RELEASES
BLIGHT SEASON 3 : EPISODE 7 : ROUGHNECK WILDERNESS
BLIGHT RECORD PROJECT # 1 + RELEASE PARTY
Hello and welcome to the new branch of the Blight tree, The Blight Record Project.
The Blight Record Project produces adaptations of contemporary short stories (and other experimental storytelling ventures) printed to vinyl in limited run. The debut full length split features “Angel of Death” by Brian Evenson and “A Skull Dreams It Is A Horse” by Ashley Mayne. Both stories are scored and composed by Nathaniel Heuer and the band Hello Death.
PURCHASE THE RECORD ON BANDCAMP (digital and physical)
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
BRIAN EVENSON is the author of over a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection The Glassy Burning Floor of Hell (2021). His collection Song for the Unraveling of the World won the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times' Ray Bradbury Prize. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes, an NEA fellowship, and a Guggenheim Award. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the Critical Studies Program at CalArts.
ASHLEY MAYNE’S work has appeared in Fence, Post Road, Juked, Peripheries, Blight Podcast, Metambesen, and elsewhere. She lives in Upstate New York and edits fiction for Fence.
NATHANIEL HEUER is a musician and artisan. He currently writes, records, and performs with some of Milwaukee’s preeminent bands, including genre-bending Group of the Altos (The Altos), experimental rockers Marielle Allschwang and The Visitations, and his own indie folk project Hello Death.
BLIGHT SEASON 3: EPISODE 6: BABY BUMPER
In 1993, my great Aunt Peg Ransom was a player in a dramatic scene that was reenacted (months later) on the CBS Television show Rescue 911. I began working on this story in 2019 in my apartment in Ridgewood, Queens, and will be sharing it as part of an experimental non-fiction, memoir series on Blight.
“Final Questions” by Rhea Dhanbhoora
Editing, music and sound design by Ian Sallman
BLIGHT SEASON 3: EPISODE 5: THE OTHER DAN
Follow Dan on Twitter @danbacula - Follow Ian at: https://iansallmann.bandcamp.com
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BLIGHT SEASON 3: EPISODE 4: SUMMERTIME
Blight is back with new stories, new art in a new format. Each episode will contain works by Sean Williamson and a guest writer/musician.
Episode 4 of Season picks up right where it left of over a year ago. With stories by Sean and “Summertime” by guest storyteller (and repeat guests on the show) Tom McGowen. The photo above is from “Summertime”
“Other Side of the Wall” by Sean Williamson, engineered by Jorge Oliveira, drums by Nick Amara, additional vocals by Chau VT.
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WE ALL FALL DOWN
ROBERT CORMIER AND THE COLUMBINE MASSACRE
“They entered the house at 9:02 p.m. on the evening of April Fools Day. In the next forty-nine minutes, they shit on the floors and pissed on the walls and trashed their way through the seven-room Cape Cod cottage.”
Robert Cormier’s We All Fall Down is the story of trashers, boys who invade and destroy homes. The boys trash the Jerome household and when the younger of two teenage daughters, Karen, returns alone they attempt to rape her and end up pushing her down the stairs, putting her in a coma. This attack is witnessed by The Avenger, a vigilante Peeping Tom and stalker of the older daughter, Jane. He vows revenge on the trashers. He once shot a bully from school in the face, before shoving his own suspicious grandfather off the apartment balcony.
When I found the paperback in the library it seemed like a prophecy realized. A road map for the brutality, heartbreak and violence that would make up the rest of my life. That was dramatic, but I was, after all, a high school freshman. Just two years earlier, when I saw the images of the Columbine School Shooting on TV: Senior portraits. Grainy security footage. Swath of blood. Students marching, I felt different. Those images activated within me a new understanding of the danger I was in. Also, in the paranoia of my teenage mind, home invasions and school shootings had similar qualities—they were each, in their own way, the most terrifying thing that could happen in a place you were supposed to feel safe.
Before the publication of We All Fall Down, Cormier was already one of the most infamous Young Adult writers of all time. His themes of youthful depression, violence, and sexuality had put The Chocolate War, Beyond the Chocolate War, and I am the Cheese, on challenged book lists across the country. We All Fall Down was no less bleak than Cormier’s other work. The main character Buddy Walker, a young hopeless alcoholic, is brought into the trasher gang after his father walks out, throwing his family into disarray. Though Buddy participates in the trashing of the Jerome house, he is offered to the reader as less complicit in the crime because he wasn’t in the room when Karen was pushed down the stairs. Buddy, because of his guilt, begins to stalk Jane and through a chance meeting they fall in love. Of course, from there nothing good can happen. I stuffed the book inside my textbook in math class, my teacher Mr. Hower’s said constantly, “Sean, put the book away.” Each time it felt like a smack in the back of the head.
I felt ugly reading We All Fall Down, as I had Cormier’s other books. I wondered, is that what happens when things go bad? Is this what would happen to me if I started drinking and doing drugs? If my family fell apart? At that time my brother drove me to school. My parents still gave me money for lunch. I was on the cross country team. I wouldn’t hit puberty for another year. This was as innocent as I ever remember being, but I was reading the signposts along the way. In school we did active shooter drills where we hid under desks and the teacher turned out the lights.
Our history teacher Mr. Obmascher was a slow pot-bellied man. He told us if there was a shooter he had weapons hidden all over the room. He told us, holding his skinny pointer finger in the air, that he would hide in the shadows and whack the shooter with a bat when they stepped into the doorway. But hose boys went into that school with machine guns and bombs. They could step into the doorway of the classroom right now, I thought. Mr. Obmascher wouldn’t be able to do a thing. I could be reading, We All Fall Down tucked into a history textbook and a grenade could roll into the classroom. I’d be torn to shreds. I’d never see it coming.
There was a senior named Maureen. I had not come up with the courage, or seen the opportunity to talk to her, but would steal glances at her in the hall, at football games and after school in the parking lot. We passed each other every day in front of the tech wing. She had dark hair and dark eyes. I could sometimes see the outline of her bra through her shirt. I thought about Maureen at night. How she moved in the halls. How she laughed with her friends by the payphone. I would think about her on the bus to school. How she studied at night in her room. How she kissed. These images of Maureen worked through my head until I saw her the next day. They built the long bridge from one tiny moment to another.
As I read, I imagined that Jane Jerome looked like Maureen. In We All Fall Down, Jane helps Buddy after he falls on the escalator at the mall. Of course, she doesn’t know that he is following her. She doesn’t know that he was with the group of boys that destroyed her house and put her sister in a coma. Despite this substantial wall, Cormier brings them together, each needing the other to navigate their respective wreckage: Buddy’s home wrecked by his philandering drunk father, Jane’s home wrecked by Buddy. When I saw Maureen shuffling past by the tech wing, I had to wonder: Was Maureen in love? Was her family in peril?
“They could not get enough of each other, which made it necessary for them to have rules...How long kisses could be, how far touching and caressing could proceed. Cupping her breast drove him wild, thick juices in his mouth, the threat of a sudden embarrassing eruption...One night he stiffened in the middle of the longest kiss they ever had, their mouths meshed, tongues wrapped around each other, his hand kneading her breast...”
“Sean! Put the book away!” Mr. Hower’s yelled.
Cormier’s sex scenes filled me with astonished longing. I felt myself racing from one angsty sex moment to the next. The vision of Buddy and Jane necking in the back of his mom’s car. The vision of Jane alone in the bathtub. The love between Buddy and Jane was important to me. The lust between them was more important.
Of course, this was an interlude and not an escape from the horror in their own lives. Their lust was a distraction, like We All Fall Down was my distraction from the dread of bombings, of planes flying into buildings, of classmates turning machine guns on the lunch room. In the short number of pages connecting their first kiss and the end of the book: Karen wakes up, Jane is kidnapped by The Avenger, who tells Jane about Buddy, The Avenger commits suicide, Jane breaks up with Buddy, Buddy starts drinking again. The book ends as badly as I imagined, all an ugly accident that felt like an accusation.
When I finished We All Fall Down, I looked for Maureen less. Then class schedules changed and I no longer saw her in the halls. It was as if finishing the book ended my infatuation with Maureen. This was surprising and a relief. Because while the thought of classmates coming into the school with machine guns was terrifying, the thought of talking to an older girl while the outline of her bra was visible, was more-so. Then I was overtaken by new distractions and new fears. I started drinking and taking drugs, every day less innocent. As I went through high school and into adulthood the high pitched eruptive dread of shootings and bombings transitioned into a constant low tone, like a phone left off the hook.
- Sean
BLIGHT SEASON 3 : EPISODE 3 : DISAPPEAR
Hello and welcome to Blight: Stories in the Key of Decay and Repair. This episode features Tom McGowan on the impermanence of life, two stories by Justin Spaller and the debut single by Lonely Games, "Charlene."
Hosted by Sean Williamson
Show music by Shawn Stephany
mixed by Shane Olivo
BLIGHT SEASON 3 : EPISODE 2 : ALIENS
Hello and welcome to Blight: Stories in the Key of Decay and Repair. Sean Williamson talks seeing Pedro the Lion at Cactus Club and the importance and preciousness of independent venues. Jo Hylton on one film. Parker Winship on many films.
"Shimmer" by Cairns
Beet Street Music Video Project Showcase
Show music by Shawn Stephany. Show mix by Shane Olivo.
BLIGHT SEASON 3 : EPISODE 1 : THE SHRINE WITHIN THE SHRINE
Welcome to Blight: Stories in the Key of Decay and Repair: Season 3: Episode 1. In this episode we talk about Milwaukee's Cactus Club and the importance of punk rock. Visit the Cactus Club WEBSITE for merchandise and check out their Patreon page for some excellent programming.
Jessica Heuer tells a story about being isolated with chemotherapy, observing as her Chicago neighborhood moves on in it's own pain and joy.
Robert Trettin tells an adventure about hiking to meet a Buddhist nun, in the mountains of Nepal.
Music by X Harlow. Show mix by Shane Olivo.
Mix on "Springtime in Quarantine" by Nathaniel Heuer
THANK YOU! T-SHIRTS!
Hello listeners, storytellers and well-wishers,
Firstly, thanks to everyone for their support of Blight: Stories in the Key of Decay and Repair — Season 2. I have received a lot of positive feedback. It was encouraging to hear the shared enthusiasm for the revolutionary power of art, cycling and gardening. We have another season of Blight in pre production right now. We also have shirts for sale, designed by Shawn Stephany and printed by our friends at The Shop! So if you want to support the show and also want a sweet shirt, please put your order in today! Selling 100 shirts would go a long way in covering costs for the next year of programming.
Thank you —— Sean and the Blight family
BLIGHT 1: STORIES IN THE KEY OF DECAY AND REPAIR
BLIGHT : Stories in the Key of Decay and Repair is the collected audio work of Sean Williamson and friends. Each story is a meditation on death and rebirth. Each story is about endings and beginnings. There are dimension-shifting-dogs, flickering street lights, gas station hot dogs, toddlers, peach Schnapps in water bottles, Yancy Thigpen, and much, much more. BLIGHT is a comfort. BLIGHT is a voice. BLIGHT is a reminder.
CREDITS
The Street Lights Flickered : Written and performed by Sean Williamson. Produced by Sean Williamson, Shane Olivo, Shawn Stephany and Robert Trettin. Original music by Shawn Stephany. Recorded and mixed by Shane Olivo at Bobby Peru Recording. Milwaukee, WI. 2016
Dog Dreams : Written and produced by Sean Williamson. Performed by Jon Mueller. Music by Justin Schmidt. Mixed and Mastered by Shane Olivo and Sean Williamson at Bobby Peru Recording.
Kansas City Road Trip : Recorded by Sean Williamson in Kansas City. Mixed by Shane Olivo at Bobby Peru Recording. Music by Altos.
The Funniest Thing : Written by Sean Williamson. Performed by Erin Wolf. Music by Chris DeMay.
SEAN WILLIAMSON : YOU’RE DOING WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE
“Life ain’t short, it’s long.” So says a dying Earl Partridge in Paul Thomas Anderson’s melodramatic Magnolia. That sentiment hangs heavy over You’re Doing What I Should Have Done, a stark, moving, and quietly brilliant collection of audio short stories from Milwaukee filmmaker/musician/writer Sean Williamson. Clocking in at under 10 minutes and spread out over just four tracks, You’re Doing still manages to convey the dreams, the triumphs, the disappointments, the missed opportunities, the unexpected compromises, and the inevitable ends of a long lifetime.
“Each morning when I wake up,” Williamson begins on opening piece “You Wouldn’t Believe,” “I think of everything that’s happened.” From there, he gets into that everything: growing up and taking stock of your life (“You Wouldn’t Believe”), dimly remembering first apartments and nights spent walking home alone (“The Reflection Of That Reflection”), and daydreaming about actress Jenna Fischer during drunk driving classes (“Jenna Fischer”). Then there’s the title track, a sad and funny and lovely and sad again piece about the final days of gone-but-not-forgotten Milwaukee icon Dave Monroe. “It’s not the past I regret, it’s the future,” Monroe says, via Williamson.
Matt Wild, Milwaukee Record
Written and performed by Sean Williamson. Recorded and mastered by Shane Olivo at Bobby Peru Recording. You’re Doing What I Should Have Done CDs are available for sale. Photograph and Layout by Sean Williamson. With portrait by Erik Ljung
SEAN WILLIAMSON : BUILD A BRAND NEW LETDOWN
“Build a Brand New Letdown is a short EP of work written over the long period of my sparse haphazard song writing career. I have always sang in bands and writing my own song is always something I’ve had much less confidence in. I remember just making the decision to get into the studio, and thought, that maybe in like ten years I could be a competent songwriter. I don’t know if I’m there yet but I will always be happy I made the decision to roll the tape. A lot of wild life things were happening while I recorded these songs with Shane. I found out I was going to have my second child and Shane was one of the first people I told. Because we just had this special thing where I would come by once a week or every other week and record a song. He was recording in this beautiful studio way west on National Ave. There was a really nice piano I could play. And I kind of just thought yeah, I need to lean into this.
The second and fourth song on this EP were thing I was writing in High School and I just kept tinkering with them. Then I took guitar lessons and they improved. And I could feel OK about them. And I think that’s a good thing to remember about the writing and creation process, is that nothing ever has to go away. You just keep working on things and generating ideas, and things might work out eventually, And if a specific story or song doesn’t work at that moment, then something else might. And things will never be perfect and rarely sound or read like they do in your head, but if you can create something, then you can face it and say: I did this, here it is.”
All songs written and performed by Sean Williamson
Produced and engineered at Bobby Peru Recording by Shane Olivo
Piano on "Be Still" by Chris DeMay
vocals on "I Feel Better Now" by Heather Hass