Tom Cole’s “Chimes: A Monologue”
Wednesday, October 14
Doors: 7pm
Reading: 7:30pm
at 2220 Arts+Archives
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The Poetic Research Bureau hosts Tom Cole for a reading and conversation with writer Bradford Nordeen, celebrating his new book on Song Cave, Chimes: A Monologue.
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Through a striking and unforgettable performative monologue, Tom Cole’s Chimes: A Monologue introduces the distinctive voice of a first-person narrator mentally indexing his lifetime of memories. His individual experiences of shame, addiction, and self-destructive behavior are recounted with mischievous humor, even if they have left lasting scars. Now, after months of monotonous solitude, a storm of unresolved issues resurfaces, triggered by the incessant and irritating clang of an out-of-town neighbor’s outdoor wind chime. As his self-examinations become an obsession, feelings of alienation and unworthiness worsen and lead to unconventional solutions.
In the tradition of the plays of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Georg Büchner, Charles Ludlam, and Sarah Kane, Cole weaves the very bleakest of humor with startling and heartbreaking feats of intimate self-reflection. Speaking on issues of class, sex, intimacy, and the highs and lows of queer reality today, Chimes asks how and where one finds the answers to living a complicated life.
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Tom Cole is a writer, performer, and artist living between the Lower East Side and Kingston, NY. His work has been presented at Participant Inc, Thread Waxing Space, Art on Air, Dixon Place, Clocktower Gallery, ICA Boston, Performa, Howl Arts, Poetry Project, and the Boston Center for the Arts. He is a three-time MacDowell Playwriting fellow, and an Edward Albee Foundation Playwriting fellow. Cole’s writing has been anthologized in Pathetic Literature, edited by Eileen Myles; Sluts, edited by Michelle Tea; Flesh and the Word 4, edited by Michael Lowenthal; This New Breed, edited by Rudy Kikel, and Flashpoint, edited by Michael Bronski. His first book, Chimes: A Monologue, will be released by The Song Cave in fall 2026.