Thursday, November 8, 2007

Ghosts of York and Jay MillAr rise again

The reading at York turns out to be another first – the maiden voyage of the Egress series run by Andy Weaver. Andy, of course, comes down with that begins as a flu and turns in to a laryngitis and bronchitis cocktail. His doctor orders 48 hours of bed rest and no talking, so Stephen Cain hosts the reading. He’s all dry wit, but warm.

This turns out to be the one and only opportunity that the 3 Snare authors – me, Jay MillAr and ryan Fitzpatrick – perform together. Ryan is stellar. His patter develops, conveys some of the passion he has for the book. He reads a combination of longer and shorter pieces, strikes a whammy of a balance. The shorter pieces, glib and hard, lull you into expecting it all to be light and funny and pointy, and then the longer pieces are a suckerpunch buffet. He read form the “death and destruction” suite, some of the funniest and most uncomfortable material in the book. I remember how much I love the line “I hate ethnic; I like orange drink.”

Jay reads a lot of non-book material – chapbooks, a long set from a longer string of poems examining the general malaise of customer service. When he does read from the book, he asks the audience to call out number between 1 and 79 and reads whatever is on the corresponding page. The audience resists the participation.

The Q&A afterwards is really only 2 questions the three Snares answer together at length. I get to talk about the specifics of the constraints I employ, and that’s fun. Then we munch on cookies, drink some juice or coffee, and spend an interminable length of time on the TTC.

We all have dinner at Tabule. There is white wine and spectacular hummus, labne and tawuk. Later, ryan, Neil, Emily, Gennie, angela rawlings, Jenny Sampirisi, Aaron and I all wind up at Gennie’s apartment. We sing, listen to music videos, drink, and read tea leaves. Angela has notes form our performances, excellent and difficult questions. We try to name Jenny’s book and actually find the tabs to My Belruel. Jenny, angela, ryan and Aaron eventually leave before the subways stop running and after Neil goes to bed Gennie, Emily and I lay on the futon and talk, There is power in having us together again. Emily stays the night and it feels so good to have all the pieces of myself reassembled for just a few hours.

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