She's the One

After a hiatus, here it is— a new way to do Undulant. This time, a novel manner of backing up print, specifically Vlad Pogorelov's Monday Journal, on perma.cc. Of course, PennSound doesn't hurt, either. All to back up the unlikely chiasmus of Bruce Springsteen to Federico Garcia Lorca. Hear me out. This tune, one that's not been emphasized much, does a gut-level trick, or slug-in-the-guts trick, that consolidates a good amount of shock and awe. There's fear and trembling, joy and ecstasy all together, danger and safety, etc. Lorca names this assemblage of fiery passion the duende.  What I tie Lorca and Springsteen into is myself, and Undulant, also into Hannah Miller, the mid-Aughts, and the rest. Just something to know about Hannah: she was dangerous. She was wild. She meant danger. The night being described in the piece is June 16, 2005. Bloomsday, fer chrissakes. Hannah is Molly, who meant danger, too. The first night it was, of not too many nights, but nonetheless some of the most memorable nights of my life. Like a bullfight, touched for the very first time. And the crowning moment of the Aughts for me, who didn't even expect, until Hannah showed up, that the Aughts would or could be crowned. Philadelphia had the power to let it happen. 

The Core

So, then there's the idea of the partnership I had going with Mary H— as equals, as artists. That's the essential idea— we were partners. All the early Aughts ecstasy, as we see in Starlight, Ink Pantry and PennSound, was not just about finding kindred spirits, but precise kindred spirits. Another you, that just happens to be opposite sexed. That's why we were so at home, and all those nights could pass in a spirit, deeply felt, of all for one and one for all. Abby slots in the same way— as an equal, as an artist. A precise kindred spirit. Abby's a fucking Virgo— it better be precise. We were all perfect together enough that even Abby could accept, for a while. And when we could get the right starlit mood going, starting in West Philly, all of Philadelphia joined in with us. This, Manhattan can never do. The Clapton song thus works as a paean to me dialoging back and forth with Mary and Abby. The nights that went on and on, with everything in them, including the kitchen sink. We held nothing back at all. Our entire souls were allowed and encouraged to come to the surface and express themselves. All because the essential human pact was fulfilled— we were finally among people who were like us. At home. That's The Core. Amnesty from the stupid surface of things, forever, babes. 

Rock and Roll

At a key moment here, I'm not going to be afraid to call a spade a spade and name P.F.S. for what it was in the Aughts: a pagan scene. When I say pagan scene, I mean a scene about earth magic(k), in all its manifestations— no point belaboring them, y'all know what they are. Everything that was righteous among us was a pagan rite fulfilled, a pagan ritual fulfilled, even, at times, a pagan sacrifice fulfilled. What just went up on P.F.S. Post, and has been on PennSound for a while, is about Philadelphia getting in tune with the cosmos the right way, even after all the humiliations it suffered towards the end of the twentieth century. By pagan voodoo it was, and by any means necessary. Also, a triumph against oppression and potential oppressors by pure Joy of Earth. So: read the piece. And just come to an understanding, about our pagan scene, that religion was got, and religion was had. Starting with Mary, Abby, and I, and then out to Jenny, Hannah, Gaetan, and the rest. Philadelphia not a down place, but a get-down place. As we would ask: are you gonna fuck up, or are you gonna get down. So, Zeppelin might be rock's ultimate pagans, and may they be right there with us. Philly will always get real in the end. That's my prediction. Because it's been a long time since...

Stay

Not to neglect the obvious— if I chose to write a book like Equations, it's partly because the Aughts in Philadelphia were a highly charged time around sex and sexuality. When the Aughts Philly Zeitgeist dictated actual bacchanals followed by actual orgies, it couldn't be that a writer weaned on introspection and deep interrogation would neglect an imperative to ascertain, if it could be ascertained, what it all meant. Hannah, of course, left a major thumbprint on Equations, and on Something Solid, too. The sonnet Undulant, as it appears in P.F.S. Post and on PennSound, hopefully catches a lot of the craziness of what we were living through then. For those with imaginations, it helps to remember that the fun in those days started when you left, were willing to leave, inner-room scruples aside. Then, you could participate in the decadence without being plagued with self-consciousness, if it was in you to do that trick. It was, for better or for much much worse, in me to do that trick. Bowie here investigates the insanity of a Moody Blues mellotron overlay over a George Clinton backing track. Sounds like Syd, right? But the equation is clearly a carnal one. Sounds like the Philly Free School.  

We Gotta Get You A Woman

As I just said in TAS, and as is also visible in the 2025 Buffalo 8 page: the book Equations was written by me, to attempt to answer a question. The question— whether our relationship to sex and sexuality is what makes us most human— is one that some find interesting, some don't. Why not God, for instance, rather than sex, or work? In any case, for all the sex prevalent in Aughts Philly, Philly is still, also, the City of Brotherly Love. The idea of friendship had to be huge, too. So, also for instance, Gaetan Spurgin's vaunted bros before hos refrain was one he carried around, for all occasions. It worked between me and my other Free School cohorts while that scene was going on, too. And, of course, it worked with Todd, who begins in Upper Darby, where lives, incidentally, the Trixie Belle character in Equations. Upper Darby, btw, is not all working class, as many would assume. Up close, it's half working class, half posh. Trixie Belle lived on the posh side of Upper Darby. And did leave me with sunken eyes, and full of sighs. As was duly noted by Mike Land... so that all the games could begin again. And again. 

Weird Fishes/Arpeggi

Was In Rainbows the last great rock album? It's difficult, in 2026, not to think of rock as having decayed and decomposed, from supermarket tabloids on out, into nostalgia-land, rather than being a present-tense reality. My first listen, turns out, to In Rainbows, was an extremely memorable one. It was a car ride from Midway Airport in Chicago (after my first visit to Chicago, I avoided O'Hare) into the South Side of Chicago. Steve Halle's car. And we were going to visit the enfranchised, Eric Elshtain assembled bookstore on the U of Chicago campus, wacky poetry section and all. The time was January 2008. In Rainbows is a spectacular winter album. Memories are made of this. I had time to remember Chicago in the TAS interview that just came out, along with the sense that Chicago is an investment I don't regret. So it goes, that day, with In Rainbows hot off the press, there wasn't that much need yet to think that rock had kicked the bucket. It's Blitz held down the fort in 2009. But, from the Teens forward, pretty slim pickins for those raised on rock. Funny, that day, to note that Chicago's South Side mirrors Philadelphia's North Side. Where Temple University is. Memories are made of this. 

Kamera

Aughts Philly was long on glamour, indeed. Was the city glamour market necessarily cornered for that time period? Not from what I saw. Part of the attraction of Chicago in the Aughts was that you could see from a distance, right there online, all kinds of glamour bleeding out in different directions. So many presses, journals, reading series, so much dynamism, and the online presence was, indeed, immense. Once I got a taste of Aughts Chicago, I went slightly crazy with it. First, I was going to be there, then I was there. The second of four visits, in the summer of 2007, when I was still hitched to Mary H, was well documented. Mary H and Abby, as they had been in the early Aughts, had glamour-puss rivals in Simone and Kristy, as is seen here. The fact that Simone and Kristy were also powerful heads-of-state made it so that I could not not feel, that second visit, that I had securely arrived, even as I had done Myopic the first visit, met other heads-of-state. What do Philadelphia and Chicago have in common? They both happen to be big, real cities. That's a deceptively simple thing to say, but seasoned city-watchers will know what I mean. Through Wilco, Chi-Town also had an Aughts rock record of note, which Philly did not. I like to hear Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as Tweedy & Co's answer to Third/Sister Lovers. Decomposition and decay. Even as a walk down North Milwaukee Avenue in Wicker Park does something so Main Street Manayunk, and Bucktown does something so Roxborough, that people watching closely, about Philly-Chi-Town, would not be surprised that something had to give, and it did. Against decay.