About the Author

Michael Williams
Nov 25
7 min read

andy pink, almost alive after a rye everything bagel, callus, fla —

no one has visited the site for several days despite the google ad campaign that even according to google has done nothing for the website. i'm tempted to cancel the help. i think the site is quality, so i'm not sure why no one checks it out, or at least lands on it accidentally. obviously the google ads are not helping. what would help? i have abandoned the website several times over the last 10 years, only bringing it online again about 4 months ago, i think. it's disappointing. it's not a diary — the blog isn't even a diary — it's intended for public consumption, so the fact that no one reads it makes me feel empty. i will survive. but i may take it offline the server and make it a wix site, which would further doom it.

if rich is still reading, i thought i would write about myself, give him a bit of a biography that really isn't present in any of the writing i've done for him and others. i realize that if this entry is going to make Hallucinations of Desire, i actually have to say something of substance, it can't be all form and play and letters and no story or thesis. some of the entries in the "fact sheet" have a story or a point or a purpose, but as i read them all over again, there is a lot of vapid blankness to the entries, they feel to me like they are just punning and play, without any serious content or consequence. part of that is my illness: it's easy to get lost in the play of words when the sign is detached from the referent. it is as if nothing is real, or everything is simulation. i tend to believe that, but there's a whole substance to my life story that ends up being obliterated in the suspension of the world. this substance will be important to any chance reader of Hallucinations of Desire, and so if i can run the story now, even if it comes late in the book, that will be helpful to that reader who wants a content rather than merely a form, even if the form is the substance of the topic of Hallucinations of Desire. this is a sketch.

Why would rich care about this? I don't know. I can't really fathom what to write to him at this point that would convince him to come over and hang out. i am losing the haldol weight. i am at about a buck sixty, which is good, and will be down to one forty five soon enough. there's some hangup there, with rich, and i can't discern it. but here's some of my biography, for Hallucinations and for rich:

I grew up in brookline, massachusetts, I was originally in somerville, when my parents had me, but we moved to brookline when i was two or so. my dad was eager to get us into the brookline schools (probably less enthused to have us become friends exclusively with jews, but whatever). my dad was a red cab driver (they are still around even amidst uber and lfyt), and he worked for red cab for most of my childhood up until he passed away, when i was seven and he was 37. my mom was a nurse, she worked at beth israel for a long time, in the maternity ward, and then later moved to different clinics, one memorably in chelsea, where the office would go out to drinks at mob restaurants and have alcoholic coffees for lunch. my sister was born when i was 3, she was for the most part the love of my life, when my parents told me that she was coming, i said that she would be my best friend, and she was, she later died in 2020. now, it is just me and my mom and my stepfather, everybody is retired (except me), and it's kind of a tiny family as it stands. i was also raised by my grandmother, esther, who was a librarian at brookline high school, where i was a student, and she was a very disciplined woman, who was so kind and loving to me and my sister (my mom had friction with her). my stepfather never married my mother after my father died, this irritated my grandmother quite a bit, and there was always strife there, too.

my parents were first cousins, so my family sides are essentially one side. in other words, my mother married her mother's brother's son, it's that easy, if you want to try it. my paternal (?) grandfather was a unitarian minister, he studied at meadville, and later became a professor at harvard, he wrote the original scholarship on the protestant revolution, and also a biography of john paul ii, the pope. he was in the divinity school at harvard for his career, and later basically died there. i learned to hate him, and have nothing good to say about him except that he probably helped me get into harvard divinity school (i declined the offer). my other, maternal (?) grandfather was also a unitiarian minister (as was my great-grandfather, who authored a book entitled "faith beyond humanism," which for a book published in the early twentieth century is a pretty good text). my maternal grandfather, homer (i'll give you his name), was also a civil rights activist and nuclear disarmement activist, working with king on non-violent protests, he won the japanese peace price in 1973. both of my grandfathers were kind of big deals. you can see that my parents failed. i also failed, i have a little press name that i publish under, no tenure position, no university press book, and don't make any money. my uncle, alex, runs a press, one peaceful world, and publishes mostly on diet (macrobiotics) but also on literature and philosophy, he adopted a daughter from russia, who later had many babies, she moved back to russia with her kids, alex remarried and moved to slovakia. my grandmother, esther, who partially raised me, went to oberlin and became a social worker and then, as i mentioned, librarian. she lived with us in the house in brookline, growing up. my other grandmother (my dad's mother) also went to oberlin, and she was sort of a housewife to george, my paternal grandfather at harvard, and did the bills and the house. another uncle became an architect — estranged from — and his wife, my aunt, i'm not sure what she does, i'm estranged from her too. my mother's favorite cousin, portia, had a hard time: her husband and daughter fell through soft ice on a lake in western mass just 3 weeks before christmas and drowned (1973). she was 8 months pregnant with my cousin heidi. tragedy, not unlike what happened to my dad and sister (both suicides). heidi, my cousin, is a scientist and works on climate change, and her sister, my cousin, lucia, who is estranged from both of us, is an environmental scientist and author at amherst. portia's wife, tom, who died in the drowing accident, was a professor at yale in literature. portia wrote the introduction to his posthumously published book on "the romantic sublime." i can't make hardly anything of that text. my other cousins, dinah and emory, do local things. my sister, molly, was a first grade teacher in the newton schools, and she was the funniest person in america. there is a street in moscow named after my great-uncle for his work during the bolshevik revolution and the book he wrote in its aftermath.

as you can see, i'm pretty much a failure when i'm compared to my family, it's not a great feeling, it wasn't like this like 10 years ago when i was still coming up, i was in grad school, everything was possible, and the like, but since then it's really been a crappy feeling. i'm looking to be recognized (part of all of us is, i think) but it's not really happening. i am grateful for the teaching jobs i have had — particularly at berklee where i imprinted, and emerson, but now i'm teaching online, and my special brand of charisma and persuasion is somewhat lost on my audience these days. i'm really happy with my books, i've worked hard on them, the little ones, and the first book, the big "pervert-schizoid-woman," is really good because it is so inventive, that's really the key to what i like to do, create, and that book is in line with that purpose, as are the smaller other books.

i was very happy as a child, even when my dad died. i always had a lot of friends, was very smart and funny, and enjoyed my family (the small nuclear one, even my stepfather), and all of the people around. our unitiarian church in brookline was very supportive of my family when my father died — they brought all kinds of food and flowers and the like — and it was a real community over there, though i wouldn't say i'm religious in any way at this point (perhaps against my better judgment) — and if i'm spiritual it's mostly bereft of a common thinking community. at swarthmore, where i went to undergrad, i went to a few of the quaker mtgs, kind of a weird scene, but i liked it, but i found most of my community at college in theatre and in my work on my major, which was sort of originally in "interpretation theory" (which was a small rather elitist concentration) and then in "cultural studies," even though most of my classes were literature and philosophy. in high school i was a drama god, leads in all of the pretentious plays (and "workshops") that we did at brookline high, and i had a lot of friends, many of whom remain my closest allies. grad school was a total blast — in rochester, ny — and i continued along with my studies until i finished there, taught at the eastman school of music, then moved to montreal for a 3-yr stint at concordia university (anglo) before moving back to boston and living variously in brookline, somerville, brighton, allston, watertown, and cambridge. i got jeff, my 5 year old rescue, a few years ago, and i live in simple housing on hurley in kendall, off of cambridge street. i am a generally happy person, with good friends and good family, but it would be nice to have a boyfriend, even a weird-looking one.

what i am looking for: basically, funny, but also smart and mutually-supportive. i'm also looking for a collaborator on art/science/literature/philosophy type projects. i have worked in coffee shops, restaurants, diners, a donut shop, cvs, bruegger's, hair salon. i really do not have any money. though i am currently saving up for my disney world trip with rich.