Help Me Raise Money For Suicide Awareness & Get Free Stuff!

That's me and Mike to the left, circa 1999. Mike was one of my first friends I ever had, very much raised as a brother to me. He lost his life to suicide nearly five years ago now, and while you learn to deal with loss as time goes on, it never really goes away — you're left with questions and loss and one big hole that will never ever get refilled. That's part of the reason that I'm so sensitive and vocal about mental health (aside from own struggles); because I know what that suffering is like on all sides, and I don't think anyone else should ever have to experience those things.

I had other friends who'd lost loved ones to suicide, but Mike's death was really the first time I was forced to deal with losing someone so directly close to me, and especially in such a way. Unfortunately, when it comes to dealing with loss, I've gotten my fair of share of practice in these last five years, and Mike's wasn't the only one of those that could have (maybe, possibly) been helped, or stopped.

I could go on and on about this, but since suicide has recently been in the public eye, I've decided to do something different. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention hosts walkathon fundraisers every year to raise money for research, education, and outreach programs about suicide. The Out of Darkness walk (as it's called) in my hometown is not just for Mike, but it is taking place right around the anniversary of his passing. I want to raise some money for the walk, in the hope that even though its too late to save my friends, it might make a difference in someone else's life, so that they don't have to suffer the same.

So here's the deal: I've put together a sweet little package of music and eBooks, all various things that I've created, and they can all be yours with a donation of any amount to the Hamden, CT Out of Darkness Walk for the American Foundation for Society Prevention (Go Team Mikey).

All you have to do is click here to make your donation, and the download should start right away! (It's a pretty hefty ZIP file, because all the music is uncompressed)

Thanks in advance for your support. It means more to people than you realize, and I hope you enjoy your little rewards. Here's what you'll get:

eBooks:

• Fixing a Hole, a one-act play about two friends and a hole at the end of the world. Mike lived for theatre, and shortly his death, I wrote this as a kind of elegy to him, and a reflection on our relationship.
• EndProgram.txt, a darkly comedic (or maybe just sad) short story about the death of a robot. Originally written and conceived in the 5th week of the Clarion Writer's Workshop under the guidance of Kelly Link and Karen Joy Fowler. 

Music:

• If You Really Want To Hear About It, the unreleased EP from my college band the Roland High Life. Six tracks, plus two bonus b-sides. Track 2, "Your Last Fall" was written before Mike's passing...but listening to it now, it feels frighteningly prescient.
• Three new cover songs recorded especially for this occasion:
  • "The 59 Sound" by the Gaslight Anthem, changed to "The 69 Sound" in honor of the recording of Mike's beloved "Let It Be";
  • "I Was Meant For The Stage" by The Decemberists, one of Mike's favorite bands, this song could just have easily been written from his point of view, especially given how he had committed his life to theatre. At the reception following his funeral, some of Mike's friends played a haunting video of him singing this song at karaoke (my parents actually thought it was a song he had written). Recording this was the first time I've listened to this song since then;
  • and "You Were Cool" by the Mountain Goats, an unreleased track, with a few lyrical changes, as John's protagonist lives in his version of the song (also Mike wasn't really known for wearing high heels back in high school, although I did think about changing it to something like "stalking down the concrete hallways / in your tight jeans / back in high school," but then I didn't). Still, the lyrics remind me a lot of Mike growing up, and what I wish I could say to him now.

If you have any trouble with your download, please let me know.

Legal stuff: all content made available in this offer is available free and will not used for personal profit or gain. All files, content, intellectual property, etc. is the legal property and copyright of Thom Dunn and is made available through a Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike4.0 International license, with the following exceptions: 

• "The 59 Sound" is copyright 2008 Brian Fallon / The Gaslight Anthem
• "I Was Meant For The Stage" is copyright 2003 Colin Meloy / The Decemberists
• "You Were Cool" is copyright John Darnielle / Mountain Goats

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Wow. Our Town. Wow. Okay.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPwJ-8cGXpI] I say this with no personal bias -- not because my wonderful girlfriend, the producer of this fine production, has been busting her ass for 10 months to make this show as a reality, and not as an employee of the theatre company that is presenting the show.

David Cromer's production of Our Town at the Huntington is one of the Desert Island All-Time Top 5 Most Moving Shared Communal Experiences I have ever had in my entire life.

Perhaps it's especially poignant for me when I think of the friends that I've lost in recent years, but I watched the show on both Tuesday and Wednesday night, and I couldn't stand to watch it for a third time last night for our opening because I was already so overwhelmed with emotion. Three days in a row, and I think I would be eternally reduced to a sobbing puddle of flesh lying in fetal position on the floor. Yes, this show is so good that I literally could not watch it a third time (although I will probably go back at the end of the run, and hopefully catch some things I missed the other 2 times, because there's so much to see in the nothingness of this production, and as the play itself suggests, we can't possibly appreciate all of it when it's happening).

Anyway, there's a video I made up there about the show. I cannot stress enough how powerful and poignant this production truly is. Our Town might be seen as hokey and sentimental and high school-y to many people (though oddly I grew up in Thornton Wilder's hometown and never read or saw the show once, although I did play lots of shitty punk rock shows at Thornton Wilder Memorial Hall), but man, David Cromer just gets it, in a way that'll just blow your mind.

(Also don't read the review in The Boston Globe because [a] it's douchey, [b] IT SPOILS THE END OF THE PLAY, and [c] it's douchey. Yes, Our Town has been around a while, so there are certain spoilers that are now beyond the statute of limitations, but to spoil what makes this production so remarkable -- and to spoil it in such a nonchalant manner -- is awful. If this guy had reviewed The Sixth Sense when it first came out, he would have said "And then it turns out that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time which was totally brilliant and stunning -- I mean, that is to say, if you're one of those people who enjoys brilliant and stunning things or whatever. But otherwise, meh.")

Our Town In Boston

First of all, I'd like to take a quick moment to wish myself a Happy Birthday. So, Happy Birthday, Me! Thanks, Me! Fun fact: Our Town playwright Thornton Wilder spent most of his life and is buried in my home town of Hamden, CT. Other fun fact: I never actually knew anything about Our Town or Thornton Wilder when I still lived in Hamden, but I did play lots of shitty punk rock shows in the Thornton Wilder Auditorium, so, ya know, there's that.

Our production of Our Town at the Huntington opens next week, and I'm incredibly about finally having the chance to see this show in this way. David Cromer, the director, won a MacArthur "Genius" Award, largely for his work on this show, and everyone who's seen it so far (it's been performed in several different incarnations across the country before this, but this is the same design and approach, with a new, all-Boston cast) has raved about how incredibly how much, how much the show affected them and blew their minds away.

But don't take my word for it. Here's a new video I made about it:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl_Z1uqkwQk]

(Did I mention that my good friend Jeff Marcus AKA "Calvin Elder" AKA Avenger from True Believers is in the show as well? Sorry, no spandex this time)

Alejandro & the Harbingers of the Apocalypse

Friday night was the first performance of my all-male Lady Gaga cover band, Alejandro & the Fame. In light of the then-impending rapture, we changed our name to Alejandro & the Harbingers of the Apocalypse. We have since returned to the Fame. Audio/video to come, but for now, here's some pictures to tide you over:

Yes, I'm wearing leopard print leggings and jean shorts. No, I do not own the leopard print leggings. Yes, I did make my own jean shorts.

Photos by Justin Seward

Burning Words

It was the first day back from winter break. As the first period bell rang, we begrudgingly sidled into Ms. Nitkin’s 11th grade double-period American Studies class. Nitkin was a feisty old Jewish lesbian from Cheshire, who had long since cemented her reputation as both the hardest and greatest teacher at the school. She didn’t take any bullshit (as she so eloquently told me when she handed back my very first essay with a big fat “D” sprawled across the page), but she made her teaching worthwhile, and always pushed you to your very best. She had given us the week between Christmas and New Years to read Huckleberry Finn, by native Nutmegger Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain. Being assigned an entire novel to read over winter break always seemed cruel and unfair, but we did as we were told, and came to that first period class ready to discuss the book and bear Nitkin’s sardonic, witty wrath.

Once we’d all settled down — a good five minutes after the late bell rang — Ms. Nitkin stood up from her desk, hardly taller than she was when sitting down, and made her first declaration to the class: “Nigger. There, I said. Now that that’s out of the way, I hope you all read Huck Finn,” and proceeded with her usual four-question verbal quiz, just to make sure we actually read the book, instead of skimming SparkNotes.

After the quiz, Ms. Nitkin told us a bit of the history of the book’s censorship, as a means of launching us off into a class discussion. Almost immediately, and with much less arguing and shouting than was typically expected of us, the class came to several unanimous decisions: yes, the book uses the word “Nigger,” no, it’s not a very nice word to use, and yes, it was still historically accurate. This set us off on our debate — was Jim the true hero of the book, despite the fact that he was a “nigger?”

The lone black girl in the class — technically Jamaican-American, not African — raised her hand for the first time. Ms. Nitkin called on her to speak, and with seething vitriol she declared her disgust for that word and the shame it brought upon her people. Once again, the rest of the class agreed, and genuinely sympathized as best we could.

But she carried on, spewing vile about how terrible it was for Jim to be called such a thing. Still we all continued to agree, just as we had at the start of the class. She insulted Mark Twain’s worth as an author, and the educational and historical value of the book because of this. Ms. Nitkin tried several times to change the topic, re-iterating that, although the rest of us were white, we were still on her side.

The girl continued her rant, or argument, or declaration, or whatever else it may have been, well into the middle of the second period of the class, interfering with the instructional time allotted to another teacher. The next day, Ms. Nitkin brought in an entirely new book for us to read — this time with only three days to do it. In her final year as a teacher before retirement, Ms. Nitkin changed her curriculum for the first and only time, in effort to satiate the outraged student.

I can’t remember anything about that book we read next, but I sure as hell remember Huck Finn.