My poem "Disinterment" appeared in Aries, a literary journal published by Texas Wesleyan University, a while back. Although Aries is not widely distributed, some of the contributors' work in this volume (Vol. 27) have appeared in publications such as Atlantic Monthly, Harvard Review, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner.
In my bio maybe I should have mentioned that not only had I received a free tote bag from the New Yorker for renewing my subscription, but that I had even been granted the professional rate. Needless to say, I was very proud to have my work published alongside such established writers.
"Disinterment" is the first literary work I have ever put on youtube. I took the picture for the "video" at Concordia Cemetery in El Paso, where the outlaw/lawyer John Wesley Hardin, numerous buffalo soldiers, Chinese railroad workers, and many, many others are buried.
I wrote the song "Byzantium" while sitting on the curb near my cabin in Yellowstone National Park in 1995. In those days, I was reading Plato, Lao Tzu, W.B. Yeats, Thomas Merton, and Shakespeare as well as novel after novel. My job did not require much mental strain or cause too much stress, so I was never too tired to read books, write fiction, or compose songs. What I read tended to influence what I produced, as evidenced by the lyrics to this song.
"Byzantium" was recorded almost by accident. While in the recording studio with the band Nijak in the Czech Republic in the early 2000s, Radek, the producer, asked if we had any songs that we had not been practicing or working on. I told him that I had one, so I played "Byzantium" for him. A few minutes later, Honza had an acoustic guitar in his hand, and we recorded the song pretty much spontaneously. Pavel, who was not in the studio, dropped a bass line in after the fact, and the result is the song linked below.
Back home in Texas many years later, it is as if another person sang on the record. Maybe it's because thousands of miles and multiple lives now span between the time of recording and the present. I even found myself in old Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium, along the way.
Today would have been Jack Kerouac's 95th birthday. Kerouac, that shining son of the Beat Generation, influenced my life in such a fundamental way that once I read his most famous book I hit the road as soon as I could. And once I got on the road, I essentially stayed there through my early thirties. Kerouac's seminal novel changed the trajectory of my life in a profound way, and while those years of traveling light did not bring me financial or career success, I consider them golden years, the greatest years of my life so far.
When I was nineteen I remember marveling when I saw the words "Fort Worth" in the novel. Kerouac had mentioned my town. And looking back at the novel this morning, I read about Sal Paradise, Marylou, and Dean Moriarty passing through Fredericksburg on their way to El Paso. I imagine them driving through that quiet Texas town in the days when many folks still spoke German on the street and it was not uncommon for children to learn English when they first got to school. I imagine the snow on the ground and the cowboys in ballcaps and earmuffs looking for lost cows.
This morning I woke up with a song channeling its way out of my body. I wrote down the words, noted the chords, and recorded it on my cell phone. It is a raw cut, but I wanted to post it on Kerouac's birthday. I wanted to pay tribute to a man who changed my life for the better.
