ENTRIES:
Close Encounters—The Interview
Commencement
Putting the Bite into Cowboy Poetry
Newsflash: 01-13-08
Newsflash: 11-28-2007
Proclamation/Preview
Newsflash: 10-04-2007
Making Wood
Postscript to Making Wood
Tom Russell/Cowboys & Indians
Western Horseman review
Tom Russell review
Ray March review
Red Shuttleworth
Happy Birthday Paul!
(News?) Flash: 4-24-2007
© Paul Zarzyski. All rights reserved. These words may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.
NEWSFLASH: Close Encounters Of The Umpteenth Kind—The Interview (May 16, 2008)
I’m not fond of doing interviews, especially by phone. And to emphasize just how few and miniscule are my life’s regrets (tallyable on the remaining digits of a short-armed, farsighted butcher’s off-cleaver paw) I reprimand myself merely for not having the good sense to tape-record my responses to questions I field during telephone exchanges with journalists. You bet, I’m VERY capable of delusion (and hallucination, to boot!), but I’m convinced that more often than not, the best snippets of my keenest poetic perceptions never make it into print—at least not in any syntax or incantation, any articulation or delineation, remotely recognizable by MY memory banks? I feel forced to conclude, irrefutably, that today’s reporters, magnificent as many are, must be piss-poor shorthand-takers—period, end of discussion.
Therefore, several years ago I began a SELF-interview—50 pages, so far—that barely scratches the proverbial surface. I’m hoping to impose the tome on you, to begin posting it here, sometime this fall. Until then, you might be interested in entertaining a brace of half-hour radio exchanges between yours-truly and Pianist/Composer/Maestro/Art-‘n’-Wisdom Advocate/All-Around Sweetheart-Of-A-Humanist-‘n’-Soulful-Human-Being, to boot, Philip Aaberg—who else, ‘ey? Phil and I palavered in a room overlooking the Mighty Mo at the Historic Grand Union Hotel in Fort Benton a couple years ago, and I guess it’s taken him this tormenting-‘n’-toiling long to edit and choreograph my otherworldly Planet UniPoet harangues, spiels, and pontifications—all over Musical Universe tarnation, no less—into something both decipherable and coherent to Earthlings? The first of the two half-hour segments aired this week on Montana Public Radio and I’m already catching a raft of flak for ever-so-tongue-in-cheekedly even making mention of my countryman, Ted Kaczynski, and for—far, FAR worse in the hearts and minds of literati, and lariati, friends—proclaiming Music as the highest art form (…bless me Father Frost and Monsignor Thomas, for I have sinned…).
Phil and I invite you to join us in that second story room at the Grand Union—beam yourselves in via www.ofthewest.net (scroll down to Paul Zarzyski—Programs 1 & 2).
