Process

Posted on May 17, 2023 by John Biscello

One of my most sweetly savored pleasures: a freshly printed manuscript.
Completed at the Casa de Currier retreat (May 2023).

Posted in Books, photography, Poetry, Prose | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Drama Notebook

Posted on May 15, 2023 by John Biscello
Seven of my original children’s plays–The Shadow of Peter Pan, The Little Prince in Egypt, The Myth of Demeter and Persephone Revisited, Mythology Mash-Up, the Nutcracker in a Flash, Aesop Remixed, and Benchmark–are now available through Drama Notebook.
Drama Notebook is a leading resource of royalty-free plays for schools. Ideal for drama teachers, classroom teachers, after-school professionals, theatre companies, and parent volunteers worldwide.
Posted in Press, Publications, Theater | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Cowpunk

Posted on May 15, 2023 by John Biscello

Another track from the jukebox catalog of None So Distant.

COWPUNK
Last night you set my quizzical pompadour on fire. Tonight, baby, I’m yours, behind the shed, all slangy and lonesome, in the needle’s eye of a hell-bellied storm.

We are out here on all fours panting in the sun the bleary merciless maraschino sun burning us. It has been a long while one of those spells that feels foreverish out here in these fields unseen dreaming of god knows what. We are permanently scarred. Some of us suggested we become a group that goes by the name Permanently Scarred maybe a band except none of us sing or play an instrument. I’d say we are disembodied voices except we are on all fours with the sun burning us so something like bodies like skin must be our lot and inheritance. Knowing the void answerless you’d think we’d stop asking questions but we don’t What’s for dinner Where’s the moon Did we do something to deserve this. We ask answerless and listen hoping dreamless. You could call us a sorry bunch but then again not knowing whether finite or infinite there is nothing to assess no one to blame. There’s just us on all fours the sun burning unrelenting. If we decide to call ourselves Permanently Scarred maybe one of us will learn to sing so we can earn our name. It’s either that or absolute silence which none of us have yet tried.

Posted in Artwork, Books, photography, Poetry, Prose, Publications | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bluegrass

Posted on May 13, 2023 by John Biscello

Music plays a significant role in both the construction and tone of None So Distant, with one of the sections, titled Jukebox, functioning as a mythical and conceptual music catalog. Below is one of the “songs” from Jukebox.

BLUEGRASS
Offbeat lonesome roads articulating the backbones and weary tremolos of spilled pilgrims.

We recall fondly. We recollect. The good old days in which we titled windmills redolently and rode clanging dusty boxcars across the glaring horizontal spread of america. What a lay we said hitching up our pants sticking our peckers into every gopher hole and indian eardrum we could wrestle or manage. The good old days an unrolling panoramic canvas of america painted over with screaming reds graying blues mudpacked browns other colors running together like luxuries found lost. We posed as stiff hipped sheriffs marshaling laws to frontiers unexplored my god we were real artists then painting with the light just right to conceal any shadows unwanted creeping across borders.
From beyond history I sit here now in this abandoned boxcar a tramp with torn baggy trousers too tight calico vest dustcaked bowler writing songs no one will ever sing or listen to but that’s fine just fine. A train trackless running outside of time is concerned solely with mythology. Mythology in this case being the present moment expanded upon infinitely within the mantling of lore.

Posted in Books, Cinema, photography, Poetry, Prose, Publications | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Paris Lit Up

Posted on May 11, 2023 by John Biscello

Grateful to have had three excerpts from None So Distant published on Paris Lit Up. Story, All Fours, and Lore and Order can be read here.
Posted in Artwork, Books, photography, Poetry, Press, Prose, Publications | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Springing Forth

Posted on May 10, 2023 by John Biscello

As I sit here at my retreat enclave, feeling gratefully reflective and enjoying buttery afterglow effects, today in looking back through my records I realized: the three novels I have completed over the past three years–The Last Furies, No One Dreams in Color and None So Distant–while not conceived as a trilogy, are energetic kin, or derived from a specific phase, in that they were all born during the pandemic era, its “official” timeline running from March 2020 thru May 2023, with the first of the three books started in 2020, and the last of the three books having been completed this week. As I sat outside, reflecting (one of my favorite pastimes), it felt as if I was coming out the other side of a passage, a strange, dark, dreamy, fruitful, transformative passage, with works chronicling the long day’s journey within.

Shift happens. Alchemy is a fierce dragon, breathing down our necks, demanding movement. Metamorphosis is hard bop. As a fan and devotee to the work happening in the shadows, to the worlds behind the worlds, to dream-feed beyond the veils, it has been a ripe and raw period of vagabond graffiti tagging bones, of basements excavated and attics spelunked, of fractures reforming into new structural foundations.

This afternoon, sitting at Iconik Coffee, enjoying an Americano, David Bowie’s “Changes” came over the radio, and I felt a good happy glow inside and I wanted to travel to the distant star where the Thin White Duke was hanging out and squeeze him to no end.

Posted in Books, photography, Poetry, Prose | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Minimal Techno

Posted on May 10, 2023 by John Biscello

It is only with the heart that one can groove rightly, what is essential is invisible to the sublime.

There is the one with the downturned mouth, pityglazed eyes, heaven itchy in his navel, raggedy clothes, attempting with solemn determination, with stalwart effort, day after day to sweep that circle of light into his dustpan, that uncooperative prick of light which refuses to be colonized by thistles, refuses to go gently into that good dustpan, but this man, he is, despite the taxation on his brain, the ennui flagging his vitals, the innate exhaustion, he carries on as only fools can, from a young age FOOL stamped on his working papers, and that vocation was branded into his being, FOOL, we see him daily at the same spot on the street corner, that same small worn rugged patch of universe which is his and his alone, the moving picture always the same: him, broom in hand, trying to sweep that dancing impish bastard of light into his dustpan. Never have we witnessed folly and determination so equally matched in distribution.

–Excerpt from None So Distant

Posted in Books, Poetry, Prose | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Soul Food

Posted on May 9, 2023 by John Biscello
Posted in Books, photography, Poetry, Prose | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Novel Origins

Posted on May 9, 2023 by John Biscello

New novel completed.
Bardo jazz, psychic vaudeville, bop odyssey of internal consciousness….

For me it’s always been the novel living within is the possession, the spirits dancing their jig of the dead and living, and the novel written is the prolonged, exacting and necessary excorcism, the inevitable purging and expulsion which feels damned close to the dream-life and bottomless cry of hallelujah. And so … hallelujah. Word to the mother.

Posted in Artwork, Books, photography, Poetry, Prose | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Mermaid in Torn Jeans

Posted on March 31, 2023 by John Biscello

(Excerpt from None So Distant, novel in progress)

Cherry steps out of the bathroom, soaking wet. She has just gotten out of the shower, having showered in her white bra and torn dungarees. She drips onto the floor, the urgent pap of water splashing hardwood.

I am a mermaid in torn jeans, comes the only line Cherry will speak during this dramatic skit. First she informed me how it would be—I will come out of the shower dripping wet and I will say to you I am a mermaid in torn jeans and you will say nothing and you will do nothing even when you see me on the floor writhing in agony and going through my death-throes … you will do nothing, which was how we rehearsed it, and now it was happening, the mermaid in torn jeans had fallen to the floor and was writhing convulsively, in the fever-grip of a seizure, and as rehearsed, I went over to the flopping mermaid and stood over her, wishing I could do something, doing nothing, I felt powerless, she was dying right in front of my eyes and I couldn’t help her, couldn’t even hold her hand or cradle her, nothing, I had to, as instructed, watch the life leave her body, and after the spasms ended, stillness, absolute stillness, the mermaid was dead, I felt useless, ashamed, and needless to say my favorite part of this skit was when she opened her eyes and said I was just playing dead and then I’d kiss her mouth as if it were the newest thing ever.

Posted in Poetry, Prose | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment