Susan says: Since I have a one year old son, I am always doing a lot of fixing of situations in the form of acquiring, organizing, cleaning, and inventing fun as well as order. I can be very good with emergency situations—small or more serious emergencies. I tend to not panic easily, and even […]
DeWitt says: When you’re young, it’s fun to break things. You realize how easily stuff can be destroyed. And that’s exciting. Until the day you break something you love, like a fish you try to take out of the tank to pet and, coincidentally, its fin falls off. At those times, you find yourself seeking an […]
Susan arrives, and DeWitt and I say hello. I ask Susan a version of “are you a writer and what’s that about” that I asked DeWitt. She thought, and then said, “I feel like a writer if either a) I am writing something every day or b) I know someone, even just one person, is […]
I drag a large white leather couch into the Beached Whale for DeWitt. I think he will like a cashmere blanket, two-tone, purple and blue, so I drape it across the back of the couch for him. Susan hasn’t arrived so I use my most stilted, awkward question on him to break the ice. We […]
I covered the ceilings of my mind so when my friends look up, they will see something like an old bank building tile with a red fan. Then I wanted to be sure and keep everyone grounded so I spray painted this on the […]
Welcome to the Beached Whale Salon aka the inside of my head/the living room in my mind. Picture the inside of a parade float in the shape of a whale–it’s about 10 feet high and 6 feet wide. At this point, memory of Chewbacchus’ whale float weakens, and I use my imagination to decorate the […]
Susan Kirby-Smith is also joining us at February’s salon. Susan can simultaneously entertain and fascinate with her wry humor and skillful text message-sized nuggets of wisdom and sharp observation. She is the only person I know who could, if prompted, connect the scented candle trend with modern-day feminism thoughtfully. And she also makes funny possible. I […]
Our first visitor to the Beached Whale Salon, which is a dirty streetcorner cast with the hopeful glow of a distant U-HAUL sign and that witching-hour expectation of a New Orleans evening right before urine hits the sidewalks, is poet DeWitt Brinson. Bio: “DeWitt Brinson is” reads the text in his bio. And that is […]
So far, 2015 has been full of new beginnings: 12-step programs, coffee with butter and coconut oil, a new full-time job that comes with an office that I don’t have to share with an industrial furnace. When you start the new year by assembling the Lego Swamp Police Station, good things are sure to follow. Changes. It […]
nola studiola 