“[Singing] was sensuous, a pure pleasure, which didn’t take anything away from the emotions being expressed…Music can do that; you can enjoy singing about something sad.” – David Byrne, ‘How Music Works’
A plug up top, in case you catch a case of the TL;DR flu. I am reading poems TONIGHT, February 25, at Neon Mic Night. Neon Mic Night is a bimonthly reading series hosted by my friend Ben Neispodziany. Really cool people like Kathleen Rooney and Heather Christle and Johannes Göransson have read at this series. Now, I am on the bill. The reading is at The Whistler, 2421 N Milwaukee Ave. Doors are at 6, reading at 6:30, and I’m reading first, so be fuckin on time, my fellow degenerates. Also reading is Shipwrecked Sailor Blog favorite LJ Pemberton and cool-as-hell Julián Martinez. Last time I saw LJ at Neon Mic Night, she read a genuinely moving essay called “I Fucked Your Mom, Dude.” Like, an essay with that title made me wistful about lost youth and sentimental about family—LJ rocks. And I’ll be doing shit like “THE TREES MY DUDES THE TREES” before you get to hear LJ.
It may be strange to admit, given that I don’t do it much, but I crave performing. I’ve thirsted after being on stage since I was around 13, covering “Brainstew” at the middle school talent show. That aspect of my life seemed permanently back-burnered. After all, the likelihood of me seriously joining a serious three- or four-piece band is low. It sounds nice, sure. The practical aspects of really being in a band, though?
Let’s see: Brendan and I have our three somewhat amorphous projects. When Mike can drum for us, that’s great. Records aren’t easy to make, but we’re always writing songs, so a record isn’t prohibitively hard, either. If we want to play shows? Well, we can play acoustic. Once you start getting into re-arranging songs for a three-piece or finding a bass player, well. Then, we gotta find a rehearsal space, plus venues, and suddenly what doesn’t seem like a big deal feels like a huge lift.
My band broke up when I moved to Chicago in 2006. Until about 2012, I tried to make a go of solo acoustic stuff. Can’t sing lead, though. In 2011, I went on tour with Since Forever, Brendan’s band, filling in on bass. That was a blast, but obviously impermanent. In 2015, the first Shipwrecked Sailor record came out, with the explicit idea that it’d be a bedroom project. In late 2016 or 2017, I joined Solipse on bass. We practiced every week—Charles and Mike made for a fun hang—but only played three shows while I was in the band. We mutually parted ways when my kid was born. Two years later, the first b & the shipwrecked sailor record came out.
Do you see all the almosts? Do you see why, after playing shows all the time in high school, I feel like not really a performer?
Enter poetry. And podcasting?
The pattern was not apparent to oblivious 20-to-22-year-old me, but the 1317 Revolution (the reading series that Charles Gabel, Quin Slovek, and I ran in college) was largely another place to put High School Me’s show-organizing energy. After college, I did some readings around the city, before burnout/lack of confidence/alcoholism made me stop seeking out readings. The impetus behind starting The Line Break (Bob and I started talking about it around 2016, did some test episodes in 2018, got started in earnest in 2020) was finding a way to reach back into the scene. Contribute something, by reading and gushing about other people’s poems. But also, the podcast is a performance.
Thinking that performance was now entirely relegated to the digital space was a mistake, though. An understandable mistake, given the “pivot to video” panics and podcast boom of the 2010s and given the fact that I was officially a House Husband, but a mistake nonetheless. Hell, money-minded people would probably say that de-emphasizing digital space in 2026 is a bad idea (“why don’t you read The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You over Twitch stream?” the clueless capitalist asks). The digital space is a tool, for sure—I meet just about every writer who is on The Line Break or The Lazy & Entitled Podcast on the Internet. Though not all of them.
Last year, we began The Lazy & Entitled reading series. Two dates a year, minimum, at Rivers & Roads. Brendan also started hosting some acoustic shows there. 2025 saw me going to readings—like Neon Mic Night—again. I even had a three-date “tour,” shoutout to Maya Williams and Erin Watson.
What I learned last year is that being out in the real world—whether it’s a bar or coffee shop or bookstore or apartment or LGBTQ community center—being in the real world matters. The feeling you get actually talking to people, actually experiencing something beyond just looking at a screen or listening through headphones? That’s irreplaceable. Seeing Portland, ME was a dream. So was having my dear friend join my family and me for dinner. Tuesday Funk introduced me to a bunch of Bluesky mutuals (Bluesky is a very Chicago place). There was no way of knowing it at the time, but that gave me a little push towards being able to get outside and defend my neighborhood from ICE last fall-present. “Those people don’t just live in your phone,” my brain seemed to realize. “They live within walking distance of Clark Street.”
This blog has gotten a bit unwieldy beyond its initial thought of “come see me read at The Whistler tonight, February 25th, at 6 p.m., wow I am sure grateful to my friend Ben Niespodziany for booking me.” What I’m getting at is we all need to get off the internet more (eventually forever), and we should all be working towards more in-person stuff. Accessibility is important, I know—don’t catch me disrespecting shut-ins or disabled people or people with infants. The internet is not entirely a bad place, but it will never replace in-person gatherings. I, for one, was an idiot for thinking it could even come close.
Here are some poems I won’t be reading tonight, but that I like a whole lot. Hope to see you at The Whistler.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris