Colin and the 9-11 Reading

I've been doing what I do when I lose someone I love: putting their name in the search in the folder of my journals (which I've been writing digitally since, I don't know, the turn of the century) and seeing what I come up with about them. I found an entry I'd written on September 12, 2009. The day after a reading that Tom Spanbauer had put together (I believe) in remembrance of 9-11. 

By then, I had been a member of Tom's Dangerous Writers class for four years. I'm not sure how long Colin Farstad had been a member, less than I. I think this may have been Colin's first public reading of his work (alongside Tom and Dangerous Writers Kevin Meyer and Elizabeth Taylor). It was at Powell's on Hawthorne, which was a big deal for a new writer, and all four had written original essays, about 9-11, for the event.

Here are a few chunks from my journal, chronicling the event (and for context, I had read at a different reading recently, and I reference it in my comments).

First in the journal there was a section I'd headed: Random quick blips from yesterday. In no certain order.

Last night after the reading when Tom told me that the way he was able to keep himself from crying, reading his piece, was looking at the old man in the front row and pretending that man was his father and he was going to laugh at him for crying. I said, “Wow, that’s so,” and paused just a moment, “twisted.” His smile went from big to bigger, and I told him the emotions he showed just made the reading that much better for us.

 

Colin at the podium. That spread of books on the shelves behind him. Big Colin smile. He’s been so excited about this and saying things like, every time I go over the railroad tracks, or see 11:11 on the clock, or, or, or – I have to close my eyes and make a wish. Afraid it wouldn’t happen after all. But it did.

 

Before the reading, telling Colin how he’d told me, before my reading, his way of being nervous earlier in the day before his performances (Closureyes) but then, getting up to show time, coming to a calm. Telling him how that helped me not be nervous for my reading and hoping the reminder would be good for him too.

That last segment is a little hard to follow. What I was saying is that when I had been nervous about reading my own work in an earlier event, Colin had told me that when he performed with his band Closureyes, he always got nervous early in the day but by the time he went on, the nerves would be gone. That comment had helped me feel less nervous about getting up to read, and so I hoped that telling him so, before his own reading, would help him not be nervous too.

OK, so here's another chunk, later in the journal entry, when I had stopped jotting random moments and was writing out the event as it had unfolded:

Colin [read] third. He probably read slower than he usually reads in class – yes, I think he did. But he was a bit fast and he has that way of mushing his words together. Made some lines hard to catch. Me, I kind of like that he read like he reads, that Colin way, but it’s too bad that you missed things. Like the cool way he dissected and inverted the god is in the details thing.

Some bits of his piece: Kissing without kissing. Letting the girl smoke in the apartment. Taking comfort in the human touch (that was said twice, I think, and was the last line of the piece). The story I tell over drinks and cigarettes. Shoulder to shoulder, cavemen around the campfire. Knee to knee on the couch (with his roommates watching the TV).

Colin got to introduce Tom. Well, not introduce, but call him up. Tom spoke as he always does. That soft blue powder voice, the hesitations and the places where that voice stumbles – all of it charming.

I wish I had Colin's 9-11 essay to read again now. To get the context for the lines I pulled out, the kissing without kissing, the cavemen around the campfire. To remind myself what I meant when I said that Colin "dissected and inverted the god-is-in-the-details thing." (Hyphens added because I've learned some about punctuation since 2009.) Mostly, though, I'm just happy that I thought to write down some of the moments of an event in Colin's life that obviously meant a lot to him. And happy to have been there in the audience for it.

And happy that I've always had that impulse to snap pictures even when I've never had the aptitude for it. 

The readers preparing before the start of the event.

Colin receiving his applause.

where it all began, for me, with steve arndt

Truly, Steve Arndt is the reason I am a part of what feels like the best, most thriving and supportive literary community in the country. If you're a part of that community, this may be true for you too. And if you're part of that community, I'm sending a big hug as we all get used to the hole he leaves behind.

I've been doing what I do when I lose someone. Looking at pictures and reading what I have written about them and our story together in my old journals. I wanted to share a little. This collection is some journal entries and some emails, actually, because it tells the story better.

My backstory is that I had been emailing back and forth with Stephen (my Stephen, the O'Donnell one) for months without having met him, and was going to be taking a trip to Portland to visit my family and meet him in person for the first time. That first visit to meet Stephen, I also met Steve.

From my journal, October 5, 2004. This is before the trip. In here, I'm writing about chatting with my aunt Kathy on the phone about the man I was coming up to meet.

When I said his name was Stephen, she said that was funny because she has all sorts of Stephens around her, and she wanted to introduce me to Sienna’s boyfriend Steve, who is a writer and has taken a year off to write a book and who is connected to the apparently very huge writing community that is in Portland. He is involved in writing workshops and such, and I guess she told him about me, and she says he’d like to talk to me. So that was interesting, too. I said, you know, I’ve always been afraid of the social aspect of the whole writing community thing, and I realize that maybe if I want to get anywhere, I have to jump into it. Very terrifying, but I would like to meet and talk to him and see how things go there.

Now from October 25. I'd flown up, hung out with family, met Stephen, and here was my first meeting with Steve, out at dinner on, I think, the third night of that visit. (When I mention "Seth's book," that was a novel I had been writing at the time.) 

We were sort of in the middle of that discussion when Steve and Sienna came. That shifted the dynamic of the conversation, but it was still very nice. I enjoyed meeting Steve, who is involved in writing and has an accomplished mentor. I can’t remember all that he said, but a couple times I found myself intrigued by the way he speaks about writing or art in general. I remember talking to him about the voice I use in Seth’s book, how I think it’s a good point of the novel. He expressed an interest in giving me some encouragement, and we exchanged email addresses. And all laughed over some pistachio dessert that no one liked but Stephen and which Kathy remarked quite loudly was, “Really crappy.”

This photo is the very first photo I have of Steve, from that dinner.

Now, an email from him from the next day.

last night, if i talked too much, forgive, so nice to be in a conversation about art with artists. not that its some kinda exclusive club. really like stephen and hope to know him better over time.

please if you wanna have a dialoge about writing and won't mind my shity spelling, please e me with your thoughts and concerns. my biggest thing right now is just sitting down and doing writing. in a relationship what you thought was good use of time in the past slips into another good use of time.

hope you arrive safe and strong, steve arndt

And from a later email:

let me know the next time you come up. would love to introduce you to my mentor here in portland, tom spanbauer, ('the man who fell in love with the moon," a pulitzer nominee in 93 and most recently, 'in the city of shy hunters').

yes to stephen, same way i spell it, he has an easy humility that gives comfort.

yes to bob dylan, 'he not busy being born is busy dying.'

take care, thanks sea

I don't know if the yesses were in response to anything in my own correspondence or just Steve talking poetic, as he tended to do without thinking.

Another email. This is me to Kathy on November 1, 2005. She'd told me if I wanted to move to Portland, I could stay with her while I got myself settled. And she offered to pay my way to take some classes at PSU if I wanted, because they had (have) a writing program, something that you could actually earn a degree in. A degree in writing was, at least at the time (I don't know about now), a rare thing.

Hey, I'm thinking seriously about PSU. There are so many reasons I feel it would be something smart for me to explore. I'm actually looking into getting my college transcripts and such together now. Who knows if I'd actually get in, but I really like what I've read about the English department—and Steve Arndt (sp?) has really done a lot to sell me on the writing community there. I was telling Mom: it's more than just school, I think. I've always tried to avoid the idea that to get somewhere with writing you need to get involved in a writing community, do workshops, network... all stuff I was terrified of. I kind of feel like, yes, I need to do this type of thing to get me out there—but that I'm really too shy to do it on my own. And I feel like, hey, Steve might help me feel comfortable enough to... kind of go for it.

This is what Steve did for people. This is what he did for me.

Back to my journal. I want to share one last entry. This was when he took me to meet Tom Spanbauer. I said "class" below, and Tom did famously run a class, his Dangerous Writing workshop, but this was a one-on-one session between them. In it, Steve took a chapter of the book he was writing and read it aloud and then there was discussion about the pages afterward. I felt very privileged to be able to sit in on this intimate work time between them.

February 12, 2005. 

I went to class with Steve and it ran an hour overtime. I felt very welcomed by Tom, and I made a couple comments about Steve’s chapter, and Tom received the comments and engaged me. At one point, Steve looked across the table at me and asked, “Would you say that’s written like most writers write their books?” Or something. And I said, “Do you ask that because you’re not sure or because you already know the answer?” and Tom laughed. 

Steve had said that this latest offering was kind of bland and he wasn’t all that happy with it, yet it was brilliant. I told him after he’d read that it was so good I almost didn’t want to join the class. And they both took that as the compliment it was meant as. And Tom actually told me that at times, he’s been jealous of Steve’s work.

Yes, I think I'll leave this collection of snippets there. I think Steve would (reluctantly and self-deprecatingly) approve.

a moment in the day: talisman

Near the ceiling of the radio room, a string of multicolored twinkle lights runs the perimeter, up and over the edges of baffles tacked to the walls. We're all sitting around the table with big, foamy microphones in front of our faces, and I've got headphones on because I'm reading first. To my right at the head of the table, the host, Leigh Anne Kranz, also headphoned, talks into her mic, her voice sweet and measured and soothing.

Between her thumb and finger, she holds and just so slightly rolls a small object. I'm trying to figure out what it is. It's oval-shaped and a light amber color, and as she gestures it through the air while speaking, its polished surface catches the light.

It's a crystal, I realize. Some sort of radio talisman, maybe, a special touchstone she holds as she performs on the air, and I love knowing this about her. I figure this talisman centers Leigh Anne in her work - and it centers me, too, makes me feel a little less nervous about reading this essay out over the airwaves.

She rolls the talisman between her thumb and finger and signals Domi, across the table, who reads my intro, and then I'm reading.

*

Now it's after the break in the radio show, and I'm listening to the other readers, full of glee because my reading is over and I did OK.

I notice Leigh Anne doesn't have the crystal anymore. I glance at her other hand. No crystal. Maybe she only uses it when she starts the show, like a little boost of luck for the program. I love thinking about people's rituals, the way they make magic out of ordinary objects, words, actions. We know no real magic lives inside our talismans, but we hold onto them anyway, and they comfort us anyway. There's something kind of beautiful about that.

Look down on the table below her microphone, and there are two tiny objects covered in paper that twists at the ends.

Oh, right. OK. I'm a moron.

Her talisman was a cough drop.

a moment in the day: kboo

Alone in the car, Mozart playing on the classical station but low, I recite from the piece I'll be reading on the radio tomorrow night. Recite until the fog bank of my memory runs into another blank patch and I have to wait until the next red light to look at the crumpled cheat sheet of my essay to see what comes next.

The program is "Bread and Roses," on Portland's KBOO, and I'll be reading work along with four writer friends, celebrating the Burnt Tongue reading series we've all been a part of here in town. I'm assuming none of them are in their cars practicing lines. They all, I'm sure, have perfectly fog-free memories. In the Mozart quiet, waiting for that next red light, I try to think how long it's been since I was on the radio. Used to do a lot of it when I was in the circus, feeling stupid sitting there with the head phones on, not only because why would I need to be in clown makeup to talk on the radio, but also because who would think I should be on the radio at all? I never knew what to say. Always sat quiet, letting my ex-husband do all the talking, until the radio guy asked me a question and I tripped all over my tongue and fog-bank brain trying to come up with something to say.

But the last time I was on the radio it was for the local station in my then town of Baraboo, Wisconsin, promoting a children's picture book I'd had published through a small press. Which would make it 2001. And, wow, think of it - Baraboo. That time, too, the station was called KBOO. Difference then was that I didn't feel like a writer. Somehow because it was a small press, a tiny press, I didn't really feel published. I was too young and naive to know the wonderful worth of small presses all across the country. Too much the me I was then to know it was OK to feel self worth, to feel like a writer. But here I am now, in the Mozart quiet, driving with my crumpled essay on the passenger seat, on top of stacks of pages from my novel in progress, which I'm taking to my writer's group where [I don't know it now, but] I will read to the group and they will laugh and they will applaud at the end and they will talk about how the piece was funny and also emotional and also a little scary and then they'll applaud again, for god's sake, and I'll feel so much like a writer I won't even notice that I feel like a writer because I've felt like a writer, been one so long I can't even remember not feeling like one.

Or at least the fog bank of my memory has pushed those feelings so far away they sit in the blank patches like the next line in my radio piece. Leave them there. Let the fog swallow them up. Red light ahead. I slow to a stop. Quick glance at my pages and I start reciting again.

true love scars

Recently, I was given a sneak preview of a book that's out this month by music writer Michael Goldberg (who was a senior writer at Rolling Stone among other things). It's Goldberg's first novel, and I've been excited to check it out. Years ago, he spent time in Tom Spanbauer's basement, workshopping this very book, and I've missed his runaway freight train of a voice and the story I got to know so well, but which I never got to hear the end of, since Michael moved out of state and out of the Dangerous Writers workshop before finishing the book.

As it turns out, I still have yet to get to the end of the story, because that breakneck freight train has turned into a trilogy. True Love Scars is book one in the Freak Scene Dream Trilogy, a story about Michael Stein, a 19 year old "freakster bro" at the brink of the seventies, doing drugs, obsessing over music and pining for his "Visions of Johanna Chick" - Visions of Johanna after the Dylan song. Dylan is God to Michael Stein, a god almost as important as the narrator's quest for what he calls the "authentic real" - or his quest for the perfect woman:

Ahab got the whale, which is a huge symbol for some unreachable mammoth goal we yearn for, and Columbus gotta prove the world ain’t flat, which is mammoth too, and he runs right into America, and if that ain’t mammoth, nothing is. And Gatsby got Daisy, who’s pretty much the same deal as the whale and America. No disrespect to Daisy, but she’s a symbol too. Well daunting as any of those three might be are my trials regards my Visions of Johanna. I needed a chick bad that fall day. And I’m not talking about getting laid. This was way deeper. I was searching for the key to the rest of my life. If only I could find my Visions of Johanna chick, she’d do for me what Sweet Sarah once did, mirror back to me who I am, and once again I would stand tall. Once again I would be the last freakster bro standing, guns a-blaze.

This is sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, folks, which normally you probably wouldn't think would be my thing, but Goldberg's book is full of a voice that is so breathless and particular and, what attracts me the most, innocent. There is such a sweetness in the narrator, such youthful naive charm under all the F-bombs. (There are lots of F-bombs. Sometimes when he read pages in the Dangerous Writing basement, we'd count the F-bombs.) Michael Stein knows everything there is to know about music and the music scene. He's a walking encyclopedia of rock 'n' roll. But there's so much that he doesn't know. And it's in what Michael Stein doesn't know that the story finds its heartbreaking charm - and, of course, its danger.

I didn't know the hellfuck of what the next years would bring. You can’t know. If you did it would be too much to bear. There’s this Chet Baker album called Let’s Get Lost. Well that year, the year that began that day I met Lord Jim, we were all looking for a way out. Me and Lord Jim, and the others. You’ll meet them. None of us ready to feel. The drugs and booze and cigarettes and coffee and music and sex—all the ways we didn't feel. Well there were times when the future leaked out. When we had to feel something. Mostly it was let’s get lost. We tried so hard. To feel nothing.

True Love Scars is a crazy ride. And a thoroughly dead-on look at what it was like to be young and yearning and out of control and freakster hip in the late sixties and early seventies. You can check it out here.

a moment in the day: tom

It's Friday at work, and I'm at my desk with the earphones on, the weird ones that hook over your ears and hang across the back of your head. Plugged into the computer under my desk. They give me a slight headache but the sounds in my ears - the sweeps of big band, the Helen Kane boop-a-doops, the sparkling rain of Fats Waller's piano - make my brain happy as I edit my spreadsheets. My every Friday task, preparing the chosen titles to go up as New Favorites the coming Tuesday at Powell's, with extra special placement and a 30% discount.

This time one of the titles is Tom's. Tuesday will be official launch day for I Loved You More, Tom Spanbauer's first novel in seven years, published by my favorite publishing company, Hawthorne Books. I'm so excited I could jump up and dance, my head with the headphones on it yanking the computer clean out from under the desk, to drag behind me, across the floor of the Marketing Department, and play Ginger Rogers to my Fred Astaire.

Seven years - has it really been that long? I've listened to what seems like every word of this book come out of Tom's mouth, the group of us sitting around his basement table on Thursday nights. Years of Thursday nights as he wrote and edited and perfected this thing, sharing pieces with us at the end of workshop whenever there was time. All of us listeners felt like each note of his novel's music, each jot of his incredibly honed skill was ours in that basement because he gave it to us first.

This really is mine, this little moment, my fingers on the computer keys, putting his name in spreadsheets. The spreadsheet that I will send out to the merchandisers who will display the book. The spreadsheet that I will send out to the computer guy who will put the book on sale. The spreadsheet that I will forward to the graphic designers who will make a slide for our website and shelf talkers to sit under the stacks in the stores. Each shelf talker has a staff pick blurb, and guess who got to write Tom's.

No one is better than Tom Spanbauer at exposing the hidden pain inside us. In I Loved You More, he reaches even deeper, plumbing the terror of death, love, AIDS, cancer, propinquity, and the complex business of being a man in the world.

As I type his name into my spreadsheet, the song in my ears is Lulu's Back in Town.

*

Check it out on Powells.com here.

burnt tongue 2 - a wrap-up

domi rocking a very burnt-tongue-like hairdo.
photo courtesy of kathy mcferrin

Writer, organizer and all-around powerhouse boi-about-town Domi Shoemaker put on a hell of a show last night at Crush Bar in Portland. Burnt Tongue 2 was the second in a quarterly series of readings created to honor Tom Spanbauer, author of four books and creator of Dangerous Writing. Emcees Doug Chase and [my husband] Stephen presided over a packed house, and in the lineup were current and former Dangerous Writers along with some special guests. I thought I'd try to give you a little snippet of thought about each.

Chloe Caldwell was up first with one of my favorite essays from her book Legs Get Led Astray. "My Mother Wanted to be Betty Boop" is a beautiful list poem about her mother - and ultimately about longing. I already loved this piece after having read the book, but last night, given that foreknowledge and given the pace of Chloe's reading, I was able to linger a little longer over each thing Chloe told us her mother wanted - so that when she came to the line "My mother: taking off her bra underneath her shirt when she came home from work, and saying that it was the best part of her day," my reaction surprised me. The line is funny and brought a chuckle from the audience, but underneath that is a realness and simple heartbreak that brought tears to my eyes.

photo courtesy of lidia yuknavitch

From motherhood, we shifted to the topic of chlamydia with a chapter from Colin Farstad's novel The Four Month  Summer. Down in Tom's basement during Thursday afternoon Dangerous Writing workshops, I've heard Colin read many different incarnations of many different parts of this book. And, as Stephen mentioned in his intro, I've even listened to Colin read the book in its entirety at a lovely salon. So, I have plenty of context for what he read, but for Burnt Tongue 2, Colin did some masterful editing to turn the chapter into a painfully hilarious stand-alone piece.

photo courtesy of kevin meyer

Then John Hinds took us out of the men's room and into a jungle night laced with psychedelics in his short story "The Cosmic Raven of Enlightenment." I've always loved John's easy style as he writes about the big dark mysteries of the world. The piece he read last night came with a bonus segment on the particularities of farts that I can't believe he was able to read with a straight face.

photo courtesy of kevin meyer

photo courtesy of kevin meyer

Kathleen Lane. When I saw the order for the evening, I couldn't believe Domi was going to make me follow Kathleen Lane. One of the smartest, quirkiest writers around. She read one of my favorite short stories from a collection she's putting together, a fabulously voicey piece about a child's quest to discover if she might be the murdering type. I love Kathleen Lane's brain so much, if I were a zombie she'd be first on my list.

Next, I read a flash piece I was invited to write a while back for the launch of the mysteriously ill-fated website Reading Local: Portland. The story is called "Airplane Seat" and I think I read well, and since I'm not really here to talk about my own piece or performance, I give you another picture. Note the pumpkin sitting unceremoniously at the back of the stage.

photo courtesy of kathy mcferrin

Following me was Gage Mace, taking the stage and donning a hat, saying he'd brought it not knowing if he'd need it or not - presumably to keep the lights out of his eyes. You can see the hat, undonned for the reading, off to the left in the picture.

photo courtesy of kevin meyer

Gage read the opening to the novel he's been working on in Dangerous Writing, a story about coming of age while fiercely holding onto youth in the days following Bobby Kennedy's assassination. Thursday before last in the Dangerous Writing basement, he brought this piece in to be workshopped after tinkering with it to make it more stand-alone for the reading, and it was one of the treats of the night for me, getting to hear the finished result of that work, live, only a week and a half later.

photo courtesy of domi shoemaker

Closing out the first half was Kevin Meyer. Kevin has been a Dangerous Writer longer than I, and the novel he's been working on, which he's just in the finishing stages of now, is dark, funny, surprising and full of excellent snark. Not only is he a great writer, he's also a great editor, so when he left the group not long ago  in order to move to California, he left a huge hole in the DW basement. I practically jumped up and down when I found out he couldn't stand being away from the group and his novel and was moving back. The scene he read last night takes place at the edge of a South Dakota cyanide pit and involves abandonment, teen angst and butterscotch schnaps. I think I'll leave it at that.

Even the musical entertainment at intermission was put on by DW Alumni: Joe Rogers and Kai Mathisen cranking it as Post-Op Blondie. One voice and one guitar - a perfectly balanced edgy sound that seemed just right for the evening.

photo courtesy of kevin meyer

photo courtesy of kevin meyer

Bradley Rosen opened the second half with a big burst of burnt tongue - maybe the most excellent burnt tongue there is. The term Domi took for the name of her lit series comes from one of the techniques Tom Spanbauer most espouses in his Dangerous Writing school of thought. Burning language is taking language and messing it up in a way that creates character. If "character lies in the destruction of the sentence," Bunkie, the sweet, naive hero of Brad's novel The Bunkie Spills, is one of the richest characters in the world.

Event producer Domi J. Shoemaker took the stage next, reading a piece from her novel in progress, a novel of huge voice - in fact, voices, as the narrator Joni suffers from dissociative identity disorder [or what used to be called multiple personality disorder]. Although suffers from seems wrong here. The character has certainly suffered, but each different voice has such humanity that the multiple personalities seem like the one good thing that has come out of all of Joni's hardships. The spot where Domi wanted to sit for her reading was very dark, so emcee Doug Chase stood up to be her one-man lighting director.

photo courtesy of tracey trudeau

photo courtesy of domi shoemaker

Special guest and DW alumna Monica Drake read a sweet, funny essay about the anxieties and longings associated with brushes with celebrity - her "date" with Kristen Wiig, the famous comedienne who has optioned Clown Girl. Monica's such a master storyteller, and as much as I love her kooky fiction, I've been loving the pieces of nonfiction we've had from her lately, like this smart, honest piece. I'm so looking forward to her new novel The Stud Book, which can be preordered now.

photo courtesy of domi shoemaker

Our penultimate reader was Lidia Yuknavitch, another special guest for the evening. Though she's not a DW alum, her writing is so full of voice, her poetry burnt, her themes a straight shot down to the sore place Tom is always asking us as writers to go to. She read a piece of her latest novel Dora: A Headcase, a chapter that talks, in fact, about one of Tom's favorite artists, who he evokes more than any other artist when talking writing, Francis Bacon. This particular piece from the book takes you seamlessly from narrator Ida's on-fire broken-teen anger-whirlwind voice to the beautiful, hopeful voice of a five-year-old in love with her mother. Young Ida is watching her mother play a piano recital:

"...Her back is straight and strong. Her hair is wrapped and wrapped up around in great swirls of French twist. Her gown is off white silk and chiffon, and off of her shoulders, so that her shoulders look to me like perfect pearl drops. Everyone is holding their breath in anticipation.

"No one is everyone more than I am. I am hot underneath my black velvet and a little itchy and yep a little bit I have to pee but I'm also wanting. I could eat her. I want to run up that instant and crawl into her lap and fold myself between her jaw and and collar bone and suck her shoulder..."

If I could, I'd transcribe like a whole page of this part of the book for you, so you could really understand what it was that made me cry, watching Lidia read this.

photo courtesy of domi shoemaker

Last up was the man of the hour, Tom Spanbauer. Which I suppose rhymes a little too much. Tom read a chapter from his upcoming novel I Loved You More. As a Dangerous Writer who has had the privilege of hearing Tom read pieces of this yet-to-be-published novel in his own basement, I feel... well, there's a part of me that feels like I kind of own this book the way you feel you own something just for loving it. And there's part of me that feels jealous of this book, jealous like, hey, other people aren't supposed to get to hear it, only me. Last night's piece was at times scary, at times sexy, at times gross [part of it takes place in the aftermath of an explosion of sewage], at times beautiful, at times heartbreaking. And at the bottom of it all, it's about what the whole book seems to be about in so many different ways: what it is to be a man. I'm floored every time I hear a segment of this book - the grace and the enormity of it.

Reminiscing about the evening, Stephen had this to say, and I think it's the perfect comment to sum up this sweet thing Domi put together:

"Married to a writer, I go to a lot of readings and hear a lot of great writing. But last night was something very special. And one of the incidental delights of the evening was watching Lidia Yuknavitch across the room - she was in my direct line of sight - just beaming as she listened to the other writers read, her love for what her fellow writers do and who they are was so obvious. And I keep thinking that it was just the perfect expression of the amazing, loving camaraderie that is what Portland's writer's community is all about."

danny comes out

This new novel I'm working on. Creating characters and trying to do more - like make those characters live. That ridiculous god thing writers do. It's only serendipity that, tonight in Dangerous Writing workshop, I presented the piece about Danny coming out to his friends, and it so happened to be National Coming Out Day.

Last week, I had these seven pages printed up and ready to present in workshop, but I never got the chance to read. So I took my printed-up copies home to wait another week - and I never connected National Coming Out Day to my seven pages until this morning.

Of course I got all excited. Danny was going to get to come out on a very auspicious day.

And then, of course, I felt stupid. Danny was just made up in my head. And yet.

frozen moments night: a wrap-up in [bad] pictures

Seriously? This is all I got from snapping away with my phone through the evening? OK, I'm not too surprised, but still. I tried with flash, I tried without flash. What I should have tried with, of course, is a camera.

Here's emcee Mark Saltveit, comedian and palindrome world champion. Seriously, he's a world champion. Somehow I thought he'd be introducing us all palindromically, so sort of on the spot before the reading started, he wrote one for me off the top of his head. It involves me as a singer opening up for Mark in one of his comedy shows: "Gigi Little, belt 'til I gig."

Mark kept things moving great throughout the night.

Here's JW Griffith. I was on the program following him. You don't want to follow JW Griffith. He's a brilliant writer and very smooth, very particular reader. He was the only one among us to read from his actual Frozen Moment piece: "How We Were, How We Are, How We'll Be."

Here's Kathleen Lane. She followed me. You don't want Kathleen Lane to follow you. She read one of my favorites from a collection of short stories she's been putting together. It's about normal stuff: chewing scabs, winding your hair around your finger and then licking your finger, stuff like that. Actually, it's about childhood and identity and the longing for connection. Beautiful.

Here's Michael Sage Ricci reading from his new novel in progress, a story about tattooing and murder. I was privileged to be the first person to hear the first chapter, when it was just written, so hearing him read it in public, I had a little bit of a 'that's my boy' reaction. Reading the opening to a novel at an event can be risky because there's so much setup that goes into that first chapter, but Sage's opener is totally riveting.

Next up in the parade of faceless photographs: our musical guest for the evening, Bradley Rosen. I didn't realize until we talked later that those were his own songs he played. Lovely. He closed the first half of the event.

Here's Liz Prato, who's a great teacher/workshopper as well as writer. I haven't taken her workshop, but friends of mine have and rave about it. As a writer, she's a quirky storyteller who crafts sentences with precision.

Here's Margaret Malone doing her lovely deadpan read of a short story I hadn't heard before. I always love Margaret's work, so deft, so elegant and full of dark wit. Sadly, if I haven't read a piece beforehand, after a reading the details of the story go out of my head and I'm just left with the enjoyment I felt and the longing to get that story back in me again - especially if I wait a few days to write it up. I was like that with both Margaret and Liz' pieces.

Closing the show: Tom Spanbauer, presenting a gorgeous psychedelic moment from his new novel I Loved You More. Two tidbits about Tom's reading. First, somewhere in the middle there, someone, maybe Someday Lounge staff, maybe Bigfoot, was making loud roaring sounds in the kitchen just off from the stage. Tom, with his lovely powder soft voice, kept reading, finished his piece, paused and then roared right back.

Secondly, I found out after the reading that Tom had actually lost the last page of his piece somewhere between the car and Someday Lounge. And he spent part of the early part of the reading rewriting it. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a remarkable man.

As I said above, I read second in the lineup.

For notes on how I did, you can read this.




Or look at this picture of my shoes.

In my defense, I want to say I'm usually a good reader. After that performance, though, I don't know. I may never read again.

By the way, I'll be reading on May 30th at the Jack London Bar. Details are up on my website here.

[OK, I wasn't that bad.] Frozen Moments was a reading to benefit the anthology  The Frozen Moment, edited by Colin Farstad. More information on the book is here.

a moment in the day: the reading

Spotlight is a yellow veil in front of my eyes, cheap net hanging from a bad hat, a Tiffany lampshade on my head. I stand at the podium reading to a good-sized audience at Someday Lounge, worrying that my writing is cliché, worrying that I'm mixing my metaphors.

In these new girly shoes with the high heels, I was afraid I'd trip coming up to the mic, but it's my tongue that's been tripping. I keep reading. If I look confident, maybe no one will notice.

Now the sentence that does its slip-on-a-banana-peel out of my mouth contains words that aren't even on the page. My pronouns are the Three Stooges, running around, and I is where you should be and you is where he should be, and maybe that's more Abbot and Costello than the Three Stooges, but I keep reading. If I look confident, maybe no one will notice.

Now I'm back on track, and things are going along fine. I read a line and the audience laughs. But as I read, I'm thinking about the experiment I decided to conduct prior to this event, where I would not let myself get all over-the-top about practicing like I always do, how I'd just read my piece through once or twice and then get up there and perform it, like every other writer does - how this was not a successful experiment.

My dry tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

Now Shemp does that thing where he pokes the V of his fingers into my eyes, and my words take a tumble again.

"Can't I just read this?"

Did I say that out loud?

Keep reading.

Maybe no one will notice.

mermaids

The spaces between the words are dangerous. You get down in that basement, surrounded by Dangerous Writers reading and critiquing each other's work, you get to feeling a certain kind of comfortable and a certain kind of belonging, and right in the middle of someone's reading, right there in the space between the words, something will pop right out of your mouth.

Usually it's a laugh or an "oh god." With Charles, it might be a little giggle when the choice of words in someone's piece sounds unintentionally dirty. And then Sage will slip in, "Innuendo Man!" like he's announcing the arrival of a super hero.

With me sometimes it's a repeat of someone's turn of phrase. The reader reads the sentence and there, in the space after the period, right out of my mouth before I realize it come a few words, parroted back, in admiration. Last night, though, it was the mermaids that did it.

Adam was reading a beautiful piece set on a drive through Florida. The basement was all silence except for Adam's voice and the here-and-there turning of pages, and then he read the passage about the car driving past the sign reading Weeki Wachee. And in the space after the words, right out of my mouth like a hiccup: "I've been there."

I had my hand clapped to my mouth before I got that last r out, and then we all laughed and Adam continued reading, but I felt a little mortified for my outburst. So I'd like to take this moment to blame it on the mermaids. If you've ever been to the cheesy camp glory that is Weeki Wachee, you may understand why.

Here's exhibit A. Complete with dreadful song. [Weeki Wachee is a roadside attraction in Florida where girls dress up like mermaids.]

Exhibit B. Weekie Wachee in earlier days. Apparently mermaids send a lot of time drinking sodas and eating apples. Must be delicious in that fishy water.

Now, come on! How could I not want the world to know, right then and there, that I had been to this place?

Adam was recently published on Intellectual Refuge. You can check him out here.

book launch night

Excellent book launch event last night. We arrived about ten minutes after doors opened, and already The Woods was packed. The Woods is a campy-charming event space that was once a funeral parlor - Spanish style with big chandeliers hanging down. What do you call those chandeliers that aren't sprays of crystal but look like giant plastic beehives? Nooks opening off of the main room, all bright painted but low light, kooky couches, a bar on one side that we never made it to. So sad that this place will be closing sometime soon.

Before showtime it was a rush to say hi and throw hugs around so many people. We never made it out of the entryway, and it didn't look like there were any seats left, anyway. I sidled myself up to the edge of the open archway to the main room, and I and a number of us stood there in and behind the archway for all the readings. Where I was, I had a straight shot over the heads of people in seats, to the readers on stage. Colin gave each reader a sweet, little intro - made me selfishly look forward to hearing my own in January. Colin all suave and confident and wearing a tie. There were a lot of readers, but nothing bogged down. Every piece was totally engaging, and the evening really moved.

Mary Wharff making us all laugh somewhere between delighted and horrified as she read about wanting to eat the baby. How deftly her narrative moved back and forth between the scene in the drug store and the scene in the bar, between funny and heartbreaking. [Mary came all the way from Kansas to be part of this event.]

Wes Griffith with his voice all biscuits and molasses. In his intro, Colin said something like, if you fall in love with his voice, look out, because he's married. Sometimes I'm glad I have such a dysfunctional memory, because things I already know can be new again. I've read Wes' piece in a number of incarnations, but still, last night when he got to the end, it hit me so hard I made a little gasp, standing there.

Liz Prato getting up on stage and saying that, here she is reading at a 21-and-over event, and for the first time she's presenting a piece that doesn't contain the F-bomb.

"So," and then a tiny pause, and, "Fuck!" she shouted.

It's a deft piece of writing, laying down a leapfrog of moments and details, and no F-bomb is needed. 

Margaret Malone and her lovely monotone, reading half of an intensely personal essay. Fragmented and laced together the way memory is. Precise, little moments written in her precise, graceful voice.

Bradley K. Rosen, clown at heart, saying he was told there was a time limit, so he'd shrunk his piece. Then he pulled out what looked like a tiny book, size of a pat of butter, and one of those big magnifying glasses.

"Florence...stepped out of the car...languidly..."

He pretended to try to read from the tiny pages until a friend walked up with a black notebook and handed it to him. Then Brad was off, reading his real piece, obliterating the cliché text of his gag opening with his lovely language.

Charles Dye so big on stage he looked like he was bursting out of his spotlight. Reading only a part of his story, starting at the beginning where it grabs hold of your heart and stopping in a spot where it punches you in the gut. I think when he stopped reading, the whole room had one of those moments where the breath stops at the back of your throat.

"It only gets darker from there," Charles tells me.

Michael Sage Ricci trying to raise the music stand but pulling the top clean off instead. Reading a story that starts out light and goes to surprising places. In each of the stories in this book, and in each of the readings, I've found myself, naturally, looking for the frozen moment. Trying to predict what each offering's frozen moment is going to be. Sage's piece, in particular, did real honor to Colin's theme, I think.

Tom Spanbauer stepping up in a vintage suit. [Last time I saw him, Tom had said, "What are you going to wear? I'm going to wear vintage." So I wore vintage too.]

"I'm feeling kind of tender," Tom said into the mic. "Brad says I always cry." This was Tom's way of steeling himself for his own reading after all the emotions already put out into the room.

He read his piece "The Visitations," which I've heard him read twice before. Once in workshop and once at the benefit reading for Walt Curtis. Every time I hear or read this story, it does something to me that I don't understand. We talk about writing as music, but when I hear this story, I hear real music. Some certain sound in my head, a dark, foreboding, relentless sound in my head. The second-person voice of his story is like an elegant nightmare, from which you're suddenly raised up into moments of transcendence.

After the readings, the first of two bands, Leaves Russell, started on stage. They sounded great, but we didn't want the music of the readings washed out of our heads. Stephen and I went over to the sale table and had a gander at the book. It's a sweet, handcrafted book, which comes with different colored covers. One of the cool things about Publication Studio books is that you can go into one of their studios and order one, and they make it right there in front of you. It's dated on the spine. I'll get a contributor's copy, but I also look forward to going into the Portland Publication Studio and getting one hot off the press. But last night, Stephen picked up a copy there, and we moved into the crowd to chat with people and give hugs and congratulations.

Then we ended up at an Italian place called Gino's, a big group of us ringing a large table, ordering wine and clinking glasses. A few of us who will be reading at the January event: Christine Calfas, Nora Robertson [and beau], Holly Goodman. Also Krista Price, another writer from the basement. Mary Wharff [and beau]. Tom and Sage, Tom sitting down next to me, Tom presenting me with the pages he'd read from, which made a lovely souvenir of the evening.

We ordered food. I was famished. "I spent all evening on one banana," I said.

Tom said, "Did it hurt?"

When Colin and his wife Rebekah showed up, we got to be obnoxious in the restaurant and applaud and cheer. When Brad Rosen appeared, we got to be obnoxious again. More joking about my banana. More clinking of glasses and then good food. A lovely way to round out a wonderful evening.

on finishing the novel

 It's hard [impossible] to say when a book [story] [poem] is finished [beyond the moment it's printed, of course]. But there has to be a moment when the writer stops and looks and says, "There. It is what it is." I don't know exactly what it was, last night, that made me sit back and say this about my novel. What final word gave the manuscript its thingness, its completeness. I opened the door to my little writing studio, went down the hall and into the kitchen, poured one swallow, each, of champagne [cava] into two glasses.

Me being the ritualistic person I am, the over-celebrator I am, I took some time to decide which glasses, and I finally chose the thick ones with the little starbursts etched in, the ones Stephen's grandmother gave him [left to him?]. Stephen always says Grandma Betty was the person who most encouraged his art, who taught him to "see." [She makes a tiny appearance in my novel, and Stephen's art makes a huge appearance.] I took the glasses the two steps out into Stephen's studio and handed him one. I said, "I've signed the painting."

[grandma betty]

Stephen says he knows a painting is finished when he looks and looks and his eye doesn't show him anything to change anymore. Then he signs it. He knows he'll continue to fuss with the painting after it's signed, sometimes for a long time, before the coat of varnish goes down, but for him, once he's signed it, it's finished. I know I'll fuss with the novel, and if it has the luck to be run through the ringer that is the agent process and the editor process and the publication process [a pact cosigned by Mephistopheles would help], I'll be doing much more than fussing with it, but for me, the signature's gone on the painting.

[delacroix' mephistopheles]

Funny thing, mentally signing my work. I spent so much of my childhood and young adulthood hating myself that things like my name left a bad taste in my mouth just because they were mine. I almost never said my name out loud, and writing it down was like writing the name of that bully "friend" who used to ridicule you and made you ride horses in fourth grade [smelly].

When I started workshopping the novel, the writers in my group would jot little wrap-up notes at the bottoms of my pages: "Gigi, this is..." Me being the ritualistic person I am, I would go home and consolidate all their notes into a master set of pages, making sure to copy their marks and comments exactly, including any spelling errors [don't ask me why], but in the beginning the one thing I didn't include was my name. I don't know when I started copying my own name down in these pages, but I do know that when I did, it was with the knowledge that the goodness of the process of really learning to write, and the loveliness of these amazing writers, not to mention Stephen at home, had helped me get to a place in my life in which I didn't hate myself anymore. If nothing more than this comes from these five years [six?] in Tom Spanbauer's basement [and that pact cosigned by Mephistopheles], it's still a wonderful, wonderful thing.

week

Weeks don't usually come this full.

Standing in a huge group of people at Winston Wächter Gallery, glass of champagne in hand, listening to Stephen speak about his art, with his paintings on the wall behind.

On-the-clock / off-the-clock dread at work, waiting to find out if Stephen or I will be one of the ones laid off.

Good friends losing their jobs.

Noni in the hospital with pneumonia, fear but then favorable reports from home of how she's doing.

Learning wonderful secrets from friends.

On-the-clock / off-the-clock dread, waiting to find out if Stephen or I will be one of the ones bumped by one of the ones laid off.

[in my head, i keep thinking "bumped off" which is kind of fun because it makes me feel like i'm in a gangster movie.]

Arriving at Dangerous Writing to find a thick stack of completed manuscript in the middle of Tom's table, ready to be sent off to his agent. A book we in the workshop have been privileged to watch come to life over these past couple years. Tom says, touch it for good luck. Later, Tom says, kiss it with your red lipstick. I kiss right at the edge of his name on that top page. Then one by one, first the women, then the men, pinking their lips, covering the page with color.

Learning unhappy secrets from friends.

A night of amazing pages, then I read last. The very final chapter of the second draft of the novel. Hoping Stephen arrives in time to sit in but he doesn't. But Sage is there - lovely surprise. Finish reading, and Tom starts clapping, then it's a full-out standing ovation around the room. I want to fly and I want to hide under the table. Stephen doesn't arrive until just as it's over, but I say, "Ladies and gentlemen: Michael," and they applaud him too. I tell him to get some lipstick on.

We all agree Charles looks pretty damn good in that shade of red.

Blue Monk later, drinks all around, hanging out and talking writing and other things. Taffy and She-Yeti don't make it, but Carrie does, even with a marathon reading of Moby Dick ahead of her. A toast to Charles for creating my website. Emily and I conspire to get champagne to toast Tom and his book, but I get waylaid in a conversation. Suddenly here's Emily with lots of glasses with a bit of champagne in each, passed around, a toast to Tom and to me--I feel privileged to have my toast folded up with his. Lovely night with so many of the very important people in my life.

Top it off with an evening with a couple more of those people (the very important kind), amazing, enriching conversation, the kind where you feel like you must be the dumb one in the room, the bar is so high, and talking some of our favorite topics. Delicious dinner and a surprise recording session to be part of a very cool podcast series.

This isn't even a week, it's five days. Who would have thought the biggest part of our week would not be Turandot?

...

It's been quite a week. Stephen's artist talk (lovely as usual), the bittersweet of probably saying goodbye to some beautiful paintings I won't see again, the fun time chatting up and back from Seattle with Mary, the turmoil at work... Such turmoil that it's made it difficult to enjoy the enjoyable things. And here I have all sorts of enjoyable things coming up. Dinner with great friends on Friday, Turandot on Saturday. Valentine's Day on Monday. And tonight. I'm promising myself I'll let it all go and just enjoy my Thursday night. Dangerous Writing can do that to you. Sink into some stories and forget all the other stuff. Tonight, if I read, I'll be reading the very end of the novel. My second time all the way through. After workshop, we'll be heading down to the Blue Monk. I'm looking forward to hanging out with some great writers and hoisting a glass at my little website launch hang-out tonight.

Can't help it: shameless self promotion #googolplex, and then I'll stop talking about it:

Website here.

Event invite here.

website

It was quite a process for me, helping put together my website. After I started negotiating with Charles Dye on the project, I stalled the project for some three months just to work on the first step. The masthead... or what I've been calling the masthead, although that's probably not the technical term. I knew I wanted the image at the top to be a piece of a painting I did called Still Life With the Devil - which you can see in full at the top of the blog. Doesn't seem that difficult to take a thin slice of a painting and run your name across it, but it was quite a math problem, fitting it all together just right, especially since the book in the painting is slanted just slightly.

Charles was so patient with me as the weeks wore on and I played around with try after try...







That's a lot of time spent looking at your own name.

I've never been quite comfortable with that person, that person with that name*, so it was an odd process to be creating a rather large cyberspace devoted to her, to me. And here I am, now, launching this thing, and Charles says let's have a launch party.

Let's throw a party to celebrate the me that put together a website to celebrate me. Heck, when I was a kid I was mortified at my birthday parties to open presents from friends because it felt too selfish.

But he's right, of course. Charles knows more than just how to frame a website that looks professional and contains just the right stuff in the right places. He knows about promotion, he knows what it takes to get people to look, which is why you put together a website in the first place.

He also knows that we writers are strange people--writing all the time to have our voices heard but often wanting to hide in the closet and not be seen. Really, this event on Thursday is more than a launch party for a website - it's another little step in my life, toward being comfortable as that person.

In the end, the masthead I went with was this one. And we were off and running, putting together the site. Charles asked me what I wanted out of a website, gave lots of great suggestions, and was never pushy if my ideas were different than his. I thought this was the perfect combination in a webmaster. It made me feel supported, made me feel I had an expert giving me expert advice, but that I was also creating something that was uniquely mine.

When he turned the keys over to me, he taught me really easily how to drive it on my own. He was very patient, he explained things well, and the transition was very smooth.

I'll be updating the site plenty. Soon, I'll be posting info about some upcoming reading events I'll be doing in conjunction with the next issue of Thumbnail Magazine. In the meantime, drop by the Blue Monk on Thursday night...

When: Thursday, February 10, 2011 9:00pm-ish

Where: The Blue Monk, 3341 SE Belmont, Portland

Facebook event invite is here.

[* it's not the name, of course, it's just the insecure inside the person. i think it's a perfectly fine name...]

website launch

Tom Spanbauer says, "We write because we always wanted to be invited to the party."

So, I'm a writer and now gotta throw the party?


Alright, maybe not an out-and-out party, but we're gathering after Dangerous Writing the Thursday after this one, to hang out at the Blue Monk for drinks. I never would have thought to get up a get-together to launch a website--and that's one of the reasons I needed the guidance of my webmaster Charles Dye--but more on him later. In the meantime, the info on the event:

What: Gigi's Super Cyberspace Extravaganza (Or: The Website's Done [lookee-lookee])

When: Thursday, February 10 at 9:00pm [that's 9-ish, as we're never completely sure when the workshop will end]

Where: The Blue Monk, 3341 SE Belmont, Portland OR

You can view the facebook invite here.

dw army - huzzah

Frozen Moment submission is off and away. This has been a very particular experience - a very nice experience. Having the whole writing group submitting for the same project, you'd think there could have been some tension. The difficulty of getting published out there in the modern publishing world, the very strong want... need... that I think every writer has inside. But I sensed no tension these last few months. In fact, it's been just the opposite, and even though, in a way, I would expect that out of this group, I'm also very impressed.

Stories have leapfrogged across the e-mail universe for comments and critiques between us. And then there was Kevin opening his home up for special Frozen Moment workshops. All of us around the table helping each other work toward the same goal, knowing that in essence we are competing against each other. Not caring about that at all. An experience like this is quite a gift.

back in the basement

Back to the Dangerous Writing basement after two weeks of the flu. Life complete again. Amazing pieces and discussions, not to mention two dirty Tallulah Bankhead jokes after someone likened my laryngitis whiskey voice to hers. My voice also got compared with Peppermint Patty's. Nora brought beer in two big jars like you'd use for iced tea or apple cider. Even though I didn't have any, I liked watching my fellow writers try to pour from those things and not spill on the sacred table. When it was my turn to read, I said, "This is the thing that comes after the thing that came six weeks ago," and everyone drank anyway. For an explanation of what the heck that means, go here. But only if you want to.

9/11 reading

On September 11th (this September 11th), Stephen and I were part of a big audience at the Powell's on Hawthorne, listening to some great writing about the first September 11th.

When asked if I wanted to write a piece for this reading, I thought, what could I possibly write about my experience of that day that would be unique or interesting? Here's an excellent essay for you. I watched it on TV. I talked to my mom on the phone about it. I watched it on TV.

Well, the writers who stepped up to the plate showed me just how far flung the theme of that day can be. How writing about an experience that so many people had in fairly the same way as you did can still produce such unique stories and points of view. How that day, and those towers, could mean so many different things to different people.

Kevin Meyer


Elizabeth Taylor


Colin Farstad


Tom Spanbauer



And as a little photo bonus - here's the group preparing before the reading. Tom's buried, but he's in there.