It all started with The Wild Boys. By William S. Burroughs.
I had done the audio book with Luis Moreno and loved every second, even though I was clearly not the ideal audience for it. Also, Burroughs had lived in my college town – Lawrence, KS (and had not been kicked out!).
At the time, I was thinking so much about holistic Barn events for The Silent Barn.
I wanted to involve all the spaces in the space and all the people in the spaces.
So, I decided to do a reading of the entire novel. We would have readers in one of the apartments (as well as a dick pinata by MARTHA), we would have a dream machine in another apartment and cover all the furniture in tin foil, and we would have food based on the novel in another apartment that my brother and G. Lucas Crane would make and serve through a hole when the bell got rung. And in the hallway, we would play a cut-up soundscape by Lucas and also have all of the 3D glasses frames I had accrued for months (100s of them), so that people could look like Burroughs, even if they did not want to wear a 3-piece suit in June… We also screened a film that Scott M Ries had worked on about Burroughs! It was hot and weird and wonderful. And the butt-cushions we borrowed from The Collapsable Hole got destroyed.
Readers were – me, Luis Moreno, Jeff Stark, Jeff M Jones, Ryan William Downey, Steven Laing, Harrison David Rivers, Fil Vocasek, Tom Picasso, Rob Granniss, Greg Thrasher.
What a cast!
After that, we also did a 34-hour reading of Ulysses, which had many readers (especially on the Circe chapter), but I was the only one up from midnight to 9am, reading the entire time. It ended with me and Catrin Lloyd Bollard in the yard, reading the Molly chapter and two amazing drunks who wandered into the yard to catch the end. They had met 10 years ago on Bloomsday.
THEN! We did an all drag king reading of The Outsiders, which was much shorter. But we had bologna sandwiches for all, some smokin’ kings, video and Xavier Rice covered Stevie Wonder, even though he was wasted from a Steak and Scotch Society gathering and forgot all about it.
When the time is right, we will do another novel. Send me suggestions!
