This is a bit difficult for me to talk about, and I’m afraid I have nothing that I can present to you here in the form of a link to a picture, or video, or text. There are so many wonderful, inspiring, creative works here that I want to share my own small success. I just wish I could truly show it to you.
It’s always been my dream to be a writer, to write science fiction. For reasons typical and boring, I have not made much headway in pursuing my one dream. But at one point, not all that long ago, I made some efforts. I took a few writing classes, and I signed up for this mentorship project where I got to work in a small group with an award-winning science fiction author. I never thought I’d be accepted, but I got really lucky with a risky, but creative, application that caught the attention of the author in question. At the end of the mentorship, we were all supposed to do a public reading.
Now, the program was split up into several types, with spoken word poetry as one type, and another type was some sort of non-fiction that was really intense (led by a Gulf War veteran who was an award-winning journalist), and a couple of others, with science fiction tacked on at the end, as an outlier, and probably only because the particular author in question was involved with this organization by virtue of being in the LGBT community. When it came to a live reading of our work, we science fiction authors were clearly lacking. Everyone else had powerful rhythms and imagery; intense, self-contained stories that spoke of the human condition. The others in the science fiction group had only sections of our unfinished novels which, frankly, failed to produce the kind of energy the others had in the time alloted.
Except for mine. I decided to bend the rules, and chose a piece that I had written a few years before, instead of whatever I was working on during the project, because I felt it was more suitable for a live reading. It was a weird little set of puzzle pieces, with elements of science fiction, yes, but also of Spaulding Grey-esque spoken word energy, childhood reminiscence of magical realism, and onomatopoaeic bursts of sound. And it was a rare, brilliant moment of creative genius in how every piece came together, in a way that I was more witness to than creator of.
And I performed the hell out of that thing. I gave it my all, like nothing could go wrong. Tom Cruise in magnolia could have learned how to act with passion from me. Maya Angelou could have learned something about the beauty of spoken language from my utterances. Morgan Freeman could have learned how to make his voice resonate from the performance I gave. It was that high school football hero moment, that I will forever remember as the pinnacle of my creative life, surpassing and transcending my limitations and giving myself fully into the moment of true creativty.
And people applauded. And people stood up and applauded. No one else, that night, had received such a response. And my mentor, whom I had felt was uncomfortable with me, and whom I had felt was unsure about each piece of writing I submitted to her, looked upon me with awe. With awe. And pride. Because I was hers - if only because she had chosen me out of dozens of applicants and finally she was seeing that I was deserving of her esteem, and had exceeded her expectations.
I wish I could have the confidence in my ability to write, and be the next P.K. Dick or Ted Sturgeon, or at least make the attempt, and get a few worthy stories out there, that at least a few of you fine folks might find entertaining and thought-provoking, for a time. But if I can’t do that, at least I have this. I have this moment. And when the question is asked, I have this, for an answer.
- and her vocals are beautiful.
