UPDATE!
From Chicken Corner
The Machine Proejct
Emily Lacy
*****
At 3pm, when our reading at the Natural History Museum in LA had been scheduled to begin, the auditorium was empty.
Juliana Spahr poked her head in despite my protestations and after seeing the pristine, untouched expanse of seating, she turned to me with her eyes gleaming.
“This has always been a fantasy of mine,” she said.
“To have no one at a reading?” I asked with the pure peculiar horror of an organizer at an unattended event.
“Totally,” she said.
When three people finally showed up, she seemed genuinely let down.
Oh well, Juliana.
She would have been especially dissapointed in the Machine Project Reading later that night, since we had to turn people away from the door because it was so packed.
Both readings were excellent, giving further proof that it doesn’t matter how many people are in an audience for a reading. If you’re that one person and the reading is good, then you could be in the middle of Times Square or on the moon, it wouldn’t matter.
Will Alexander
Dudes and burgers
From the work of Juliana Spahr, Jen Hofer, Jen Bervin and Stephanie Young in Los Angeles [5:16m]:
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Even after a month or so of exposure, watching Linas skateboard around the bus with his camera still seems amazingly cool to me and everyone else on the bus, but, apparently, not to the police of Barstow, CA.
On a long stretch of construction riddled highway from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, Linas dissappeared for half an hour only to show up in the back of a squad car driven by the prototype highway patrolman.
Whoops.
But only a little humiliation and a ticket, and not, as threatened, a confiscated camera and jail time.
So we made it to Cal Arts for a reading in a bunkerized building full of attentive awesome listeners, remarkable especially for a Wednesday night.
Though the Mets lost, everyone stayed sane enough and there was little gnashing of teeth, and I got to go early to meet my new niece, Willa. Hello, Willa!
Stephanie Young at Cal Arts [2:21m]:
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UPDATE!
More from Las Vegas!
****
I want to hear Elvis sing one more time so I keep pressing this button.
I believe Elvis sees into my soul and he sees I am on a fundamental leval a loser so he gives me nothing, only takes more and more numbers from my tally on the screen.
Noodly doodly ding ding!
From the monumental awe of Roden Crater to the flimsy sugar high of a Las Vegas casino, we’ve had an intense 24 hours, in no small part because of readings like Eileen Myles’ below.
All of Las Vegas is not like this, but this is what we see when we come to read at the Brooklyn Room of the New York New York Casino.
A strangely charged reading, with some of the most intense performances we’ve had yet, with one particularly loud heckler and a man telling me I’m sexy afterwards as I stand at the urinal.
Really?
Elvis doesn’t think so.
Eileen Myles in Las Vegas [5:29m]:
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