Russell Brakefield
What slayed on 4-track was not the vocals, which did arc like nimble swallows in the attic eaves, and not the strings or back-line beat we’d built on the suitcase strip-kit in the hallway. What played and leapt on tape’s return were the voices of Matt’s family whirring in the background, laughter and table talk and family lore and inside jokes, bits of language woven like a nest where we set our brittle songs and in doing so turned them the dappled blue of new eggs — not birdsong yet but the herald of birdsong — life turning again every time we laced the tape.
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Russell Brakefield is the author of the collections Field Recordings (Wayne State University Press, 2018), My Modest Blindness (Autofocus Books, 2023), and Irregular Heartbeats at the Park West (Wayne State University Press, 2024). He received his master of fine arts from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program and is assistant professor in the University Writing Program at the University of Denver.