Mother May I
midwest post-punk, a Substack rant, and about-town goings-on
Hi friends,
Thanks to everyone who came to the inaugural Monologues. And it really did feel like everyone. It was a completely full house – all seats taken, plus some kind souls who stood for the whole performance in the back. Some people I knew, and some I didn’t! How delightful. Stay tuned here for the next date sometime this summer.
In other news….
I wrote a short piece for Screen Slate on Ron Mann’s 1982 documentary Poetry in Motion. It’s a frenetic, electric compilation of clips featuring over two dozen countercultural North American poets reading their work, interspersed with interviews about the role of performance. I’m sorry to say its run at Anthology is over, but clips are on YouTube. My favorite is of scruffy cherub and The Fugs founder Ed Sanders reciting “Matisse” with scissors and a homemade electronic finger device as instruments.
A recording of “Matisse” is in my May 2026 playlist.
I’m also listening obsessively to Tirez Tirez, a 1980s Missouri-originated band (catnip to yours truly). Numero Group reissued their two perfect albums: Etudes and Story of the Year. Sounds like The Cure meets the Talking Heads. Highly highly recommended: Tirez Tirez on Spotify.
Wouldn’t it be nice if Substacks moved away from professionalization and towards sharing stuff just for the sake of it? Remember niche blog communities? I don’t know, times are tough but I’m allergic to money and I find Substack paywalls baffling and affiliate links are antithetical to my values (bring back the concept of the sellout!). I can’t remember how I found Reener on here. Probably by searching for writing about stuff I like. He’s just some random guy publishing minor tomes on Frank Borzage. He also has a “show” called “You Sucked What??” Great music with goofy commentary. Very local radio.
I’m realizing this missive will be mostly of missed opportunities. Sorry! I’m performing in Walker Rutter-Bowman’s play The Town on May 27th and 28th. But unfortunately both nights are sold out. If you bought a ticket but can’t make it please let me know so I can broker your ticket to the standby list. I’ll bully Walker into adding some more nights.
What else?
Tristan und Isolde at the Met Opera was great. Garth Greenwell’s take is worth a read even though I disagree. I wore my boyfriend’s favorite dress from my closet (there’s nothing shameful about dressing for the male gaze if you’re seducing a man, you know?). There were so many young people there, dressed very casually. One girl was wearing daisy dukes. Kind of fun! Everyone can do what they want. There’s no wrong way to enjoy the opera. The Met chandeliers are so gaudy anyway that I don’t think you should expect people to really try that hard.
Fun to see the ASME winners. Elena Saavedra Buckley was the real star, I think. She was the editor for the winning Harper’s piece on gooning. Congrats to the writer Daniel Kolitz, of course, but it takes real guts as an editor to run that piece. She’s already doing a great job at the New York Times Magazine. I’ll be curious to see what happens to T Magazine post-Hanya Yanagihara. I’ll say though, my favorite Sunday reader is the How to Spend It in the Financial Times, the best bang-for-your-buck weekend newspaper. Also kudos to The New York Review of Architecture although I think Mark Krotov should have won for his snippy defenses to their Letters to the Editors. Their publisher Nicolas Kemper is a great writer and you should be able to trust any magazine with an exemplar at the helm.
Speaking of, I love Plough, a liberal Christian magazine. This concerns my boyfriend, understandably. You can take the girl out of youth group, but…. I enjoyed Plough’s article on “Why God Doesn’t Need Psychedelics.” Its thesis is that God doesn’t require an aid to commune with him. And we should be suspicious of anything that seems to facilitate a connection that is already open to us. You can extend this point to be about lots of things. Drugs and community. Drugs and friendship. Drugs and sex. Drugs and romance. Beware of false gods!!
A drawing of yours truly by Seth Harris is part of a figure drawing class exhibition at the Salmagundi Club It’s in a very cool building, so it’s worth a visit, even for prudes.
Ok, that’s all. I love you. Ciao!
Brittany
