Brian Kenneth Swain

A simple enough assignment. One picture alone at the far end of a distant wing, obscure, exiled. Removed from the masters.   I’d wondered what to expect when I first saw the title, “A Girl Weeps Beside a Basket of Raspberries.” Something modern – a solid red canvas perhaps. A Rothko blur, some Twombly scribblings. But no, there she is, aglow in harsh white museum light. More literal than I had imagined, though vaguely defined, in a not-quite-impressionistic way.   The girl, young, sitting on a park bench, sixteen, seventeen, difficult to say. Her dress of taffeta white, matching bow drawing back black ringlets. After Renoir, but not as good. And there, beside her, sure enough, the basket … but of what? Raspberries if ...

The San Antonio Zoo has been around—officially—since 1914 (the zoo celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1989). But if you spend some time exploring the history of the zoo—which CEO and Executive Director Tim Morrow, subject of this month’s profile, was kind enough to provide to me—you’ll find references to animal collections dating back to as early as the 1870s, with the original small animal collection residing in San Pedro Park. Credit for creating the original zoo goes to Colonel George W. Brackenridge (also founder of the Express News), and since its inception just over one hundred years ago, the zoo has had seven executive directors, with Tim having begun his stint in the position in December of 2014. But the path that got ...

The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) is the preeminent culinary college in the world, and the San Antonio campus at The Pearl is one of just three locations in the U.S. (the others being Hyde Park, New York and Napa Valley, California). Those of us fortunate enough to live in San Antonio have long known the Alamo City for the astonishing quality and diversity of its restaurants, but—just to make it official—UNESCO named San Antonio a Creative City of Gastronomy in October 2017, one of just two cities in the U.S. to be so honored. The San Antonio campus of the CIA opened in 2008, and it has since gained a well-deserved reputation for the quality of its instruction and the culinary innovation of its graduates. Notable local alumni ...

“I feel like I know a lot about the things you’ve accomplished,” I said to begin our interview at The Tobin Center, “but I don’t really know anything about who you are.” Sebastian Lang-Lessing has been Music Director and Conductor of the San Antonio Symphony since 2010, and his many career achievements and accolades are well documented on any number of web sites and magazine articles, hence the first half of my opening statement. The goal of this piece, though, was to learn a bit more about the maestro as a person. And so we started in the small town of Gelsenkirchen in northern Germany, a former mining town not far from the Dutch border, where Sebastian was born, the youngest of four, all of his siblings girls. The ...

From the author of Sistina, Alone in the Light, and World Hunger   The Book of Names is Brian Kenneth Swain’s first collection of short fiction. The stories, characters, and themes explored in this work are as universal as they are diverse: bravery, greed, legacy, and a serious infatuation with horses and French horns. In the title story, one soldier turns hopelessness into a moment of grandeur and sacrifice. In “The Antique Shop,” the proprietor and his customer marvel at the absurdity of debating the provenance and value of a book that cannot possibly exist, despite it being there in the shop with them. And in “Convergence,” two Middle Eastern men share a drink and speak of the inestimable loss each ...

So, this title has been sitting on my desk for about eight years now, and I still haven’t yet come up with a poem to go with it.   It’s just that I was really taken with the image and I thought, well I’ll write it down so I don’t forget, and I’ll use it later.   I don’t even recall what inspired the image. Probably a line from a novel, or maybe somebody else’s poem.   Because that’s how this poetry thing works. We take ideas from other peoples’ stories, poems, paintings, films, and we try best we can to make them our own. But sometimes, like in this case, we never do manage to come up with a poem worthy of the original image. Which is okay too.   Life is, after all, really just a series of images. So ...

The object of life is to make sure you die a weird death.                                                   Thomas Pynchon   No lingering bedsore festering demise for me—not a chance. Something quick, probably violent, that will make the mortician really work for his money. Something so bizarre, so outrageous that it will get me on the evening news. People will talk about it with their friends for days, shake their heads ruefully.   “Can you believe it?” they’ll say. “One minute he was there. The next minute Who even knew such a thing was possible?”   They’ll need to come up with a whole new warning label just to protect others against whatever stupid thing I did. It will be the sort of ...

Today is like all the others, gray like a barren winter sea, the sun a pale and heartless orb. And it’s on days like this, that I feel certain my journey is nearing its end.   Only now I see, as I look out to the distant horizon, a whirlwind of outlandish color, trick of the light perhaps, but no less real.   And in that moment I hear a note ring out, then another, and before long a melody that seems to reflect perfectly from off the colors.   And I feel my senses inundated, My fears dissipated like morning fog, an effect so complete that no space remains for those thoughts of a journey’s end or of some hopeless cruel travail.   I just stand and take it in, mesmerized in that unexpected instant, marveling at the ...

Despite a lifetime of religious cynicism and disbelief, it was still something of a disappointment, upon my death, to discover that there really is nothing afterward. Well, not nothing in the literal sense. My ability to be here and to tell you about it pretty much means that there must be something. But it’s certainly nothing in the eschatological sense that most everyone is back there basing their lives on and which serves as the foundation for everything they’re looking forward to in the hereafter—in fact, not only looking forward to, but for many people actually spending their lives striving toward. Only here’s the eye opening reality of it—what awaits over here is exactly the same for everyone, regardless of what you did ...

Imagine for a moment the paradox of being, for nearly two decades, one of the most well known, best loved personalities in your hometown. Now imagine that for that entire period of time, no one in your town has the slightest idea who you are. Sounds a little ridiculous, and yet this is the story of Rob Wicall, the man who served as The San Antonio Spurs Coyote mascot for the past sixteen years. And, while we’re busily pondering the irony of being one of the most famous guys in a city full of people who have no idea who you are, how do you even become a professional sports mascot? And what makes a person want to do that for a job? And what is the life of a full-time mascot like? Yeah, lots of questions, but let’s start at the ...