Picture Book: Melissa Floyd

Melissa Suzanne Floyd appears as Lisa Tomasino in Equations, Letters to Dead Masters, and A Poet in Center City. 

This is Melissa and I at a This Charming Lab show at The Balcony at the Trocadero, summer 2000. I was in the mode of warming up for what was to come at the Highwire, several years later. Melissa, before she cut her hair, had the waterfall going. Small show, all rock. The picture was taken by a dude I ran cross country with at CHS: Adam Drescher. Melissa closely resembled the "Psyche" we had in common, who I had also seen in Manhattan, and toasted later in American Writing: A Magazine.

Us at the wedding of Brett Eisman and Meryl Block, somewhere miscellaneous in the 'burbs, summer 2001.

For the shows This Charming Lab did at the short-lived Upside-Down Cafe, on 3rd Street between Market and Arch in Olde City, Melissa often showed up to lend a helping hand. Now we were in the multi-media shit: rock, poetry, fiction, and the rest. Jeremy was always around. Lots of foot traffic on first Fridays; lots of el bizarro walk-ins. Briana Winter and Janet Vodka showed up once from NYC. Hinged, once, also to the Philly Fringe Festival. Still small-scale, though, and sans mania. The Bowie Beckenham Arts Lab was part of my mental landscape about what we were trying to do.

Melissa at Philly Java Company, on 4th Street between South and Lombard, 2001. Philly Java moves us into a just-spoken word space. When we could, Jeremy and I held court there, over coffee beverages and books, books, books. Sometimes there were guitars around, too. The back room then was cozy, high-ceiling'd, and ambient. Goths were constantly crashing there, to warm up for club nights; including Gaetan and his crew. Melissa had a knack for being a chameleon and fitting in. She could blend in with anyone.

Melissa, with the waterfall and on her home turf: Bartow, Florida. Right in the middle of the goddamned state: no beaches. Melissa was not particularly enthusiastic about her home turf, and was more excited by the possibilities of Center City Philly. Not a homesick camper; a quietly ambitious one. Who, btw, could sing, if asked.

Season in Hell: White Arts Fest

A jaunt is a jaunt, right? Still, it seems likely that enough people have now seen Season in Hell: White Candle on P.F.S. Post to justify answering the simple query: what exactly were we doing, other than tantric exercises, in room 510 of the Atherton Hilton in lovely SC? The answer is simple. As of the 90s and back, every July aughts, State College would hold a town-wide Arts Fest, as it was called. Artisans, craftspeople, painters, potters, jewelers, would be encouraged to set up tents the length of various arcades on campus, and in the town, and offer their wares to a huge throng of locals, and interested parties from Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and NYC. We were there, at the Atherton Hilton, to attend the Arts Fest, which also included musical acts playing all over the place too.

Preceding this, Jen had come to stay with me and my family for several days in Gulph Mills (Philly 'burbs), and I had stayed for several days with the Strawsers in Liverpool, Pa. We had visited Center City, and South Street, just as I toured part of Central Pa. with Jen when stationed in Liverpool. Was I high as a kite the entire time these things were happening? I plead guilty, with an explanation. Ask my attorney.

Season in Hell: White Candle is also available as an individual mp3 file on PennSound.