William Crump dines with the Iron Chef

In late 2001 I had just moved back to Mississippi after three and a half years in northern California, where I’d cultivated my gourmandism mostly on the cheap – during trips to the Bay Area, I discovered la[…]

This is a highly personal story. I’m writing it because I wanted to write something. Because it gives me a way to give myself a purpose outside from merely working again. Because it makes me understand myself better. Because I love music, and proba[…]

“ROCK AND ROLL is the spearhead of our attack because it is so effective and so much fun.”
– John Sinclair, revolutionary and manager of The MC5, November 1968 from the first ‘White Panther Statement’.
No matter how or what you choose t[…]

If I were a painter I would spill great splashes of yellow and
red over the end of this trip
Because I am quite sure we were all a little mad
And that a raging delirium was bloodying the lifeless faces of
my travelling companions

Blaise Cendrars, La[…]

And I’d finished this so I sent it to my girlfriend and she called me back and said, “um, err, I don’t, understand.” So after sulking for a bit, obviously upset, I explained. And she understood. I asked her if she could write a short […]

t.A.T.u.
For Melissa Witkowski. It’s all your fault, of sorts.
I
Because when I want to explain to myself Bjork’s “Pagan Poetry”, I can’t think here, in my world, the song seems too simplistic when measured, the merest cursory g[…]

The Ultimate Fop-Pop Explosion
When I hit the astroturf I knew it was serious. By the time I got to Battersea the next morning, my ankle resembled the Graf Zeppelin and each gear change felt like an angle grinder slicing through my leg. Only another […]

“Backwoods”
I went out to the hazel wood
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread- Yeats, ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’

This shouldn’t take long.
Records of the Year, that woul[…]

must’ve been five years old in the passenger seat, mid-dusk, on the barren highway drive to grandma’s house, the sky a navy swath, faraway lights from radio towers, signposts, airplanes, whatever, piercing through cobwebs of branches like[…]

Lift To Experience – The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads
I don’t want to begin with a trope and have to carry through its execution. I don’t want an introduction giving me some context to work around; to seep into and out of. Now I am half way […]