Standing room only at Noveltown "Stories From Dust" literary event - By N.L. Belardes

Noveltown's "Stories From Dust" was held at Russo's

What’s in a book? An artistic cover with pages spit out by a big press, all in perfect binding? I flip through pages. I’m not looking at a novel, but a book of poetry—not the biggest seller in any publishing market. Yet inspiring, deliberate—the words gyrate, swivel, Elvis-style across the pages into my consciousness; descended from performance to published artform through Heyday Books—there goes T.Z. Hernandez Skin Tax talking to me, performing for me, just from looking at the words. He performed his own words in Bakersfield recently and people cried in the audience just from the energy of his performance.

Yet it’s still poetry.

And you hate poetry. When it comes to Bakersfield art you’d rather turn the page, shove the book in between a stack of People magazines, or get focused altogether somewhere different—like the drowning of a little girl in a local park of the affluent. It’s not that her death is more important to you than a local Bakersfield rock band, or a Roger Mathey Seat of Your Pants theatre production. You’re not going to her funeral anyway. You don’t even know her name. You don’t remember how many brothers and sisters she had, what school she went to, or what her favorite donut was. You just think it’s about stupid parents, or an egotistical city waving lawyers at you like Johnny Depp pirate flags. Who do you trust? And you get caught up in the media hype.

Other than that little girl, poets have it the toughest.

Many people don’t understand performance poetry—that a poet can literally make words in a page transform, jump into a 3-dimensional manifestation of voice, movement, and words. If there’s energy in a room, then the poet—just like the frontman rockstar in any band—can feed off such energy and even reconnect that energy back to the audience. Many of my readers won’t understand until they see video, hear the words of Tim Z. Hernandez in a podcast. Many wont understand just by reading what I’m about to share. This won’t even be the most popular of Paperback Writer blog entries. But it’s perhaps the most important I have written in the year-and-a-half of writing online articles.


Russo's display shined with promotional posters,
Central Valley poetry and novels


Chairs were full


Standing room only at "Stories From Dust"

“Stories From Dust” was that important to the Vision 2020 cultural growth of Bakersfield.

Poetry is an extension of literary prose. And prose? Prose makes up the energy of books, film, the voice of music, the complex dialogue phrases of theatre plays, and more. Prose is really what I love to share. It’s part of what you’re reading, because I don’t write like most journalists. With prose, there is a marriage to poetry, and many poets crave to share their words, to connect to the people around with their own thoughts.

And you still hate poetry…

“Stories From Dust” was born quickly, quietly, through an email seed that blossomed into an event where many in the current dusty Bakersfield summer were inspired to suddenly share performances, music, stories, poetic thoughts, and tears. It was an event that fused more than poetry to the audience. For me and Noveltown, it wasn’t just about the poetry. I told a friend, “Poetry played a minor role, though headliner Tim Z. Hernandez is a giant among performers to hit Bakersfield and share poetry. The event for Noveltown was about showing the community that as community supporters, we could progressively fuse music, prose, media, local businesses, performance, storytelling, film, and poetry. I think if you ask the attendees, the event meant something different to each person present. The common thread was cultural renaissance.”


Sharing the idea of "Stories From Dust"


Supportive family showed up and understood...

One attendee commented,

I was at the event too for most of it. Very inspirational—I didn't expect it to last so long—I felt bad I had to leave when Tim just started presenting. I stayed for one of his readings, he's pretty awesome. Even picked up one of his books as I left. NL, the piece you read was a tearjerker. Though I didn't have as rough a childhood, I could feel the anguish. Quite moving... saw a woman in the audience just crying! I picked up a copy of Lords… Mento Buru was great as always and the ladies at the table were a pleasure to talk to. Thanks, chingpea for directing me to NL's blog and letting me know a little bit more about Noveltown…Anyway, I hope you have more events like this. It's about time Bakersfield has stuff like this happening. Some of us youth don't like just barhopping... we like to feed our minds too…

The event was supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. and took place at Russo’s Books on June 28.



Matt Munoz is a storyteller and he kicked off the event at Russo’s Books with storytelling and acoustic music. He’s from McFarland, was in marching bands and a punk band as a youth, and through the years has taken ska into new Latino directions by surrounding himself with great musicians and an expert knowledge of music and improvisational skills. I call him the Ska King, but maybe he’s really a master of jazzody (time to make up a new word): prose and improvisational music all in a Latino-influenced whirlwind of sound. He has the strength and passion of a true curious musical mind, and though I’d argue about his short-term memory, his knowledge and memory of music and Southern Central Valley music history is extremely profound.


Interviewing the Ska King


The storytelling of Matt Munoz

I’m currently reading the book, Blithe Tomato: An insider’s wry look at farmer’s market society by Mike Madison. Inside, Madison gives rich storytelling in anecdotes that reveal the true nature of life for at least one small farmer in California. His work is filled with humor, passion and gives you a zest for farming, or at least for the small farmer who endures the struggles of a life toiling the land. Maybe you wouldn’t want to have a war against gophers, albeit a sometimes tragic comedy for Madison; but you’ll gain a respect for how he makes his life work in a tough job that he often views as a labor of love.

Why am I throwing in an anecdote about Blithe Tomato here? Because there is a key to understanding aspects of life we don’t always understand, that we take for granted because we partake in the finished product. We place food on our table, or we wear certain clothes, and even listen to music, often without an inkling of understanding where such creations come from. The same is for poetry too. We forget that the really good poetry we read and hear is woven from experiences, not just pulled out of the air to cry about lost love.

There’s a humor and passion in storytelling about Bakersfield music that makes it a world all its own, that we take for granted unless we hear someone like Matt Munoz pause, as he did, between songs, to speak to us about his life, music, and how such developed into the culturally sound Latino music that it is today so filled with ska, funk, reggae, and punk. Matt Munoz told us stories as if sitting in a living room band practice among friends. He paused to improvise, stopping to explain a riff or a melody, and even inserted his own historical details, even the history of the Central Valley and some of its rich architectural and cultural changes that have occurred right before our eyes.

Ah, the Ricky Ricardo of the Central Valley, such a skaliscious storyteller and crooner…

Matt Munoz seems able to catalog stories in his mind that when asked at the “Stories From Dust” event, he turned on an imaginary tap to the past that for many of us attending, poured Central Valley and music history for the first time.

How can I even begin to express how knowledgeable and entertaining the beginning of the event was? We heard Matt, some of the members from Mento Buru, and two extremely talented guests from Visalia: Carlos Rodriguez from Mezcal, and Rudy Parris who regularly plays with Hank Williams III.


Rudy Parriss and Carlos Rodriguez

Mesmerizing. And the music didn’t stop with Matt’s incredible storytelling.

“Stories From Dust” then went on to Eduardo Arena Silvera’s incredible Spanish poetry that was accompanied by improvisational music from the musicians. Eduardo appeared slightly nervous. Yet his voice rose with the energy of the music, and eventually, he spoke with the confidence of a troubadour giving a poetic speech to a kingly court.


Eduardo Arena Silvera

Bakersfield has likely never witnessed such an improvised speaking and performing event.

Greg Goodsell also exercised his poetic talent. He gave a stirring performance of childhood classroom fears. His piece was both startling and humorous. The audience was mostly used to hearing stories and poems read, not performed with such vivacity. When his voice shrieked at a feverish pitch, attendees literally wanted to hide beneath their chairs.

In the end we all heard Greg Goodsell share poetic childhood memories that normally could only be heard in Slam Fests.


Greg Goodsell scares the bajeezus out of everyone with his
Performance art tales of schoolhouse woe


And don't forget the debut of Cerro Coso's Metamorphoses journal.
We gave lots of those away...

I gave a reading of prose—because I wanted prose to be fused to the music, performance, poetry, media and storytelling of the event. Yes, media too. There were representatives from Zowietown, Paperback Writer, MÁS Magazine, Channel 17, Channel 29, Channel 58, Bakersfield.com and Bakotopia. I read from the e-book, Thick White Crust:

Months later at the University I saw visions of both my mother and father. These visions began with the young me sitting isolated, pale, staring at the walls in the ghetto-house I used to live in—its rolling green carpet full of folds beneath my cold feet, as if it too huddled to keep warm in our unheated house. I could see myself on a torn leather couch where I contemplated my young dreams of growing up to be an artist, a writer, and not a truck driver like my father who often drove to the ends of the Earth and back. I swore he did. His truck rattled as he drove it and kicked dust up into the god-eye when it was awake, and pressed muck further into the god-eye while it slept. I knew father would drive to the tips of the starry universe where high above the clouds was a large platform, and in my mind, he would gaze over its edge where dust dropped like stars from his boots into infinity. I could see visions of my mother stretch her white arms into the room. She grew like a giant, and her arms, still raised, seemed to go through the ceiling, and up toward the white and blue of the sky that fell upon the roof of our home in South Bakersfield. White and cloud-like her pale arms reached and reached; and as she yawned and then smiled, she stretched even higher until there was a final creak of her elbows and her smooth arms came downward, back from the infinite sky to grip around me tightly.

“Such a little boy. Let me pick you up,” she would say as her eyes shone toward me. I always noticed her eyes—always that same look beneath her fragile hair, the same golden that filled my little head with amazement. I was like a kitten, purring, staring at her eyes as if they were great balls of bright string turned into stars; I was fixated, entranced, in love. She was there—her open-eyed suns washing me, never dissipating, and never the Tule fog of the Southern San Joaquin’s cold mystical mist.

She picked me up and carried me to the patio where she brushed dried mud from my pants. I had been outside with my brother. She knew we had been digging tunnels through the dirt, using water to soften the ground so our hands could easily claw into the earth beneath the backyard weeds. We had dug and dug. Our heads pushed right next to the ground; mud stuck under our eyes like shadows; we spit as our mouths filled with the muck of rich topsoil as we reached deeper into the ground to pull out worms and rocks.

The dead of the valley danced into our eyes back then. Here was our city yard of dust, our sandy dirt yard, our foxtails yellowed by the summer sun. If you dug deep enough back then, you could find the thick dark soil that cakes the valley’s soul. And deeper still, through the thick white crust of skeleton bones, possibly to the hard eye of the spirit itself, to scratch the surface of the cornea upon which our valley rests: on the eye of the dead sea spirit whose bearded head sometimes shifted side-to-side to see the oil pipes penetrating toward its spirit mind, where with the slight turn of its head could shake the curve of the valley and cause dust and disease to rise into the smoggy Southern San Joaquin air. That was the giant beneath us, beneath Bakersfield, beneath the skeleton bones. We were close to its god-eye surface every time we dug. We just knew. And so mother picked me up after dusting me off, and held me close.

This was our home in a ghetto off South Chester Avenue, near Union Avenue, near old highway 99; ours was a house built into the ground like our own dreams of tunnels and mud; dried like a foxtail—yellowed paint on the exterior walls—brown stains, including aged egg yolk that once dripped down into brick-walled marigold flowerbeds, and then deeper into the earth, toward the giant eye buried beneath us.


Reading some of my own prose

Russo’s Poets, a large group under Jen Williams leadership collectively wrote, “On Any Given Wednesday”, a self tribute to their Wednesday night poetry meetings in the form of a chap book that you can purchase at Russo’s. At “Stories From Dust” Russo’s Poets shared poems that many had written specially for the event. I really enjoyed a poem about Valley Fever that was both engaging and well-written. Other poems touched on life, travel, and even Cesar Chavez and cowboys. Such readings were all truly “Stories From Dust”.







What can I say about T.Z. Hernandez? He was the headliner who stole the show. Sure, Matt Munoz and even I tried to pull the carpet out from under T.Z.’s feet. But we failed. He swooned, swaggered, danced, and acted out each line as he read from Skin Tax with the energy of the music pulsing through his male libido. Yes ladies, he was sexy. Originally slated to read for only ten minutes, he gave the Noveltown/Russo’s/Poets & Writers, Inc. event thirty minutes of pure poetic passion that made eyes peer inward to the soul of machismo, non-machismo, and anti-machismo—depending on your interpretation of his interpretation.






While T.Z. talks, chingpea and Matildakay of Noveltown
watch on (You can add the ladies of Noveltown on
myspace: myspace.com/noveltown)

T.Z. performed from the soul of his all-seeing poetry eye. His own Central Valley experiences jumped from page to music to voice and movement. He took ideas and shaped them into the music, and even gave the Ska King and friends time to improvise, to shine, to carry the poetic moments to new shimmering, scintillating word heights—with just the resonance of a poetic line left to ponder in musical moments that reflected the passion of his words. They carried each other.









Yes, you still might hate poetry. You might hate prose and even dislike music and storytelling. Maybe you only read Paperback Writer for the controversy.

Yet, after such an event, I can say you missed something.

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Sunday, July 09, 2006. You can leave your response.