Preceded by short: Thanatopsis (Beth B, 1991): The legendary Lydia Lunch stars in this "meditation on death," a short narrative that pits the banal duties of the everyday against imminent cultural destruction. (11 mins, 3/4" video, From the artist) Henry Rollins, known to many as the lead singer of L.A.'s notorious punk band Black Flag, is a man of unusual intensity. Aggressively muscled, thoroughly tattooed, he looks like a mobile threat. But on stage as a spoken-word artist Rollins debunks his own appearance with an unexpected warmth, fueled by incendiary observations about a flammable life. In its current incarnation, spoken-word performance is a pastiche of styles: first-person monologue, poetic incantation, stand-up comedy. In the performance work Talking from the Box, Rollins mines his life for fissured gems about broken hearts, a pet shop in Washington D.C., first infatuations, the L.A. Uprising, and dark ends. By anchoring his stories in pop culture, Rollins evokes the familiar with quirky humor, a fuck-you arrogance and brazen optimism: he tells of his first Ramones concert, a grotesque fixation with the Italian Stallion, the defense of a Sam Goody store during the riots. Concerned, politically off-center and bullishly boisterous, Henry Rollins has a warm heart, but don't get in his way.-Steve Seid