Ben Spivey’s Flowing in the Gossamer Fold: A Review by Melissa Chichester
[Kirsty Logan / October 19th, 2010 / Reviews & Young Bright Things ]
“The walls felt colder, and I sat shoulder to shoulder with the world.” Get ready, because it’s a tight squeeze. While reading Ben Spivey’s Flowing in the Gossamer Fold, be prepared to enter the vortex that is Malcolm Blackburn. Wait, scratch that. Be prepared to be Malcolm Blackburn, a motivational speaker, left dejected by his ex-wife as she kicks him in the teeth one last time by giving him a separation gift: a bag of orange pubic hair. If you were left with a bag of pubic hair, your life might spiral into a majestic pity party too. Right away, we know this isn’t a traditional life, but then again what is? Flowing in the Gossamer Fold gives us the freedom to explore the layer of mental tissue that inhabit all of us, some of which we are too afraid to admit is there.
Reading like a long prose poem, Spivey weaves in and out between the abstract fluids of Blackburn’s stream of consciousness while seamlessly touching back to the grim reality of his lonely life. This is 164 pages that feels like ten minutes and forty years all at the same time. In our first steps through Malcolm Blackburn’s life, we see an everyman, a regular person doing his job so meticulously, that he has mentally recorded that this is his 289th motivational speech. With the speech follows a very public breakdown in front of his faithful audience, and a spiral seemingly made to digest the reader and regurgitate over and over again through a complex relationship with self, a sparrow of an ex (otherwise known as Claire), and shape shifting mannequins.
“You can’t leave, the sparrow squawked. Where will you go?” Where Blackburn goes is bungee jumping into the maze of his own emotional intestines, which prove to be quicksand. Malcolm Blackburn continues to be pricked by the sword, paying the price of being human as he navigates through the sticky aftermath of divorce. He jumps on the bicycle of regret and remorse, pedaling backward to find warmth and comfort with his dead mother (swimming in the ocean, never to return), all while speeding forward to a leaner shape, a beard full of bird nests, and a retreat from society with the exception of Guy, a friendly top hat wearing, chess paying neighbor. Still, with Guy’s social arm extended, Blackburn travels with swift, progressive destruction as he is tortured by the words of the sparrow; the words of his ex-wife.
It is difficult to figure out where to shelve these thoughts, while bathing in “dream’s milk”, as Blackburn drifts through life, intently drawing lines through the loss of family and the inability to create one. The descriptions are raw; the natural childbirth of a man’s crisis. When he declares to have “unfinished business with the rest of the world”, readers will cheer for Malcolm Blackburn, for he is always racing in circles with the space between root and dust. “Static. I am you.” Aren’t we all?
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Melissa Chichester writes in rural Michigan, surrounded by three dogs, three cats, and her fantastic husband.