Myth of Arrival

The stereo is on. I found this wonderful CD at the library called something like "Torch Song Divas." I always thought if I could spend the day as someone else, it would be a diva. I don't mean a squeamish prima donna, someone who throws rages temper tantrums, but an old school diva, a fabulous operatic or jazz singer. In other words, someone with a better singing voice than I have who croons along in the beer and cigarette smoke of some cabaret or cocktail lounge and belts out torch songs to break all the hearts of everyone listening. I love all those sentimental love songs, all those laments about unrequited love. But since I am not such a person, the close I get it is when I get to go to a poetry reading and read poems about unrequited love, which doesn't the have the same charm as a torch song I know, but you got to work with what you got, I suppose. The following is a bit I stole from one of my own letters to a good friend. It goes as follows:

I think I wrote to you that I was going to perform last Sunday at a local bookstore (or was it two Sundays ago? My weeks seem to blur into each other and I don't have my calendar in front of me … oh, how terrible to have such a short term memory like I do!) but after it was over I was sort of not impressed by my performance. That isn't to say my fellow wonderland poets (Robert Rentschler, Ruelaine Stokes, Sam Mills) weren't terrific. Oh yes, they were! but I quickly decided never to bring up the subject again (my usual tactic when dealing with things I'd rather not have to, lol) until Sam sent me couple of photos yesterday he took of me at the microphone and I thought, "hey that's cool!" I figure I would send this to you because, of course, you can't hear me … only see me, so you can just imagine I have a great deep speaking voice (wouldn't be cool to sound like Darth Vader/ James Earl Jones? I'd speak a lot more in public if I did, that's for sure) and am not tripping over all the long, complicated words in my poetry. (rule #38 in poetry writing: never use words you cannot pronounce in mixed company … especially if you have a high, fizzy lisp!) well, there will be more readings this year. I can always start practicing.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 5th, 2006 at 6:57 pm and is filed under Scantily Clad Info Dump. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.