Last night I read aloud from my essay, “The Nature of Disturbance” to members of the Dubuque Area Writers’ Guild. What an amazing group of people who live in this historic and architecturally rich city in eastern Iowa along the Mississippi River! (Check out their totally cool web site: Dubuque Area Writers' Guild.)
Tim Fey, the editor of the Wapsipinicon Almanac who published my essay, had been invited to read and speak to the group. He asked me to join him, along with poet Peter Fraterdeus. Tim and Peter accompanied each other’s readings with music, Tim on the mandolin and Pete on the lute. A piano player from the crowd provided the perfect mood to my own part of the reading.
What a rush, to read my words aloud to an appreciative audience of about 25 people in a bar called Isabella’s, located in the lower level of an old Victorian mansion in downtown Dubuque. After the readings, one woman told me she resonated to my discussion of quitting a demanding teaching job so I could have “deep time” in nature and for creating. A man told me that he liked my conclusion that all religions and spiritual practices have the same underlying “invisible sea” that unifies them all.
I’d taken years to write, revise, and polish this essay, but it was the feedback from the audience that truly completed it. For many years I told myself that I wrote and drew simply because I liked the process, and that I didn’t need an audience. This meant I operated in a vacuum too often and fought inner demons about my worth too many times. Writing and art matter, and creators matter, and there’s nothing like getting your work out there to realize that.
I dare you to try it if you haven’t. Ask the local coffee shop to put up a few of your paintings. Submit your short story to a regional literary magazine. Stand on a street corner and read your poetry aloud. Attend an open mike night at your neighborhood bar.
I know – you’re shy. So am I. So was the 20-something woman who rushed, embarrassed, through her lovely poem about prairie grasses that night at Isabella’s during open-mike after the formal readings. Her soft voice simulated the way a breeze makes tall grasses rustle. I thank her for mustering up the courage to read because she brought the prairie to me that night and I’d been missing it.
Tim Fey, the editor of the Wapsipinicon Almanac who published my essay, had been invited to read and speak to the group. He asked me to join him, along with poet Peter Fraterdeus. Tim and Peter accompanied each other’s readings with music, Tim on the mandolin and Pete on the lute. A piano player from the crowd provided the perfect mood to my own part of the reading.
What a rush, to read my words aloud to an appreciative audience of about 25 people in a bar called Isabella’s, located in the lower level of an old Victorian mansion in downtown Dubuque. After the readings, one woman told me she resonated to my discussion of quitting a demanding teaching job so I could have “deep time” in nature and for creating. A man told me that he liked my conclusion that all religions and spiritual practices have the same underlying “invisible sea” that unifies them all.
I’d taken years to write, revise, and polish this essay, but it was the feedback from the audience that truly completed it. For many years I told myself that I wrote and drew simply because I liked the process, and that I didn’t need an audience. This meant I operated in a vacuum too often and fought inner demons about my worth too many times. Writing and art matter, and creators matter, and there’s nothing like getting your work out there to realize that.
I dare you to try it if you haven’t. Ask the local coffee shop to put up a few of your paintings. Submit your short story to a regional literary magazine. Stand on a street corner and read your poetry aloud. Attend an open mike night at your neighborhood bar.
I know – you’re shy. So am I. So was the 20-something woman who rushed, embarrassed, through her lovely poem about prairie grasses that night at Isabella’s during open-mike after the formal readings. Her soft voice simulated the way a breeze makes tall grasses rustle. I thank her for mustering up the courage to read because she brought the prairie to me that night and I’d been missing it.
No comments:
Post a Comment