B O N D P H O N E.
Words and pictures by Chris Lamb.

This is something that happens: silence on the telephone for minutes disguised as hours, broken only by the crackle hiss of so-so connection stretched over a thousand miles. And yeah, it sucks; there are a dozen things you feel like saying but even the ones you mean don't fit, so you um uh around the obvious until one of you comes up with an excuse to hang up. It's a shame and a loss, something in you shudders at the acknowledgement and you move on. The operation was a success but the patient diedj people ask me if the transition between Huntsville and here was hard and I say no, but I'm starting to understand the word "transplant" now.

I'm writing a play. A one act, maybe ten minutes long, but still a play, something real people might act out in front of a real audience. After weeks of swinging and missing I think I know what I'm doing again. Writing is like possession: when it works, when the characters start talking, when you remember how to give yourself over as a vessel; just as scary and twice as fun. Gimme gimme gimme words.

I'm putting something together for The Stranger, something short and sweet about playing out of your league. Prose fiction is hard to get back into, and I haven't bothered since NaNoWriMo last November. I once asked Steven Page how much of his songs were true, and he gave me some of the only advice I've been smart enough to take to heart: blend fiction with truth until not even you know the difference. So a huge chunk of me goes into whatever comes out and I have to get over being embarassed before writing anything worth keeping. Which brings us to another life lesson courtesy of Richard Kadrey: When you can't make the words happen, bleed flowers.

Fahrenheit 911 works better than expected. Moore manages to keep focus while pushing through a nearly endless berth of subject matter, making his case essay style by following each piece from its beginnings up to present times. Most impressive is the editing, flowing from images of heart breaking cruelty softly back to jokes exactly when you need them. While Moore's public persona is farther left and much more of a raving jackass than I feel comfortable aligning myself with, I will always have time for his films and the rational, competent way he gets his point across. I went in a believer and came out galvanized.

Aimee Mann at St. Ann's Warehouse was everything I didn't know I needed. It's easy to forget how many moments of my life are defined by her slow storytelling and biting lyrics until I hear them told back to me with the air of talking over cigarettes outside a bar with an old friend. 'Driving Sideways' is a letter written at three in the morning last Spring. 'Deathly' is just before leaving for New York, all the unsaid bits of a last conversation. 'Stupid Thing' my first real break up and so on and so on. Mann from the perspective of someone older and wiser than you who still hasn't quite learned better. I remember first hearing her years ago, hitting like a message from the future screaming No, it doesn't get any better, so work with what you got. Seeing her live, making stage banter and guarded laughter, it's clear the only people who would qualify her as depressing are those who've already given up.

Three in the morning and I'm walking through the scafolding leading up to ninth and first. She comes around the corner with headphones on, skipping oblivious to the world along with some amazing song and I can't walk any more. A flash of green eyes, a smile to end the world and she's gone; I can't imagine living anywhere else but now.