We started the reading with the ever charming and gracious Silas Howard, who read from 'Friends as Heroes'. It was so nice to hear all the laughter from all the nuance Silas has in this piece. . .it's all about the relationship Silas formed with Harry Dodge and Lynne Breedlove in San Francisco when the three of them met- how they went from getting high together to doing art together. I'm a big fan of Silas, Harry and Lynne, and so to have an understanding of how they all helped each other both through art in life is so inpsiring. Btw- you have to check out Silas's movie 'By Hook or By Crook'. It's all about the relationship of unsung heroes, and the heroic acts of love that allow us to survive in this mad world.
Nicole Blackman went next. What? What is that sentence? "Nicole Blackman went next."Fuck that. Nicole Blackman fucking eviscerated the mic while putting a spell over the audience with her incredible spell-binding performance and delicately painful essay. It's all about the response she got from her poem 'Holy' which is so damn good I can't even attempt a description. Like most of her poems, (such as Daughter- check it out) Nicole's poems touched the hearts of so many girls and women that her inbox was inundated with their response. However, the response to 'Holy' was mostly by women who took it to be a champion for anorexia. In this essay, Nicole details the intense response she received from her fan's, and what she learned about female self-destruction through the process.
I always make mention of the fact that when I was in college- I e-mailed Nicole, telling her how great her poems were. I used one of her poems as an audition piece. It kills me that now I am writing sentences that go 'Nicole Blackman went next."
So, despite the technical difficulties- the gang at Bluestockings put their collective brilliant heads together and finally got the projector to work so Cristy Road's piece could rock the house, as I knew it would. Cristy Road is a veritable cherry-bomb of talent. Just boom. She's so good and so casual about being so good that it's amazing. I'm not going to detail what her piece is about because my hands are tired - but check out her shit.
Oh- then Fly. FLY. Fly is brilliant!! She let me go through all of her journals and take pictures of anything I thought would work for the book. I came home with over 100 photos. She is so fucking punk, so fucking balls to the wall fierce, and so giving that I'm just honored to even have her in the book, let alone rock the mic yesterday talking about her artwork. Boom.
Then Bonfire Madigan Shive. Just to make sure that we didn't leave a speck of that space untouched, Madigan read from the book and talked a bit about the journey that lead her to the book. (She told me that when she saw it in Bluestockings, she went to the bathroom and cried, she was so happy. That made my heart swell up.) But yeah- then she took her cello out and basically burned the place down with her fierce heart.
Okay- my sister just called so i'm a bit thrown off bass in terms of writing this now. I'm going to go see a short musical she wrote about scientists studying the theory of a kiss. so I have to go soon.
Still, a word about the crowd yesterday. Hotties. Damn it, what a crowd of hotties. Show up to an event if you can just to look around and bask in the hotness. And the goodness. Now I sound like I'm selling biscuits- which in one way, I am.
No really- hot, smart people striving for change in their communities. There were some top notch authors in the haus, some rocker chicks, and then teachers and artists and friends. Also, there was a certain anonymous author there, who I introduced to the rest of the authors so she wouldn't feel alone in her anonymity.
Okay, I'm going to go take a shower now, so I can put on the same clothes I wore last night and go see my sister's musical rock the stage.
yo,
S
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