Happy Friday, Wham-Bammers!
Real talk: I find the holidays annoying, especially this blessed celebration of American commercialism where Best Buy employees need to report for duty in the middle of the night to greet savage consumers hellbent on trampling their fellow man to acquire this year’s version of Tickle Me Elmo. It feels odd that it’s right after the day we traditionally spend being grateful for everything we already have. Allegedly.
Admittedly gift-giving is not my love language. I tend to prefer experiences over material things as I would rather spend quality time with those I love rather than receive stuff. Your mileage may vary.
SHAMELESS PROMOTIONAL OPPORTUNITY!
If you’re looking for an experience to give as a gift to your loved ones or yourself (loving yourself is the greatest love of all, amirite?), why not purchase a year’s worth of stories?
On to STORY TIME. This one came from my archives, the prompt was to write three five sentence stories. I decided nothing was more compelling to keep brief than my whole damn life.
This example is truly just that, an example. Nan and I have very different writing styles and tech experience and set-ups (Nan’s in-home studio is quite snazzy). Due to recent brain surgery my performance will not radiate with confidence no matter how much I practice.
I am a perfectionist-in-recovery, but I’m not letting that deter me.
Nan and I are offering these video clips to give everyone a taste of the format. The stories in the slam will be read live. If you are slated for an upcoming slam, we encourage you to embrace your own unique writing aesthetic and run with it, but keep in mind, they must be stories that are true, about you, and have a beginning, middle, and end!
If you’re not gearing up to tell a story, sit back and enjoy my 356 word three act synopsis of how I discovered the artist that I became later in life.
I am a party girl in act one. I come by it honestly as I am born into a world full of hard drinking, fast talking, self absorbed socialites. Growing up in their shadow teaches me that interesting people with big ideas always need people like me to support them while they do their work. “Just use your cocktail party wit to find a decent guy to help you escape this mess,” I tell myself. Then go along with whatever he says, because you won’t be young and pretty forever.
In act two, I am a housewife. I mean, we’re not legally married, but we cook and clean and buy furniture and pay bills together and have sex every Sunday on clean sheets after we both take a shower. It is safe and comfortable and seemingly forever, until one day safe and comfortable becomes a mundane state of emergency and our brains fill with smoke as we scramble for the exits. Forever is wonderful in theory, but in practice it can be elusive as fuck. As is coming up with a new plan when you’ve been following someone else’s lead for most of your adult life.
The party girl returns in act three, as getting wasted seems like the default way to kill time until that new plan emerges. But this time, the hangover involves depression, loneliness, and self loathing that really was there all along in act one, but Chekov’s gun loaded with despair was infinitely more romantic through my younger vision. The only thing that keeps me from pulling the trigger is my desire to chronicle the experience to the point of regularly scrawling words on my hands so I will not forget them. The act of honoring and transcribing my thought bubbles teaches me I can get high on my own ideas anytime I choose, opening myself up to a vibrant world I could never access with liquor. Saved by the fact that creativity can fill in the most gray and desperate of landscapes with color, my third act shows the most promise as I vow to stay forever stoned on my imagination.
I told you we had merch. We wouldn’t end without a teaser.
Risqué, we know…but that’s what it’s all about!
