TIME IS A FLAT CIRCLE

Out 4.10.26

When I was two years old I slept for the first time —

Or so my parents thought, relieved, finally, for there to be silence coming from my room & crib. But no — how had I placated myself that afternoon? By somehow standing up & pulling their favorite poster from the wall — & then — as legend has it — ripping it to shreds & eating each pulpy piece of paper.

And what poster was that, you may ask?

None other than Bumblebee Bob’s painting for Rosa’s Lounge — the same Rosa’s Lounge I took the stage at, for the first time, 33 years later.

A year before I had been to the club (as a listener) for the first time & watched Willie Hall backing up DuWayne Burnside — a sight so transcendent I wrote a poem about it, which ended up published in POETRY Magazine and which — perhaps you guessed by now — was published the same week of my concert at Rosa’s Lounge.

Time is a flat circle: centripetal (the force that pushes out) is not a force at all, but a pressure we imagine — centrifugal (which draws us in) is what’s real, & keeps us circling back.

And so it was — Rosa’s Lounge — my first performance there, a poem & lifetime in the making. It was a homecoming, in front of friends & fans & family, & this album showcases a range of older songs, re-imagined covers, & evidence of what’s ahead.

In some places you see the past, in some you see the future, but in the meantime, we keep living — the record keeps spinning — this pulse our only proof of life beneath the burning stars.