songstory night

SongStory was the first lit event I've ever produced.  Such an interesting, different experience from being in a reading without coordinating it. One of the things I noticed as I sat watching the show unfold Wednesday night was a sense of... can I say ownership? How about wishful ownership - like it was my right to pretend I owned each one of those performances, those readings, those tremendous stories.

[photo courtesy colin farstad]

I couldn't have asked for a better night - a big crowd and no last minute crises. Someday Lounge is an excellent venue. They can pack a lot of people in there but it's really intimate with low lighting and little candles on the tables and a balcony for more seating. Here's the red curtain waiting for the show to start, before all the readers had made it to their seats down front.

 Emcee Stephen O'Donnell.

[photo courtesy leann o'rourke]

How lucky am I to have a husband who would offer to take care of all the intros for me so I could keep my mind on my own reading and on the rest of the coordination of the event? I wrote up the initial intros but Stephen did a lot of work expanding on them and making them his own. He makes a great master of ceremonies with his lovely speaking voice and charm - plus, note the sexy sweater vest.

First up was Bradley K. Rosen, reading an excerpt from his novel The Bunkie Spills. It was fun to listen to the slow build of laughter as people realized his narrator was talking about making music with one's urine stream. Bunkie speaks surprisingly beautifully and music-savvy about pee...

First off, you got to be open to it. You got to open your ears up real wide and you have to open up your imagination so it can hear all them notes coming into your ear canals and you can imagine a fanfare of clarinets and violins and bells and whistles and drums and trombones and tambourines and trumpets. All them tonal essentialities of a symphony. You can get all them different tones out of your urinactic stream by concentrating real hard and moving it from the middle of the toilet water and out to the edges of the bowl and around and back again. You can use your hips if you want. A gyration of sorts. A slow groove. Like you was fucking a butterfly.

[photo courtesy leann o'rourke]

[photo courtesy leann o'rourke]

 I liked going from the mangled poetry of Brad's narrator to the sumptuous poetry of Lidia Yuknavitch. She read from The Chronology of Water. I didn't know what she was going to read until she started reading, but I'd been hoping she'd choose this piece. It's beautifully layered and intensely sexy.

One night he put a blanket on the floor and told me to wait and when he came back he was a big 10 years younger than me beautiful man carrying a cello.

"Jesus," I said. "You play cello?"

He played Bach. The sixth suite.

I cried. Possibly the puniest sentence I've ever written.

I cried for the force and strength of his body brought to the brink of tender in his fingers straddling the strings. I cried for the violence of hitting as it fell away into the tremor of holding a note. I cried for the man of him - the size and shape of my father - the brutality of muscle and artistic drive - brought to the cusp of such beauty. Bach. But mostly I cried because I could feel something. All over my body. Like my skin suddenly had nerve endings and synaptic firings and ... pulse.

[Oh my dear lord.]

[photo courtesy leann o'rourke]

When Courtenay Hameister got up on stage, she pointed to me in the audience and said, thanks a lot for making me follow Lidia Yuknavitch. I thought to myself, yeah, I sure as hell wasn't going to follow her. [Producer gets to arrange the program so that she opens the second half so she doesn't have to directly follow any of her fabulous readers. Producer is smart that way.] Then Courtenay launched into her essay "My Sister's Husky Too" and killed.

[photo courtesy leann o'rourke]

Courtenay always kills, with whatever she does. I read her essay in full before the event, and it was so great just in my little head - but combined with Courtenay's impeccable timing and delivery on stage it was even better.

I was glad we’d agreed to play New Year’s Eve, as it gave me something to do. I’ve never dated much because as a rule, I hate people, so my New Year’s Eves are generally not the grown-up proms they are for some. My favorite New Year’s EVER was playing dirty scrabble with five drunken word nerds who almost came to fisticuffs over whether the word “poon” was acceptable. (Side note: it IS.)

Additionally, I’d been dumped a few months prior by a really attractive, sweet sociopath and the breakup had lead me to eat some things. So as I was putting on my holiday bustier before the show, I noticed that the fancy silver hook-and-eye closures were straining a little harder than they used to do their job. It didn’t help that the other backup singer was a size two, and we often dressed alike. Her bustier made her look like Kiera Knightley in Pride and Prejudice. Mine made me look like an 18th century barmaid trying to smuggle a passel of puppies home to her kids. 

So as we stood in the echoey gym bathroom in front of the mirrors, I felt a lot like my awkward 16 year-old self, but now I didn’t have that whole “You’ve got the rest of your life ahead of you” thing going for me.

During intermission, Cymbalman arrived at the entrance to Someday. I wish I had a picture or two of the audience playing him as he wandered through the place. I know people were taking pictures, but none have come my way yet. I love to stand back and just watch people. Some are totally shy about it, afraid to take the mallets from his hands, afraid to give more than a soft ching-ching or two to the cymbals all over his body. Others really let him have it.

Stephen was not only emcee for the evening but Cymbalman-rangler too, escorting him up the stairs since those tiny eye holes in his eye cymbals don't leave him much room for peripheral vision - and then Cymbalman did a bit of percussive performance on stage.


Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!




Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!

Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!



[cymbalman photos courtesy leann o'rourke. psychedelic colors courtesy me having fun with paint shop pro. except for the first shot. that purple is just the lights.]

[photo courtesy leann o'rourke]

I was the first reader after Cymbalman had his bow. I think it's fitting that I followed him because I think of Cymbalman as a clown - in the best sense of the word - and the essay I read was all about my decision to become a circus clown - and the overblown childhood strivings that led me there. My strivings were always grand and timid at the same time, and when I discovered the anonymity of clownhood, I'd found my calling. I see this in Cymbalman too - not only his anonymity but his combination of cacophony and quiet.

[photo courtesy lidia yuknavitch]

Alone in the house, my bedroom door locked, I sat on the edge of the bed in an endless rhythm of strum, each chord a smash of sound with the click of the plastic pick hitting the strings. My cockatiel, Punkin, sitting and sharpening his beak on the wood of my antique washstand, started a quick-paced chirp, low in his throat, along with my music. Of course he wasn’t in tune and he wasn’t in rhythm, but as long as I kept strumming, he kept chirping. I decided this could be some exotic, foreign instrument, like when George Harrison introduced the Beatles to the sitar.

I like this picture Lidia took of me. The combination of lights and iPhone make me look like a faceless yellow phantom, some character from an old movie about the future, complete with some sort of beam of light shooting down onto my head from the mother ship.


Next up was Vanessa Veselka, reading a funny, edgy, very moving piece called "Flora in Pregnancy," which had a landing that left me a little breathless. Listening from my seat, I was glad I hadn't followed her either.

My midwife says I should look at my pregnancy as an opportunity to get closer to my women friends. But I figure they’ve had their chance. Ten years of punk shows, basement parties, and having sex with all the same people should have been enough to break the ice.

                         

“Don’t you have any female friends?” asked my midwife.

            

 “None I’d let near a child.”

[both photos courtesy leann o'rourke]

 Vanessa has a delicious rock 'n roll way of reading, all casual with the mic in one hand and pages in the other. I wish I could put these two pictures of her together and make a flip book.

[photo courtesy leann o'rourke]

Kevin Sampsell closed the show, reading from A Common Pornography. I was kind of delighted to hear him read about his own youthful strivings for musical grandeur - so similar to mine. Both of us read about recording our own music - in the bathroom where the echo was better. Although between the two of us, only Kevin was innovative enough to add percussion to his recordings by banging on the toilet seat.

Our first "album" of punk rock songs was recorded on a cassette player in his bedroom and bathroom. Just Terry and me. We decided to call ourselves Neon Vomit. He was good at creating some heavy riffs based on my smallest suggestions (usually just me saying, Can you do something like this - and then imitating a guitar part with my clenched mouth) and then I would yell the lyrics in my best Rollins imitation. There were no drums but sometimes we would bang on the toilet seat for percussion.

The grand finale of the evening was Kevin using our old relic of a boom box and his own relic cassettes to play some actual Neon Vomit recordings - not only that, but he gave the best lip synch performance ever, rocking out all over the stage as his teenager self. It was hilarious and awesome.

[photo courtesy b. frayn masters]

I want to say thanks again to all the readers, to Someday Lounge, to Bob Priest and March Music Moderne. To Stephen for being emcee and helping coordinate. Thanks, too, to Leann O'Rourke for taking some great pictures of the event.

March Music  Moderne is going on all through March with an outrageous lineup of musical events. Check out their calendar here.

[photo courtesy me]

[one more picture for good measure. emcee stephen contemplating the boutonniere he made from the lost cymbalman feathers he found lying in the someday lounge green room after the night was over...]

nicholas at the party

The day doesn't start out great. After a month of hot sun, it's the first time since Nicholas came to live here that the day is cold and rainy. Nicholas is puzzled and disheartened by this. He's hoped it wouldn't rain in this place; after all, he came such a long way from the last place he lived (Beaverton)*.

In the evening, though, the tall man who calls him dog and the woman with the lap take Nicholas out to a party at the home of the woman who makes everyone laugh and the man who writes pornography.

No, no! says the woman with the lap, the book is called A Common Pornography. Nicholas doesn't get the distinction, or why the woman with the lap seems so horrified by his blunder - he isn't quite sure what pornography is.

The party is called the End of Summer Party, but the tall man who calls him dog laughs sadly and says it should probably have been called the Party to End Summer. As they round the backyard to head inside, they see one man smoking in the wet dark and a ping pong table lonely under a plastic cover shiny with pools of rain.

But the man who writes pornography, standing by the barbecue at the edge of the house, looks happy and grins as he meets Nicholas, and offers to cook them some hotdogs. Inside, the house is packed full of people. There's a big wall with trees and a squirrel painted on it, and a low coffee table covered with food. The refreshments include crumbs at people's feet and a dollop of key lime whipped cream, which Nicholas finds on the carpet. People want to hold Nicholas, and he is passed from person to person.

One group of three get excited and have their picture taken, all holding Nicholas together. They say they are the proprietors of Smalldoggies (a magazine and press and also a reading series), but they've never been photographed with an actual small doggie before (they have cats). On their card is a logo of a Chihuahua looking a lot like Nicholas except that it has two heads. Nicholas has never seen a Chihuahua like this before.

There are so many people at the party, Nicholas can't remember all their names. There's the woman with the blues tattoo and the woman with the girlish voice and the man who lets Nicholas lick his mouth and the man who writes and the woman who writes and the man who writes and the woman who writes. At the end of the evening, when it's time to go, the woman who makes everyone laugh does a little goodbye dance to the Captain and Tennille.

Overall Nicholas enjoys his night on the town.

*[editor's note: the woman with the lap would like to go on record saying she's not actually sure where nicholas' foster home was, so she chose beaverton, since this was where she first met nicholas.]

smallpressapalooza

Every year Powell's City of Books puts on a very cool author event called Smallpressapalooza. It lasts from five to ten and contains a lineup of some of Portland's best small press writers and publishers. It's hosted by our grand sovereign of the small press, Kevin Sampsell. This year, it's on March 15th, and starting up the festivities will be Justin Hocking, the... [let's just use it again because I liked it the first time] grand sovereign of the IPRC.

Guess I'm being redundant since I included the graphic for the panel I made for the Powell's window display and most of what I just said is in there. Ah well. What can I say, I like the sound of my own voice. Here's some more redundancy, followed by some new information. Below: the rundown...




The second looks smaller because it's longer. It's not that I like any of those writers any less. It's just the way of the blog world. Come out on Monday evening! Fun!

uncommon

Here's a shot of the top panel of my February window display for my friend Kevin Sampsell's new memoir. He let me borrow some old family photos - some in the book and some not. Click on the image to enlarge if you'd like to see, among other things, Kevin's bushy-haired eight-year-old school photo and Kevin's house on fire - one of the many stories in the book.

There are more photos in the lower part of the display, which I'll have to post once I can get a shot or two of it.

Oh, and the blank area on the right is where I've set a copy of the book in front, in the window.

[that's a clumsy little sentence. i'll bet he gets teased by his friends.]

It's been really fun following along with the progress of this book and sharing in Kevin's excitement. Tuesday night was his very first reading for the book - at Powell's on Burnside - and I have to admit, I sat myself and my party front row center for it. With as emotional a night as it was for him, he read his pieces and presented his excellent slideshow with charm and great timing and topped the evening off with an on-the-knee proposal to his seven-year (was it seven-year?) love. Stephen and I were talking later about how similar their story was to ours - yes, great things can come out of one simple fan email.

Take a jaunt over to Kevin's website for a blog post about the night, plus pictures and even a bit of video. More info on his tour is there as well.

a common pornography

Every time I read Kevin Sampsell, I'm trying to figure out how he does what he does.

One of the main things I read for is voice - was far before I even got involved with Dangerous Writing. And part of this is that writing without a particular voice tends to have a remove. A sense of distance that keeps me from being able to fully touch the narrator or the characters.

Kevin Sampsell has written a memoir whose voice uses remove like a painter uses just the right sable brush. And I don't get how he does it.

There's something about the spare, detatched, matter-of-fact wonder in the voice of A Common Pornography that, to me, puts that adolescent boy (then teenager, then grown man) on the page. He's quirky, he's charming, he doesn't grandstand. You do touch this narrator, and you can't help but fall in love with him. With all his talk about his suitcase full of porn and even the spudnuts (read it, you'll know what I'm talking about). It's very a infectious read. The array of short, clipped snapshot-like stories makes you lie in bed late, knowing you have to get up early but telling yourself, just one more, just one more.

Another thing I find endearing and refreshing in this book is the way it seems to exalt the ordinary in life. There's plenty of out-of-the-ordinary stuff in here, but you also get to wall-fly yourself for events in his life such as getting drunk for the first time off of vodka and Squirt and trying to kiss a girl in the 7-11 parking lot.

You get the sense that the out-of-the-ordinary is ordinary, and the ordinary is extraordinary. And in the end, that this extraordinary is something we all share. A common pornography told through an uncommon voice.

And such a portrait of a time period - takes me right to the era of my growing up.

Here's a piece. Can you call it a chapter? I love the ambiguous fullness of "for no good reason." And then that matter-of-fact final line - a beautiful setup for the rest of the book.

-

Egg Hunt

When the gun sounded, Matt ran ahead of me with the other kids who filled the park. I could tell they were all excited, yelling into the wet spring air. The sky was speckled with birds and high dark clouds. I ran the other way, back toward home.

When I got to the house, Mom held me as I cried for no good reason. My brother came in the side door with his homemade Superman cape over his shoulder and a basket of decorated eggs and chocolate candies. It was the first time I gave up.

-

It comes out next week.
<linky linky>