the heaping piles of goods and the overlapping displays of a 99 cent or secondhand store, here each object is carefully discrete, with equal blank space isolating each example. To consider the objects themselves, here's a cursory list: pottery, glasses, wooden spoons, cutting boards, picture frames, mugs, espresso cups, saucers, plates, ladders made from large bamboo stalks, pots for plants... We could add to this a list of clothing and aesthetic choices that create patterns as the talent step two-by-two on and off-screen: light-colored canvas ball caps, fancy trainers, flare leg jeans, shirts with designer logos, white shirts, black shirts, tattoos. And drinks, lots of iced drinks in single-use plastic cups with lids. Finally, significant patterns of behavior and anomalies. Younger couples scan and pluck at the wares in tandem, while older couples are often separated by a more coherent gender gap, the man reading the store as feminine and lingering by the front, holding bags from previously visited shops and sipping from his plastic cup's straw, impatiently. One man lost in thought, leaning on the big table at its center, his eyes scanning the room mechanically, as his partner coolly darts from cup to cup, plate to plate. ----- 1&nbsp;Is this still a thing? It must be, but it is somehow so inoffensive that it melts away completely into the background, whereas music in large retail clothing stores [JC Penney, DXL, DSW…] is loud, mediocre, and extremely annoying. Notes to self: listen for canned music in the grocery store. Write about the “history” of canned music in grocery stores, ex. M’s distaste for the eponymous Talk Talk song. Do a comparison of store music / write on the extreme musical experience of stores like JC Penney – is the soundtrack specifically chosen to shuffle customers through the space more quickly? A cheap means of providing a score that is unintentionally obtrusive? Clearly licensed library music that is specifically recorded to sound like modern pop hits at a fraction of the cost. 2&nbsp;This led me to wonder whether the local affiliate I was watching (ABC 7) was owned by the Sinclair Group. AtToW (at the time of writing – any way to make this less clunky? Time of narrative? Genette), I noted, “Is this channel owned by the Maryland company that owns 60% of local news channels?” Just now (time of narration), I read a bit online about this media conglomerate, who I first heard about from a Last Week Tonight with John Oliver segment. A quick search pulled up a tool (https://apps.voxmedia.com/at/vox-sinclair-map/) that showed a searchable map and the regions of the US where Sinclair has a stake. According to said map, as of 8/27/25, the company owns 193 stations that reach 40% of the American viewing public. All this is moot because ABC 7 isn’t owned by a company like Sinclair; it is, of course, owned by ABC. But the homogeneity of local news broadcasts and their tendency toward conservative fear-mongering (see the Oliver segment) stands as a valid concern, as evidenced in the segment I analyze above. Side note – both Sinclair Group and ABC function in my personal geography. The latter in a far less sinister fashion – I would pass by the studios with L when we’d walk along the river path in Glendale. Sinclair lurks in a corner of the Maryland suburbs about 10 minutes from the house where I lived in college. However, I didn’t know of its home until I got off on the wrong exit on a visit to see my old roommate. I ended up on a road that services the local landfill and recycling center. Tucked away on this commercially busy but, to my mind, secluded road, away from the public’s prying eyes, is Sinclair HQ. ----- Richard McLaughlin is a writer, educator, and musician based in Pasadena, CA. Listen to his music here: https://rmclaughlin.bandcamp.com/ https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/Lawrence-by-Conrad-Burnham Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:33:18 +0000 Minor Works https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/Lawrence-by-Conrad-Burnham Lawrence by Conrad Burnham ----- &nbsp; &nbsp; Lawrence stood perhaps just over five feet tall. From a distance you could see that he was grimy. His age was hard to tell but I would guess that, at the time I knew him, he was in his mid-sixties. His silver hair was matted in a hard combover, his weak chin perpetually stubbled and his mouth was almost always open in a small o, showing a row of little gray mole teeth. His eyes were of the same Talpidae lineage, and he wore thick, greasy, brown-framed glasses of a style popular in the eighties. I’d seen him several times before in the store, mostly talking to Rolf, an older coworker, though occasionally he’d snare some other employee closer to my age, usually with a searching look of desperation or one of resigned despondency. Soon enough I would understand these expressions. &nbsp; &nbsp; It should be mentioned that this was the “old days” of the Strand, before they changed to a branded merchandise hawking tourist destination. The basement was a gathering place for a few woolly septuagenarians, one for instance was a former rocket scientist with NASA, though I don’t know if others were as distinguished. I would hear them discussing theater, restaurants, books of course, politics, the opera, but all of them would be lurking around, waiting for a manager to fill a box of proofs to send back to the little room in the corner of the basement. Once the box was full there was a sort of feigned politeness, and you watched the geriatric’s eyes grow beady with need and they would follow the employee to the corner room while carrying on their conversations. The poor employee, sometimes me, would have strict boundaries with the proof room: nobody crosses into it until the books are shelved. Most of the time you would barely get out, having to squeeze past the small horde that came in like hungry dogs after scraps. These ashen intellectuals would scratch and claw at each other, drawing blood and tearing hair over prized advanced reader proofs that they would sell for a profit on eBay. Lawrence wasn’t a proofie, as we called them, but a type of gray man, in faded winter coats and loose sweaters that reached to his knees like a lot of them were and so blended in with this portion of the clientele from that era. &nbsp; &nbsp; I worked in the basement of the Strand, a section called Review, where all the recently reviewed books from critics and publishing’s lower rungs would bring freebies of their newest books to sell. Sometimes I would help the managers at the desk of the Review section unboxing and stacking books so they could look them over and give the seller their chit. Lawrence would come down and the managers would mumble something that I usually missed but caught enough to know was a comment on this little man that showed up several times a week. They’d watch him weave his way into the maze of books with a look on his face that said he was searching for someone. &nbsp; &nbsp; His one friend there, the one person he could rely on to chat with him at length was Rolf, who sorted books behind the stairs next to the foreign language section. Rolf was an immigrant from Germany. As a teenager he worked at a country club in Vermont and after that he moved to New York City only to become homeless for a while before getting a job at the Strand and moving into a tenement building. Rolf came across as harmless, though maybe a little crackpot, perhaps slightly deranged. He stood seven feet tall with a light brown skullet that brushed his shoulders. He always wore a white t-shirt, tucked into light blue jeans. One eye bugged out further than the other. His age was indeterminate, though I would say he was in his mid-fifties. Once, when I was shelving in the stacks, I heard him from somewhere deep in the basement wrestling phlegm from his throat with what sounded like all the might it would take to lift a wrecked car off an old woman’s crushed leg. It was both amazing and repulsive, he was yelling so loud. A few quick asides to give you a better glimpse. I often came across him in the break room saying, ‘interesting’, while stroking his chin and thumbing through large books with titles like Iowa Class Battleships: Their Design, Weapons and Equipment&nbsp;or Cold War Submarines: The Design and Construction of U.S. and Soviet Submarines. He had designs for large scale weapons of his own, he’d told me. Rolf was somewhat of an enigma. Once he interrupted a conversation I was having because a fond memory of the oft-canceled McRib sandwich hit him and he wondered aloud to me and my coworker, why they canceled that one. Another thing he told me, unprompted, with about as much glee as I imagine he had on the day that he himself heard the news, was that his terrible boss at the country club where he worked as a teenager had asphyxiated to death, along with his mistress, while they humped in the big man’s car that was parked and running in the garage. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Rolf laugh so hard. The story must have been thirty years old or more but still struck him like fresh news. Slightly deranged right? Over the holidays he snuck boozy eggnog in a paper bag, which he attempted to share with anyone of us he thought worthy. His life goal, he’d mentioned many times, was to be the landlord of an apartment building in Arizona, and so one year he departed the Big Apple in pursuit of his American Dream. However, not too long after, less than a year in fact, I heard through the grapevine that his attempt had failed and he had come back to NYC, broken, winding up homeless again, only to be taken care of by old Strand employees until he was somewhat back on his feet. This was Lawrence’s friend. I saw them speaking often. After getting to know both a little more, I could see why they would gravitate toward one another. At least that’s what I thought at first. I realized later that maybe Rolf couldn’t get away because of having to be stationed where he was for work. &nbsp; &nbsp; Little by little, I would hear tell of Lawrence from other coworkers or managers. Lawrence was Jewish and was pen pals with several SS officers from the Second World War, somebody had told me. I asked him about it and he showed me letters and pictures to prove it. This of course shocked me, but then perhaps you would be fascinated or obsessed to the point of wanting to hear it directly from the people responsible of such unspeakable horrors against your not-too-distant relatives. &nbsp; &nbsp; He brought a small stack of letters for me to look over along with some pictures that the officers had sent him. I held up a small black and white portrait of a young officer, Karl Preuß, his features smoothed by the age of the film, his uniform crisp, hair blond. Lawrence showed me another picture, this one in color, the same man, but much older, white-haired and wrinkled, with his little wife standing on a bridge, looking like two German citizens, someone’s grandparents. Karl integrated back into society after the war and found himself working on the reconstruction of Germany. He met his wife, part of the Trümmerfrauen, helping clear the ruins in Munich, after the war. Karl claimed to have not even witnessed atrocities, only hearing of things when meeting other officers. He rose through the ranks, he said, because of his cunning, not his cruelty. For a while he was stationed on the Czechoslovakian border checking passports. A conversation with an officer who was passing through led to a change in position to Berlin where he was to command a small unit for a specialized operation for the foreseeable future. The unit rounded up known counterfeiters that were to make fake currency intended to collapse the British economy. After the war, his brother-in-law, a prisoner of war at Langwasser, had suffered poisoning by the Nakam, when they tainted the loaves of black bread the prisoners were given to eat. His brother-in-law didn’t die, Karl said, but was writhing in a hospital bed for days and so, Karl lived for a long time in fear of having some revenge enacted upon him. But nothing ever happened. After the reconstruction Karl found employment in an automobile factory and his wife as a teacher of kindergarten. They had three children, now all grown with children of their own. Lawrence found and reached out to Karl on a whim, asking him about his life, his involvement in the war, his experiences. To his surprise, Karl responded within a few months. The tone of his letter was full of an anxious urgency, all too glad to tell his story as he saw it. He talked about Germans living in the ruins of bombed-out buildings, some in caves immediately after the war. He mentioned in every one of the five letters he sent to Lawrence his guilt and in every letter he asked Lawrence for forgiveness. &nbsp; &nbsp; Another letter from a man named Eberhard Saalmeier detailed the accounts of being a young officer with the Kriminalpolizei who worked mostly on fraud cases. The Kripo was absorbed into the SS in the thirties, but his functions never changed. The most exciting thing he claimed to have worked on in the war were blackout burglaries, and that that was mostly done in paperwork at his desk. His colleagues in the department worked on the more serious crimes of sexual assault and murder that was capitalized on during the blackouts. He talked about growing up in Bayerischzell where his parents ran an inn. He would help them clean the rooms and prepare meals for the guests. People would come from all over just to breathe the air there. Because of his size, his uncle and cousin encouraged him to move to Berlin and join them in the Kripo. He joked that his size never came into play, at least not to anyone’s expectations. Every Christmas he would travel south to visit his parents. Some of these nights he would see old friends, some of whom would tell him, over a few pilsners, that a friend of a friend or a friend of a cousin who worked at SS-Berghaus Sudelfeld overheard an assistant on holiday saying to someone else that at Dachau he had witnessed people subjected to standing naked outdoors in freezing weather for hours and then being thrown into vats of boiling water to see if it would warm them properly. This was the extent, Eberhard explained, of the horrors witnessed by him. After the war he was considered essential and was rehired as a detective where he worked for another ten years before going back to Bayerischzell to help his aging parents. He and his wife, a secretary with the department, enjoyed a quiet, childless life, breathing their clean air and marveling at the scenery. In another letter Eberhard mentions getting lost in the Teutoberg forest as a teenager on a hike with the same cousin who convinced him to become a Kripo. They left in the morning with a couple of slices of Schwarzbot and käse in a satchel and a flask of tea. The scenery was immaculate, the trees, oak, ash, beech, more green than he’d ever seen, he said, patches of blue sky and the sun peeking between the boughs, but then he started to feel like he was seeing some of the same trees, the same rocks, to which his cousin said that he was mistaken. Hours went by as did many branches, trunks and leaves. Weariness began to set in. They went up for a long time as the sun began to go down. He said that near dark, not finding their way out of the forest, that they came upon castle ruins that at first look could almost pass as plain rock except that from another angle, its structure emerged. Inside they sat on the precipice and ate their food. His cousin talked about his dream of becoming a Kripo, like his father, then he talked about the girl he would eventually marry, a fact that nobody but his cousin was sure of. When the sun was gone, they slept in a corner, out of the wind, pressed against one another. On waking they saw that the interior cascaded deep into darkness away from the entrance near where they slept. Something crashed deep inside, sending a wave of echoes from the black and they ran down the hill where they came upon a group of schoolgirls and their teachers on a nature hike who, giggling, pointed the way back to the main road. &nbsp; &nbsp; I wondered at Lawrence’s end of these correspondences. He knew that no matter the story they were complicit. What exactly was he after and what did he disclose about himself? Would he embellish the truth? Would he have gotten a response if they knew the hygienic state of the writer of these descendant’s questions, questions he had a right to ask and ought to likewise get an honest answer for? &nbsp; &nbsp; There came a point where I didn’t care how obnoxious the man was, I wanted to hear about his strange life. He’d piqued my curiosity. Gaining his trust as someone who would listen to his life’s lonely tale, he told me of his adolescence as a troublemaker. It was hard to imagine this aged and bookish homunculus as anything but someone who shied away from much of the public, let alone someone who was once an adolescent and at that, a delinquent. One shift shelving in foreign language taught me that Lawrence used to like to go behind buildings in Manhattan when he was a teenager and snip undergarments left out to dry. Bras, negligées, lingerie, holsters, girdles, all fell prey to Lawrence and his red handled scissors as did sheets, towels, quilts and duvets. Just for the sheer delight of destroying someone else’s things. I could almost see a teenaged Lawrence jumping from a fire escape and dashing down an alley. With this tale he regaled this to me with something of a devilishness in his smile, a delight, it seemed, he most likely recalled often. &nbsp; &nbsp; He had troublesome friends, he told me, who, like misery, sought out company too. But perhaps it was really that loneliness means more acceptance for some. One friend of Lawrence’s was a cab driver who schemed to screw some homeowners out of a lot of money by suing them. The plan was to dig a hole in the unsuspecting’s backyard and lie inside of it as though he’d fallen in and have Lawrence snap some pictures. Preposterous as it may seem, this was a real, hatched-out idea with an intended victim, for whom the plot against them also served as an act of revenge for some slight the cab driver perceived from this particular fare. Lawrence probably lucked out when the plans never came to fruition. &nbsp; &nbsp; Another of his friends was someone I surmised to be on the run from the mob. Lawrence all but said this to me. The picture of the guy was painted clearly enough. This was also someone who knew that Lawrence was loaded. Apparently, Lawrence’s parents had millions of dollars from the stock market and rentals that he’d inherited after they’d died. When Lawrence was in his twenties this guy, a teenager a decade younger than Lawrence, never gave Lawrence the time of day until Lawrence let it slip that his parents were wealthy. Suddenly this guy’s obsessed with Lawrence and butters him up all the time. Now they’re hanging out on the streets of the Bronx, laughing together. Lawrence finally had someone who would enthusiastically say hello when seeing him walking down the street, perhaps for the first time in his life. Lawrence considered him his friend. Not only that, he considered him his best friend. &nbsp; &nbsp; They would scheme together on petty criminal activities, stealing from bodegas, breaking into their neighbor’s apartments or stealing cash from Lawrence’s parents, but mostly it was Lawrence listening to this guy he was likely infatuated with, talking about his exploits. Until one day he disappeared. Lawrence looked for his friend for a long time; years went by, decades. He felt confused at first, that it must be he who repelled his one friend, sending himself back into his solitary ways, until one day a letter showed up at his parent’s apartment. &nbsp; &nbsp; Lawrence was in his sixties, still living at home, when his parents died. They were landlords, and they seemingly never spent a dime their whole lives. He came off as an unlikely millionaire, but maybe he thought that holding onto it with a clenched fist was better than spending any of it ever on say, going to the dentist. His teeth were disgusting little cubes of yellow-gray plaque, and he never wore anything that didn’t look like it hadn’t been in heavy use since the 1980s, likely hand-me-downs from his father. Lawrence looked like he slept on the streets but that was definitely not the case. He would buy hundreds of dollars of books on art and history on his stops at the Strand, spending hours there and leaving only when he’d exhausted all the people who’d put up with him. &nbsp; &nbsp; The letter couldn’t have come at a better time, Lawrence told me. He wanted a vacation, needed to get away from New York City. He told me the only place he ever visited was Washington D.C., and he only went there to go to the Smithsonian. The letter urged Lawrence to come for a visit in rural Tennessee. When Lawrence arrived, he and his old best friend sat on the front porch, drank whiskey and talked about old times, looking at the scenic yet secluded vista surrounding his friend’s farm. At some point, when Lawrence was asleep, his friend got ahold of Lawrence’s credit card and racked up a couple of buys; a jet ski and an espresso maker. His friend laughingly brushed off Lawrence’s look of consternation, slapping his shoulder as if not hearing him say, That wasn’t very nice!, while looking at his bill. But then Lawrence didn’t do anything more than that. So I guess the guy got a jet ski. I couldn’t believe it. I would have been furious, I told him, just for starters. Lawrence smiled at me. A smile that I could not read. He went on that at some point during the trip, his friend thought it would be funny to lock him in a barn with a young colt. Lawrence pounded the door and wailed to be let out while his friend stood on the other side laughing, keeping the barn shut for a long time until Lawrence exhausted himself. It was just a joke, his friend said, when he let the dripping Lawrence free of the barn. To this day though, I believe Lawrence was meant to be executed by that pony. He told me his friend kept pestering him on long distance calls leading up to the visit about giving him power of attorney over Lawrence. Why go down there Lawrence? This guy obviously wants to kill you so he can take all of your money, and he’s come up with some crazy ways to do it. But obviously it didn’t go through, after all, he lived to tell me the tale. At least to that point. &nbsp; &nbsp; My wife and I moved away from Brooklyn to Los Angeles years ago and sometimes Lawrence crosses my mind. I wonder sometimes if he’s alive. If he’s reignited his passion for snipping underwear behind buildings or if he’s in prison because he helped one friend carry out a hair-brained scheme, or maybe dead and buried on a farm in rural Tennessee because he helped another. All his SS contacts must surely be dead, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he pesters their children. &nbsp; &nbsp; I wrote my friend Natty Faze, an ex-coworker who knew about Lawrence, and asked if he thought Lawrence might be dead by now. He said, Oh the eccentric Strand customer who was fixated on you and may have been a Nazi? I replied, He was Jewish…or so he claimed. But was definitely pen pals with SS officers, he showed me photos and letters, but yeah, that guy. Probably dead right? He responded, Probably so. &nbsp; &nbsp; It never crossed my mind that Lawrence may have been a Nazi. I took him at his word that he was Jewish, though I suppose I don’t know anything. His language towards others was awful though. I never responded to these types of comments, I’ll add, when he’d often trap me somewhere in the basement where I was shelving and would just start in, he knew I didn’t think that way at all, but he didn’t care. He would flash that same devilish smile at my disgust and carry on. Sometimes, because of curiosity, you voluntarily get too close for comfort and then you’re in someone’s web and you realize, you’re also a part of their feast. Lawrence was a racist bigot and said atrocious things. This I thought ironic, coming from a man who said he was a descendant of a people who were murdered because of who they were. I doubt he was a Nazi, but I also don’t think he was practicing Judaism. Hateful for sure. Eager for a dose of something slimy. His fascination with SS officers, to me, was probably like anyone who attended an execution at the gallows, or is a watcher of true crime shows now, fascinated by man’s capacity for cruelty and its assertion of a right to choose capital punishment. &nbsp; &nbsp; The first part of what Natty said also struck me. He was fixated on me. After a while I would hide from him many times and overheard him asking for me by name. Over the years working there I’d outgrown my curiosity and now wanted nothing to do with this abhorrent person. His inner being reeked of something like decay, a portable, bubbling origin point of hate who wore his feelings in layers of crud that he traversed the city in. Some of my coworkers would help me evade him by pointing in the opposite direction I’d gone, while others, with an evil glint in their own eyes, delighted in seeing me stuck and having to squirm my way free. &nbsp; &nbsp; My wife thinks Lawrence was in love with me. She thought he might try to kill her to get to me, or maybe it’d be he and I that died strangely, mysteriously and passionately. He came to one of my music performances at a bar in Brooklyn and stood in the corner leering the whole night, not talking to anyone but giving everyone the creeps, chewing on his tongue, his glasses illuminated but showing no eyes. I was terrified. December 2025 ----- Conrad Burnham is a writer, editor and musician. He lives in Los Angeles. https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/Human-Host-Interviewed-by-R-McLaughlin Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:20:28 +0000 Minor Works https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/Human-Host-Interviewed-by-R-McLaughlin Human Host, Interviewed by R. McLaughlin ----- Human Host first appeared to me in the form of a t-shirt, worn on the torso of a friend in college. Being quite literal-minded back then, I asked, “What is Human Host?” and got laughter in return, laughter in the same spirit as the monstrous face that adorned the shirt. The laugh was a buy for time as my friend gathered his thoughts to sum up what HH was, not a rock band like we often went to see, not a theater play, maybe an art-piece, a provocation, a shared moment of laughter or surprise, something... The monster’s playful, lightly menacing mouth on the shirt’s front has shimmered at the edge of my consciousness for the following 20 years or so, emerging every once and a while on another body, much like the (collective) entity of HH itself. Sometimes HH has revealed itself to me as a cluster of bodies, furniture, and chords, sometimes as a duo weaving together lines of electronic tones, sometimes as a single figure plucking out notes on a keyboard in a dimly lit room… I’ve heard that the Host could now be identified as three individuals, Mike Apichella, Rick Weaver, and kim ++ (pronounced "Kim Plus Plus"), but when I asked these questions, as you’ll see, what responded was a single (synthesized?) voice that followed the whims of its own intelligence. Forget my questions and enjoy the answers. - R. McLaughlin, MW <img width="600" height="600" width_o="600" height_o="600" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bb7244282eb27af9b0928eff79b4504bdb3ec6c70656b574a4ffb21f08fab9f2/PSX_20260327_112244.jpg" data-mid="246670720" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/600/i/bb7244282eb27af9b0928eff79b4504bdb3ec6c70656b574a4ffb21f08fab9f2/PSX_20260327_112244.jpg" /> ----- MW: How do you conceive of the thing that is Human Host? Conceptually, theoretically, historically, practically, all of the above or none of the above? HH: Well, as you and your readers already know, all gods are low paid essential workers. You’ll find them any given night down at the old neighborhood watering hole, getting drunk and high with all their equals (janitors, groundskeepers, dishwashers, waiters, house keepers, etc.). So, having lost the script, we hired an old head of new cinema to draw out a spot of color on the lake to smear across the second frame of the exterior shot. Without wiping the grease paint from the lens, the master’s stroke stress tested the system and sacrificed the artifice of shallow magic. This is what happens when you’ve been in the business as long as we have been. It’s similar to when _____ gets a bucketful of ______ then takes it down from the mast, throws it into the&nbsp; _______ without priming the clutch, and voila! You’ve got the best/worst/most bonk-a-liscious _____ ever to faceplant carefully, right smack dab on to the cosmic brain-soul. MW: What do you think about the contemporary state of music? What do you think is Human Host's relationship to this state of affairs? HH: Burning one mile of brush is the moral equivalent of walking over fifteen feet in 1953. Now we’re faced with the choice of either letting the right hand rot off into a prehensile sump or taking five. We’ve decided to install an alarm system, now that all the children have drowned. That way we’ll know when to tightly grip volts. Once moss is shaken, the system should work as promised. If we hear screams or shots fired, we have been told to stay put until the bell rings. Then we may proceed. Anyone who breaks character may be asked to leave the rescue. Let ’s &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;c &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;h &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;o &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;o &nbsp; &nbsp;s e &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;t &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; o &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mis-manage &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;e &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;x &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;p &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;e &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;c &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;t &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;ations. MW: What does it mean for you to put out a record? Is it a chronicle of a moment in time, a jumping off point for future performance, an unrealizable ideal, something else? HH: Yes, no, and maybe… and this is an answer to all of your questions (occasionally). But, if you need us to go a bit deeper, then yeh, schmaggle schnabah schnork bork. Algg krall tonyasaurus crillb with atch puffers straggling along the adreeba honk fly twagga pone scramble donkey in the moonlight, cardamom and bergamot, other flavors of tea, you know, like for the learned clump. Throw spaghetti at a gas wall and see if it fades from existence or spirals through the levels. The spikes feed the engine. MW: How does this current iteration of Human Host relate / compare to past iterations? Does it matter? HH: It started with a few signatures. First, our farmer. What was meant to be dull turned exotic in much more than a hundred years for our farmer, the one with recall. We were shocked when he switched from amaryllis bulbs to electric light. The progress of his first installation split the check then stripped bone. Above all else, concern spread to more and more on the circle’s periphery. Not that the resources were available. We removed at least one shoe before stepping over collaborators previously mentioned, some once invited to the table. Some even accepted the invitation. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment that they and their belongings disappeared. A regular dinner theater-style murder mystery, no one was allowed to leave, especially not the edible corpses. An audio cassette copy of a Betamax of a mimeograph of the day the zygote performed. Put that in your pitch pipe and smoke it. Morse code of missing pixels. MW: I've been thinking about the potential for music (pop, folk, etc.) to influence political thought and action. Does Human Host believe in the political potential of music? Does it aspire to create music that could impact political life? HH: In the theater of bad actors, the trustee with a movie camera is king. We’re not sure which is worse: To hide civilians’ great accomplishments or to finance their massive failures. To make it extra clear…. <img width="1402" height="649" width_o="1402" height_o="649" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f9cbf56a16cb02936384b880d562bb2d32d46acd901e0d507e53b1954b76592c/in-article.jpg" data-mid="246496019" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f9cbf56a16cb02936384b880d562bb2d32d46acd901e0d507e53b1954b76592c/in-article.jpg" /> MW: For as long as I've been aware of Human Host, I've connected its performances and recordings to two overlapping traditions: DIY culture and the avant garde. To what extent do you find value in these terms? HH: A PIT maneuver runs through the attic of oxygen and slides forever after mangled merge. When the finger was raised in the boiler room, we hit total deliverance from attachment. Smelling salts to pull us back, concussed on IR. Double-cuffed in an endless deployment of superionic quilt work. Celebrating the bicentennial of the junkyard interstate. Like a post nasal drip mixer, we merged into some sort of ongoing pile up, unidirectional nosedive, breeding octane and the eternal. …yup, you guessed it: sandwich roinky tobble. Squidgy influx of liquified trace element burst. Come alive and die awhile. Moon reflects what repeats. MW: Tell me a little about your upcoming album. What's it called? Where can people listen to it / buy physical editions? HH: The name of the album is For an Unknown Sign. For an Unknown Sign is an l.p. that will be out sometime in the spring of 2026&nbsp; on vinyl and cassette through Entropic Records, based in Poland. The album will be mastered by Angel Marcloid at Angel Hair Audio. The cover art was done by George Viebranz, Jr. For an Unknown Sign will be available to stream or download as well. This album marks the first time ever that a physical release of Human Host music will receive extensive international distribution. That’s definitely one of the most exciting things about the record. A small global audience has been aware of our work for a long time now, but with this new extra attention in the UK and out on the European continent we’re really excited to learn how a bigger new overseas audience may connect with our work. To support the new album, we’re doing domestic gigs more often than we have in the past few years and we will be playing some shows overseas as well. An exact schedule for a UK Human Host tour is still coming together, but we’re pretty sure it’s gonna happen in this fall.&nbsp; MW: Is there anything else you'd like to communicate to this community of readers? HH: Hugger games can be humbled at the drugstore by stripping tequila off their bones. You can smell alcohol on their breath. Some of those who like to hug you won’t smell like anything at all, maybe sweetmint. With the sober ones, rubber duck debugging is best practice. To discover rare earth minerals, throw your keys aside as soon as you see someone approach you hoping for a handshake. &nbsp; Consider the oxbow lake as you become one. A ribbon of savory time. Excluding taxes and fees. Take your answer off the air. <img width="1920" height="933" width_o="1920" height_o="933" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b8e276c1d964c408ebbfd6fe2c648c00b2c96d666e2f6f68ed8bf1fa9f55d43d/HH-light-show-still-1.jpg" data-mid="246496020" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b8e276c1d964c408ebbfd6fe2c648c00b2c96d666e2f6f68ed8bf1fa9f55d43d/HH-light-show-still-1.jpg" /> ----- Human Host is an American mulitmedia/music collaboration between an ever-changing ensemble and figments of your imagination. https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/The-Last-Year-by-Nicky-Otis-Smith Wed, 25 Mar 2026 12:51:12 +0000 Minor Works https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/The-Last-Year-by-Nicky-Otis-Smith The Last Year A tape collage by Nicky Otis Smith, originally made in 2023 for the score for his film SATUR-19. ----- Nicky Otis Smith is an American writer, filmmaker, and musician. He was born and raised in New York City and has lived in Baltimore since 2003. He is currently shooting a feature length remake of his 2020 short film Orange You Glad I Said Banana. https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/Selected-Poems-2019-2025-by-Richard-McLaughlin Mon, 30 Mar 2026 16:05:22 +0000 Minor Works https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/Selected-Poems-2019-2025-by-Richard-McLaughlin Selected Poems 2019 – 2025 by Richard McLaughlin ----- Newport Panorama The truth shows itself in the interstices, liminal time between night and human motion The eye scans a scene spectacular as the battlefields held still in circular rooms. Down to the sea the eye wanders, pulled by the steady progress of the maintenance carts writing order on the green and the anomaly of sand traps like esoteric knowledge or topographic maps illegible to laymen. The scene is set and on the paved paths slugs ooze a steady Morse, slow surveys with homes on their backs the picture of regal dignity. Already caravans of cars sing poor imitations unknowingly, zipping dazed along the coastal highway. This is the first morning of the rest of life on earth and beheaded trees of unidentifiable stock stand sentinel in the coolness of condensation. A truck's blinker wrapped in the distance like an insulated thud drums out the tempo in silence. ----- Chosen Remnant It's hard to believe, in this stretch of houses and strip malls – old and young, men and women, but singly on porches, a symbol of time and resources – That in a mortuary building indistinguishable from a church, three columns of pews but far too bright, white-walled and two flat-screen TVs in perfect angled symmetry, there could be an image like this – A window view, a trompe-l'œil out on the horizon, a terrace, a railing with eleven braces and two plinths to hold the ceiling in the sky, and vegetation paired, incongruous (or maybe I know nothing of the plants in the forest, Gary Snyder's dictum), two stands of poplars, then cloud-like trees from the Serengeti, and finally Mediterranean aloe, And beyond it scaling back to an infinite indefinite vanishing, rows of purple mountains, greying and losing their definition until they're a cascade in line and hushed tone, a beyond ineffable and true, never to be named by the compulsive deliberation of men and women singly at the pulpit. How to interpret it? It is enough, the words that come to speak of a scene so out of keeping – a scale of color waning purple into dusk, a tone singing out, a bell sustaining into the rustle of settling evening, the water of an organ's notes drifting through silence into its clearing after, when you feel it, still there, ringing. ----- Made In The Shade California in August, the heat thick in the air like the day we sat in the park eating cold cuts, the only food we could imagine on such a hot day, the park we live close to now, just us then and the man with all the shopping bags separately seeking afternoon shade. The poplars in the yard opposite, stark stalks of green in a blue sky and not much else for coverage. A moment's breeze for respite and a reminder of movement on a lizard-crouched day. A butterfly's shadow silhouette along the green umbrella weaves an instant of incredible size and a lingering thought of flight. In my view, the three old bricks and tattered tarp remind me of the days of smoke and wind and hold the present in the suspense of another time and feeling. My son opens his eyes and looks at me The world is changed. Signing off for now… ----- Early To Rise Relearning old behaviors Like are you the kind of person To stand up to take off their jacket or coat Or do you pull the sleeves blithely off your arms Without getting up Jettisoning the garment to the back of your chair Like an awkward child The fences run across the land That old style Where the wood slots into the posts 2 lengths long, Like something out of feudal England They run And we’re frozen in the car And how are the trees here? Like how they used to make brooms Out of old branches Wicker brooms Did they ever do that Or is it your dark old media brain Blacking out the past Old dumb sludge to keep us here in the hearsay here-and-now And really it’s just too damn cold, It’ll snow tomorrow they say, a little bit So let’s cozy up Inside the hearth of mingled voices They say &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; they say Our elders getting older every year, And one day fading from the picture But the gestures the same And the faces carried through Dutifully Survivor’s guilt An expression I didn’t think I’d offer up To name the blunt reality Of time As non-renewable resource, Transmuted not into gold But the gossamer of thought. ----- Richard McLaughlin is a writer, educator, and musician based in Pasadena, CA. Listen to his music here:&nbsp; https://rmclaughlin.bandcamp.com/ https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/Molly-Water-Parking-Lot-by-Tniz-Ren-Rey Sat, 14 Mar 2026 14:18:49 +0000 Minor Works https://minorworksjournal.cargo.site/Molly-Water-Parking-Lot-by-Tniz-Ren-Rey Molly Water Parking Lot by Tniz Ren Rey ----- Standing under fluorescent street lamps, the parking lot was a sea of asphalt that softly swayed with their bodies as the tapping of moths vibrated from above. The four bodies stood huddled close together near the hood of their car, the warmth of miles driven rising up, the cold November air piercing through their layers of cotton. All of their teeth chattered in unison. He took out a ziplock bag, its contents jangling in mid-air, as he teased the bag in front of everyone’s faces. Four capsules, filled with bright white crystalline— the more he shook the bag the more their mouths watered for salvation. She rolled her eyes and grabbed the bag from his hand, sighing as she pried the flimsy plastic bag open. She dug her nose into the bag and took a whiff of its contents, imagining freshly baked bread, but instead smelled something like battery acid, partitioned for the four of them. She looked at each one of her friends, gazing so intently into their eyes, and she noticed how each strand of hair rested against their skin, their mouths half smiling. All of their eyes shifted from one person to the next, going in circles until infinity. Carefully, she picked up each capsule and placed one in each of their hands. Receiving holy communion under the halo of a parking lot lamp post, they dropped the capsule into their mouths and threw back their heads, imbibing whatever bottle of liquid was thrown in the back seat the night before. “Holy shit that tastes like ass, I need more water.” “That seemed like way more than last time.” “Didn’t we just swallow toilet paper last time?” “It was pressed last time, we didn’t have it like this.” — Four bodies crammed inside a cold, stationary car. The static of the radio was a fluctuating hum that swam underneath their legs and nestled behind their knees. Palms were sweaty, their eyes rolled so far back as if they were weights controlling the equilibrium of their heads. No one noticed who started playing something from their phone, but the drone of the music enveloped the space and held their vulnerable bodies into euphoric harmony. “Fuck, what is this? This is so good” “It feels like a warm sweater” “Fuuuuuuck, that guitar part though”“Wait, so what is it?” The substance was reaching its climax and everyone could tell from the lack of banter that normally happened at this point in the evening. Their words were lodged in between the roof of their mouths and tongues, each word being saved for another tender moment. Their bodies melted into the flannel car seats, heads resting on shoulders, laps and stomachs. Hands were laying wherever offered refuge from cold empty air— a car seat crevice, inside a pocket filled with old post-its and candy wrappers, interlocked with another hand. The car expanded as the minutes accumulated, the back seat becoming more spacious, the front seats inching closer to each other. Looking up, the ceiling of the car all of a sudden possessed a beautiful pattern of dots and squares that lined up neatly and formed more complex shapes; hexagons and triangles all morphing into one another. Their altered state made them forget where they were, until they heard a door slam shut next to them, and footsteps shuffling down a metal ramp a few feet away. A collective sigh was presented to the black asphalt of the parking lot as they peered carefully out the window, the four of them offering their vulnerable bodies to the discomfort of passing time. They were still stationary, in the back seat of their car, in a euphoric stupor. Restoring themselves, they held hands and comforted each other through ecstatic laughter. “How long will this last?” — Hours morphed into each other. He noticed he had been crying for quite some time. A sadness filled the car as they witnessed the sun wobbling onto the horizon. Wispy beams of yellows and reds circled the perimeters of their eyelids. Lips trembled in the morning haze as the serotonin dipped below the ground. They adjusted to their comedown, gathered themselves, and looked out the window— glistening asphalt, shimmering in the morning sun, blinding their sense of reality. A collective sigh, an offering to the parking lot. She started the car and maneuvered out of the parking spot. A song started to play: Listen close and don’t be stoned I’ll be here in the morning Cause I’m just floating… Four heavy heads drove past familiar light posts and concrete parking blocks that outlined storefronts and the town’s main grocery store. The sun settled above the thin mist, in its usual spot, creating moving shadows for them to follow from inside the steady moving car. They all took in the smell of an early November morning, damp and new. “I’m stopping by to grab some coffee, anyone else down?” “Yeah, sounds good.” “I’m down.” “Yeah, I’m down too.” ----- I’m currently trying to daydream more. I spend time thinking about vegetables and how they feel under the blade of a knife. I daydream a lot about one day finding a morel mushroom, thinking perhaps I’ve walked by one at some point but never noticed. I especially like daydreaming of the stranger I’ll be standing behind the next time I’m at a coffee shop, wondering if they know I’m staring at the stray hairs on the back of their t-shirt. - TRR