“A Grim Reckoning” is one of my more gothic offerings. It began its life as incidental organ music for “Misguiding Lights,” a dance/theater piece by Pam Quinn and Michael O’Connor. I reworked it for viola and electronic organ, and performed it on the “No Soap Radio” series at Dance Theater Workshop, in NYC, in 1996, with David Gold on viola.

Here’s the first page.

On the occasion of Jim Steinmeyer’s biography of Charles Fort, I contributed an article to Fate on Fort’s books: his style, models, and reception. Among other things, I pointed out his Pyrrhonist and Bohemian tendencies; and compared his comic and speculative use of science with Jarry’s ‘pataphysics. Here’s the first page.

That gentleman of the pen, Danny Hellman, published this comic strip in his anthology Typhon, in 2008. I originally drew it for performance, which is why the dialogue is not contained within the balloons. Here’s how it begins.

How did I ever end up in a movie? I don’t even watch movies.

However — I was appearing, yet again, in Bill Irwin’s show The Regard of Flight, and casting agents noticed me. I auditioned for a movie called Three Men and a Baby (as one of the three men, not as the baby). I didn’t get that part, but was eventually assigned a small part in Crocodile Dundee II. I emerged from a toilet stall during a tense moment, retreated, and then emerged again to say “He’s gone.”

I have no idea if the movie was nice, since I never got around to watching it.

The curious thing is that friends and family (especially family) saw the fact that I delivered one line in a movie as much more important and interesting than anything else I did. For me, it was just a lark, a chance to earn a few bucks. My fellow citizens often mystify me.

A round on a trenchant scrap of Yeats. Hear, hear!

A funereal snippet, to illustrate a point of physical comedy in a performance with Bill Irwin, at the Walter Reade Theater (NYC) in 1999.

Having long been a fan of both Richard Shaver and Fate magazine, I was happy to play a part in putting him on the cover. My article for this issue, “What’s This?  A Shaver Revival?” can be found here. Or, to be more precise, the beginning of the article: you have to buy the issue to read the whole thing, as is only proper.

In 1977 and 1978, I drew a comic strip for a paper in Oakland, CA, The East Bay Review. It was called “Art For Art’s Sake,” and took a cast of anthropomorphic creatures through the Bay Area arts scene. It seems pretty jejune to me now, in my dotage, but the discipline of meeting deadlines was salutary; and people told me they enjoyed it. It careered through both continuity and isolated panels; here’s one of this and two of that.

Back in 1981, while touring in Florence, I picked up a facsimile copy of this peculiar alchemical work. I was fascinated, and started a translation. Then, many years and moves later, I found my notes, and realized that I should either discard it or finish it. So, I Googled Nazari; and found that the book had not been translated; and that, in fact, a publisher of alchemical books had put out a request for someone to do it. I contacted him, he sent me money; and the result was published in 2002 by Adam McLean, of the Magnum Opus Hermetic Sourceworks, in Glasgow, in a limited edition of 300.

It’s perhaps best known for its woodcuts, particularly the three-headed dragon below. And here’s a bit of the passage in which our narrator encounters that beastie.

I’ve often performed this song on the ukulele. I recorded it with an obbligato for baritone uke; in performance, David Gold has joined me on viola. Here’s how it begins: