Jamieson Ridenhour

My friend Kevin Smith, who is composing the soundtrack to the Cornerboys film, had just released his fifth (I think) collection of original music. He launched the album, Crux, with a concert at Timrod Park in Florence, SC yesterday. I am sick that I couldn’t be there. So are you. But, we can at least hear a sample of the new music here.

Kevin rocks the park, 09/06/09

Fun news update from Firecracker Press, the letterpress shop that prints The Lumberyard magazine and which is run by my friend Jen’s brother Eric. Apparently they’re sending product into outer space. What a cool thing.

Over the next couple of months, I’ll be working with a couple of friends to complete a project I’ve been thinking about for quite a while. My long poem “Cornerboys,” which was published in a small (and now defunct) horror magazine called Whispers from the Shattered Forum back in 2000, is being resurrected as a short film. My favorite artist, Ali LaRock, is illustrating the poem, and producer/composer extraordinaire Kevin Smith is writing and recording a score. The final product will include Kevin’s music and Ali’s art along with me giving a dramatic reading of the poem.

We’ve been talking about this for a while–I think I first approached Ali about it nearly two years ago. Things have begun to move now, and we hope to have something tangible for you by October, because Halloween seems the best time to launch this little story on the world.

While I was in the Carolinas the first week of August, I spent some time at Kevin’s recording studio and did the narration. I was very pleased with the result, which was quite creepy and atmospheric. Here are some in-studio shots:

Here I am in the vocal booth, reading in various creepy voices

Kevin working studio magic on my reading

Kevin has since sent me the first snippet of music, and it’s really, mind-blowingly good. It’s only 25 seconds long, but it sounds like the love-child of Alfred Hitchcock and Danny Elfman. Ali’s preliminary sketches are due any day now.

I’ll keep you updated as we progress. I’m very excited about this project.

A quick post to say we’re back from two and half weeks in the Carolinas. It was a truly wonderful vacation–good time with all the family, especially lots of time with my brother Jason and his family, whom I usually only get a couple of days with. Through my stepfather I discovered my new favorite band, the exquisite British outfit Elbow. They don’t need my help–they’re opening for U2 and Coldplay–but check them out anyway here and here.

I also turned 40.

I’ll post again soon to update you on the several projects coming up this fall (A Blind Mice CD? The Cornerboys film? A new book project? The old book project? All this and more will be revealed…) But I did want to say that I not only got to visit with my friend Jenni the Chef, but I made it into the Online Pastry Chef blog! This is a whole new level–who knows where I might go from here?

Talk to you soon…

Eva and I in the Blue Ridge Mountains. You wish you were us. Tough luck.

The doctor reflects...

1. Always double check your brain.

2. Don’t have a self-destruct lever in the castle.

3. Don’t have your lab in a castle. Practicality should be a guide here.

4. Don’t hire help that:

• Has only a first name (i.e. Fritz, Karl, or Ygor)
• Likes to torture newly created beings with fire or other elemental forces
• Is played by Dwight Frye

5. Let your fiancé know the nature of your research and keep regular hours. It keeps her happy and lessens the likelihood of her showing up with a well-meaning but ultimately misguided friend just as things go sour at the castle/lab.

6. When you create a new and surprisingly strong life:

• Treat it respectfully. No chains and barred doors. They hate that.
• If it storms off into the inky blackness of the mud and rain, you should react with something other than “oh, good, that’s taken care of, then.”
• Don’t try to set her up with someone she hasn’t met. Especially if he’s got bolts in his neck.

7. If you live in an indeterminate Slavic country or other area rife with peasant superstition, don’t expect them to “get it” with no help. Make friends with the local council members. Watch out for prosthetic-armed law enforcement officials. Consider hiring a really good PR firm. Riots are ugly things.

8. If the monster is in the house, and your fiancé is in the house, perhaps you should check your fiancé’s room before you check the attic. Just in case.

9. Don’t follow anyone into a windmill. Ever.

10. If one or two people said you were mad, that could be envy. If they all said you were mad, maybe a quick trip to a therapist wouldn’t hurt. I’m just saying.

Yesterday I was worried about a Rain of Frogs. I had no idea that it was really happening in Japan. I wonder what other prognostications I could make with the blog? Perhaps I should talk about the high incidence of English professors winning the lottery?

It’s been raining hard here. Gwyn and I went into a restaurant at around 6:30 yesterday evening, and when we emerged at 8:30 the rain was so heavy that I couldn’t see across the parking lot, except during the brief and brilliant flashes of lightning. Last night, after we got something like four inches of rain in two hours, there was a calm period between thunderstorms. Standing at the patio door, we could hear a steady, throbbing noise coming from across the fields in the direction of the river. We realized it was frogs–dozens, maybe hundreds, singing into the wetness.

This morning it’s still raining, and the frogs are still croaking for all they’re worth. They must be down by the river, nearly a mile away, and that makes the sheer noise of them all the more remarkable. It wierds me out a little. I was first reminded of a creepy and violent little short story by Stephen King called “Rainy Season,” from his collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes. I first heard it read by Yeardley Smith on an audiobook. The rain in that story brings frogs with razor-sharp teeth to hunt and eviscerate the hapless protagonists.

But the better, though not much less disturbing, poem that has finally lodged in my head is by the great Seamus Heaney. He reads it for you here.

Stay dry. Avoid frogs.

(addendum: I have edited this post to correct my mistyping of “the great Seamus Heaney” as “the geat Seamus Heaney.” But, on reflection, the first way may have been an unconcious homage to Heaney’s masterful translation of Beowulf. Probably it was just a typo, though.)

So I’ve done with the lion’s share of official work (that is, university related work), and have begun settling into the summer. I’ve been rehearsing with Blind Mice (and have already played the first of several gigs–see Blind Mice’s website), and have been trying to establish a writing routine. this has been aided by converting the guest room into a writing room/study, where I am now happily ensconced. It is now a cozy, booklined retreat at the bottom of the house, with my Victorian phrenology head and old Dickens books overlooking the proceedings with their collective years of wisdom. Here’s how my webcam sees it:

My desk

I picked up the rather oddly-shaped desk at a thrift shop for thirty dollars, and it sits comfortably amidst the rest of my stuff. It’s warm and happy in here. I hope to do some good work here this summer and in the years to come.

Most immediate under the pen are the poetry collection, revisions to the London book before resubmitting to the most recent publisher (the one that so far has shown the most interest), and the Dickens project I talked about a couple of posts ago. That one is turning from a lecture/presentation on Dickens into a full-on theatre piece, with a plot and a fully developed character. That’s what I hope to make some good headway on through the weekend.

We’ve also been doing some work in the yard. Gwyn’s herb garden is looking quite fine, and there are plans to trick out the playhouse. We hung a hammock in the space underneath the playhouse (it’s on stilts) and tonight Eva swung in that before bed while I read her the nightly installment of The Hobbit. We’re up to Thorin’s capture by the Wood-Elves.

I’ll go write now. Talk to you soon.