A new spoken word piece! Freshly recorded earlier today, isn’t that great? Thanks to the cute husband, who took the time in a very busy weekend to sit with me for three hours so he could see me perform.

This piece was written and performed for Take Action Minnesota and Justice 4 All for their fair hiring campaign kick-off event. This is a really great organization that is working in earnest to secure fair hiring practices for ex-offenders. This will make our communities safer and healthier, you should check them out!

This is a piece I’ve been doing for a while, and now I have it on video thanks to my dear friend, Heidi.

I was desperately and stupidly trying to write a paper for school the day after my good friend Michele passed away. Frustrated, I called a friend, who assured me that it was normal to be upset. To which I replied, but I have to stop crying! He gently reminded me that it is okay to cry. I felt he didn’t understand that I was crying in class, I was crying on the bus, I was crying the student union, I was crying at small group, I was crying at the freaking grocery store! And while it’s a nice thought that it’s okay to cry, I was finding that the times when it’s really appropriate to cry were fewer than I’d thought. I also discovered that even when I cried in wildly inappropriate places, everyone would act as if I was not crying. Although that felt awkward, I was mostly grateful that I could maintain some modicum of privacy.

One time, though, at a bus stop, a woman noticed that I was crying and kindly asked me if I was okay. Because she seemed to mean it, I told her that I was fine, but I was sad because a friend of mine had just died. “Cancer?” she asked. I shook my head, cried a little harder, and said, “No. She killed herself.” The woman nodded, serious, but not surprised. I went back to my crying, thinking she was done. Then she turned suddenly and demanded, “It wasn’t ’cause of no man, was it?”

I still hold a special place in my heart for that woman.

At long last, I have an actual video of me performing The Math Works. This was one of my first spoken word pieces, written a couple years ago for A Minnesota Without Poverty. Enjoy.

Many thanks to Heidi, one of my favorite performance buddies, for filming this. I say this even though she has now abandoned me for Taiwan.

For about a year I’ve been attending the Voices Merging Open Mic, the largest amateur open mic in the Twin Cities. There are roughly 300 people who attend these gatherings. It feels like a concert, except it’s free and the atmosphere (in my oh-so-humble opinion) is a lot warmer. Each artist who makes the list has five minutes on the mic, and there’s always a featured artist who gets a little more time. I love going to these, and I try to get on the mic as often as possible too. It’s great practice, and a great crowd.

This Monday, I attended a VM open mic whose theme was “Let’s Talk About Sex.” I don’t usually perform to the themes, but that one was worth writing a piece for. So I wrote and performed the piece below, which was a ton of fun. Not safe to watch at work, though.

I have noticed lately that I have no spoken word performances on my calendar.  I’m not sure how this happened.  It seems that over the summer and into the fall I had performances all the time, sometimes several in a week.

In an attempt to get over this hump and into some new opportunities, I googled open mics in Minneapolis.  There are a plethora of open mics in Minneapolis, several for every day of the week.  I could go to one every single day for a month without visiting the same one twice.  At first I was overjoyed, so many chances to perform!  So many new connections to make!  Then I tried adding some of them to my calendar, and I quickly became discouraged.  There are SO many of them!  I don’t even know which ones to pick, and so much of my time is devoted to things other than open mics.

My dear friend Alice suggested that I try to go to one every week.  There are an awful lot of things I try to do every week or even every day, but this is not a bad suggestion.  My problem was that it will be hard to go to an open mic every week without going pretty frequently by myself.  I like to have a buddy with me at performances.  No matter how well it goes, as soon I step off stage I’m convinced that no one has ever said anything so completely moronic into a microphone.  If I have a friend with me, when I sit down the friend says, “That was great!” and I remember that there are much worse things that have been said into microphones.  But when I’m by myself, I end up just sitting with that feeling.

Alice, genius that she is, suggested that I bring a piece of paper with me that says “That wasn’t the dumbest thing ever said in a microphone.”

That said, I’m going to an open mic tomorrow at the Riverview Cafe in Minneapolis at 7pm, and you should stop by if you’re able.  No obligation to reassure me after I perform.  I’ve already conscripted a couple friends for that.

Last night I performed at the Mercy Vineyard Open Stage, which was pretty rocking awesome. It’s a very different feel from performing at the Voices Merging Open Mic, a lot more musicians and bands, and a lot less people of color. That’s not saying much since I’m one of like five white-ish people who attend the VM open mics, and there are usually around 300 people there. The Mercy Vineyard Open Stage was also more relaxed and casual, and I got to do three pieces instead of just one since there’s no five minute limit. I’ll include one piece here that was performed last night. This video isn’t actually from last night because my camera ran out of batteries before the event even started. Sad.

Next weekend Source is having a benefit to for their annex project, which will add a few more beds onto the current 35 in the city that are used for transitional housing for human trafficking victims. I know that Breaking Free alone gets 800-1,000 calls every year from women wanting to get out of the life, so that will give you an idea about how inadequate 35 beds really are. I helped organize that benefit, and I did an interview for their artist spotlights. Which is great, because a lot of my friends (who are freakin’ fantastic) will be performing at that show, or showing visual work, so you should go just because it’s awesome, and then feel good about it because it’s for a really good cause. You can find out more about it at http://www.sourceannex.org.

Two weeks after the Source benefit, I’ll be hoofing it down to Mankato for The Venue. This is a three day art festival that’s put together by a bunch of volunteers who love God and art. I am super excited that they invited me to join them, especially since they’re putting me up so I can participate in the whole weekend. You can find out more about The Venue at www.venuebuzz.org. I was invited by Julie Hawker, who saw me perform at Art Fest earlier this year, and who was kind enough to read a draft of my book and give me feedback. That is one cool lady.

The week after that, I’ve planned a retreat for my women’s 12-step group so we can work through our inventories together. A vast majority of people who enter a 12-step program drop out during step 4, which is when we’re supposed to take a fearless searching moral inventory of our lives. Not surprising that people drop out during that step, that is some scary stuff. But I hope by taking some time out to work through it quickly and with tons of support, we will all make it through to the other side which will be a whole lot better than this side. I know this because I’ve done it, and I hope that the wonderful women in my group will know it soon too.

Two weeks after THAT (I know, right?), November 6th, is a date you should mark on your calendar right now. I’ll wait. Because that Saturday is going to be my birthday party, and you will want to be there. I’m going to invite everyone I know who is amazing at something and ask them to do that thing. The goal is a crazy, over the top, co-ed version of women’s creativity night that will send me into a creative nirvana that will last until my next birthday. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

Today is the sixth anniversary of the day I married the cute husband, who, in the opinion of the author, is the cutest husband in Christendom.  I believe the photo will back me up.

Although it’s not really fair, because almost all men are much cuter when cuddling with a puppy.

In honor of six wonderful years with the cute husband, I wrote, performed, and recorded (with the help of my awesome friend Alice), a spoken word piece, which you can view below.

Our Love, An Anniversary Poem

Cheers to love that is affectionate, magical, and sexy six years in.

Four days, three performances, two new poems, one tired brain!

That’s right, I had three performances last week, as you know if you follow me on facebook or twitter (or both, for extra super special points).  I did another Minnesota Without Poverty event, where I got to meet some really great musicians and connect with the organizers.  They had a special table set aside for artists, which was awesome.  Not only did I get to sit at a table marked “Reserved for Poets,” but we broke into small groups after the main talk, and I got to have my discussion with all the artsy types.  Hoarding the awesome?  Maybe, but it was fun just the same.  Possibly even better, one of the women at my table told me that her dad is a literary agent and gave me his contact info.  She even said she’d give him a heads up that I’d be contacting him.  That is pure gold, baby.

Second, I performed at the benefit concert for the youth group’s 30 Hour Famine campaign.  For the very first time, I tried out a call and response in a poem, and the thing rhymed.  To my joy and a little bit to my surprise, it went over really well.  I’m going to try that again.  Plus, my dad said that he sent the video to his church’s youth pastor to possibly use for their 30 Hour Famine campaign.  Of course, Dad was hoping that they would fly me out there to perform it again.  I’m going to set the likeliness of getting flown anywhere to perform a 2 minute poem at “very low,” but it’s nice to have parents who think I rock.  Here’s a video of that piece:  Manna

The third performance was a much more somber event, the memorial service for the Mcmahon Fire on Lake Street.  The cute husband and I live less than a block from the site, and our whole street was blanketed in smoke that morning.  As we left for work we could see water pouring onto the roof from the fire trucks and flame shooting out the windows.  It was the biggest fire Minneapolis has seen in 26 years, and it killed 6 people including 3 little kids.  I was honored to contribute to the service, and I hope that the poem was comforting to the community.  Here’a video of that piece: The Fire

Today the challenge set before me is to write a synopsis of my most recent book so I can finally start querying.  Yes, I was planning to start querying about a month ago, but I was not fully prepared for such a venture.  And sadly, I still am not.  If you don’t know, a synopsis is supposed to be the entire book in miniature.  So every plot point, character development, and larger theme should be present, all the secrets should be given away, and it should all happen in two short pages.  I can appreciate the convenience of having a synopsis, and I actually expect that a synopsis improves my chances of getting picked up since an agent/editor doesn’t have to read all 325 pages to see how awesome I am at plot.  Still, every time I sit down to write a synopsis there is a little voice that gets steadily louder in my head.  The voice says, “if I can really do this in two pages, why did I write a freakin’ book?”  And then, at that very moment, is when I find out if I really believe in my art.  You might want to check in with me tomorrow.