Bury you burdens....

There is a beautiful juxtaposition realized from listening to William Elliot Whitmore's Field Songs on the CTA. Whitemore's smoky voice trembles over a banjo and six string, and tells of stories of sorrow and regret, and the scenes outside of CTA windows tell the same. The recordings of sparrows in the background that bookend all the songs on the album oddly sync with the whisks of passing cars on the Dan Ryan. Maybe it is because I know where to look for the the desperate, homeless, in this White city, but the characters Whitemore presents in his songs are as big shouldered as our own.

Thoughts... from Lost Panoramas

Lost Panoramas is a book that explores the reversing of the Chicago River. Around that time, there was huge amounts of flooding downstate, wiping out entire towns and farms. Insurance men sent out engineers to take pictures, to access the damage (and those pictures make up some of the book). I want to write a fictional short story about this. A story about a farmer who has lost everything and is not to happy to see an engineer working for a insurance company. Not happy at all. Feeling scorned. Feeling like taking pictures of his own. I need to get my hands on Lost Panoramas and really do some research.

They made a fake Paris

with all the lights and blackened out windows,

and I need to find out what Potemkin means.

What happens to all our fake selves?

The tour guide, the thief, the pinball packager,

could all be waiting at the Gare du Nord.

Bullet ridden tickets in their hands

waiting in the combustion and tea light

where they’re off to, real or not, on the tips of their tongues.