Something (rather than nothing) – Détails, épisodes et analyse

elle nash is an electrifying writer based in glasgow, scotland

this is about her book 'deliver me' - 

At a meatpacking facility in the Missouri Ozarks, Dee-Dee and her co-workers kill and butcher 40,000 chickens in a single shift.

The work is repetitive and brutal, with each stab and cut a punishment to her hands and joints, but Dee-Dee’s more concerned with what is happening inside her body. After a series of devastating miscarriages, Dee-Dee has found herself pregnant, and she is determined to carry this child to term.

Dee-Dee fled the Pentecostal church years ago, but judgment follows her in the form of regular calls from her mother, whose raspy voice urges Dee-Dee to quit living in sin and marry her boyfriend Daddy, an underemployed ex-con with an insect fetish. With a child on the way, at long last Dee-Dee can bask in her mother’s and boyfriend’s newfound parturient attention. She will matter. She will be loved. She will be complete.

When her charismatic friend Sloane reappears after a twenty-year absence, feeding her insecurities and awakening suppressed desires, Dee-Dee fears she will go back to living in the shadows. Neither the ultimate indignity of yet another miscarriage nor Sloane’s own pregnancy deters her: she must prepare for the baby’s arrival.

Something Rather Than Nothing Podcast

Vanessa Stockard recently visited the podcast for the 3rd time!

Vanessa Stockard was born in 1975 in Sydney and spent her formative years in a small country town in the Mid North Coast of New South Wales.  At 12 she returned to Sydney as a boarder at Abbotsleigh.  After graduating from the College of Fine Arts (COFA) Sydney in 1998 with a BFA, Stockard launched head first into the avant-garde art scene in the bohemian village of Glebe.

Stockard is one of the most dangerous artists on the Australian, and by extension, international scene.  Her ethereal works of art are a window into the soul of a talented and complex artist, one whose legacy is bound to resonate well past her generation.  The existential nature of her painting viscerally questions our concepts of social relationships and reality.

Twenty years of introspection and experimentation, ranging over a number of media, have forged Vanessa’s style and vulcanised her craft, enabling her to reveal complex misdemeanours, while simultaneously demanding the viewer’s self-reflection.  She deals with isolation and sadness with intimate care and attention.

Vanessa is unhindered by failure, always continuing the discovery of things previously unseen, revealing work that is fresh, unlaboured and penetrating.  The deceptive everyday nature of her subject matter belies hidden depths of relationship, feeling and emotion.  One could describe her process as absence of thought, a freedom of construct, not unlike the stream of consciousness associated with authors such as Hemmingway and Thomas Wolfe.

If light and shade were students, she would be their master.  This skill, combined with a naturally deft hand and a determined use of perspective, imbue her subjects with gravitas.  The artist refers to set design elements that often alter and morph as her piece progresses.  She has said she feels grounded from her ability to draw from the benign surrounds of familiar life, infusing these images with a meaning that yields a meditative satisfaction.

Stockard’s oeuvre features many pieces developed without any direct visual reference but rather from memory, often incorporating domestic pets such as cats and dogs.  Juxtaposing the anthropomorphic nature these animals are given by our society, she infuses the personification of virtue and vice into the everyday canine and feline status quo of our pets.  Cats with their fluffy comical exteriors glint with an instinctive urge to kill and cruelly torment their prey, dogs with their providence of happiness, loyalty and friendship are flung back onto Churchill’s menacing metaphor for depression.

The Kafkaesque mindset behind such works is reminiscent of the existentialist authors like Sartre and Camus.  Absurdism appears with cake imagery and its relation to a childlike nostalgia for happiness which may never be real, but rather imaginary, unattainable and unachievable.  It’s been said “pain is inexhaustible, it’s only people who get exhausted…”

One can never “have it all”, to be both the artist and patron.  To intrinsically understand those things around us that others overlook is what we want from our artists, our creatives.  They give voice to the profound mystery of the world around us, surrounded as we are with consumerism, pointless greed, deceit and dissatisfaction.  There’s no pretension here in these paintings, just spontaneous insight and beauty.  Some art is said to speak volumes, but these works are more like innocent and delicate poems, whispering untold truths with an economy of words.

Something Rather Than Nothing Podcast

Shelia Knox awakes from a two week coma to find her life torn apart.

Her children have been savagely murdered. Her husband is missing. Her hand completely mangled and her throat slit to within inches of her jugular…Leaving her with nothing left to live for.

So, when the men responsible for taking her and her family, come after her to try and finish the job, they unwittingly let loose an Angel of Death, hell-bent on hunting down those responsible and making them all pay.

From the creative team of Keenan Marshall Keller (writer/co-creator of The HUMANS from IMAGE Comics) and Alex Delaney (creator of The Derelict and The Other Side of Town) comes VENGEANCE Is For The LIVING; A 4 issue mini-series overflowing with gritty exploitation action about the power of anger/loss and the clearness of vision that VENGEANCE can provide.

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Victoria Astuto is an actress, musician, and educator based in New York.  She is most known for her roles in Some Time Soon and Trusted Hands.  In addition to acting, she also plays Clarinet with the Brooklyn Wind Symphony and is a Band Director in the Hudson Valley.

Matthew Kyle Levine is a filmmaker based in New York City. His short films have won awards and played at numerous film festivals throughout North America, including the Williamsburg Independent Film Festival and the Canada Shorts Film Festival.

Watch 'Some Time Soon' and Levine's other films here: 

MKL VIMEO

SRTN WEBSITE

Lauren Bright Pacheco is 3-time Emmy Award-winning Producer, Podcast Host, Media Writer and Storyteller.

You should know her spellbinding work on:

Happy Face Presents

Murder in Oregon

The Murders at White House Farm 

Murder in Illinois

And as the producer of:

Speed of Sound with Steve Greenberg 

Wholly Human with LeAnn Rimes.

SRTN WEBSITE

Chloe Niclas is an illustrator from Baltimore, MD. She is fascinated by the unexplainable and bizarre aspects of the world, often executing the otherworldly and impossible to feel within reach of existence. Her work has been recognized by American Illustration and the Art Director’s Club, and has appeared in The New York Times, Harper's Magazine, Politico Europe, and others.

https://www.chloeniclas.com/

Follow on Instagram @chloe.niclas

SRTN WEBSITE

Susan Tomorrow is a film programmer from Austin Texas, specializing in cult, horror, and Golden Age Hollywood cinema. 

“As Co-Owner/Programmer of the Clinton Street Theater I am thrilled to be helping to bring back that William Castle MAGIC.”

Clinton Street Theater

SRTN WEBSITE

Lauren Redniss is an artist, author, and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant." Her books include Radioactive, a finalist for the National Book Award, Thunder & Lightning, winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, and Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West, called "astonishing" and "virtuosic" by the New York Times. She has been a Guggenheim fellow, a fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars & Writers, the New America Foundation, and Artist-in-Residence at the American Museum of Natural History. She teaches at the Parsons School of Design in New York City

https://www.laurenredniss.com

SRTN WEBSITE

Michael Conley writes murder ballads, jukebox romances, and love songs in between.

Conley was in from Nashville and the SRTN hosted  a magical set + interview from Warbling Creek Studios in Eugene, OR.  This is something special. 

Follow Michael on Instagram @isleepinmyjeans

Nothing Risked EP out now on all streaming platforms.

SRTN WEBSITE

Melissa Oliveri has been an artist her entire life. As an only child, she would spend hours entertaining herself by writing and illustrating stories, playing music, drawing, writing plays, making puppets and other crafts. This has translated into adulthood in the form of one person wearing many creative hats.

As a musician, Melissa goes by the stage name Cannelle. She composes original songs in a variety of styles, often compared to Tori Amos, Regina Spektor, or Kate Bush. She also writes original music for her Podcast, The Skylark Bell. She likes to take a creative approach to songwriting, often including her audience in the task. An example of this are her "Post-It Project" songs, for which she requests people assign her a set number of words that she will build the song around. The topics she covers are also varied and can range from a dedication to a lost loved one, to a song about a salt shaker or a silly song about her disdain for the long winters she has known her whole life.

After years of sitting on a series of unpublished books, a friend suggested Melissa turn one of her stories into a podcast. Being unfamiliar with podcasting, Melissa was hesitant, but the thought of composing original music for the podcast, including sound effects, and finally getting the story out to the world eventually won her over, and The Skylark Bell podcast was born. The podcast has not only proven to be a great success, it has inspired Melissa to imagine expanding The Skylark show beyond all dreams!

https://melissaoliveri.com/about

Follow on Instagram @cannelle.music

Link Tree with all the things: https://linktr.ee/theskylarkbell

We highly recommend you listen to the Skylark Bell Podcast

SRTN WEBSITE