Shot of Life: A Review of Danny Shot’s Night Bird Flying
By Westley Heine
first published at the Rusty Truck
Like its namesake the Hendrix song “Night Bird Flying,” this collection of stories builds and builds until you think it’s hit a plateau. Then it builds upon itself again. Largely autobiographical, this book is written in a tough New Jersey, New York, some new voice that is also very familiar. It’s good storytelling to allow the characters to unravel and reveal themselves. By the end of the second piece “72 Scars” I was completely engrossed, wanting to learn more, and my sympathies were completely with the narrator.
Danny Shot leaves a lot of blood on the page. He paints a vivid picture of growing up in Jersey in the late 60s early 70s from greaser gang fights in the park, rivals, crushes, his Bukowski level acne, sex and drugs, studying boxing, from a friend dying too young to his father dying when Danny was only 15. There’s also some privileged gossip like treating his acne with the same famous doctor who did the hair transplants for famous clients like hockey player Bobby Hull, Frank Sinatra, and then U.S. Senator Joe Biden.
During the early flashbacks he viscerally conjures the insecure thoughts and phrases of a teenager. Most people leave that young person inside them behind until they atrophy. A good writer stays in touch however torturous that can be to the psyche. His teenage angst reminded me of my own. He accurately captures tripping on acid in a high school classroom in only half a page. That’s good writing.
On to the excitement of college, becoming a poet, underground music, finding and losing love. We get to tag-a-long through the Lower East Side and day-drinking with Gregory Corso in San Francisco. However, these memories are not macho retelling of glory days. What makes the book so compelling is the humility. The author doesn’t glaze over when he’d acted badly. There’s a reflectiveness and honesty in this book rare in a world that is increasingly virtue signaling and sterilizing itself out of life.
Cutting between the time of writing (presumably now) and decades past at first feels like the fourth wall fell down, but the effect is another level of honesty and shows how much the author has changed as a person. He is a survivor. He has made the transition from student to teacher. He describes the alchemy of conjuring the past. There are things he doesn’t want to write about but does anyway. So no, the memoir sections are not self-indulgent but very generous. The freedom of the 70s and 80s artist scene implodes under its own weight. The passion first warms, but then burns all those involved like a lighter under a bubbling spoon. This is personified in his tumultuous relationship with Carla, which I won’t attempt to summarize here because it’s his story to tell, and he does so very well.
Night Bird Flying also includes pieces like “Big Dick,” which as it turns out is a work of fiction. As males, who among us hasn’t fantasized about an increase in our manhood? The story takes this dream come true to Kafkaesque proportions until the fantasy becomes a nightmare. This is the kind of satire that perfectly comments on masculinity, and all the complexities and ironies one has to face when being both a poet and barroom brawler. From memoir to creative writing all these separate pieces complement each other until we have the essence of a man’s life, his youth, and the world of Beat Poetry he’s been a part of since the 70s. The writing is so full of life that I was near the end until I realized that Night Bird Flying is largely a meditation on death. Death of a lover, death of friends and fellow poets Allen Ginsberg and Andy Clausen, as well as the death of the mother he loves.
What I like most about Danny Shot’s writing is that it hits the sweet spot where things can be both funny and sad at the same time. Life is just fucked-up, but good storytelling keeps us from feeling that way.
Night Bird Flying is available for pre-order at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/night/184
Westley Heine is the author of Busking Blues: Recollections of a Chicago Street Musician and Squatter through Roadside Press (2022), a short story collection 12 Chicago Cabbies (2021), and volume of poetry The Trail of Quetzalcoatl (2016). He has featured twice at the Green Mill Poetry Slam in Uptown Chicago, and is the new host of the poetry open mic at The Gallery Cabaret in Bucktown every 4th Saturday. Most recently Roadside Press has released his new poetry collection entitled Street Corner Spirits, audio excerpts of which are now available on most streaming services under the same title.
He’s been a taxi dispatcher, a roadie, a deliveryman, a squatter, a street musician, a grocery clerk, a chambermaid, a novelist, a painter, a metal head, a Boy Scout, an insurance investigator, a jailbird, a farmhand, sold tickets to the symphony, sold plasma, been unemployed, and been a filmmaker. Life is always creating new characters inside him, but always a writer. He’s rambled from Wisconsin, to Chicago, Europe, Texas, Mexico, California, and everywhere in between. Let in the light. Let out the fire. Instagram: @westleyheine
Busking Blues: Recollections of a Chicago Street Musician and Squatter by Westley Heine is available at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/busking/98
Street Corner Spirits by Westley Heine is available at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/spirits/136
