The Bad Penny (beta)

Praise be the wind

And the filth on it’s back

Paint the inside of my hallow body in holy mural

Like a gunshot wound crater

Like a Rothko

Like a fox pissing in a ditch

Her lungs inundated

She will try to cut the back of the wind she rides

Singing out…

Elizabeth A. Carver’s “I Commit to You God”

Consider for a moment how many songs and albums musicians create every single day or every single year. To put a twist on an the oft-used idiom, “finding a needle in a haystack” is almost laughable compared to finding musical gems in today’s infinite galaxy of songs (largely because the vast majority of them can be streamed or purchased for free).

But to cop from another cliché, great music can still bubble to the surface, if it’s remarkably captivating, if the artist takes pride in their craft and if they work hard enough chiseling it to perfect. Oh, and there’s that small matter of working hard too. Even amid the Internet Apocalypse, which continues to be sold to us as a means allowing every musician of however negligible quality to “make it big,” there are still glimmers of hope that transcend the terrible, trendy trappings of the modern era and give us hope that maybe, just maybe, every facet of creative endeavors isn’t rigged.