Music touches everything. It pervades our memory, accompanies us through emotion and history, and becomes the lens through which we understand culture or politics. The essays in "Read the Music" are just as wide-ranging. The book kicks off with a ride through the post-9/11 landscape alongside Tori Amos and 12 cover songs she calls "girls," and concludes with a treatise on "Zoon," the album by British death-metal outfit Nefilim that retells an ancient Apocryphal text. In between, there's dialogue with Russian heiress Anastasia Romanov on the nature of trauma survival, the songs that might be sung by a robotic girl in love with the world, and a trip to the deepest part of the Scandinavian winter. If you've ever loved music, if you've ever found it seeping into every aspect of your life, then you will understand "Read the Music," even if you've never heard these songs before.
I'm an author, journalist, poet, and mom. I've worked as a reporter for several San Francisco Bay Area newspapers, including the San Francisco Examiner and the San Mateo Daily News. In the 1990s, I worked as a music writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, Addicted to Noise, ROCKRGRL, and others.
I'm the author of several books, including Beloved, Read the Music: Essays on Sound, and Sacred Sonoma. My poetry has appeared in New Verse News, Terrain, Tertulia, Bardsong, Dispatch, and Lime Green Bulldozers.
I'm currently writing a book for parents that explains how Satanism, Grand Theft Auto, and Cannibal Corpse can be a healthy part of growing up. My blog, Backward Messages, focuses on media misinformation about violent video games, paganism, heavy metal, goth culture, RPGs, teen literature, and more -- and how this misinformation can hurt adolescents.
I live in San Francisco with my partner and daughter.
