December 17, 2001: and I always drown
Last night, I went to the Red Sky open mic with Chris and Ali. I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers for a couple of reasons. First, I hadn't really gotten to know Ali before she became Chris' other partner and I managed to get a horrible first impression of her, so last night was a stab towards reconciliation and actually getting to know her. Second, I was going to actually read some of my poetry aloud in front of strangers for the first time in seven years.
Football traffic caused me to be an hour and fifteen minutes late to pick up Chris and Ali, so we just managed to snag a quick dinner at KFC before heading up to the Globe. I am, slowly, correcting my first impression of Ali as I get to know her a little bit; I'm still bristly but trying like hell to remember not to be so judgemental. We talked about nothing much in particular, just trying to relax into each others' presence a little bit. She told stories that made me glad that I'm not pretty, stories about getting hit on by various unsavory people. If that's what being pretty gets you, I'll take my fat fuzzy self ANY day, thanks.
After remedying our collective low blood sugar, we headed up to the Globe for the mic. Chris got leaked on by the ceiling, causing us to very quickly vacate the booth for one of the tables in the middle of the venue. Ali signed up for the #2 slot, Chris signed up for #5, and I--optimistically--signed up for #10. There were a couple of good performances, but several of the readers were mumblers, which led me to not have the slightest amount of interest in their poems. (Ah, yes, I love central auditory processing disorder. really.) Ali read a couple of pieces, one a very cute long-form haiku piece that I just love. Chris did his usual bang-up job with a couple of pieces I've heard before--it's very different when he's performing them for a crowd instead of just for me. I can't really quantify the difference--it's more of an energy thing than anything else.
Then came my turn. I read journey song #10 and a new poem, water-knot. the journey song reading went reasonably well--it's short and melodic. If I were to do it again, i'd read "for the pleiades, seen from a highway at night", as that one's really fun to read aloud.
The reaction to "water-knot" was...interesting. I stumbled a bit on the second stanza but managed to recover without starting over. When I got to the part about "poet" being a dead word...you could *feel* the temperature in the room plummeting. I actually got heckled at the end of that stanza by someone who was a very, very rude boy. I tossed the next line at him as if it were a throwing dagger--"I am alive, and therefore NOT a poet." Had my hands not been shaking, I probably would have zinged him in the next stanza, but by the time I got there, I'd forgotten all about it.
Fortunately, "water-knot" resolves nicely even for people who get pissed off about the middle of the poem. I got some nice loud applause at the end of that one. In retrospect, i'm glad that poets are, generally, gentle sort of people more apt to throw words than rocks. I didn't actually stop to think that, um, my opinions about poets and poetry are a trifle out of the ordinary, at least in that literary circles.
Cris seems to think I did pretty well. I'm not so sure. But, at the very least, it was a start.
I'm not sure if I'll go back to Red Sky. But I might find some other open mic to attend irregularly.
I was having a low self-esteem day, caused by lack of sleep and general blood sugar weirdness. I'm better now. I'm going to go to bed early tonight and see if I can't make up for not being able to sleep last night.
Sometimes, the simplest pleasures are the ones that are completely out of reach.
I'm trying out a new template--this one should look okay at resoloutions of 800x600 and above. I'm going to live with it for a few days before I decide if I'm going to keep it or not.
I love the lily, though. Love it to death. Mmmmm, transparent flowery goodness. [I am such a goddamned GIRL sometimes.]
