It was the same month The Whiskey Dregs began as an online arts and literary magazine. Before then I’d never been invited to do anything on behalf of any publication. Mostly I did what every other writer does — sit alone, at a desk in front of the plastic surface of a keyboard. But then Ellen Donbeck got a lead from an artist she had interviewed and suddenly I was sitting below KGB Bar in an independent movie theater, wearing a pair of 3D sunglasses at the invitation of the film’s director, Graham Reznick.
Ellen was one of our first writers, if not our very first. I had met her at an old haunt in Astoria called Sparrow. She was on hiatus from her work as a playwright and we’d sit at the bar and discuss art and literature. Later, she emailed me a few of her poems. I was impressed with Ellen’s poetry, which were stark, honest depictions of her life. Her work was wound when necessary and then unbound when the splattering juices of her world soaked the pages. When The Whiskey Dregs was looking for contributing writers, she immediately began to work. So, then, in that small theater, we sat side-by-side, accompanied by our significant others, awaiting the show.
The director’s careful articulation of love and violence was depicted in his surreal horror film, I Can See You. I sat in the chair, my blood rushing to my head because I was watching the work of an artist who spoke a similar vernacular as I. The surrealists believed, as I believe, that life should be analyzed like a dream and our life, therefore, would serve a greater purpose when expressed through art in Freudian fashion. Nevermind that the famed psychiatrist thought poorly of these libertines. But then, there it was, whether Reznick acknowledged the dead artists or not, were these interpretive scenes of subtle horror and the psychedelic morphing of imagery.
I sat in that uncomfortable seat, wondering what the next year would bring. Who would I meet? Where would The Whiskey Dregs be in a year? How would this dream be analyzed?
