SHE BUILT IT. LET HER HAVE IT.

SHE BUILT IT. LET HER HAVE IT.

In Voyage of the Waistgold, Phineas Krull, a poisoner and pirate, steals a ship he sees at the docks. With a waistband of gold around its gunwales, the ship is unlike anything he’s seen.

 

‘Tis not just the wheel what’s becrusted with gems,

For the ebony beams sport fat emeralds in rows

Seemin’ lit from behind inside finely carved scrolls

Among faces, creatures, temples, odd leaves,

And wrought geometrics o’ the Golden Mean.

 

In a blood-soaked book Phineas reads who ordered it built: young Ood, an orphaned enchantress queen from far to the north. According to the book, she’s probably dead. Her land was in flames when the scribe who wrote the book escaped.

The problem is, it turns out Queen Ood is very much alive. And once she does the impossible and finds Krull on the open sea, she wants her boat back. He lets her and her soldiers come aboard. A confrontation soon follows.

 

“I’d like you to leave,” she says, facin’ the windows,

Unwillin’ to share any truths in ‘er eyes.

“As ye wish, lady queen. Ye may sleep in this cabin.

Know this, though: The Waistgold, tomorrow at dawn,

Sets ‘er sails as she was, ‘fore your boats come a’flyin’.

We’s still headin’ west. Ye can fight, leave or ride.

So please do consider just what ye might do

To avoid unpleasantries fer ye and yer crew.”

 

She understands the danger she faces demanding what is now a pirate ship. It’s the beginning of an astonishing relationship.

I’ll be performing Voyage of the Waistgold in one week, at Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square. In this original fantasy world, I’ll perform the tale in pirate patois, with Phineas Krull as the narrator. If you come, be sure to bring a thick skin; this story is guaranteed to leave no one unoffended. It’s adult fun.

Have some food and drink, and then be among the first to experience this tale.

Odds Bodkin

Voyage of the Waistgold

Sunday, Jan. 27, 2022 at 5 pm EST

Grendel’s Den in Cambridge MA

Tickets $35

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If You’re in Boston…

If you’re in Boston this February 27th, make your way to Harvard Square. There, tucked away down a set of brick stairs, you’ll find Grendel’s Den, a legendary watering hole. You’ll see a small stage beneath lights that sports a lectern and a microphone. Be sure you’re vaccinated (they won’t let you in otherwise) and find your table. You might even be given a free test kit, new from MIT.

Music will be playing over the sound system, but it won’t be long before I’ll appear onstage and the music will fade. I won’t have my usual 12-string guitars or harp; instead, I’ll open a simple manuscript.

“Voyage of the Waistgold: An Untrue Tale in Doggerel Rhyme by Odds Bodkin,” I’ll begin in my ordinary American English, the one I use to talk to people in the real world. “Chapter One: The Builderguilder’s Boat.”

Ah, but then, Captain Phineas Krull will begin to speak. He’s a terrible, murderous pirate on a fantastical sea, my narrator and the one who lives my 90-minute adventure. His voice is rough and gritty. He even sounds dangerous.

“So I hires me a crew o’ drug suckin’ thieves/To help me to steal ‘er, that fine filly ship./With one goodly mast, like Priapus himself,/Buried deep in ‘er hold ‘neath a parquetry deck/And a gem-crusted wheel fer the high dudgeon winds/ The Waistgold, we seen ‘er, my silver sea slipper/Tied placid ‘twixt other and far lesser boats.”

So begins the saga of how Krull murders the local Builderguilder and escapes with the salvaged Waistgold, only to discover that the gem-laden ship has a mind of its own. A dark magician himself, he’s baffled by his new boat’s powers. And he’s worried, because he doesn’t know how to control them. It makes more sense when he finds a dead scribe’s book, written in blood. In it, Krull reads about Queen Ood, the enchantress who built the boat, who or may not be alive.

This story reads somewhere between William Burroughs’ The Naked Lunch and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

According to Wikipedia, Swift claimed that he wrote Gulliver’s Travels “to vex the world rather than divert it”. Voyage of the Waistgold is much the same.

For Adults Only.

Voyage of the Waistgold

A World Premier Event

Februry 27, 2022 at 5 pm EST

Grendel’s Den, Cambridge MA

Tickets: $35