The Mark Baumer Celebration of Life – February 4
Saturday, February 4th at 2 PM at the Granoff Center at Brown University
All are welcome to join us for a celebration of the life of Mark Baumer
Please come out, we’d love to see you
Here’s a profile from the New Yorker on Mark and the tragic end to his beautiful life
Massive People / Comments Off on The Mark Baumer Celebration of Life – February 4
January 27th, 2017 / 1:09 pm
January 27th, 2017 / 1:09 pm
Everyone Please Stop Listening to the Money: An AOL Instant Messenger Interview with Mark Baumer
It is 19 days after the election. I go to the gym. I run on a treadmill. There are 26 screens. As I gaze into them, I enter podcasts where Americans speak about how they want to be seen. My body propels itself forward in place. I stare at a yellow wall, practicing Zazen. I want reality to fall away so that my listening and movement are symbiotic. In spite of this, I experience a cavernous feeling. It is a feeling like an architectural rendering where the edge of a building blurs into the sky.
On three of the 26 screens, CNN reports that the President-elect may terminate the agreement between the United States and Cuba. This possibility was announced in a tweet.
My body, running in place, accumulates miles.
Before and after the election, Mark Baumer is walking. Mark Baumer is crossing America with his bare feet. In a Snapchat message to Mark, I type: Do you have shoes with you, and if so, what kind are they? Slip ons called fit kicks, he says. I only put them on when I go into stores.
This is not the first time Mark has walked across the country. He did so six years ago, but not without shoes. Walking is part of Mark’s writing practice. Have you ever seen someone write with their feet?
As he walks, Mark nonviolently protests. “My goal […] is to stop the earth from dying because of climate change,” he writes. “I’m sure a lot of people don’t think I can make it across America barefoot and probably even more doubt I will be able to defeat climate change with this journey, but something deep inside of me is telling me to do this so I will do my best to listen to this voice inside of me and ignore all the voices outside of me who don’t believe in me.”
In a time of black mirrors, cavernous feelings, and running in place, Mark’s project strikes me as both very funny and dire in its seriousness—a source of light in the dark. If anyone can perform the super-heroic act of stopping climate change without shoes, it’s Mark. READ MORE >
Blake Butler—
Mark Baumer tried to get funds on Kickstarter to write 50 books in one year. It didn’t get funded. He’s writing them anyway and releasing them one at a time. You can read them online and you can buy them. I love Mark Baumer.
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Fund Mark Baumer’s 50 Books in 1 Year
The first and only Kickstarter I’ll probably ever pledge to fund:
Blake Butler—
@ Urlesque, Mark Baumer is interviewed about his walk across America: “Q What surprised you about your trip? A: People are good and god might be real.”
Mike Young—
I know we already linked to it, but Mark Baumer’s walk-across-America trekblog is awesome.
4 Loonmachines
1. New online edition of Gigantic Magazine is now live for May.
2. DC’s exhibits 50 treehouses
3. Mark Baumer is walking and blogging across America from coast to coast (for real, he just started this weekend)
4. Amelia Gray’s constraint writing & media for this week at Everyday Genius
An Open Letter to Carl’s Jr. from Mark Baumer
[Mark Baumer, of the Brown MFA Blog sends word of his current project, a consummation with the Carl Jr’s of the US. He also recently wrote to Chic-fil-A and got a response. He’s a slut. — BB]
Dear Carl’s Jr.,
There are a little more than 1,000 Carl’s Jr. restaurants in the United States. I would like to visit each one this summer. Please give me one-thousand free meals to Carl’s Jr. If you do I will only eat Carl’s Jr. this summer. You know how sometimes old people talk about the ‘summer of love’? Someday, when I grow old, I would like to talk about ‘summer of carl’.
I have a friend. His name is ‘Karl’. I think I will ask him to change his name to ‘Carl’ if you give me one-thousand free meals to Carl’s Jr.
If you don’t give me one-thousand free meals to Carl’s Jr. I think I will kill a Chinaman. I just read this Hemingway book, To Have and Have Not, and a guy named Johnson stiffs this fisherman named Harry Morgan $800 and Harry doesn’t have any money so he kills a Chinaman. If you don’t give me one-thousand free meals to Carl’s Jr. I will be hungry and I will kill a Chinaman and eat him.
I’m looking at the Carl’s Jr. Wikipedia page. There is a picture of the Carl’s Jr. in Rancho Cordova, California. That sounds like a cool place. I’m glad you put a Carl’s Jr. in that town. I look forward to eating at Carl’s Jr. in Rancho Cordova.
The other day I was reading this book by James Baldwin about a black man who is in jail. It made me pause. I started thinking, “If Carl’s Jr. can afford to give me one-thousand free meals then they can afford to give some black man who just out of jail one-thousand free meals.” I think you should give me and a black man who just got out of jail one-thousand free meals each. The two of us will then drive around and eat at every Carl’s Jr. in the United States this summer. I will write a book about the experience. It will probably be a #1 best seller. Tyler Perry will buy the movie rights. The book will be called Summer of Carl. I think the black man will be named Carl. Tyler Perry will probably change the name of the book when he turns it into a movie. Maybe he will call it: Angry Black Woman Mouthing Carls.
Anyway, I think this is a good business proposal. I want to win a million dollars. Give it to me.
Sincerely,
Mark
How to become the most famous author in the world, a guest post by Mark Baumer
Mark Baumer, of Everyday Yeah and the Brown MFA blog, writes in with some tips on writing gleaned from what last week or the week before was the #1 movie in America…
John Cusack or Jackson Curtis wrote a book called Farewell Atlantis. In the year 2012, according to the movie 2012, it will become the most famous book in the world. Everything I’ve read about Jackson Curtis leads me to believe he was very forward thinking. It was obvious from watching the movie that he had planned his rise in the publishing game long before the world came to an end and flooded and repositioned itself despite an original print run of less than 500 copies.
Here is a list of everything Jackson Curtis did to become the world’s most famous author. I’d like to point out that this list doubles as a nice how-to guide for becoming the most famous living author after the world has killed itself.
1. A few days before the end of the world wake up late and make excuses about the traffic when your ex-wife calls and asks why you having picked up the kids yet.
2. Take the limo when your Jeep doesn’t start.
3. Wave to the plastic surgeon dude who is boning your ex-wife only because his skills are important later in the movie.
4. Drive limo to Yellowstone National Park while singing songs with daughter in the front seat. Ignore your son in the backseat. He is being a little douche bag. Let him listen to the music. Don’t worry, he won’t be completely useless his whole life.
5. At Yellowstone, climb over fences marked with trespassing signs. Ignore the dead elks roasting on the former lake where you and your wife used to have sex.
6. Make friends with the head scientist for the United States who is leading up the investigation on the end of the world. This will only be possible if the head scientist’s father has already read your book and has given it to his son. Make sure the father of the head scientist investigating the end of the world has read your book before you trespass at Yellowstone.
7. Ask your daughter if she still wets the bed.
8. Hang out in Woody Harrelson’s camper. Take his last beer.
9. Bring kids home early when ex-wife freaks out over an earthquake at the supermarket.
10. Don’t believe the government when they say, “The worst is over.”