"Crawl"

By Robbie on May 9, 2009

That's the name of my short story in the just-published collection "Amplified" (Melville House).  The book collects new fiction by songwriters, most of them with some sort of alt-country identification, and its editors propose that the tools of the writerly trade have fungibility -- that a fellow who has, for example, invented a credible character voice for a tune can create one for the printed page.  Doubt it; but I look forward to reading "Amplified" and being proved wrong. 

Writing the story took me some time.  What voice and characters, what milieu, what situation, how funny: all this looked vexingly obscure.  But I figured out promptly that, to give myself the best possible hope of success in an alien craft, the people I would be moving around, and their gameboard, would have to be clear from familiarity.  So the story is about a middle-aged writer and not an African king; and the professions and wardrobe and urban topography (it takes place in NYC) required no special research.

At a promotional reading the other night at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville, I was talking to David Olney, who said that he had some difficulty writing environmental detail for his story, like the color of the sky and the lay of the land, since songwriting never called for much of that.  Personally, I was troubled by entrances and exits and getting people from one place to another.  Maybe the reason that Alfred Hitchcock, in "Suspicion," had Cary Grant appear in scenes without being seen entering, was not only to give him an uneasy aura of supernatural power but to save a little work.

At the reading, besides David and me, were Jon Langford, Cam King, and Mary Gauthier.  Most of the audience were gray-haired or getting there.  There was one little girl of about 8, though.  I made special note of her partly because in reviewing my story and locating an excerpt of appropriate length and extractability to read aloud, I saw that I would be talking about a blow job, briefly.  Mary's story (which she read in such a cool voice that I wished she had read for all of us) had plenty of shits and sons-of-bitches, but I thought a blow job might be categorically different if not unique.  "You may wish to send your children to the military science section to browse for the next ten minutes," I announced before starting.  But the kid stayed put, and "took it like a man," as the saying goes.

Afterward we went to the Bluebird and played music for a couple hours in that venue's patented "in-the-round" format.  The roundness was thrice magnified, as not only did we pass songs around, we sat in a circular shape, and the listeners were seated all around us, which left half of the crowd staring at the back of my shoddily tapered, eight-dollar Windsor Terrace haircut.  Without meaning to slight anyone else on that bill, because everyone was fine in his own way, I want to recommend that you pick up some music by Mary Gauthier.  I had heard a couple of her songs, but two she performed that night, "Mercy Now" and "Sideshow," had a rightness that sold me.

It was good being back in Nashville and not being in the position of facing a smiling man from L.A. or Murfreesboro and trying to convince him of my lyrical talent and openness to corrective revision.  I may be kidding myself, but returning to read from a book and play at the Bluebird gives me a stronger sensation of dignity.  It was good catching up with Lorne Rall, with whom I once spent five years in a Ford Clubwagon.  Lorne recently turned 55, and can still easily do that many push-ups.  Also good seeing Jeremy Tepper, Paul Burch, and Laura Cantrell.  Dignified, each one.