the renaissance writer | a little of everything under the sun

remembering the graffiti man*

27 February 201624 March 2016 therenaissancewriter

John Trudell thought I was a stick in the mud because I wouldn’t let him smoke pot. Here’s the scene: On 13 November, 1999, I helped organize a concert for the Save the Peaks campaign—a hardscrabble effort to protect the San Francisco Peaks from a pumice mine expansion. These mountains are Arizona’s skyscrapers and a […] Read More

fight the trite

15 January 201624 March 2016 therenaissancewriter

Not-so-random pictures and news clippings from Baton Rouge’s Chimes Street ‘Ghetto,’ the Bayou, Industry Bar, and Louisiana State University’s free speech alley, ca.1982-1983. I’m inspired to collect these here because punk-ish history often verges on cliché, or risks being reduced to nostalgia for your 1980s playlist, and I wanted to personalize the larger story, bring […] Read More

crime scene

16 October 201517 October 2015 therenaissancewriter

In case you think this is going to be some pale imitation of the ‘Serial’ podcast where we are content to let mysteries lie, buck up: I am going to politicize this week’s events. I don’t mean the latest mass shooting. However, seeing news of two more mass shootings in the last two weeks, plus […] Read More

confronting meursault

6 June 20159 June 2015 therenaissancewriter

I was inspired to spin Rachid Taha’s Rock el Casbah (Rock the Casbah cover) when I started Kamel Daoud’s provocative novel, The Meursault Investigation, and I encourage you to try it out. It’ll get you in a desert state of mind, a revolution state of mind. Daoud’s novel, on a first reading, seems a cry against both […] Read More

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