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Blue Heron (2025) Capsule Review

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At times beautiful, at others devastating, Blue Heron is an accomplished study of how mental health challenges change a family. Sophy Romvari explores the limits of memory, how we process trauma, and the realization that solutions might slip through our fingers. Her twists and tonal shifts are masterful. Sasha's (Eylul Guven) childhood memories of her brother, Jeremy, (Edik Beddoes) demonstrate the limits of human connection, but the way Romvari traces the threads that hold her family together hold out hope for much more. In telling the story of a brother's mental breakdown and his family's futile attempts to help him, Romvari, strives to create a space for healing. She shifts characters and memories within her narrative, so that she can show the difficulties of understanding other people and how they navigate the world. Blue Heron points out the failings of the mental health industry while ultimately showing that some problems might  be unsolvable. From her vantage point...
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Elk River Reveries Day Five

Fire pareidolia is the current conversation. Smoking skulls and charred logs. Add or subtract some wood but just keep it blazing. It mustn't go out for at least two more days.
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Elk River Reveries Day Four

 I stayed up too late but don't regret it. I lie here in my bunk listening to the birds and think about the endless hummingbird battle, the logs on the crackling fire, the endless discussion. I'm rolling back over and sleeping some more.
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Elk River Reveries Day Three

 The fire pit hisses in the scattered rain. Dark drops crash against uprooted spruce, As I take respite in the fire away from the frantic talk. An Afghan Whigs album on the turntable struggles  To rise above the bustle and hiss. The river beckons. I must hover.
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Elk River Reveries Day Two

Sitting on the rock dock, that was hauled here by horses long ago, I try to avoid dangling modifiers, escaped adjectives, the fishy river smell, the dreams of my cabin youth. Dragonflies in a mating dance strafe my upturned face, promising me a contemplative future, the expected narratives of cabin summers, the expectancy that a bald eagle will break my revery.  Cold, iron-stained water covers my toes as I wade into the shallow water, avoiding jagged rocks and crayfish,  heading for deeper pockets, floating between granite obstacles. I submerge my body deep in the cloistered, silent water, on the sandy river bed, imagining the walleyes swimming by my head, and rock bass ignoring my presence. I rest here, sloughing off the cares, finding my own private Bethlehem as Joan Didion might, in the less brackish deep. I hover.
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Elk River Reveries Day One

Stung by mosquitoes that are driven by bloodlust I sit in the outhouse of undeniable redoubt Please give me this boon, the living of the senses A sensory world that never fades I lose my voice, amidst the bullfrog croak Greenery and tree root, the slap of tail on water 
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Track This: Gene Vincent's "Race With The Devil"

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It's been some time since I posted a "Track This," so I figured that discussing one of my favorite rockabilly songs by an underappreciated great, Gene Vincent, who does not get as much coverage as he should, would be an excellent return to form. Most of his career, he attempted to recapture his former rock and roll glory, and never completely turned country like his contemporaries Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. Elsewhere on this blog, I discuss his self-titled Kama Sutra album, which should also receive more accolades. In a perfect world, Gene Vincent's "Race With The Devil" would have been a bigger hit, but it never managed to capture the public attention like his first hit, "Be-Bop-A-Lula." I first heard The Stray Cats cover "Race With The Devil" on their underrated fourth studio album, 1986's Rock Therapy , and needed to track the original down as soon as I could. The countrified rhythms and frantic pace of the song leave the li...
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