Broken Mic Night
Feb. 20th, 2008 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mhuzzellSteve Bell isn't funny.
But his near-constant presence on the back of the G2 gives me hope as a cartoonist. I've been feeling the desire recently to do more creative things, writing drawing and such. Harry wants me to develop a cartoon I showed him in prototype. My mum wants me to do satirical caroons, generally. My dad wants me to be 'a writer'. Jesse wants me to become a freelance journalist/opinionist. Seeing as I have no idea right now what I want, I'm taking suggestions.
Monday night was the first Spotlight Open Mic Night of the semester. The microphone itself was broken, hence the re-naming of the event, but it went pretty well despite technical difficulties. There were fewer people there than usual, so we were able to crowd close. I read a couple of poems: the current edit of 'A Winter's Unrequited Love' and a new edit of 'Love Poem' that Harry pestered me into writing due to the shortage of readers. Chris read a short story he'd written, and as he's another poet* who's made a transition to prose, a leap I've been preparing to make myself.
Now, Chris is an actor, and when I've seen him read before he's looked pretty confident. But watching him read this story, I could actually see all of those things I usually feel when I read. His voice was steady, but his hands were trembling like the filament of a dying bulb, the papers rattling audibly. A perfect picture of the terror of display.
Because all writing, if it's honest, is baring. And it has to be honest, if it's to be any good. Not literally honest, obviously, but emotionally honest--which is the deeper kind, anyway. Showing your writing to someone else gives them, at least on some level, an insight into your psyche, your soul. Doing it makes me feel more naked than naked, so I'm careful about what I let show. But I'm getting bolder about it, I think. Hell, I keep this journal; I've even started linking to it, on things as public as my Facebook profile. Maybe I'm more of an exhibitionist than I thought.
All of this--and much else in my life--has been put half on hold just now, though, because I have man-flu. That's right. I thought it was just a cold (once my body forced me to admit to being ill in the first place, that is), but then on Monday, talking to my friend Jon, he diagnosed it as the dreaded Man-Flu. First, because I'd compared my sinuses to plumbing (I stand by this. Does anyone know of a better description of the place between your nose and mouth than 'the U-bend'?), but more importantly because, having finally admitted to having a cold, I was complaining about it every other sentence. Telling people I have man-flu has, so far, engendered little sympathy and not a little confusion. This morning's breakfast conversation was therefore reassuring:
Vera: "What's man-flu?"
Steve: "Oh, no, man-flu's awful. It's just, like, a mild cold, only you feel like you're going to die or something. It's terrible."
I have at least gotten myself all drugged up for it now. Unfortunately this includes not just the usual paracetamol and decongestants, but (since I didn't sleep 'til 5 am from coughing one night), a nasty sludge called 'Bronchial Mixture' that I found at the drugstore. I wasn't sure whether to get the syrup for a 'chesty cough' or a 'dry cough', since what I have is, in fact, a dry chesty cough. Damn divisions. Should've gotten the former, I guess, as it's the one with the expectorants. Instead, I was seduced by this so-called 'Bronchial Mixture' that promised to be for all types of coughs and colds. Which is why I'm posting this, as a warning to you all.
This sludge, though I guess it's effective, has got to be the most disgusting thing that's ever passed my lips--and that includes goldenseal tea. I really wish I'd read the label more closely before I bought it. The 'Active Ingredients' are: Menthol, Aniseed Oil, Capsicum Tincure. The 'Other Ingredients' are: Sucrose, Liquid Glucose, Caramel E150, Glycerin, Chloroform, Tragacanth, Benzoin Tincture, Tolu Tincture, Clove Oil, Peppermint Oil, Ginger Oleoresin, Benzoic Acid, Ethanol, Purified Water. It looks like crude oil and it tastes like a mixture of menthol, aniseed, and petrol. Ych.
*By Spotlight convention, anyone who reads a poem at an Open Mic is a 'poet', and is usually referred to as such ever after. But are these distinctions really useful? Especially at this level of writing! How much poetry does one have to write before defining oneself as a 'poet'. Or is it a matter of how much poetry vs. how much prose? Harry was 'Prose Monkey', but about half of what he reads are poems. And what kind of prose counts, anyway? Does it have to be fictional prose? What's going on here?
But his near-constant presence on the back of the G2 gives me hope as a cartoonist. I've been feeling the desire recently to do more creative things, writing drawing and such. Harry wants me to develop a cartoon I showed him in prototype. My mum wants me to do satirical caroons, generally. My dad wants me to be 'a writer'. Jesse wants me to become a freelance journalist/opinionist. Seeing as I have no idea right now what I want, I'm taking suggestions.
Monday night was the first Spotlight Open Mic Night of the semester. The microphone itself was broken, hence the re-naming of the event, but it went pretty well despite technical difficulties. There were fewer people there than usual, so we were able to crowd close. I read a couple of poems: the current edit of 'A Winter's Unrequited Love' and a new edit of 'Love Poem' that Harry pestered me into writing due to the shortage of readers. Chris read a short story he'd written, and as he's another poet* who's made a transition to prose, a leap I've been preparing to make myself.
Now, Chris is an actor, and when I've seen him read before he's looked pretty confident. But watching him read this story, I could actually see all of those things I usually feel when I read. His voice was steady, but his hands were trembling like the filament of a dying bulb, the papers rattling audibly. A perfect picture of the terror of display.
Because all writing, if it's honest, is baring. And it has to be honest, if it's to be any good. Not literally honest, obviously, but emotionally honest--which is the deeper kind, anyway. Showing your writing to someone else gives them, at least on some level, an insight into your psyche, your soul. Doing it makes me feel more naked than naked, so I'm careful about what I let show. But I'm getting bolder about it, I think. Hell, I keep this journal; I've even started linking to it, on things as public as my Facebook profile. Maybe I'm more of an exhibitionist than I thought.
All of this--and much else in my life--has been put half on hold just now, though, because I have man-flu. That's right. I thought it was just a cold (once my body forced me to admit to being ill in the first place, that is), but then on Monday, talking to my friend Jon, he diagnosed it as the dreaded Man-Flu. First, because I'd compared my sinuses to plumbing (I stand by this. Does anyone know of a better description of the place between your nose and mouth than 'the U-bend'?), but more importantly because, having finally admitted to having a cold, I was complaining about it every other sentence. Telling people I have man-flu has, so far, engendered little sympathy and not a little confusion. This morning's breakfast conversation was therefore reassuring:
Vera: "What's man-flu?"
Steve: "Oh, no, man-flu's awful. It's just, like, a mild cold, only you feel like you're going to die or something. It's terrible."
I have at least gotten myself all drugged up for it now. Unfortunately this includes not just the usual paracetamol and decongestants, but (since I didn't sleep 'til 5 am from coughing one night), a nasty sludge called 'Bronchial Mixture' that I found at the drugstore. I wasn't sure whether to get the syrup for a 'chesty cough' or a 'dry cough', since what I have is, in fact, a dry chesty cough. Damn divisions. Should've gotten the former, I guess, as it's the one with the expectorants. Instead, I was seduced by this so-called 'Bronchial Mixture' that promised to be for all types of coughs and colds. Which is why I'm posting this, as a warning to you all.
This sludge, though I guess it's effective, has got to be the most disgusting thing that's ever passed my lips--and that includes goldenseal tea. I really wish I'd read the label more closely before I bought it. The 'Active Ingredients' are: Menthol, Aniseed Oil, Capsicum Tincure. The 'Other Ingredients' are: Sucrose, Liquid Glucose, Caramel E150, Glycerin, Chloroform, Tragacanth, Benzoin Tincture, Tolu Tincture, Clove Oil, Peppermint Oil, Ginger Oleoresin, Benzoic Acid, Ethanol, Purified Water. It looks like crude oil and it tastes like a mixture of menthol, aniseed, and petrol. Ych.
*By Spotlight convention, anyone who reads a poem at an Open Mic is a 'poet', and is usually referred to as such ever after. But are these distinctions really useful? Especially at this level of writing! How much poetry does one have to write before defining oneself as a 'poet'. Or is it a matter of how much poetry vs. how much prose? Harry was 'Prose Monkey', but about half of what he reads are poems. And what kind of prose counts, anyway? Does it have to be fictional prose? What's going on here?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-02-21 01:30 am (UTC)I love how you put this. It makes my embarrassment seem almost poetic. But on the other hand, it reminds me how obvious it was that I was unspeakably nervous about reading that piece.
If it makes you feel any better, you don't show your nervousness like that when you read.
(Oh, and I'm an "actor" now? Wow, the labels just keep on coming. :P)
no subject
Date: 2008-02-21 10:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-21 08:07 am (UTC)The whole poet/prose monkey thing is more my fault, I think. I made a big thing of being the only person who did any form of prose-writing in first year, because we didn't get as many workshops or events that were good for us. In second year things evened out a bit, but the whole "prose awareness" thing , meant that people took much more notice of the genre people were writing in. It's only in the past year that I've been doing poetry, really -- and there seems to be a lot more cross-genre writing happening. Which is a very good thing.