New Short Story/Anthology Exclusive Out Now!

In the premiere release from Little Episodes, an international collaborative art project:

(Click Image Above To Order)

:: information about ::

“Depression, addiction and mental illness are common problems in the modern world, with one in four people likely to experience a mental health problem every year. Established in 2009, Little Episodes is a not-for-profit organization consisting of professional writers, artists, musicians and actors with two prongs to its mission statement. The first, to destigmatize depression, addiction and mental illness, whilst raising awareness and providing empathy. The second is to provide a platform for talented, emerging and established writers/artists to find community and recognition. We combine the two by giving our participating writers and artists the first statement as their theme.”

Founded in the U.K., Little Episodes also curates ‘Late Night Episodes,’ a recurring event featuring spoken word, performance, music and visual art.  Late Night Episodes is held at the Novas Contemporary Urban Centre (London) on the last Saturday of every month.

Read more

The Visual/The Verbal: Speaking In Hieroglyphics (Grabbing Language By The Throat)

Though your MySpace page tells us “all we need to know,” Mia—your photography exposes a vulnerable intensity. The beauty inherent is that which remains unspoken: those subtle nuances, the vocabulary of the heart that extends beyond logic & its parameters. It’s none of what a viewer “need[s] to know,” yet it’s everything.

The ability to send the blood rushing—to thaw hearts as impenetrable and cold as marble—through a glacial striptease?

This is what it is to cast spells: not of the premeditated chanting from a back-room magick book, none of the hackneyed “add this herb; follow these directions; do it THIS WAY, no THIS WAY, no THIS WAY.” There is no guide book for psyche-penetration, no recipe by which one can be taught how to affect the human condition effectively.

It just it what it is: a medium that for some, is a camera lens; for others, a paint brush & a canvas stretched to its limits; others still, a pen hungry for pages on which it can conduct, gather all the energy from the soil on which we stand to mustering up the truth tucked deep inside us, an honesty of whom we really are versus how we present ourselves or what others perceive us to be—and it’s in the marrowbones, the core of our beings.

And what it is?

Something raw and real and imperfect.  Something greater than I can assign nomenclature—let alone fully comprehend. It’s a force that travels through us yet belongs not to us; it’s those “accidents” that happen when we don’t set out To Create but seem to create themselves for us all the same…those inexplicable pieces of perfection for which we somehow feel we weren’t responsible, or perhaps can’t pinpoint with specificity. Can’t name a technique or place in this space, a state of being I won’t pretend to understand though have heard referred to as La Duende, the spirit of evocation, a state of possession : vox popula. Vox populi—a sense of I can’t tell you ‘How I Did It’ when it feels as if I wasn’t even at the wheel

yet

what we see, what we discover is credited as ‘ours,’ what we feel equal parts distant from as well as intimately involved—it’s when our limbs jangle and that four-chambered metronome pounds against our sternum, and the eyes and voices and fingertips of others respond, pounding sentences out in a quicksilver frenzy.  It’s when an image you took has the power to peel back the ribs of a stranger, or near-stranger, or incite the syllables and consonants that come rushing out at 1:31 a.m. to be ’strange’ enough, strange enough;

It’s when all the odds are stacked against your viewer, yet he throws every ounce of his being down along with his better judgment. All bets are off in moments like these, in a moment like this, when your brow is furrowed & mouth hangs open in disbelief and the little voice nestled in your skull asserts “This is insane!” in a whisper, the words scalpels…

And yeah: insane it is. Would you opt for the blandular instead, the khaki-clad with lips pursed for air kisses and ass kissing? Would you rather have the safe-yet-soggy response that’s the verbal equivalent of a microwave pizza box lining?  Because in three minutes I may splash faucet water on my face, feel the shock as I regain physicality and shrug off this rant of a reaction.  In three minutes I may very well glance back with a deep-throated laugh and ask myself “Seriously, What. The. Fuck?”

But three minutes is a long time. Don’t believe me?  Set your alarm; then hold your breath.

What the fuck?  Seriously: because I live for this madness, I live for the spine-snap urgency to bound down the staircase and haunt my neighborhood streets—Micheltorena, Sunset Blvd., Alvarado—to dig my fingernails into the raw evening, to tear down the sky and polish the stars. I live. I live for.

I live for these unforeseen moments of inspiration in which I feel alive alive alive…

They’re how I know I exist: the flames lapping at the backside of my corneas like the backlash of a furnace blast.  The sensory overload.  The feral fervor. I live for this severity that destroys any sense of severity, no matter if when or how much I feel it siphoning the life force out of me.

While you may not be poisoned with the same ‘unnamed ‘which wears me down to an angry frazzle, I’m drawn to some irrational spirit of artistry  I intuit is chambertombed to you, to your need to search and to see and to leave something lasting, some body of work that no longer has to be searched for, as it’s already found; as it’s already found you; it’s found you,

found it’s you.

The Description Of An Absence

It was during that moment when my chest turns into an open space, an interminable length of time when it seems like a panel of chain-link fence gets peeled back, lies in wait for a surge of emotions to slip inside.

Then.  Just as my mouth rearranged itself around the poem’s final words— “A wad/of cold sheets/on my bed”—it was then, when I no longer recognized my voice but rather the blink of silence following.  That’s when I noticed him.

I’m sure I stood frozen in some exaggerated pose, arms akimbo or even more likely, right hand extended with a copy of Cottonmouth Kisses still perched in the air, armor to shield me from what would or wouldn’t happen next. Applause.  The immediacy of approval every performer yearns for, even and especially those who claim they don’t.

Then came the clamor of acclamation, the sounds of hands clapping, of slurred hurrahs and a high-pitched whistle.  My cue to step from the stage not really a stage in this home not exactly a “home” as I knew it, but a geodesic dome.

For a hot second, our eyes met.  His: dark, with a sparkle that followed when I looked away.  Not as in “tracers,” the stuff of flash-backs, symptoms from drugs with consonants for names.

More like: as I navigated my way to Pedro, Wash and Richard—the few people I knew at this hormone-charged salon with “Boys” as its motif—the text of my body was besieged with active verbs and question marks.

Would I dare to venture upstairs with him?

Despite its cred as the white-hot center of Where Art Lives, I recognized this dome from another context. Recently I’d seen The Hole, a skin flick in which the final scene culminates in a luscious free-for-all on the top floor.

I’d heard whispers of a similar scenario happening in medias res, and as much as I tried to listen to the performer who followed me, it was.  I was. Hard. With that beautiful boy, little more than an arm’s reach away.

My imagination is active; though my physique at the time?  Puffy, post-speed flab that rendered me uncomfortable in the flesh I inhabited.

And my skin?  Remained clothed, not “ho”ed out, as I wish it would’ve been.

I didn’t even introduce myself to that spiky-haired little number, let alone coax him into my own take on the Triple-X.

Thin and long-limbed: same as the memory I have of him, stretched-out. Three? Four? Has it been five years since then?

All this time, and I still see his caramel-hued complexion screened in my mind.  A story of me, a beautiful boy, and what might have been. Really not so much a story, as it is.

The description of an absence.

—Clint Catalyst

Read more

It’s National Poetry Month…and I, Uhh, Invented My Own ‘Poetic Form’

Nerd-a-riffic, yes.

As in: it’s now “registered” as a new literary artistic form, the whole bit.

However, with ‘free verse’ being the norm these days rather than the exception,

it seems the most radical thing a poet can do is conform to a rigid structure.

I created one with regard to meter, stanza—the title, even.

The first piece I wrote within this form is published here:

The Battered Suitcase: April, 2009

And I expound upon the form in an interview here:

Q/A With Kim Acrylic

As usual, I’m wordy as Sweet F.A…

so feel free to scan down to where I explain the “Millennial Haiku,” if you’re interested.

Tongue/Cheek?

Fiercely wriggled, please.&.thanks

Stories

Spoken Word Text

Journalistic Goulash

Reviews

Bookends Don’t Always Need A Page (A Blog Comment In The Form Of A ‘Free-Write’)

For Kime, Whom I’ve Just Discovered Lives At

themoldydoily.typepad.com:

Though your emotions may feel as if they’ve been scattered,
Smothered and covered in the Waffle House of Existence, the
Artwork you create is indeed a language understood by others:

Think of it as speaking in hieroglyphics.

Words that never have to be “learned”– yet are universal,
Exist outside the constraints of time, and become exponentionally
More subjective as they’re strung together.

A strand of jewels that has no concern for what I refer to as ‘Millenial Newspeak’–

Eyes devour the resplendent, the visually stunning
Even when minds shift off and a virtual screen-saver glazes over

Any “tl;dr”

“IDK”

Doubleplusungood

Orwellian B.S.

//

Said another way?

The heart has no need for
Urbandictionary.com

Even on an “off” day, you
Affect it, its
Chamber by
Chamber

Through
The body of work you’ve created
Already——it

Skitters with an emotional velocity too deft for
Man’s lazy Abbreviations. No need
To dial Orwell on
The White Courtesy Phone

There are no acronyms in the
Human condition; whether
We ‘choose to be all right’
Or not

It just is
What it is

It just is.
Read more

“To Push Away Or Clutch” — Spoken Word by Clint Catalyst

ART FAG ALERT!

No, I don’t hit every line in the prose-poem verbatim.

Yes, I wrote it. It’s ancient history, actually…but I chose the piece as a ’sampling of my wares’–so to speak–because it’s self-contained and just under the 10 minute mark.

BACKGROUND INFO: this monologue was filmed on the day that basically determined whether or not I’d have a sample of my art hanging in the Andy Warhol museum. By “hanging,” I mean via 50 inch flat-screen monitor and bitchen sound system with my monologue on endless repeat (entering the room on ‘Opening Night’ and hearing my far-from-soothing voice bouncing around the pristine white walls? SURREAL… and something I’m still processing.)

That Once-In-A-Lifetime pressure +

5 1/2 single-spaced pages of text?

I’m just glad I pulled it off…
And of course, exponentially more grateful to glenn kaino for including me as one of his “Uberstars” in the 8-year retrospective of his sculpture/photography in the reknown Andy Warhol museum in Pittsburgh!

Catalottalisp was “served, and proper” from May 3 – August 31st, 2008, thanks to Mr. kaino and the curators’ hospitality.

This clip would not exist without the camera skills of Nhat Nguyen and editing prowess of Diego Garza.

In this video clip:

Wardrobe by Jared Gold

Hair cut and color by Luis Payne of Hairroinsalon.com

† † †

Hairroin Salon, Hollywood’s white-hot epicenter of cool, is owned and run by scissormeister Janine Jarman.

† † †

For the image on exhibit, however?

Hair styling/color by Irene Urias of Hairroin;
make-up by Stacey Hummell.

(Watch for the “end result” of Kaino’s portrait of Clint, as taken by Polaroid Big Shot

in the compendium

The Work of Glenn Kaino: Communicating Rooks,

scheduled for an June 2009 release through the premier art publishing house, Hatje Cantz:

www.hatjecantz.de

Effing PROPS, all y’all!

x o x
C C

Read more