Boiling Bat Blood was this years’ happening Halloween lit gathering and in case you missed it, here’s a recap. In celebration of the dead, and with the help of our friends, we lit up the night with some chilling harvest-themed readings and music at Stories Books & Cafe in Echo Park.
Buffy Visick channeled hipster ghosts of Echo Park reminding us to never stroll through Echo Park Lake alone at midnight. Claire McKeown sang us into a lull with her immaculate operatic voice and Anthony Ausgang read from H.P. Lovecraft to the embellishing musical accompaniment of the Cat Museum Literary Guild.
Set to the experimental guitar loops of resident band TÜLIPS‘ Angie Bloom, each Dummy also brought her own flavor of weird to the mix. Vivian recalled a compilation of dreams of a creepy Skeksis bird; roommate stealer and giant taco eater. Rose eerily echoed a reminder of that stuff we’re all made of, BLOOD, with a poem exhibiting the blunt realities of being a human. Yikes.
Liska’s “The Last Feast of the Harvest,” a short story told by the laptop fireplace made us feel warm in contrast, but still eloquently melancholy, aching for childhood and all those things that come to pass with the changing of the season. And Taleen topped it off with the crescendo of her five-piece micro series, “HOW-TO” about the stages of creepiest human sentiment. In a mini lit-rage, the performance ended with unified YELLING into the spooky, cold, costume-clad Echo Park night.
Boiling Bat Blood was presented by DUM DUM Zine and hosted by Daniel Austin Warren.