Franklin Park

Last night I gave a reading at Franklin Park, a new lounge in Crown Heights that hosts a monthly reading series.  The wonderful organizer, Penina Roth, met me at the door and checked in throughout the night to make sure I was ok…you see, I don’t drink and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been in a bar.  So doing a reading at a bar (which the Brooklyn Paper dubbed “booze and books”) made me a little anxious.  Fortunately, my good friend Stefanie was there to prop me up, and another friend, Madhu, came out from Manhattan.  I was on last, and so got to enjoy hearing the three other writers: Matt Gallagher (KABOOM: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War), Hila Ratzabi (The Apparatus of Visible Things), and Sini Anderson (performance artist, Sister Spit co-founder).  Sini was accompanied by a cellist and bassist—watching her dramatic monologue made me realize how important it is to take chances with your work.  During the intermission my friends and I talked about what it takes to focus as a writer—sometimes it means turning inward, and giving up the social world.  Yet being an author today *requires* you to be social, to say “yes” when your inner impulse is to say “no” and then withdraw.  I think I had my photo taken at least twenty times last night, and the entire reading was filmed so I’ll be sure to post that once it’s up on Brooklyn the Borough‘s site.  Unfortunately, they had to adjust the lamp before I started to read, and that meant I couldn’t see the audience at all…it felt a bit strange, not seeing anyone’s face, not being able to gauge how the reading was going.  But there was a fair bit of applause at the end, we sold all copies of the book, and Penina assured me my reading was “memorable.”  What *I* am going to remember about last night is the trio of young black twenty-somethings who stayed til the end just to hear me read—many thanks to Charmaine and Judith and their friend Ace (?) who told them Wish was “Kindred-esque”!  We turn outward so that we can connect with potential readers and other artists, but it’s hard sometimes.  I had an early-morning poetry workshop today and I’m looking forward to tomorrow, which will definitely be a day of silence…