People at the Core
From The Greenpoint Palace bar in Brooklyn, New York writers and bartenders, Rita and Marisa, have intimate conversations with an eclectic mix of people from all walks of life about their passions, paranoia and perspectives. Featured guests could be artists or authors, exterminators or private investigators, or the person sitting next to you at the bar.
People at the Core
Bonus Episode! Dolan Morgan Reading
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Books by Dolan Morgan
That's When the Knives Come Down
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Email us! peopleatthecorepodcast@gmail.com
People at the Core
Speaker 1From the Greenpoint Palace Bar in Brooklyn , new York , writers and bartenders Rita and Marissa have intimate conversations with an eclectic mix of people from all walks of life about their passions , paranoia and perspectives . Featured guests could be artists or authors , exterminators or private investigators , or the person sitting next to you at the bar . This is People at the Core .
Speaker 2Okay , go , okay . So , rita , we've got Dolan here to read a little excerpt with us . Yay , yay . Dolan Morgan is a writer and illustrator living in Greenpoint , brooklyn , and is the author of two story collections , including that's when the Knives Come Down . Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bomb Magazine , the Believer , the Lifted Brow , the Rumpus , electric Literature's Recommended Reading , selected Shorts , npr and elsewhere . Please welcome Dolan , who's going to be reading a little excerpt from a piece that he will introduce and tell us what it's about .
Speaker 3Yeah , this is something that I read at the Palace Reading Series . Oh , I thought it was appropriate and it's called 1-800 .
Speaker 2Oh , I love this one , I know , I remember . Sorry , really , spoiler alert .
Speaker 3Please choose from the following menu options . Listen carefully , as our selections may have changed . If you know your party's extension , you may dial it at any time . If you're calling about an existing reservation or if you would like to make a new reservation , press nothing . Your reservation is confirmed . You are already signed up . It's going to happen and there's nothing you can do about it . The reservation is made .
Speaker 3If you're calling because you would like to cancel your reservation , press 1 to hear the sound of a distant hollow laughter . There's no turning back now . Everything is in motion . If you're currently in the middle of your reservation and are experiencing difficulties or require assistance of any kind , press the palm of your hand to the center of your chest , feel your breath and understand that no one is coming , that you are alone and that this reservation is yours and nobody else's . If you would like to receive a callback without losing your place in line , press pound and leave a number where you can be reached . At the sound of the tone , record the message that you want to hear . Speak the words you wish someone would say to you and when you are finished recording , try to imagine what it would be like to actually feel the feelings you want to feel , be gentle .
Speaker 3If you would like to make an adjustment to your reservation , if you believe that a change is somehow possible , that your choices can actually impact the trajectory of your reservation , then go ahead and press the numbers that you think will make that happen . Sure , put in the special code that makes the world become different . Take as many attempts as you would like . If it helps , press the laughter button again . It's absolutely not going to help , but you can keep pressing it . There's a kind of security or solace in that .
Speaker 3If you're ready to face your reservation and the fact that it's happening right now and has been for a long time , press the button that ends the call . Press the button that hangs up the phone . Now look all around you , at the room you are in , at these people , at their faces and at your own hands . Feel yourself here in this moment , tethered to the ground beneath a distant hollow sky , and then finally choose from the following menu options . Listen carefully , as our selections may have changed . If you know your party's extension , you may dial it at any time . If you know your party's extension , we're told you can do anything you want , no reservation . Now ask yourself if you've ever truly known a party's extension . Speak an answer into your receiver Okay , bye . That was awesome .
Speaker 2I love it . Yeah , you just your , your . Your writing is so humorous and I love how dark becomes so light that you're you . You forget you're sad laughing . Yeah , exactly , I don't know how else to to say that . So what's next in the writing situation ? Are you working on long format , or I mean , what I've experienced from you is more shorter pieces like that and these really punchy pieces save for the butterfly thing that you wrote . It was really beautiful .
Speaker 3Yeah , I would say . At a lot of readings I tend to read things that sort of fit in the chunk of time you're afforded at a reading .
Speaker 3But most of my work is actually significantly longer than that , not like novel length , but short stories that are four , five , six thousand words and they just don't fit in a reading . Every now and then I'll read an excerpt that I think is compelling enough to share at a reading , but generally I try to read something that will fit in that space , and so a lot of pieces I write are actually structured to be like . I have this piece about puppets .
Speaker 3It's five little chunks that I could read any one of them at any time , but they also work together to make a cohesive thing . So that's like a format that I do just sort of by necessity .
Speaker 4I do the same thing too . Like , if you look at my book , it's I'm just cutting out paragraphs and pieces just to make it work , because I feel like the reading and the writing are two totally different things , kind of . Or that's how I view them . Anyways , it was performance , so it's an interpretation of my piece , not necessarily the piece A hundred percent .
Speaker 2I've been reading my book is composed of vignettes , and some are longer , but they're not cohesive necessarily , or don't make sense as a standalone . So I take pieces , and it's a lot of work , and I make them so then it's less than a lot of work and I make them so , then it's , you know , less than a 10 minute read and all of that . But I guess my question for you is , when you're writing something new , what comes first ? Is it what you're reading at a reading is an amalgamation of something , or do you sit down to write thinking about hey , I've got to do this piece under X amount of words , or to be performed in X amount of time ?
Speaker 3Oh yeah , I have like two modes . I would say One of them is . I'm writing this . Who knows if I'll ever be able to find a way to make a chunk of it work , and it's just a story that I need to tell for whatever reason .
Speaker 3And its format dictates itself . And then other ones that often are a little bit more , I don't know , um , not frivolous , but they're more whimsical . It's sillier , dark too , but um , where , um , where I'm comfortable having it written in like little vignettes that are interlaced , um , and those I deliberately I'm like , yeah , this will be something that I can bring to a reading . Yeah , so , I'm always trying to do like I don't know . One of those for every three more traditional structure stories that I write
Performance and Writing Relationship
Speaker 3yeah , got it .
Speaker 2Yeah , I mean , you're such a prolific performer that I was curious . Is the process whether the performance followed the writing or the writing followed the performance ?
Speaker 3Yeah , I mean , in a way they intermingle , because I read my work out loud as I write it .
Speaker 4I do too , to make sure it sounds right and reads right . Yeah , I do this . I just was working on a piece the other night it's like five in the morning and same thing just reading every line , and it really helped . The reading series really helped me with that . To realize how important it is to read everything out loud .
Speaker 3Yeah .
Speaker 4You can really find those lines that are not working . Yeah , exactly , and the style of reading too . I don't know if you do that ever , but I've kind of changed my you know pronunciations , or you know how I dictate it too , and that helps I mean , it's really helped my writing a lot yeah which is , you know , crazy yeah , I .
Speaker 2I guess I've always , yeah , been a mental writer .
Speaker 3First it's my own voice narrating it , and then somehow it finds its way to actually the page , but I've always been my own audiobook .
Speaker 2Yeah , totally Nobody else is going to do that . But yeah , just having seen you and heard you , uh , I appreciate uh the effort that goes into the performance . Um , one is an organizer and two is an audience , uh participant . Uh , yeah , love , love your stuff and I'd be interested in , so happy to have reading bigger , longer , more you know , less jazzy , I guess , ruminating pieces is there .
Speaker 4Well , I guess we can't really do a times . I was going to say any pieces coming or any reading series coming up , but they probably won't miss it by the time they'll probably miss it by the time this comes out exactly if you have anything next summer stuff , yeah , there's something coming out in May , but I think we're probably past May right now we're almost to May , but we'll be yeah , alright , I'm peacing out bye .
