64. Bullying A Corrugated Rooftop
1/26/25
Heya!
I’m typing this on Monday, MLK day.
I had a teacher in college, Ted Romberg who double dated with MLK. They were both going to B.U. as grad students. They were also both dating girls from the New England Conservatory of music, one of whom was Coretta Scott.
According to Romberg he was in the class were MLK learned about Gandhi and passive resistance. This can neither be confirmed nor denied.
I took a Nietzsche class and and Existentialism class from Ted. There were multiple smoke breaks. We’d join him outside and bask in his presence.
In class he’d say things like “I never get tired of teaching Nietzsche’s Antichrist in a church.”
We were required to grade ourselves in the existentialism class because life had no meaning. I gave myself a “B” because I missed a few classes. I can be a real dumbass sometimes.
Poem
This Morning An
Elongated roadworm rolling
Beside an anaemic crow feather
Brings no comfort.
A field recording of rain,
Bullying a corrugated rooftop, is
Cross-contaminated by IRL
Drizzle, tapping my hooded head,
At the shelterless bus stop.
I accidentally play the voice memo
You sent via text and
Quickly shut it off.
I try,
But fail,
To delete it.
David Lynch Part One
The video above was taken when you accidentally stumbled into a Lynchian universe in your old neighborhood. The strange white object in the lower right corner really caught your attention.
As a kid Eraserhead was a T-Shirt that stoners wore and you had no idea what it was.
Jack Nance in Eraserhead You didn’t realize Dune was a David Lynch flick but you really wanted to see it. It was PG-13 and your mom said that was just to make R movies easier to watch and she wouldn’t let you go. You were 13. (You’d already seen plenty of R rated movies at friend’s houses. The lesson was that you should ask for forgiveness not permission.)
When you were fifteen one of your best friends, Jay, introduced you to Blue Velvet. It made you feel really strange. You loved the parts where Dean Stockwell sang “In Dreams” and Rossellini sang “Blue Velvet.” Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth is terrifying. The image of Rossellini naked and all banged up walking through the suburbs is indelible.
When you were sixteen Twin Peaks premiered. This was life changing. “There was a fish in the percolator” was the greatest scene you’d ever seen on TV. This line was delivered by Jack Nance, the star of Eraserhead. Did that really just happen?
Jack Nance as Pete Martell in Twin Peaks Jay would tape Twin Peaks. You’d get together every Saturday night and watch it in his basement, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. (A whole lot about Twin Peaks to come.)
Audrey Horne became your biggest TV crush.
Museum
We went to the Portland Art Museum to catch the last day of the Paul McCartney photo exhibit. Thanks to Paul H for the heads up that it was closing.
SkullHum Alum of The Week
This week we have Christopher Luna of Vancouver, WA.
Christopher is a collage artist, poet, editor, writing coach and teacher. Luna served as the inaugural Poet Laureate of Clark County, WA from 2013-2017. Luna has an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and is the co-founder, with Toni Lumbrazo Luna, of Printed Matter Vancouver, an editing service and small press for Northwest writers.
He and Morgan Paige co-host the LGBTQ+ friendly, all ages and uncensored Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic in Vancouver, WA, founded by Christopher in 2004. He is the editor of The Work, a monthly poetry newsletter created to inform poets about events in Portland, OR and Vancouver, WA.
Here is Christopher’s piece in SkullHum issue 5:
See ya next Sunday!
Thanks for the shout out, and for including a few of my collages. I am very pleased to be included in the zine, which is great. I am also a huge David Lynch fan, so it is an honor to be in his company in any capacity.