Voice

The author discusses her forthcoming novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation, fiction as impetus for personal change, and the inhumanity of the creative class.

The vocal improviser discusses the visceral tactility of the voice as a medium for organic and synthetic sound.

Writer and vocalist Keckler performs impersonations of obscure larger-than-life personalities he meets. In her first novel, Laing impersonates Kathy Acker.

I had the idea of making solo music that would incorporate all my weird stuff—all my various oddball rhythms, tics, repetitions, stims, and stutters—and use them as the basis of a new idiom for the guitar.

“We were relegated to Chick Lit, romance novels, our subjects were love and motherhood and other sexually-defined things. Modern Love mocks that, to some degree. It pushes back.”

“I knew from the moment I sat down to begin the book that I wanted something gray and drab and portable and contradictory.”

“I was spooling cassette tape all around my room in a big loop, running it around and through things. At the time, I got the impression I had invented the loop.”