Writer • Musician
Tales from the Road
Ren Michael · When I Come Home To You Drum.beat The sound is something of dreams, unusual yet deeply familiar. of something seemingly far but well within. Its like this, I write of the cosmos the music reflecting the land, the city the elements. As I am a force of nature, we are nature All …
I was born in Miami, lived there till I was about three, then lived in the western end of Broward County outside the Everglades, right on the borderline of that greater swampland running from the southern tip of the peninsula to Lake Okeechobee. New Orleans felt like an extension of that in some way, maybe …
This morning here we are on the FTL flight to LAX, heading west. The west: romantic, epic, and mythological. The west, prolonging the morning. Keeping the day young. In the pre-Columbian past, east and west didn't exist in these terms, not like we think of them today. To the Europeans, all of America might have …
Continue reading "The east is history. The west is myth. (Tales of two: east and west)"
Interlaken, Switzerland I rode into Interlaken at sundown and spent my first and only night there at the Funny Farm. That’s the youth hostel where I booked my stay, because with a name like that, it was hard to resist. Interlaken’s a resort town made for the outdoors and for the outdoor enthusiast—not exactly …
Continue reading "The Switzerland Papers #1: High Times at the Funny Farm"
Tucked away on California’s central coast, just a mile or so south of San Simeon leading into Big Sur, the small seaside village of Cambria is home to great people, beautiful weather and stunning coastal shoreline. For all you romantic lovers out there looking for a sweet spot for anniversaries or maybe your Valentines weekend, …
Note from the Editor: Cal Corso. Actor, poet, frenetic wild child and the natural leader of this band of hooligans. Orphaned as a small boy and raised by his aunt. Moved to California in 2017 accompanied by Jude Moonlight where he fell in with an odd assortment of characters and has since been leapfrogging from …
Last night I stepped into a carnival. Quite literally. We were coming in from downtown and as we emerged from the LA underground at the Santa Monica/Vermont metro station we found ourselves surrounded by neon lights and funnel cake, bumper cars and clowns. The damn clowns. Anyone who knows me well knows that I’ve developed …
My first recollection is the steam rising ominously from the surface, from the pools that weren't visible from where I initially stood just before I started toward them. I call them pools because at first glance, that's what they looked like. Beautiful to look upon. Clear and strikingly blue. They reminded me of the waters …
I don’t often post in the moment because I‘m either without reception or—most of the time—too caught up in the moment itself. This was a combination of the two, though by the looks of it, I am in the middle of taking a picture. Needless to say, I post a lot of pictures after the …
Inspiration has many faces, and sometimes it can leave you spellbound to the point that you see no reason to do anything else, because you feel the overwhelming feeling that everything’s been done already. It’s why I’m wary of museums. Of course it’s a matter of perspective, depending on the individual and the choices they …
A Lesson in Presence The sky was cast in a deep azure glow, illuminating the dark outline of the clouds at night, just above the aura of gold shining from the lights below. This was Plaza Mayor, in the heart of the old town, where people drank wine and champagne, smoked cigars, ate good food, …
I looked for the center of the city. I wanted to see where everyone congregated in the capital, so I started toward Plaza Mayor and Puerta del Sol. The first thing I noticed was that the streets were very narrow, romantic like something out of a movie. Every so often a dude zipped by on …
My feet were in Madrid. My head was lost somewhere in the woods of America. Technically I had no home, and for the better part of a month, I’d been on the road before heading to Europe. I'd left the west coast. I'd grown to love it, but the world outside was calling. I started …
Visions of Vltava (Moldau) I returned to the front desk the next morning and asked Orsolya for a few recommendations on things to do in town. I was interested in hearing some music, and I asked her for the best places to go and whether it was easy to get tickets to the State Opera …
I wrote these poems in the last few pages of a brown, tattered old pocket journal that I kept with me as I started into the Sierra Nevada, heading out of California and toward the east coast; seeing for the first time everything from General Sherman Tree to Yosemite Valley and the Tuolumne Meadows. I wrote …
I got to the hostel around 8. It was built into the top two floors of an otherwise mostly vacated building just a few blocks south of Andrassy Avenue, the main drag running through town. When I say town, I mean Pest, which flanks the east side of the River Danube. Together with Buda, on …
My first order of business was to find the hostel I’d booked the night before. Knowing that maps/GPS wouldn’t work since I didn’t buy a data plan--and I wouldn’t have wi-fi unless I camped out at a cafe for a few minutes--I took a screenshot of the pinned location on the map the night before …
We’d heard news that the city was flooded with refugees seeking asylum from war-torn Syria. Everyone I spoke to was persuading me not to go to Budapest. But I had roots there, and I’d never been as to close to it as I was then. It was only a 7-hour train ride from Prague, so …
Dear Cal, Man this jazz kick is great. Some album that I’m listening to with Miles Davis and Coltrane. I know they played together a few times before ol’ John blew up and went out on his own, before A Love Supreme and Blue Train. The French, the Parisians in particular have been known to …
Continue reading "Light in the Dark. Impressions and Illuminations in la Ville Lumière"
On the Move, and at Peace By Cal Corso | Reading a book on Albert Einstein and I’m thinking about Vienna, listening to Liszt's transcription for the piano of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Right now I’m in the second movement of the symphony. And yea that sounds about right now, don’t it? I am sort of …
Ren Michael 