Something Rather Than Nothing

From Page Stephenson: "Sometimes my life feels as though I am both the director and the directed. As I attempt to navigate the vast ocean of choices, I often find myself adrift. It's in these moments that inspiration often bubbles to the surface. My creative adventures have enabled me to collaborate with giants like Google, Red Bull, Patagonia, and Netflix. These projects have sent me around the globe, expanding my perspective beyond my wildest dreams. I have been fortunate enough to play with robotic arms, fast computers, remote aircraft, and even real movie cameras. For me, it isn't about the gear, brands, or crazy stories; it's the journey of the self. I spend my time lost in video games, cinema, and researching new tools of expression because I love doing so; it is a way of life and it has sculpted me.

Hopefully, I can sculpt a small bit in return."

M.J. Bassett is an English director, writer, and producer of film and television. She began her career directing the cult horror films Deathwatch and Wilderness, the dark fantasy Solomon Kane, and the video game adaptation Silent Hill: Revelation. Since 2012, she has worked as a director and writer on high-profile television series like Strike Back, Ash vs Evil Dead, Power and Altered Carbon. Check out ROGUE with Megan Fox and the upcoming RED SONJA movie!

Ben Tanzer's work includes the short story collection UPSTATE, the science fiction novel Orphans and the essay collections Lost in Space and Be Cool. Tanzer is a storySouth and Pushcart nominee, a finalist for the Annual National Indie Excellence and Eric Hoffer Book Awards, a winner of the Devil's Kitchen Literary Festival Nonfiction Prose Award and a Midwest Book Award, and has received an Honorable Mention at the Chicago Writers Association Book Awards for Traditional Non-Fiction and a Bronze Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. 

Tanzer has also also written for Hemispheres, Punk Planet, Men’s Health, and The Arrow, AARP’s GenX newsletter..

The Missing releasing March 21, 2024, nearly contemporaneous contemporaneously with this special episode release!

Philip Barasch has maintained a lifelong interest in sequential art. He is the creator of HandHewn, a magazine designed to explore the Graphic Short Story art form. His years in Portland, Oregon included involvement with The Stumptown Comic Book Convention, Sequential Art Gallery and Talisman Gallery. Philip and his wife, Charis, relocated to Astoria, Oregon in 2018. Charis departed this world in 2022, radically altering Philip's art form. He is now creatively consumed by this forced, revolutionary reinvention.

Guest host Kinneret Ely interviews opera star Nicholas Tamagna

Nicholas Tamagna’s meteoric rise in recent years has made him one of the world’s most fascinating alto voices. Highlights of the last few seasons were undoubtedly his interpretation of Ermano in the award-winning CD recording of Gismondo, re di Polonia (Leonardo Vinci) on the Parnassus label and its extensive concert tour, his MET debut in March 2020 in Sir David’s McVicar’s re-visited production of Händel’s Agrippina as Narciso, at the side of Joyce DiDonato, Harry Bicket, Kate Lindsey and Brenda Rae as well as the worldwide cinema broadcast of the performance and his spectacular interpretation of the Händel roles Ruggiero in Alcina and Silvio in Il Pastor Fido at the Händel Festival in Halle, Tolomeo in Giulio Cesare in Egitto at the Göttingen Händel Festival, and most recently his debut at Bayreuth Baroque 2022 as Timagene in the highly-acclaimed production of Vinci’s Alessandro nell’Indie from Max Emanuel Cenčić, at the side of Bruno de Sà, Franco Fagioli, and Jake Arditti. In future seasons, he will be heard at such prestigious houses as San Francisco Opera, Israeli National Opera in Tel Aviv, Theater an der Wien in Vienna, Austria, Pinchgut Opera in Sydney, Australia, and Bayreuth Baroque.

Chimen Kouri is a writer based in Cliffwood Beach, New Jersey. Her work has been featured in Goat’s Milk Magazine, Blood Moon Poetry, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and more. She fell in love with storytelling one Christmas morning during a power outage when she and her parents laid in bed while her father told stories about his life in Lebanon. She is currently writing two full-length poetry and prose collections, What Haunts Me the Most and The Old Dutchburn House, and her first novel, Miss America Is Burning. When she isn’t writing, you can find her cuddling her dogs and cats and rewatching The Last Kingdom on Netflix. For more of her work, check her out on Instagram 

TJ McGowan aka The Everyday Bite is a Bronx based writer, poet, and spoken word artist who has performed all over the Tri-State. His written work has been published in Flash Fiction Mag, Collective Unrest, 35MM, Mojave Heart, Vamp Cat, United: Red, BX Writers, to name a few. His body-autonomy poem, I Am Not Her Bones, and its incendiary performance was recipient of the 2019 Poem of the Year at the Word Masters Poetry Gala. The written version can be found in Wide Eyes Publishing's anthology, War Crimes Against the Uterus.

He has one full-length poetry collection, We Are Not One Thing, currently available for purchase. In addition to that, he is one half of the the trip-rock poetry and meditative metal duo, Subtle Bodies, most recently writing/directing the short poetic film for their debut EP, Apocalyptic Hearts.

When not slinging poetry or music, he spends his days as an Associate Producer for a Film & TV company based in NYC, contributing to script and creative copy on most of the productions that pass through the doors. He is also way more interesting than this bio, so come out to one of his shows and chop it up with him. Contrary to the stage name, he does not bite...unless provoked.

Mortal Emblem owner Olivia Britz-Wheat is a multimedia artist who has been tattooing for over 15 years in Portland. She hails originally from Colorado, attended college in Missoula, Montana until learning how to tattoo under Phil Roberson and Jed Dillon.

Enjoy this wide-ranging conversation and regale in thoughts about art, Depeche Mode, Portland, The Lloyd Center mystique and VHS love.

ART FUN with the hosts of the Baroque B**ches Podcast!

How much fun can you have on a podcast? I dunno but this was hella fun. Join this wildly ranging art, life, and raunch conversation to discover what you did not want to know but, really, c'mon, you actually really did want to know.

Art Scholarship for the People!!!

BB Website up in here

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Death is the high cost of living. The weight of that knowledge can feel crippling but is it there we find the deepest and most important knowledge of how to live?

After tragedy struck in 2013, Elizabeth Coplan turned to writing to express her personal grief. She wrote many published essays, and later, after experiencing three losses in less than a year, she turned to writing plays focused on this global experience known as death. In 2016, Elizabeth developed the groundbreaking play, Grief Dialogues, and built the nonprofit Grief Dialogues, a theatrical movement creating new conversations about dying, death, and grief.

Elizabeth is the script consultant, director, and producer for Juntos Nos Ayudamos/Better Together, a film about a Hispanic family surviving suicide. She is also the creator and the co-host of the podcast, Out of Grief Comes Art, and the Executive Producer of 8 AM, an award-winning short film on traumatic loss.

’Til Death, Elizabeth’s full-length play about one mother’s choice that unveils a family’s long-buried secrets, opens Off-Broadway in November 2023 under the direction of Chad Austin, Producing Director of the Abingdon Theatre. The play stars Two-Time Tony Award Winner Judy Kaye, Tony Award Nominee Robert Cuccioli, with Whitney Morse, Dominick LaRuffa Jr., Michael Lee Brown, TV and film star Amy Hargreaves.

In addition to an updated production of Grief Dialogues scheduled to open in New York City 2024, Elizabeth is currently working on The Book Club, a new play highlighting the lives of five senior women. She is collaborating with Ina Chadwick on The a Chronicles, a theatrical series of stories that spark conversations about women’s reproductive rights, and on a TV sitcom pilot Act Three, a coming-of-age story about a late-in-life emerging playwright. All before she turns 70 in June 2024.

Elizabeth Coplan