Demand Performance
On many evenings here, residents "voluntarily" present their work. Writers read, visual artists open their studios or show slides, catalogs, or examples of their work on their Web sites (tonight Uwe Jonas, a German sculptor who works with a kind of Austrian marble that looks like granite, talked; he doesn't have his own Web site yet, but here are a couple of examples, which don't really do his work justice), and composers perform (I haven’t witnessed that yet, though one of the composers is performing at a nearby college this weekend, and I might attend).
I put "voluntarily" in quotes up above because presenting isn't required, but there is quite a bit of peer pressure: "Are you reading?" "When are you reading?" "Are you going to let us hear some of your work???"
Leave me alone and let me unpack my suitcase, for God’s sake!
It is nice to get a sense of what the other artists are working on, but I don’t recall this badgering from the last time I was here. In fact, I felt no pressure at all -- which is exactly why I was happy to read then. That and the fact that I pretty much started writing the first day I got here during that residency, which wasn’t the case this time around.
I didn’t know if I would do a reading at all this time. That’s not the main reason I came here, and besides, I wasn’t even sure if I would have any new, readable work to share by the end of my two weeks. But yesterday, since I had no fresh ideas, I started to expand one of my blog posts into a full-fledged essay. I’d had a false start trying to adapt the same post a few days before, so I wasn’t encouraged, but 2,400 words later it seems to have turned into something I actually don’t despise. So I volunteered to read tomorrow night.
I put "voluntarily" in quotes up above because presenting isn't required, but there is quite a bit of peer pressure: "Are you reading?" "When are you reading?" "Are you going to let us hear some of your work???"
Leave me alone and let me unpack my suitcase, for God’s sake!
It is nice to get a sense of what the other artists are working on, but I don’t recall this badgering from the last time I was here. In fact, I felt no pressure at all -- which is exactly why I was happy to read then. That and the fact that I pretty much started writing the first day I got here during that residency, which wasn’t the case this time around.
I didn’t know if I would do a reading at all this time. That’s not the main reason I came here, and besides, I wasn’t even sure if I would have any new, readable work to share by the end of my two weeks. But yesterday, since I had no fresh ideas, I started to expand one of my blog posts into a full-fledged essay. I’d had a false start trying to adapt the same post a few days before, so I wasn’t encouraged, but 2,400 words later it seems to have turned into something I actually don’t despise. So I volunteered to read tomorrow night.
posted by Billy at 9:50 PM
2 Comments:
what i would do in that situation is buy many bars of chocolate, entemann's lousisana crunch cake, several bottles of wine, lock the door and nail it shut. maybe i'd come out at night time if i could ascertain that no one was out and about.
i like the idea of making that entry into an essay!
I agree. That was such a moving post. I'm sure the expanded version is even better :-)
Have fun with the reading!
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