False equivalents or exact ones.

E. Swedenborg, Journal of Dreams,

Was in a garden which had many
divisions; pretty; of these I wished 
to possess one for myself; but looked
about to see if there was any way to get out.
There was a person who picked away a number
of invisible creeping things, and killed them:
he said they were bugs, which someone had
dropped there and thrown in and which infested
people there. I did not see them but saw little
creeping thing which I dropped into white
linen cloth beside a woman. It was the uncleanness 
which ought to be rooted out from me. 

R. Crumb’s Dream Diary

A companion and I were watching big ugly 
insects boldly throw themselves into a fire
in a fireplace. I was highly amused as one by
one these fantastic, repulsive creatures went
into the fire and then squirmed and struggled
and turned black in the flames and hot coals but
did not die or burn up right away. I watched,
making sarcastic, humorous comments, as three,
maybe four, of the large insects went into
the fire in succession. I was glad to see them burn up
finally, consumed by the flames.

531-

Helene Cixous dream book.
Dream a little dream of.
Mamas or papas. Berryman’s
Dream Songs. Henry or Old Mr.
Bones. “Dream I tell you.” “Dreams
without interpretation.” Me.


		532-

“The dreams fell in place like
the dead pushing them out of Hades.”
A forewarning.

		

532-

Mulch, topsoil and stone.
A law firm or farming supplies.
Curfew or curlew. Choose one.
A mockingbird (mockingjay
Question mark) in Cloud Cuckoo Land


		533-

Memoires. I remember Barbra Streisand.
Joe Brainard. Harry Mathews. George
Perec. Ted Berrigan. And Gilbert Adair.
All possibilities. All equally valid. “Memories.”
I remember. “Light the misty corners
of my mind.” As opposed to Malraux.
Who had anti-memories. That I remember.
And Voznesensty’s Antiworlds. Not Freud
Or is it fraud. Go Ask. Anna.

		534-

“I have already lived through this
frightful situation: the head of our 
state gone mad, turned criminal and 
we kill him or be killed.” Dream Poem 
or News article. Current event or
prophecy. “Part of the population 
aware a coup d etat may take place.”
Dream I tell you.  

a purple sadness
 
it's the last whispers
you make out before
the collapse
 
flashing lights and
the torture of the
unknown
 
a purple sadness
envelopes you and
you wish you would
have saved a line
or two for tomorrow
 
as if that is something
anyone adequately
plans for
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
on these rainy days
 
there's an ache
at the base of
my neck that
is agonizing
on these rainy
days
 
eventually
 
the pain will
either fade or
spread
 
i figure one
of these days
 
it won't ever
stop
 
then we'll
see how
easily
i find the
pleasure
in the pain
----------------------------------------------------------------------
i called his bluff
 
i had a doctor
tell me if i
didn't stop
drinking i
would be
dead soon
 
i called his
bluff
 
ten years later
i have a new
doctor that
sighs and
tells me
it's your
life
 
if you want
to drink
yourself
to death
 
just make sure
you use the
good shit
 
no reason to
go out drinking
piss
----------------------------------------------------------------------
relaxes with a cold drink
 
there's this loneliness
that dwells in me, is
comfortable,
 
kicks its feet up on
the couch, relaxes
with a cold drink
and a ball game on
the television
 
i've been trying to
kill that fucker for
years now
 
sadly, the asshole is
as elusive as he is
stubborn
 
on the nights when
i am drinking until
three or four in the
morning
 
we debate the horrors
of dating in this century
and how much does
arthritis dampen the
fun of masturbation
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
dead relatives
 
around three each morning
or night, depending on
whatever your sleep
schedule might be
 
my mother starts
talking in her sleep
 
loud enough to wake
me up in the next room
 
it is usually a dead
relative she is talking
to
 
i'm sure one day,
the dead relatives
will talk back
 
then it will become
a show
 
now, it is just the
frustration of an
old man that can't
fall asleep
 
the race to death is on
 
i don't think my mother
knows just how quickly
i'm gaining on her

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know better. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at Otoliths, Cajun Mutt Press, Terror House Magazine, The Beatnik Cowboy and Mad Swirl. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

From the Back Pages 

Gaurav Ojha 



Scholars are busy professing theories that can never be applied  

Most of human ideas are better in books, too dangerous to put into practice  

Useless intellectual stimulation from the outdated paragraphs keeps on reverberating   

What shall we do with the eyeglass after the professor dies?

How can we keep up with his perspectives, difficult even for him to understand? 

Hang his ideas on the library, like the art beautifully motionless and vibrantly dead 

Too much thinking for the brains, too little courage for hands

But don’t you see the armchair scholars, it a fool's paradise outside 

Let them do what they can, they have mud on their shoes

Those who get involved also know how to wash their hand 

Revolutionaries tell us what to do on the day history dies   

Romantics give us visions and dreams as an escape from this waste land 

Hippies sing the songs of freedom, dropouts create Business Empire 

Framers plow, poets imagine, preachers preach, writers publish 

There is nothing special or specific; we all do what we have to

Before being a friend, become your own enemy 

Listen more to the silence of your skull than the sounds of mouth

It's a mystery how fiction becomes our reality 

Why do unprovable things excite so many? 

Let us remember those saviors history is trying to forgot

Let go of dead batteries from your closet 

Any which way the destiny shuffles, life always ends 

We all survive wondering as if we are missing something 

Are we all searching for the same thing, believers and atheists?

A truth, love, reason, God, soul, beauty, equation and logic 

Something transcendental and stable for a sense of comfort and certainty 

Find some life in a corpse before its burial

Learn how to jump into a frozen lake from the lake of fire

Give more significance to your journey than to the destination 

Make your questions strong and answers weak 

Don’t forget to scribble puzzles of life in the back pages 

Your words will help you find a meaning 

 

“Priceless” Effectively Means Something Is of Great Value, But Only If Someone Is Willing to Pay the Exorbitant Price That You’re Oh So Reluctant to Put on Whatever You’re Selling

2.  Mask

Simian features and contours
Maintained under
High pressure gas contents,
Foam latex
Bony browridge shelf
Over eyes,
Spheroid-shaped jaws
Of the face-puppet mouth protrude;
Maxillary trajectory
Mimics chimpanzee prognathic morphology,
Canopies forward,
Projecting incisors set off by the
Large white canines as jaws open wide, baring
Weaponized teeth
Lining an orbit that’s empty and screaming
Its blindness in glistening pink
Outrage
To the skittish trills and demented coos
Of a sleazy 70s
No-budget
Z-movie
Waking nightmare of
Ticket punched, take the ride
Psychogenic fugue, electronic score
By a dark, withdrawn,
Gently humanist
Brian Wilson on Stylophone,
Or a pressure sensitive
Music Easel with stylus pen,
Harmonizing plaintive and mournful
Over the right triangle-shaped picket fence
Sawtooth wave
Low bandwidth sound pulse:  the force-sensing
Ribbon controller allows the musician to skipper the drone on tempestuous seas,
And to wield a tremendous nostalgic fascistic authority
Over designer tonality, and permits audible changes enacted in real time:
Artisan specialist timbre shepherded, combed with filters
On heaving swells, through a thousand chops, monophonic growl of the under-sound
Treated to heavy distortion.
Fight or flight
Response immanent,
Rhodes piano bass (played
Left-handed)
Imitates menace of
Animal heartbeat increasing.
Closing in,
Zombie meatmen appraise and spin
Brian Wilson’s enormous body, suspended from
Dull, stainless-steel S of butcher’s hook,
In the end, holding him steady to feed a youthful and earnest,
Ravenous
For his shot at the champ
Blue collar straight man, Sylvester Stallone
(Who was Frazier’s white stand-in)
Heavy bag
Body blow
Practice in meat-packing freezer; breath condensation,
As ragged and fraying-edged
Hoary puffs,
Dissipates quickly.
Frozen ribs
Streaked with fat
Crunch under wrapped knuckles.
The grim reality
Flower power conferred
In its teeny bop,
Bubble gum pop music wake 
Takes hold;
Psychedelic chickens—come home to roost,
Dayglow plumage in dark light—
Scratch and peck
LSD 
Streaked and flecked
Beaks,
Nails and spurs,
Carving inscrutable runes
In the dirt
Of the barnyard
Subconscious mind at night.
Speed- and lust-fueled teenage symphonies
Old enough
To know better men
Overproduced, an epiphany
Coming too late
To the victim:  a sharp
Intake
Of cold walk-in
Freezer air.
The two-cycle oil rich exhaust stings;
He tastes fulsome
Matte charcoal grey dank
Like damp gentle tongue probe
Of first kiss:  rainbow sheen
Jerked and bounced,
Pitched and heaved on the leaden lake
Water chop, where the jet skis carve moments, white
Furrowed arcs, open cuts
Quickly closed
Under overcast Labor Day
Low-ceiling sky he remembers from
Post-adolescence of childhood—but whose?
Burnished to silvery
Spatulate,
Narrow elongate paraboloid
Tongues, the guide bars of chainsaws
Lick at the air without interest
Like lizards distractedly
Tasting the freon
And anguish, despair of the man
There condemned.
The full chisel square corner
Left cutter, drive link, to right cutter,
Drive link array
Blurs to black fur around curved
Edges of sniffing prehensile probosces encircling
The trunk of magnanimous sixties
Free love and good will
To consider the prospect of binding,
The wood
Soft, but somehow…
Responsive, reactive to injury,
Casual slights and dismissive behavior
Transformed
Into
Bulletin board
Motivational fodder for anyone
Needing some.
Line cooks and prep cooks in garish red aprons,
Truck stop-style ball caps with backing of mesh and front panels of foam, and the visors
Pulled down to shield thought- and emotion-betrayal of eyes
And crows’ feet—
Feelings’
Tiny tells—
Stand around.
 
“Priceless” Effectively Means Something Is of Great Value, But Only If Someone Is Willing to Pay the Exorbitant Price That You’re Oh So Reluctant to Put on Whatever You’re Selling

3.  Salesmanship…The Guest…Re-writes
 
Skin taut and numb,
Tingly, plastic surgery rictal grin
Settles in on his public face
Riven with wrinkles devoid of emotion like mud
Dried and plotted with cracks.
Guest chair obliquely aligned with the host,
The guest is total professional, watches his latest performance
Through grey tint of lead glass:  in character,
Make-up, on his knees in despair, clutching and pounding his head
Exoskeleton,
Overinflated air-bladders
Limiting cervical flexion, rotation,
His face cast up at the sky and his frictionless palms
Clapped over audio speakers
Transmitting instructions for blocking and lines
The assistant director hypnotically—gently and rhythmically—burbles,
His lips a mere inch from the pop shield
In order to furnish an intimate, vocalist-trying to deep-throat-the-microphone sound
But self-consciously turning away
So to minimize thumping of aspirant plosives
That otherwise batter the cardioid microphone diaphragm,
Ruin the head-job illusion delivered through
Pop screen mesh, cuing the actor it’s time to emote:
Agony:  analog system of animatronics, controlled by a veteran
Children’s show puppeteer,
Animates infinitesimal muscles of mask
To provide a complete range
Of the most
Fluid emotion, expression.
The cheeks wrung
Between vacuum-formed hands,
Deep nasolabial creasing of furrows pronounced,
Facial features scrunch, 
Clustered together, the bogeyman
Viewed through a lens demonstrating severe
Spherical aberration;
A thick bundle of wires and cords, like braids
Laced with bright, colored yarn, trails out from under the headpiece
And runs down his back to the floor and unravels,
Like offshoots that branch at the mouth of a river, or lateral roots
That enlarge in diameter:  surface roots
To support the trunk and explore the soil; sinker roots
That drop straight as plumb
Finger and gouge the foundation below the sound stage
To stir it invisibly,
Under the cover of business as usual,
Roiling and heaving the floor with the first, imperceptible
Turns round the tap root,
Rotations escaping the notice of all but the most hyper-vigilant
Crew members,
Post-traumatic survivors
Of childhood- or family-type trauma or—
Even much later
(For women)—domestic or sexual violence,
Support crew
Getting to watch the display
Of their special effects technological might
(There’s no CGI on this
One)
(Every effect is mechanical)
(Made an exception for bluescreen—the ending isn’t grand guignol,
It’s an apocalypse)
Seeing the spectacle, the sole benefit
Work in the industry offers the folks at the bottom.
Through an open cupola,
Slumping over
The armored turret,
The stillborn screenwriter—
Birthed by midwives
Who went to New Critic schools—
Hard to penetrate
Sloping glacis
With pointed prow
Armor plate
Will diffuse the energy
RPGs
With shaped-charges make
(Thickness constant, the pitch increased
To approximate ideal form
Of the self-reflexive ironic pose
That is single sheet
Or hot rolled homogenous hull material
[Extra-solid construction helps to withstand explosive
Reactive tiles
Lining exterior; final effect
Of deflect, deform,
Ricochet);
Vented shrouds
Of machine gun barrels
From globes of gun ports like doll eyes
Blast
Ashen plumes, orange
Minarets, as the Other’s mysterious gaze,
Leading the object of wrathful, transcendent desire, destination—or target?—
However, unknown and unknowable,
Calculated along
The last
Known trajectory.
Muscular contours of body
Stocking elastic mesh,
Netting woven with styrene beads
To support and shape
The full-body alien suit or prosthesis
Absent the major convenience of ultra-absorbency liner
For urine recycling connected to flexible stem of accordion-crimped sippy straw,
Outline a gesture,
An image that looses itself from appearance,
Slithers free of its context, the plot, for the Nielsen ratings bonanza
Studio audience
Lucky few.
Malcontent millionaire actor
Turned-villainous cultural mastermind bent on destruction
Of globalized popular culture
Hegemony,
Same as he helped to create,
Doing
The talkshow
Pedigree pooch circuit
Says there’s no basis for culture of lasting importance
And somehow avoiding enormous presumptions continues, “Slung around,
Totally meaningless,” his exact
Phrase,
Said by way of indicting his own manifesto, or
Subtext his shoddy, unprincipled body of work has established in words
His detractors and critics have uttered aloud in their cups
Academically, cups unaffordable working as adjunct professors at state schools.
How much contempt can you stand? Mr. Congenial,
Insufferably
Polite (or “white”)
Late-night talk show host asks
Rhetorically, teasing the segment to follow,
Signaling cut to commercial so
Everyone watching at home can consider his comments,
Infer what’s implied for themselves,
That societal currents of trauma account for an uptick
In sexual violence in media.
How did you know I was going to say
What I was going to say?
Asked by proxy, a fetish carved
Out of teak, out-of-teak
Woodwork come, stain resistant
Above the fray
To observe and mock;
Masturbation image or father figure
No more, but rather
A soon-to-be
Never was, never had
Talent hack
Getting involved
In the issue dividing the minds of his day.
 
Some Ur-Shower


Certain times and places I’m able to urinate
only if my hand is pressed palm-flat against a solid surface,
like a wall or door, or the partition of a stall,
or holding on to something, like a towel rod, even hanging off the edge
of a sill or jamb or counter, each digit curved
and arched and filled with tension, like spines of housecats that feel threatened,
or the weathered tongs of a grappling hook,
so the weight of my arm
pulls and drives my fingers fast into the surface,
irrespective of the texture, thus making me feel grounded on some instinctive
primal level.
My bladder isn’t shy, it’s suffering
from the twenty-first century disease of feeling disembodied,
immaterial, like every other organ in my body.

Certain thoughts I’m able to think only if the room is pitch-black,
devoid of even the least bit of ambient light,
and my head is in contact with a rough, abrasive surface
I can visualize in granular detail by pressing my head against it
and rolling back and forth like the freshly-inked bulb of a suspect’s finger
on a fingerprint card, careful not to apply
too much or too little pressure
as I wheel my head from one side to the other,
and thus develop a clear, precise mental image of the texture of the wall
the details of the surface I created in my mind
conforming to the details of the wall as I objectively know them to be.

If, for instance,
the patch of unfinished plaster, or spackling,
over my dresser, off to one side and level with my head—a crease, a nick
in the shape of an isosceles triangle—if those
physical details correspond
to the image my brain composes based
on information sent by the nerve endings on my scalp,
then potentially
I

can have a certain thought.
If, however,
the defining features of the rough patch
can’t be discerned using the data from my nerve endings
where my head touches the rough patch—
even, for instance,
if the cause of the discrepancy
between
what I know to be true,
and what my nerve endings are telling me,
has nothing to do with
either my nerve endings, or the patch
of unfinished plaster:
such
would be the case
if the absence of verifiable conformation
results
from a change in temperature
or humidity, like the changes preceding a summer shower—
then,
in order to think a certain thought,
I must either:  find a spot on another part of my head—perhaps
there was too much hair
on the back of my head, while my chin, just
recently shaved,
today,
as a matter of fact,
the nerve endings on my chin
will be up
to the task of relaying tactile
sense
data sufficient to the job
of my brain reproducing from the data sent
a model of the rough patch
in
as many physical details
as my naked eye can discern, an exact copy… or
I must find another place,
or something else against which I can place my head
and proceed with the business of thinking a certain thought, a thought
perhaps unknown to me at the time I first consider
the possibility
of seeking out conditions
conducive
to thinking a certain thought,
namely,
the appropriate
surface
and the appropriate lighting:
seeking the thought with the relish unique to
someone stumbling over furniture
in the darkness of a stranger’s bedroom as I feel along the walls.
 

Mark Parsons' poems have been recently published or are forthcoming in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, The Lake, Peach, and Misery Tourism. He lives in Tokyo, Japan.  You ​can follow him on twitter at https://twitter.com/parsons_mfa

Book Review:  Street Journalist
Understand & Report the News in Your Community
By Lisa Loving, 191 pages, $14.95.
Microcosm Publishing, reviewed by A. Iwasa

In a brief Introduction, Loving clearly states her "goal in this book is to offer everyday people the tools to go into your communities and then educate the world about what's going on in your zone."

I first became familiar with Loving's work when an old comrade of mine was putting together a proposal for a panel on factchecking in the time of fake news for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs 2023 Conference.  I eagerly looked up her work so I wasn't surprised when she critiqued some of the problems with contemporary media environment in both the Intro and even briefer first chapter.

But rather than simply complain about the potentially destructive nature of bad journalism, Loving uses the first chapter mostly to suggest some ground rules like, "If you're not fact-checking, it's not journalism." and "Never make shit up."  In fact, out of ten ground rules, Loving mentions both of those twice to drive home the point!

In chapter two, Loving starts to get into the nuts and bolts of "Is This a Story?"  If you're like me, you grew up with a cartoonish image of a trench coated journalist, with a press pass sticking in their fancy hat asking, "Who, what, where, when, why?"  So I like how Loving zooms in with specific outlines for the dynamics of a story:  1. People, 2. Doing something, 3. For a reason, before fleshing out these and then some with legal explanations and self care tips.

Do you remember when Jello Biafra used to say, "Don't hate the media, become the media."?  Loving is carrying on that tradition, and offering you the torch with this book.

Story style like "enterprise reporting," "solutions journalism" and consumer reporting are all described to help envision larger arcs for your writing.  Loving really hits a stride here, outlining story structure, research, ethics, and self care.  Loving also introduces exercises and suggested readings into this chapter!

With chapter three, Loving discuses media literacy in a way that will hopefully date it to 2019 when this was published and not too much more into the future by having to call it "Fake News, Brain Farts, and Crap Detectors".  She jokes about Stephen Colbert's concept of "truthiness," but it was a pretty scary moment in 2017 when life started to imitate art and "alternative facts" actually became part of the media landscape.

It's an interesting chapter, with Loving taking into consideration things like the human mind's "trapdoors that lead us to make stupid decisions" and how social media can bring out the worst in us.

Though I do have to disagree with Loving's characterization of propaganda as "completely or partially made up".  According to my handy Random House Dictionary, propaganda is "information or ideas methodically spread to promote or injure a cause, group, nation, etc."  Or, "the deliberate spreading of such information or ideas."

It's not pretty, and perhaps it's not the right thing to do, but in the past I have considered partisan propaganda to essentially be solutions journalism.  As long as we're being honest, of course.  I never had patience for chronic bull shitters who proclaimed to be adherents to Left-wing politics, any more than the Rightists.

Loving would perhaps label this "Biased news, which is often factual information, but packaged with a slant".  This sort of critiques is exactly why I picked up her book, to be challenged.  Also, I'm at least dimly aware my old propaganda writing has probably contributed at least a little to the toxic media environment.  I don't exactly regret this because I remain confident I was on the right side of the barricades, but I also think the way forward may lie elsewhere.

Plus I was appalled to read "The English Oxford Dictionary has started including the term 'post-truth,' which means a situation in which facts matter less than an appeal to emotion."

Microcosm seems to have a knack for printing books I wish I could have read 20 years ago to guide me through a lot of lessons I've learned the hard way over the last couple of decades.  Though I felt a bit like when an English professor I had back in community college scolded me by saying, "This is a composition class, not a propaganda class." while reading this, I also couldn't help but think of Archer saying, "Potato, pa-treason."  I also remember being strongly encouraged to focus on my writing by other professors then since publishers were probably going to have their own, strict in house guidelines.  I think Loving addresses aspects of journalism that could and should transcend publishers' style guides and get to the heart of what is journalism, and if a publisher can't mesh with it, do you really want to work with them?!

Fittingly enough, the next chapter begins with the five Ws of journalism previously mentioned, along with "How" drawn into an ice cream cone.  Writing about style guides, Microcosm's is pretty much quintessential cupcake punk!  Take it or leave it, but I'll tell you when their office was in Liberty Hall in North Portland at one point one of their authors was systematically preparing and serving all of the recipes in a vegan desert cook book of theirs, and rest assured I was a regular visitor to their office then.

But this chapter also focuses on things such as keeping your information organized.  It's about gathering info, including developing relationships with your sources.

The following chapter is on Interviewing Tips.  I think I'm going to have to re-read it after listening to some of Loving's material from KBOO, the community radio station she's involved with in Portland.

The chapter didn't really mesh well with my experiences conducting interviews, nor understanding from studying journalism which I've only somewhat haphazardly practiced.  But it didn't exactly contradict them either.  It gave me a lot to think about and I look forward to revisiting it soon because I think it has a lot to offer someone looking to gain or improve their interviewing skills.

In the next chapter, What Is Investigative Reporting?, Loving really hits a stride with clear reasons why and ways to stay objective as possible.  Through out the book she has interspersed her own stories to use as examples, along with other journalists'.  Maybe this is just where our work has been most closely in line, but lessons offered seemed particularly noteworthy to me.

In fact, if one wanted to be diplomatic about my past, admittedly partisan propaganda, you might call it "experiential" investigative reporting as in this chapter.  Loving writes, "Probably the most basic, bread and butter investigative story that you could do right now is setting yourself in some remarkable experience and then writing a feature story about what happened."

I agree 110%.  To be blunt, a large part of why I took up journalism was for better and for worse, you'll never run out of things to write about.  I couldn't make up many of the people I've met, and experiences I've had, and trust me!  I wish plenty of them were just figments of my imagination.  It's also part of why I can't understand why so much bull shitting takes place in the media, both mainstream and underground.  It's not only unethical, it's completely unnecessary.

Under the subheading, "Helping Someone Who Needs an Advocate," Loving writes, "It is my personal experience that the most important and impactful stories come from your readers who call you looking for an advocate in the face of some bureaucratic or legal trap.  The documents they bring with them in stuffed manila envelopes and big boxes and rolling suitcases are often the kind of paperwork FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] doesn't cover.  This is why you should have a front door to your operations somehow-a way for people to come in and ask for help."

Another total home run.  When I hitchhiked, hopped freight and walked my happy ass from the White Castle Timber Sale Blockade back to the San Francisco Bay Area in the fall of 2013 to start doing shit work for the Berkeley wingnut newspaper, Slingshot, the fact that it had an office in an Infoshop was large part of my thought process.  A public facing store front being what many media projects I had participated in had lacked.

More recently, when I made a media request for a review copy of this book (all this and more can be yours!), it was also in part because I was excited about a website some people I knew from the Infoshop Movement or a Punk House were involved in, and thinking having at least quasi-public infrastructure like Punk Houses is all critical to process.  I wanted to try laying out some ground work that I think would not only make or break my potential participation, but also be better for everybody whether I go on to be involved or just retire and get a job at a sauerkraut factory in a different bioregion.

"Health Department Records" and "Looking up Campaign Contributions" are subheadings for sections filled with good ideas about projects for mining the public record.  These are the kinds of assignments you might get in a News Reporting class, and are good skills to have for activism anyways.

"Wherever you go in the world of journalism, the documents tell the story." is a point I believe Loving makes repeatedly in the text.  Loving closes the chapter by emphasizing keeping your materials organized, from the get go.

Ch. 7 is "Pulling It All Together And Telling The Story".  She paraphrases writing coaches from a webinar advocating a martini glass like story structure:

"a wide open top bringing in the story topic,
"narrowing down to an important sharp point on what's important about it,
"and ending with the strong base that explores the future of that topic."

I really enjoyed this because I had a similar model taught to me in community college, but it was just the inverse pyramid part of the martini glass, with no base.  I like associative devices for remembering things, and I appreciate logical additions.

I actually laughed out loud when Loving wrote, "don't forget about snacks."  I think a crucial aspect about writing (and reading for that matter) that goes widely unacknowledged for some reason is the importance of the discipline of literally sitting down for the duration, and doing the work.  "If you take the time to ensure you can sit at a working station for hours at a time with comfort food by your side, I guarantee you will get more done."  This is a nice way to put it, perhaps it's the velvet underwear of iron pants?  I'm not sure, but we frequently joked (not joked) about how we worked for food when I did shit work for the Slingshot Collective, so I get it.

Apparently Loving takes tea over coffee (BOOOOO!), and doesn't shy away from sugar bombing (a tried and true tactic of many cults from what I understand from the research, not the prasadam, hack, hack, cough, cough) but hopefully you get the picture.  Please don't get all Hunter S. Thompson on this note, I've got coffee right here though (both in the first draft and typing phases) that's fueling me right now.  Chased by filtered water to keep me hydrated (again, both in draft and typing.  Relentless by Pentagram played on the youtube as I typed this portion, T. Rex as I proof read).

All joking/not joking aside, Loving continues to drive home the bigger concepts, like "What's Most Important?" while giving you specifics on how to go about "Organizing What You've Got".  "Sorting through the many parts of your media project and organizing them for easiest use is a lot like putting away your laundry."  True, provided you put away your laundry!

Similarly, "Start your path to news writing by reading." is the kind of golden advice I'm shocked isn't more prolific.  From what I understand, when Nelson Algren was a professor at the Iowa State Writers' Workshop he would just show up with a pile of books and tell his students to read.  Hopefully, obviously this isn't all one does, but the subheading, "Get Started with a Grounding in News" encapsulates the spirit well.  

While I was reading this book, I was also reading My Seditious Heart by Arundhati Roy and Accessary to War by Neil deGrasse Tyson for exactly this reason.  They are two of my favorite living writers and Roy has long been an inspiration to me.  I also re-read Neil Gaiman's "Make Good Art" speech while working on this review, and enjoyed being reminded about his experiences with journalism, and how he said, "I learned to write by writing."

Did you know "There are low cost, online platforms like Canva, Vizualize, and even Google Charts where you can upload an Excel spreadsheet and have it automatically rolled into a graphic."?  I didn't!  There's a great deal of this sort of nuts and bolts advice interspersed with the other info.

Writing about privacy, Loving coaches again, "Don't be the reporter who vomits information into the digisphere with a sense of revenge.  That's not journalism."  This time adding strong words of encouragement not to troll any kind of public figure either.  "That is also not journalism."

Ch. 8 is about Fact-Checking, and a large part of why I was interested in Loving's work.  An old comrade of mine who interned for In These Times basically only fact-checked for the internship, in a small office with a few other interns who were also just fact-checking.  I was shocked by the dedication and level of rigorousness, but that was before I became a Slingshot shit worker for three and a half years.  Now I think that sort of attention to detail is mandatory.  Loving writes, "this is a step you are not allowed to skip."

Later, Loving adds, "In fact, if you are working with a team of people, a laundry list of items to double-check would be an excellent communications tool you can share with your entire team."  I think this sort of advice is a slam dunk, and exactly the kind of thing I'd like to bring to the table if I'm going to start to do political journalism again.

As I continued to read this chapter, I remembered some advice I got for doing rumor control at street demonstrations, "Believe none of what you hear, and half of what you see."  Of course fact checking isn't that formulaic and rigid, I think it's just something to keep in mind as you're developing your system.

I also started to think about now what Loving calls a "street journalist," I might call a sea level journalist, a nod to the long form, alternative press writers who emerged after, but somewhere in between underground and mainstream journalists.

This isn't a negative criticism, in fact it's the opposite.  I think the hyper partisan, what I would consider street-level journalists, such as myself in the 30s, should probably taking ideas from this book and promptly putting them into practice.

As a case in point, in the EXERCISES at the end of the chapter, Loving writes, "For one week, keep track of all the corrections in the New York Times.  Are there any patterns?" and further along, under "STORY IDEA":  "Speaking of fact-checking, one kind of story that never goes out of date is checking the corrections sections of major media to look for really big whoppers, which generally become what are called 'follow-up' stories."

I think this is great advice, and I plan on following up on it.  It's just not what I would call "street" by any stretch of the imagination.  If someone upped the ante (and the anti!), would anyone read a Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla Journalist? 

I was a little apprehensive of Ch. 9:  CREATING YOUR VOICE AS A JOURNALIST.  I'm a strong believer in writing that might be called, "Just typing," but really I think you spit it out, clean it up, then submit the second or third draft for potential publication as is or for further editing.

For one thing, Loving also does radio and in turn is literally addressing voice.  But more broadly she also addresses personal style of communication in ways that I think are on point.

Ch. 10 is about PLATFORMS.  It sort of lost me for reasons I won't bore you with.  It's good info I'm sure for people who didn't spend their mid-20s to mid-30s in the blogosphere, somewhat blindly trying to seamlessly transition from print to digital, then trying to do both before deciding to go down with the ship of print come hell or high water.

 Ch. 11 is the conclusion and is a Grand Slam (in the ball park OR at Denny's, you decide what ever is better in your opinion), systematically laying the major points of the book out as Loving describes one of the most important stories she ever covered.  If you are a journalist, or are thinking about becoming one, I can't recommend this book to you enough.

Street Journalist by Lisa Loving is available here from Microcosm Publishing.

Dark Blank Space 

Night swallows the brown mountains 
and replaces it with dark blank space.
The birds must have been fed poison 
because there is not one in the horizon.
The devil went and stole their voices too.
A mini-hell has taken hold between 
one a.m. and two a.am. This is when
all hell breaks loose. Read the papers.
Nothing good happens at these hours.
This dark blank space finds itself 
lodged inside my brain over and over
again. I sleepwalk at these hours and
find myself in the kitchen drinking
until I pass out on the cold floor.


*


Out of the Sky

If white doves fall out of the sky,
who will save me without wings?
I tremble at the mere thought.
Who will save me without wings?

The stars fall out of the sky.
They are drowned out at sea.
No one could put out the fire
while all the birds fall in as well.

Who will save my eyes as they stand 
witness? Who will pour me drinks?
I have one arm tied behind my back.

I stick out my tongue at the voice
that contemplates my suicide.
The stars and birds burn at sea.
I love the colors but hate the carnage.

I suppose the sea will birth new stars
and birds. I will believe it when I see it.
The streets are too dim and quiet
without them as I walk towards the sea.


*


A Shoe for a Nose

The clouds gather in the sky.
I see one that looks like a face
with a shoe for a nose.
Another one looks like a bat
missing a wing, the left one.

Blue skies and white clouds provide 
nourishment for these eyes
that would rather see
them than another newspaper 
article about the end of a life.

A lovely sunny day and
clear skies with a handful of clouds 
is all I can stand
today. Perhaps I will eat tacos
and the day will be perfect.

Not the One

By Taylor Dibbert



Clear eyes,

Chin up,

Like,

Henley said,

Bloody,

But,

Unbowed,

Turns out,

She wasn’t,

The one,

After all.