Dan's Licks

Matt tells the story about when Dan was learning to play the guitar, when Dan was about thirteen and Matt was sixteen. Dan would play the guitar in the mornings before school and pick it up as soon as he got home, playing sometimes late into the night. Matt remembers lying in bed one night when Dan was trying to get an Eric Clapton riff down, it may have been from one of the Cream albums. Dan would play a tape of the riff and then try to play it himself. Matt said, “I heard the Clapton tape, then I heard Dan, then I heard the Clapton tape, then I heard Dan, then I heard the Clapton tape, then I heard the Clapton tape, then I heard the Clapton tape…and I knew he’d got it and we could both go to sleep.”

New Work

Recently out are four essays of mine: “Men in Uniform” in Monkey Puzzle #9 (Spring/Summer 2010), pages 51-55, “Meat and 3 Veg” in New Madrid (Summer 2010), 114-117, “On Not Being E. B. White” in The Kenyon Review (Fall 2010), 86-92, and “A Fountain Pen of Good Repute,” in New England Review (31:4, Winter 2010-2011), 176-180. Also, though dated 2009, this just appeared this summer: “On the Road Again,” North Dakota Quarterly (Summer 2009), 80-89.