"A Visionary Friend Is Gone, Long Live His Vision", for Chris Toll

A Visionary Friend Is Gone, Long Live His Vision
for Chris Toll

Though not a licensed phrenologist and not able to afford calipers, I would have to start with his head, his majestic hairless skull. "Ambient light from a Lenin Lightbulb", is how Bed Bath Blavatsky and Beyond put it. He had thought it into a handsome planet of clearly defined paths, culverts and landing strips for minute travelers of all dimensions to set down on. His poems of quiet passion were the generator for untold powerful landing signals. Often when out at night he would gently bow his head and rub a spot, saying "I've brought many visitors with me tonight."

There are those of us who sculptors should memorialize into busts and those of us who would be more suited to jello molds. For the virulent, languishing in a potato sack as they bleed out in a donkey cart across the border as their captor bitches to a neighbor "No se puede vender el dañado gringo", is the only proper final tribute to their cranium.

For my friend, Lost Astronauts Who Knew Too Much work in a sealed chamber in deep space with the DNA of Helen Keller, silky webs spun by spiders surrounding Poe's crypt and the tears of broken hearted catholic school girls to create the hands that will one day bring the dimensions of my friend's dome into such glory that Rodin's bust of Balzac will shrink into a PEZ dispenser out of embarrassment.

About his small smooth arms what can be said that has not already been stated by a multitude of paleontologists about those of the late lamented T-Rex? The surprising disproportionate strength of them could perhaps best be measured by the incident when he shared the dias with populist poet Billy Collins. My friend got up to read right after Collins had read his somewhat musty, frequently trotted out, "Mother's Day" poem. Shaking hands with Billy before taking his place behind the podium, the shake went a few moments beyond the norm and Collins' face contorted into a wide grimace before a small shard of bone pierced the skin of his forearm. I will leave it up to YouTube viewers as to whether there was a trace of a smile on my friend's lips as Mr. Collins tried to muffle a shriek of agony.

It would take a book to enter into his heart and do it justice. Nancy Drew in fishnets would find Jesus in there playing lightning bolt toss with Dr. Strange. Drinks hoisted aloft to the downtrodden in a vast castle filled with toys, Bob Dylan passed out on a giant feather bed covered with absinthe bottles.

I woke up to my friend gone from my planet this morning and the goneness had gained immense weight. Shrugging into a shirt my shoulders had an attitude - "Yeah right, go ahead, put a shirt on." Even my car windshield had tears on it on such a cruel sunny day. My friend you should hear this, this beautiful song that's playing. My friend you wrote such beautiful songs.

--Rupert Wondolowski

"We Are Different Here In The Present" - Stephanie Barber & Megan McShea at The Benevolent Armchair

It was a glorious sunny, breezy Spring day after a Saturday of Biblical proportion flooding and howling winds. I had been to the Benevolent Armchair readings, hosted by Chris Toll in Baltimore and Barbara DeCesare in Pennsylvana, many times when it was called The Upward Spiral and was held at the El Rancho Grande coffeehouse on Falls Road, but I hadn't made it to their spot at the Bromo Seltzer Building. Mostly because Sunday afternoons are my time to haunt the dog parks with Max. And today being so beautiful it was tough to cut our jaunt short, but it was well worth it for the refreshing word craft provided by Megan McShea and Stephanie Barber and for perusing the various "dirt soaps" down in the first floor gift shop. Love the smell of dirt and the ironic thought of cleaning with it, but if I am paying a whole $15 for something to feverishly rub against my unclean body it must be something over the age of 18 and wearing either a nun's habit or a sailor's cap. Sadly, I crept in a little late, having to stop for a cold caffeine fix on the way and being overwhelmed by the old grandeur of the Bromo Seltzer building and the refurbished Hippodrome. I missed the open mic portion of the reading and the very beginning of Megan's reading, but luckily she did one of the longest most generous readings I've seen her do. Usually she pulls a Kool Keith and whips through one or two of her evocative micro-tales and then beats it to her trailer to feast on all the riders in her contract. There was a funny moment when she was flipping through pages, obviously reading a portion to herself and deciding to edit it from the afternoon, when an audience member encouraged her: "Why don't you read them out loud."

(Above is audience member and publishing mogul Adam Robinson sporting a handsome Normal's Books & Records 20th Anniversary t-shirt). Megan's reading was followed by a brief question and answer period and then Stephanie Barber joined Megan for a reading of some great collaborations they had done. Hopefully at the bottom of this post is a working video of this portion of the reading. (It has now been about an hour and the video hasn't loaded so I'll try a separate post for it tomorrow).

Stephanie read about twenty short pieces which were all descriptions of photographs. This was a great concept that Stephanie really brought a lot of life to - the evocative, mysterious nature of life being frozen for that split second. During her Q&A, Adam asked if the photographs were real (I like a chucklehead laughed at first, thinking he'd jokingly asked if the poems were real). "Some of them," Stephanie answered. The oldest piece had been written four years ago, the most recent was written yesterday when she was compiling what she was going to read for today and she received a photograph of her nephew.

Below is host Chris Toll engaged with the sweet Lynchian retro microphone. Co-host Barbara DeCesare was occupied peering in the window of a wedding reception in Red Lion, PA that the Elvis impersonator she is stalking was performing at. The day was somewhat bittersweet because now that I'd finally caught a reading at the nice new space it turned out to be the last one of the season until September or October.