Thanks to ravioli, Will Hickman is the new chef de cuisine at Erling Jensen: The Restaurant.
“My first real experience with cooking was raviolis,” says Hickman.
He added all the right ingredients — garlic, thyme, and other spices — to make the sauce. But he just threw everything into the pasta water instead of tomato sauce. “It just stunk up the house,” he says. But Hickman, who was 7 at the time, continued to cook.
Since working with Jensen, he says, “I’m more versed in French, but Italian and Cajun Creole are close to my roots.”
Growing up, Hickman “loved drawing and creating things. That’s sort of what drove me to the restaurant business. I really enjoy the passion, the heat, the pressure, but at the same time creating something beautiful.”
Working as manager and kitchen prep at Pickwick’s The Historic Botel, which was owned by his dad, the late Darrell Hickman, was his first job at 14.
Newby’s, his next restaurant job, “wasn’t as much of a culinary challenge as it was a physical challenge. It was you making a few orders here and there, and you’re performing barback and bartender duties. On the unfortunate occasion, you’re the bouncer as well.”
On his off time, he cooked for his friends. “I was teaching myself to cook at the time. I hadn’t gone to culinary school yet. I was doing it to better myself. I was actually passionate about it because it made me happy.”
He studied at the old L’Ecole Culinaire. “It was useful because I got to network with people like Rick Farmer and Ben Smith. And I got to learn from them.”
Hickman worked at Flight Restaurant and Wine Bar, where he moved from garde manger to fish and grill. He later landed a job as garde manger at Erling Jensen’s, but, he says, “I thought I was totally out of my league and I was shittin’ kittens. I was nervous. I didn’t think that I could do it.”
He worked with Justin Young, owner of Raven & Lily, when Young was at Erling’s. “He is one of my mentors. I seriously respect him because he pushes you so hard.”
Jensen, who forced him to grow as a cook, is “above and beyond a mentor.” He taught him: “It’s always better to be prepared and be ready before somebody asks for something. The customer, the person who’s working next to you, your boss, the dishwasher … As long as you are mentally prepared or physically prepared, for that matter, you can give them something better than they’re expecting.”
Hickman left Erling’s, where he had risen to chef de cuisine, and moved to Boston, where he worked at Bar Boulud, owned by noted chef Daniel Boulud. Hickman said, “I will work for you for free. Just teach me stuff and we’ll go from there.”
He learned one of Boulud’s recipes for Edible Fireworks. “You take calcium carbonate and dump the different solutions into it table-side, and it flavors whatever you’re doing. And it shoots out sparks.”
After returning to Memphis, he was cooking at a country club when Jensen called him and said, “Are you still on the market?” Hickman said, “Absolutely. You need me and I’m coming.”
Jensen “takes care of his family, but also the people who work with him. That’s why it becomes a family. Because we see the people we work with more than we see our actual families. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the restaurant business.”
Hickman already has ideas as chef de cuisine. “I’m looking at expanding the seafood menu. Right now, we have only two things we’re offering.”
He also feels there is a “lack of authentic French. … Meaning, there’s no sweetbreads. And the foie gras should be different. Now that we’ve turned into fall, bourguignon. That’s a really great dish.” And, later, they might even do Edible Fireworks, he says.
Hickman is happy to be back working with Jensen. “I’m ecstatic. It actually feels normal again.”
Erling Jensen: The Restaurant is at 1044 S. Yates Road; (901) 763-3700.
Sawmill Break captures the luminosity of the local nature (Artwork: Matthew Hasty)
Matthew Hasty did not get his art degree from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in Sarasota, Florida. He got a bachelor’s in fine arts from the Ringling College of Art and Design, which, coincidentally, is also in Sarasota.
When he tells people where he went to art school, Hasty says, “People think it’s a clown school.”
And, he adds, “I probably would have done better as a clown. I think clowns make more money.”
Despite the geographical and Ringling connection, Hasty doesn’t include any clowns in his painting repertoire. His works, which are reminiscent of 19th-century Hudson River landscapes, are more likely to linger on vivid sunsets and images of the Mississippi River. But he has also worked on Elvis-themed paintings, including one of Graceland’s Jungle Room, as well as Sun Studio and scenes from his European travels.
Commenting on Hasty’s work, noted artist Dolph Smith says, “I don’t just view them with pleasure and profound admiration. I always wish I was there. I don’t stand in front of them. I enter them. I actually feel them.”
Matthew Hasty (Photo: Jamie Harmon)
His work has graced the official RiverArtsFest posters and is included in collections at Germantown Performing Arts Center, International Paper Company, Methodist Shorb Tower at Methodist University Hospital, and others.
Hasty is exhibiting 19 of his paintings in his show, “The Illusion of Permanence,” which runs through November 20th at L Ross Gallery.
Workshopping A native Memphian, Hasty chose Ringling over other schools, including Memphis College of Art, when he was 19. The choice was based on a simple equation. “There was a beach in Sarasota,” he says. “There was an art school.”
He originally studied graphic design at Ringling, but, he says,“I would have gone crazy trying to do graphic design. It’s too disciplined, I think, at the heart of it. You’re basically trying to please a client all the time. Which is still kind of what you do, I guess.
“Looking back, I wanted more of an atelier education, how they would have taught you in France. It’s just a workshop. The word means ‘workshop.’ It’s more of a rigorous training where they teach you how to use the materials.”
According to Hasty, an atelier education is the opposite of being “thrown into a classroom” where a teacher will say, “Just go outside, make a landscape, come back, and we’ll do a critique.” The Memphis-based artist says that method is “not teaching anybody anything.”
Hasty moved to New York after he graduated. “I wanted to get into Leo Castelli’s gallery, but that was ambitious. It was the most famous gallery, to me, at the time.”
Instead of getting his work in the gallery that represented artists Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and other notables, Hasty became a house painter. “At least I didn’t have to get different clothes. I didn’t have to wear a tie.”
Hasty’s art at Shorb Tower at Methodist University Hospital (Photo: Davey Mann)
Finding a Palette Hasty was still searching for his voice, his own particular style, but most of his work took the form of realism. “I did a lot of figurative work. I loved the Flemish masters like Jan van Eyck,” he says. Rembrandt was one of Hasty’s favorite painters “of all time.” A portrait of a stranger can be something boring to look at, but not when Rembrandt painted it, Hasty says. “The way he handled paint was so luscious. You can just get lost in somebody’s nose.”
Or, Hasty continues, enraptured, “just a shadow of someone’s lace collar. They’re just magnificent.”
During that time, Hasty experimented with a subject that has occupied artists since the dawn of time. He painted “a lot of religious, kind of allegorical things, but still kind of angry.” He did a dark painting of Adam and Eve. Adam is eating an apple that’s “glowing, radioactive,” Hasty says. “Nobody wanted that. A relative of mine said, ‘Why don’t you paint things people want to look at?’ So, I reflected on that and I was like, ‘Maybe you’re right.’”
He landed a show at the old The Wall Street Gallery in Huntington, Long Island. His pieces, which included a whimsical, dreamlike painting of a man getting shot out of a cannon at a circus, “were a little less angry” than some of his other work.
Hasty sold a handful of paintings during that time. “The guy I worked for, the house painter, my boss, bought a few paintings.”
<i>Memphis Rising</i> (<i>study</i>), the poster for the 2021 RiverArtsFest (Artwork: Matthew Hasty)
Moon Over Memphis In his late twenties, Hasty moved back to Memphis. He worked on some murals and did some gilding and column marbleizing for one of the Wonders: The Memphis International Culture Series exhibits. But, he admits, “I didn’t have any kind of real plan.”
Hasty was commissioned to do murals for people’s homes. He also did a lot of interior painting of crown moulding and gilding for designers William R. Eubanks and Warner Moore. They helped him get his artwork placed in some of the homes they were working on, Hasty says.
He began showing his paintings with artist David Mah at Mah’s studio. “I would paint rice fields. And the river has been a long-term subject, and cotton fields. I still paint cotton fields.”
Sometimes he’ll say, “If I see one more cotton field … ” but before finishing that sentence, he adds, “It’s keeping the lights on. People love it.”
He did a lot of Mississippi River paintings for people who live on the bluffs. And he painted landscapes for hunters. “Hunters will say, ‘Come paint my hunting holes.’”
The hunting paintings were popular with women as well as men. “Women like it ’cause it looks pretty and guys like it because it looks like where they go hunting. So, I feel like I’m checking two people’s boxes.”
The moon is one of Hasty’s favorite subjects. “Like the blue moon we had the other night. The moon is so arresting to see when it’s full. It always inspires me to make another one. I’ve painted this moon quite a lot. I’ve painted the moon over Italy, France.”
He did a painting of Sun Studio at night “with the eclipsed moon above Sun Studio.”
“People are inundated with images all day with TV. Images are coming at you from every angle — your phone, your iPad. You can scroll and look at your phone all day. I try to make things that calm you down or make you feel serene.”
Hasty, who has only done “a handful of portraits,” says, “Why would I try to get in that world when there are people doing those paintings far and away better than I could do?”
He’d like to do some work that incorporates physics. “To do a piece that’s connected to the quantum world of particles, but utilizing painting. Two dimensional or three dimensional pieces. I can do everything I know how to do. Drawing, oil painting, or gilding, or sculpture, wood carving — incorporate all that into a body of work that has something to do with physics.”
The Illusion of Permanence Hasty’s show at L Ross Gallery includes his landscapes, sunsets, and river scenes. Explaining the show’s title, “The Illusion of Permanence,” Hasty says, “It’s a different way of saying change is the only thing that’s constant. Even these paintings that capture a sunset. At some point they’re just going to be dust in the wind.”
Also at the gallery are prints of Hasty’s RiverArtsFest posters for 2020, which never took place because of the pandemic, and the recent 2021 event.
Describing Memphis Rising, the 2021 poster, Hasty says, “I’ve never painted the Hernando DeSoto Bridge. When the bridge got broken and nobody could use it, you realized what an important structure that is for just this area. The country, almost. It sort of crippled this region to not have that bridge working.”
The Gloaming is the title of the 2020 poster. “A hazy sunset over the river.”
The 2020 painting is the “sun going down on 2020,” Hasty says. The 2021 poster, on the other hand, depicts its subject on the upswing, with “the moon rising over Memphis. We’re growing and this town is becoming more significant.”
L Ross Gallery owner Laurie Brown says, “In addition to the beauty and technical skill of Matthew’s paintings, such that one feels they could just walk into the landscape, his work also deeply connects viewers with their past. It’s a privilege to hear the stories of fondly remembered grandparents, vacation travels … that visitors to the gallery share with me.”
Voyage of Life: Childhood Hasty began painting when he was in diapers, but his medium was a bit unconventional.
According to his father, Hasty painted on the wall near his crib. “I painted with my poop, basically,” Hasty says.
And, he says, “My dad tells the story, but I think he intends for it to embarrass me. But now I have embraced it as my first artistic outlet. To use that medium on the wall outside my crib.”
Hasty drew a lot as a child. “Oil paint, markers, and charcoal and watercolors, just the gambit of art supplies.”
He did figurative work growing up. “I found a piece recently in a book my mom had. I must have been 10. I got into Queen and, apparently, drawing them on stage with guys playing guitar. People are a centimeter tall.”
But, he says, “It doesn’t show any real promise. There’s no indication I might be good at art. It’s very childlike. Like a 10-year-old did it.” Which, of course, is the case.
His mother was an artist, Hasty says. “My mom had zillions of books and there was art all over the house.” He describes her paintings as “weird, surreal work. It wasn’t sellable.”
His mother, who was never able to be serious about her art, had to “get a real job,” so she worked as a cosmetic buyer for the old McRae’s department store. They moved a lot because of her job, so Hasty lived in Fort Worth, Dallas, and other places.
His artwork in his twenties was similar to his mother’s. “Lots of death, angst-filled paintings that were almost like a heavy metal album cover. A friend of mine used to call it ‘zombie porn.’”
Sunset on a River The artist has come a long way from centimeter-tall rock stars and faux heavy metal album art; Hasty now sells his work all over the country. The late John Prine owned one of his paintings, Hasty says. “It’s a landscape. I think it’s a sunset on a river. Not a huge one.”
The wife of the late singer-songwriter bought the painting at a gallery in Nashville, says Hasty, who later met Prine. “I got to meet him backstage at the Ryman. He wanted to meet me, which is so far out. I could have died after that. I play his songs all the time.”
Prine was excited to meet him, Hasty says. “His wife said, ‘This is Matthew.’ He kind of perked up and lunged at me, shaking my hand. He’s one of my heroes. He said, ‘I wake up every day and see your painting.’ I was like, ‘Please write a song about it.’ I mean, just the fact that John Prine woke up every day and saw my painting filled me with just the biggest joy in life.”
When he’s not painting or meeting his heroes backstage at the Ryman, Hasty enjoys traveling to Europe. “I’ve been working on these little panels and painting places I’ve traveled recently: France, Spain, Italy, Cuba.
“I started bawling at The Raft of the Medusa by Theodore Gericault in the Louvre. I used to see it in the books. Just epic.”
He loves to paint works by Rembrandt. He’s tried to paint Rembrandt’s self-portraits “half a dozen times just to see if I could do it. Like a violinist tries to play a Paganini piece.”
Hasty now works out of his studio at Marshall Arts. “Somehow, I’ve been able to keep myself alive just by making paintings. I think I was just trying to make my mom proud of me. Which I think she was.”
His mother died three years ago. “She got breast cancer, but it came back in her spine. I still feel like she’s with me. I talk to my mom so much. I feel like she’s my Obi-Wan Kenobi. I think she communicates with me still.
“I always felt terrible my mom didn’t follow her dream. Knowing that kind of pushed me as an artist. I think that was my mom’s intent.”
L Ross Gallery is at 5040 Sanderlin Avenue, No. 103; (901) 767-2200.
Kelsey on Zoom call with reporters following indictment (Photo: Jackson Baker)
State Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown), who eked out a narrow victory in 2018 over Democratic challenger Gabby Salinas, indicates he will try again, despite the obvious handicap of an indictment, delivered Monday, on charges of violating federal campaign laws.
On a Zoom call with reporters following the news of the indictment, Kelsey defiantly professed his innocence. “Look, this is nothing but a political witch hunt. The Biden administration is trying to take me out because I’m a conservative and I’m the No. 1 target of the Tennessee Democratic Party. I won my seat [by] only 51 percent to 49 percent last time, and the Democrats think this will make the difference. They’re wrong. These 5-year-old, unfounded allegations have been reviewed and re-reviewed. They were wrong then, and they’re wrong now. I’m totally innocent, and I look forward to being cleared at trial.”
Among other things, Kelsey’s reminder that he only won by a whisper the last time out is a unique boast for a candidate. And clearly, as his statement indicates, the senator has more things to worry about than his electoral future. He is in immediate jeopardy of losing his chairmanship of the influential Senate Education Committee; according to the Senate’s code of ethics, he has 10 days to ask for a hearing before an automatic suspension of his chairmanship takes effect.
Kelsey was indicted, along with alleged co-conspirator Joshua Smith, a Nashville social club owner. The five counts of the indictment charge that, beginning in February 2016 and continuing through mid-October 2016, Kelsey and Smith conspired with others to violate federal campaign finance laws to secretly and unlawfully funnel “soft money” (funds not subject to the limitations, prohibitions, and reporting requirements of the Federal Election Campaign Act) from Kelsey’s Tennessee State Senate campaign committee to his authorized federal campaign committee.
The indictment names two unindicted co-conspirators, identified by TheTennessee Journal editor Erik Schelzig as Jeremy Durham, a former Republican state representative expelled from the House in 2016 amid charges of rampant sexual misconduct; and Andy Miller Jr., who was in charge of the ironically named, federally licensed organization Citizens for Ethics in Government.
Four other individuals are mentioned but uncharged in relation to the circumstances of Kelsey’s action, one of whom is Amanda Bunning, Kelsey’s wife, who was director of government affairs for the American Conservative Union, a participating organization in the reorienting of campaign funds.
• As was noted here last week, incumbent Sheriff Floyd Bonner saw a serious roadblock to his re-election removed when the Republican Party of Shelby County disclosed that it would offer no opposition to the election of Bonner, who will run again, as in 2018, as a Democrat. Bonner will have at least one opponent, though: Keisha Scott, a 25-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Department, who will run as an independent, indicating that her concerns include the issue of jail reform.
At the moment, Sheriff Bonner is appealing a federal consent decree requiring the Sheriff’s Department to reform its procedures so as to end what federal Judge Sheryl Lipman calls the “deep peril” afflicting inmates and visitors to the jail facility, which has attained only a 25 percent rate of vaccination for Covid-19. Judge Lipman has termed the Sheriff’s Department’s response to the situation as woefully inadequate.
The consent order was the result of litigation on inmates’ behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee.
The executive committee of the Shelby County Democratic Party has scheduled a review of the jail matter for its forthcoming November meeting.
If you find yourself in the waiting room of the Utopia Animal Hospital, cast your eye over the informal exhibit of nature-inspired artwork there. The studies of wolves, foxes, and other creatures in near-tropical landscapes dotted with neon trees and flowers will draw you into their own universe. But what’s really striking is the art’s backstory: It’s all created by badass no-wave rocker Alicja Trout, perhaps best known as Jay Reatard’s collaborator in the Lost Sounds, later a key creator behind such propulsive bands as the River City Tanlines and the Sweet Knives.
Completists also know of Trout’s other works, which mine a different sonic territory, going back to the sweetly naive-yet-arch synth-pop of The Clears, and her solo singles on Loverly Music, under the name Alicja. That side of Trout, now known as Alicja-pop, was still going strong in 2016 with the release of Rats (Home Recordings 2009-2013), its sounds echoed by cover art depicting the artist up against a wall with a synth. Reflecting on the look and feel of that album, Trout says she was striving “to make a cover that fit the aesthetic of the music I was associated with.”
Which brings us to Howlin’, Alicja-pop’s new LP on Black and Wyatt Records, which sports a cover more in-line with her fantastical animal studies from Utopia. The songs, too, have an earthier feel, even if the overall mix of guitar-driven and synth-driven music is consistent between both albums. (Indeed, the versions of “Shadow Hills” on both releases are nearly identical.) And the album is already turning heads. As Henry Rollins himself has said, “Howlin’ is not only a great collection of songs, but balances her considerable skills excellently. It’s a very cool record.”
“Balance” is the key. Though Rats certainly featured guitar-heavy rockers, Howlin’ ventures further into the sonic possibilities of the guitar, from the classic rock strut of “Glass Planet, Blank Space Mind” to the wistful ostinatos of the title track. And there’s ecological balance as well: Both the album cover and the title song reflect Trout’s deepening embrace of the nonhuman world, or what Trout calls “natural inspiration.”
“It could just be progressing through life, getting older. I used to love city life, but the noise started driving me nuts,” she says. In contrast, she found respite in nature. “There’s an escape when you cultivate your wild garden. And I’ll obsess on different animals.” One need only look at her paintings of dogs, wolves, and foxes to see it. “They’ve always interested me as being the top of the food chain before humans came and controlled all that. They’re the main balancer in the ecosystem, the wisest hunters. They have a complex group and pack. And they also get along with humans. Even going as far as human children being raised by wolves. People don’t give canines credit for their abilities and sensitivity. So I think some of that little world was getting incorporated into the art.”
By “art,” Trout means both her visual and musical ventures. Taking it a step further, she considers the creative act itself to be an expression of nature. “Just making music, what’s guiding you?” she asks. “It’s nature that’s guiding you. How do you pick what chord goes next? And why do those three or four or five chords all sound good together? It’s just something having to do with nature, the same way you throw a bunch of zinnia seeds in the ground and they all grow together, all a little different, yet similar. And everyone agrees that they’re pleasing: The bees and different creatures come to them, and this different system is going on. I think it’s related.”
That natural reverie may be why, when asked if these songs emerged from the isolation of quarantine, Trout can’t quite say. “I just try to go into this space of alone time where it’s almost like meditation, except you’re doing something the whole time. And I really can’t place where I was in time at the time because the memory in my head is just this space of recording. It has nothing to do with what’s going on around me. So the memories from 2015 and 2018 and 2021 would all look the same in my head.”
Alicja-pop will play a record release show with full band at B-Side Memphis, Friday, November 12th.
What’s your Bigfoot encounter story? (Photo: Courtesy Memphis Bigfoot Festival)
Wood Booger, Skunk Ape, Grassman, Wild Man, Sasquatch, Yeti — you’ve heard of the species in one way or another. “I just go with Bigfoot. It kinda gets it all done,” says Toby Sells, organizer of Memphis Bigfoot Festival. “I love the description of the thing — it’s like ‘walkie-talkie,’ tells you exactly what it is.”
In 2017, Sells, who is also the Flyer’s news editor, pulled off his first Bigfoot Festival in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Patterson-Gimlin film, perhaps the most well-known and the only non-debunked footage of Bigfoot. “I really only expected like eight or so Bigfoot nerds to show up,” Sells says. “But to my surprise, 300 to 400 people came.”
This year, though, the festival is limited to 200 people due to Covid concerns, but the agenda for the day will be just as fun with costume and howling contests, a roundup of Bigfoot news from the past two years, an in-person appearance by renowned cryptozoologist Lyle Blackburn, and a virtual appearance by Pamula Pierce Barcelou, who restored and re-released her father’s film, The Legend of Boggy Creek (the docudrama that made Sells fall in love with Bigfoot back in the third grade). But the best part, Sells says, is at the end of the day, when festival-goers can take over the mic and tell their own Bigfoot encounter stories.
“You know there’s a monster in the woods; it’s scary and fun,” Sells says. “And it’s like if we see a Bigfoot, do we kill it for science to take it seriously? So far, the answer’s been we leave it alone. We don’t have a body yet, but that’s what fuels the mystery, right?”
Memphis Bigfoot Festival, Memphis Made Brewing Co., 786 Cooper, Saturday, October 30th, 4-8 p.m., $10.
Nextdoor user Hal Harmon’s wholesomely haunted Halloween hijinks have happily hexed horrified holiday hounds. His Nextdoor posts (and their comments) have highlighted some of the best Halloween decorations in town.
YV of Fortune
Posted to Twitter by Melissa Joan Hart
Melissa Joan Hart won $1 million for Youth Villages on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune last week. According to a USA Today tweet, Hart is only one of three “Million Dollar Wedge” winners on the show since 2008.
Dope court
Posted to Twitter by Anthony Sain
Twitter user @SainAsylum tweeted, “That University of Memphis court is dope as hell to me. I don’t care what y’all say.” And a great many disagreed, with one saying it was “heinous and had to go” and another saying it “looks like someone drew it up in Mario Paint.”
At a time when once-in-a-lifetime climate catastrophes are more and more commonplace, where each election is framed as a battle for the nation’s soul, it’s understandable that salvation is an idea with no little allure. So it’s no surprise that Kate Cayley’s Householders (Biblioasis), which the acknowledgments point out the author edited in March 2020, is a short story collection much preoccupied with salvation.
In Cayley’s collection of haunting short stories, mothers attempt to save daughters from the evils of contemporary living, and then from scarcity and hunger; daughters attempt to save mothers from lonely deaths in antiseptic nursing homes; and there is even a woman who disguises herself as a nun.
The stories in Householders form an interconnected narrative. Some tell parts of a larger story through a lens that spans decades and different perspectives, while others are connected only tangentially.
The first story in the collection, “The Crooked Man,” is one of the latter. It tells of a gentrifying neighborhood and stands as a warning against assumptions. With a struggling family working to make ends meet and to make a place for themselves, there’s a whiff of Sarah Langan’s fabulous Good Neighbors in some of the plot turns and settings, but Cayley makes the story all her own.
Her characters are often portrayed at extremes — living on a religious commune, engrossed in the self-contained world of academia, surviving on welfare and at the edge of town in a trailer slowly being reclaimed by the hills. Sometimes they live two lives, like the protagonist of “Pilgrims,” one of the most immediately compelling stories in the collection, in which the unnamed protagonist poses as a nun for an online blog. Her life can be divided into sections, a clearly demarcated before and after, and then there is the saintly life of Sister Bernadette, distinct from the protagonist’s actual identity.
“She wanted to be offered a pure sympathy,” Cayley writes in “Pilgrims.” “Now she wanted people, but no one she actually knew, because they knew her as herself—shy, not always truthful, envious of whatever she was not, stupid about men.”
If salvation and forgiveness are motifs of Householders, so, too, are past lives and former identities. Often, Cayley’s characters, flawed but sympathetic, feel they must jettison versions of themselves to be saved, whether spiritually or in a more tangible, mundane way. Several of the stories follow Naomi (formerly known as Nancy) and her daughter Trout. The two are inhabitants and, later, refugees from the religious commune known as the Other Kingdom. Both worlds offer something the other lacks. Naomi doesn’t miss the mindless consumption of contemporary society while living in the Other Kingdom, but she worries that they may never do better than subsist there. Back in the city, she misses the closeness of the commune, the feeling of family, but she can at least eat a full meal.
Eventually, the Covid pandemic makes its way onto the pages of Householders, often mentioned in passing, almost on the margins. At the Other Kingdom, Saul believes the pandemic is a sign of the end times, but Trout thinks that little in life is so obviously divided into phases — the beginning, the end. “Outside, away from their rarefied stale air, she’d come to feel that everything was not so decisive. That everything that pulled one way also pulled in another.”
In Householders, people leave often, but some people stay. Forgiveness is much sought after but rarely given freely, so Cayley writes with a passion that seems to extend that longed-for forgiveness to her characters when they cannot bring themselves to do it for themselves. People are pulled one way, but also in another, and, as in life, find themselves somewhere between extremes.
Can romance be in the cards? (Photo: Daphne Maysonet)
If I wrangled all the romantic encounters I’ve had in the past five weeks, I would seem ridiculous to you. The last five years? You’d think I was daft.
A crushaholic. A codependent. A masochist. A machine. How could anyone look romance in the face — in so many different faces — and not turn to salt when it sours? What kind of person could wake up and march through the rituals of dating again: texting through the butterflies, dressing for dinner, singing the familiar date duets of sibling names, favorite bands, career milestones, pet peeves, major losses, and the embarrassing hope of one day making a life with someone you just met?
Before five years ago, I wouldn’t believe it. I was married. I’d entered my first real relationship at 18 years old, and it managed to last until 27. In that relationship, I grew up. I learned how to share bills. I learned how to plan meals and iron perfect creases into slacks. I learned how to take someone to the hospital in an emergency. I learned how to confess when my body was doing something decidedly gross. I learned how not to mention — out of the kindness of my heart — when my partner’s body was doing something decidedly gross. I learned how to reveal my fantasies to someone I had to look in the eye every day for presumably the rest of my life. I grew up in other ways: I began my careers in education and publishing. I learned how to drive. I discovered how much I sucked, and then I started therapy.
Eventually, mundane conflicts became irreconcilable. Then, like many: I had a loving marriage that failed.
Failure is a harsh word that someone landed on to describe a break-up. I had an amicable divorce. He’s still among the first people I call for career advice or after an accident. When you’re having coffee together at Waffle House after signing away your lifetime commitment, you’re family.
At a certain point, I had to wonder: Is a bond that brought you joy but didn’t end in partnered bliss a personal shortcoming? Is an ended relationship a failure?
Before it ended, I was afraid no one would ever love me again. I’d had a rough childhood that lacked closeness and affection. I spent a lot of time alone with my drawings or stolen library books, and I won over my teachers to cope. The partner who became my husband was the first person who made me feel understood. All of the evidence suggested I was blowing my one shot at love — that prized grail of the television shows and movies and books that raised me.
I was dead wrong.
Just three weeks after moving to Memphis, someone I’d met on my first night out at the Lamplighter drunkenly yelled, “I’m in love with you!” outside of a bar at a Jack Oblivian show, and I was Midtown baptized. The rest is the history with which I come to you, dear reader.
The years have been stormy weather. I’ve been ghosted. I’ve been broken-hearted. I’ve been deceived. I’ve ridden the low hum of casual disappointment. I’ve talked to friends, I’ve talked to shrinks, and I’ve consulted the stars. I’ve been spun on dance floors. I’ve been driven to buy groceries in freak Memphis snowstorms. I’ve been inspired. I’ve been respected and listened to deeply. I’ve had my wildly imperfect body worshipped. I have been loved. And I’ve done a lot of loving; therefore, I’ve done a lot of losing.
As of a few months ago, I am once again freshly single, and I am once again, dating.
The last one wasn’t suited for the unique demands of being my life partner. The next may not be. I can’t help but feel like the struggle of love — finding and keeping it — isn’t a failure, but a fortune of mine that, like all else, won’t last forever. There will come a time when the phone stops ringing.
So now, I am open to love like a holy fool. The romantic relationship — not critical to leading a fulfilling life, but mysterious and beautiful — a reason to leap if ever there was one.
Get spooky this weekend. (Photo: Courtesy Central Station Hotel)
A graveyard smash, caught on in a flash, ’tis the season of the Monster Mash. And, wa hoo, for us living beings, Central Station Hotel is ready to mash along with us.
This year, the historic hotel is hosting its first-ever monstrous dance party with live music and themed food and drinks. Costumes are encouraged, for later in the night, a costume contest will take place, and who doesn’t want to want to face one of man’s biggest fears — being judged by others — on this night of fright? Judges — whose identity Jeremy Sadler, general manager of the hotel, withholds for the sake of intrigue — are looking for creativity, originality, and overall spook factor. Winners may be privy to one of the night’s giveaways, including a hotel stay or food and beverage credit.
“Bar staff will also be decked out in their favorite costumes, with some staff in deadly attire serving our house-made poisons around the lounge,” Sadler says. Created by Cooper Bradshaw, manager of the hotel’s Eight & Sand bar, the poison menu, aka the drink menu, includes the Graceland Ghost, Poisoned at the Play, Stax Slasher, and Murder on Main. “My favorite has to be Poisoned at the Play,” Sadler says of the concoction of absinthe, mint, lime, gin, and chartreuse.
Joining in on the fun are DJs Jake One and Supreme La Rock, both hailing from Seattle, the home of the Cullen vampires. “It is a rarity that Jake does solo DJ sets. This is a special occasion for Memphis,” says Sadler. “We are lucky to have both of these Seattle DJ legends in Memphis for a Halloween party.”
Halloween at Central Station Hotel, 545 S. Main, Friday, October 29th, 5 p.m.-close, free.
TapTheForwardAssist | Wikipedia | Creative Commons
This week I’m going to cut to the chase and use my space here to highlight reporting I think everyone in the U.S. should read. I’m speaking of the recently published Rolling Stone article by Hunter Walker titled “Jan. 6 Protest Organizers Say They Participated in ‘Dozens’ of Planning Meetings With Members of Congress and White House Staff.”
I just reread the article, and it left me feeling utterly unsurprised but no less disgusted. There’s a lot of information to digest, but the crux of the matter is, as Walker writes, that “multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent.”
To confirm this information, Walker talked with two sources who helped plan the pro-Trump rallies in Washington, D.C., which took place — and, some say, helped instigate — the violent storming of the Capitol later the same day. Because of the ongoing investigation into the Capitol attack, the sources were granted anonymity.
“I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene specifically,” one of the sources is quoted as saying.
“[T]he pair both say the members who participated in these conversations or had top staffers join in included Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).”
Seven members of Congress were willing to put their coworkers in danger, to abandon the rules and guiding principles of democracy to achieve their ends. One, Arizona’s Rep. Gosar, allegedly offered blanket pardons for other, unrelated investigations as an incentive to get the two sources to help plan the rallies. If these claims are found to be true, these representatives must be expelled immediately, and they should face criminal charges.
Washington’s Rep. Pramila Jayapal tweeted, sharing the Rolling Stone article, and said, “On January 6th, I didn’t know if I would make it out alive.” To return to an oft-repeated word these days, causing your coworkers to fear for their lives hardly reeks of “bipartisanship.”
By this point, more than nine months after the event, there is ample evidence that the attack on the Capitol was not random. Reporting from The New York Times shows smartphone tracking data in time lapse showing people departing the rallies and heading straight to the Capitol. It seems clear that the levels of involvement varied — some elected officials were involved directly, while others seem to have delegated the work to their aides. Some people seem to have just spoken publicly about the “stolen” election, letting others fill in the blanks in their own minds. Whatever their connection to the events, they must face consequences. If this is swept under the rug, that amounts to a tacit approval.
What would happen if I used this column space to advocate for violence? Let’s say, for example, that I spent weeks writing about another Memphis media organization, alleging some sort of wrongdoing there? Then, once I had whipped my readers into a froth, I wrote that we couldn’t “let them get away with it,” that we wouldn’t “take this lying down”? If someone read between the lines and acted on the orders they thought I had given, albeit on the sly, wouldn’t I be expected to share some of the blame?
In Tennessee, it would seem that our options are somewhat limited. Most of our elected representatives either already believe that the events of January 6th must be investigated and that consequences should be meted out, or they claim nothing untoward happened at all. Just a normal protest. Nothing to see here. Call them anyway. Write to them anyway. The least we can do is be loud. Be louder than a group of internet nerds who don’t like the look of a movie trailer.
If we turn a blind eye now, we will regret it in the future when a more successful attack on democracy makes the events of January 6th look like a dress rehearsal.
