Monadnoc: Dog Mason (A Review)

Michael Haeflinger, August 31, 2007

A Life in Misery: Dog Mason: Spoken Word Recordings

From the first track of Dog Mason, it is not hard to imagine sitting across a table from Miguel Soria, the Chicago-based writer who released the album earlier this year under his performing name Monadnoc. You sit in a dimly-lit kitchen in a small cabin surrounded by acres of flat land. It’s a modest place with modest shelves that support antique cans, some containing dry goods that live on borrowed time. The existence of this place is owed to the possibility that someday a great Midwestern snow storm will lead to an intense period of hunkering down. Some of the cans are empty or hiding contraband or bullets the narrator will never want to use, but would if he had to.  He is a level man; his poems do not hunt for sport.

I was in Misery, he begins. Misery, the state southwest of Illinois. Home of Twain and St. Louie.  Rather than floating on a raft in the middle of a wide river, Soria sits in the middle of nowhere, constructing a 30-thousand page novel. Written in 10 days, Soria eventually transformed the novel into a collection of stories and poems, then into a spoken word album. A happy accident.

Soria only raises his voice above speaking level two or three times on the album. He cooly gives you enough of any situation to allow you the space to personalize it.  Things said to ex-girlfriends in unsent letters, sketches of street people, the intensity of escape—all of these things find a home in Soria’s work. He creates that place to where we sometimes want to retreat when the reality of city life bears too much rotten fruit.

Dog Mason sounds more like a Dust Bowl ballad than a spoken word album, the words supported by wistful acoustic guitar or occasional vocal effects. The mood is cool, mellow, and collected. Some of the pieces begin with epigrams that sound like unforced excuses. This supports the conversational delivery his gives the poems. One such intro:

    I remember writing this in DC balled up on a couch in a hallway, after having watched
    “Dig,” a documentary about Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols.  I don’t
     think they’re related at all.  It’s just how it happened.

sketches a beautiful thumbnail of location. The piece that follows (Devil by Death) is a series of psychedelic word acrobatics that leans in close to describe people who are not quite aligned with society. Some have bad teeth. Some use big words like “apoplectic.” Their language is both the language of the street and of academia and they are comfortable using the same sidewalks.

Location is important to Dog Mason’s ecology. Soria pays tribute on Begin Again, listing Chicago neighborhoods and their inhabitants. In some (…in Chinatown, they speak whatever language they damn well please…), the people are empowered, celebrated for giving back to the city more than they take. Others (…Lincoln Park and all her trixies wearing sexy black dresses and slinky black shoes) are typical, but not necessarily incorrect, especially when seen in context of the whole list. Sports fans funnel into Soldier Field, babies cry, Ukrainians do what Ukrainians do. Things happen in this city that we don’t even know about. Rather than try to imagine what those things are, Soria makes a good point about the segregated mentality of the city’s inhabitants. 

The poignancy is compounded when we remember that Soria is no longer in Chicago, that he writes this from a ranch in Missouri. What does it mean too be so many hours from home and to reflect on the city of your origin? What things do you see from a distance that are invisible to you when you are closer to them?

In Elizabeth, Dave (the banjo-playing travel companion) and the narrator nearly lose their minds looking at a light they mistake for an alien spaceship (it turns out to be the moon obscured by the trees). A local noodler comes by and invites them to the bar, an invitation they decline. The ensuing exchange of dialogue between the two that eventually leads them to the bar is among the funniest and most endearing use of language on the album.  Their initial excuse for not going, having much work to do (which is a great city reason for not doing things), is melted by the desire to get out of the house. They drink down a couple of beers, but when the guy who invited them in the first place, the noodler, arrives, they split. They have work to do. (N.B. A noodler is a fisher who fishes with his hands.) 

Personally, I would be very content with Mr. Soria if he never published a novel in his life. Or, I would happily make him a deal: publish all the books you want, but keep the albums coming. I thoroughly enjoy Dog Mason and raise a dusty glass to happy accidents.

You can find Monadnoc bumming around local open mics and can email him at monandnoc@gmail.com, or check him out at http://www.myspace.com/monadnoc  or http://www.monadnoc.ws/.  You can also catch one of his upcoming performances:

September 9, 2007 - 7:00 PM - The Orphanage
643 W. 31st St., Chicago, Illinois 60616 - $10 (donation)
w/ Gabriel Whiteturkey, Mike Krieglstein aka K-Nein, and Love, Claire

October 27, 2007 - 7:00 PM - Uptown Bill's Small Mall
401 S. Gilbert St., Iowa City, Iowa 52240 - $3
w/ TBD

Michael Haeflinger is the poetry editor for Chicago 6 Corners.  To submit work for publication, or to have a spoken word album reviewed for the webzine, contact him at poetry@chicago6corners.com. Thanks to Megan Chapman for assistance on this article.