felix
lelu
freddie
bagira
vader
howler
simon
no wonder doc feels outnumbered. i have three girls and four boys. two are microchipped. three are up to date on their shots. we're saving money to catch the rest up. no wonder we're going through food so fast.
Red was petting howler the other night and discovered a microchip. i thought she wasn't chipped. but i felt it, too. this sets up a conflict. she followed us home. of her own free will. she only lived two blocks away and she is a part time outdoor cat, so she has the opportunity to go back there any time she wants, and she hasn't. so do we take her to the clinic and get the chip read and return her to the owners she ran away from? or do we take it as divine providence or fate that brought her to us and leave well enough alone? she had a wound on her tail when we found her that hadn't had vet attention. i cleaned it out. i helped it heal. not her owners. so i'm really conflicted about it. most of me says, what the hell, my karma is fucked anyway. part of me knows how much i miss jack but i wish him the best with his new family, if he's happier there, more power to his cat self. i won't stop looking for him, but the heartbreak has healed.
i've been working on assembling pieces about my illness. i've decided those can be spoken up and projected. it's like acting to me. like i'm doing a monologue. i try to recapture the emotion i was feeling when i wrote the piece. and with the angry stuff, i'm usually very calm and quiet and mean. with the madness pieces, i'm more manic and animated. much better for slams. and most of them are short enough that i might be able to memorize them.
that is the one thing nagging me. memorizing. my brain doesn't do that very well any more. but i figure if i read it enough and say it enough and perform it enough in my back yard, i will be able to get up on stage and belt it out and actually compete every so often.
i'm not saying i'll do this for every slam. this is a necessary thing for the double down because of the mic. i'm sure at other venues, the mics will be better and i can do some of the regular stuff.
i'm not afraid to do the madness stuff. i've already taken my teeth out and outed myself sexually to a room full of strangers, including judges. what's wrong with a little insanity thrown in? and if i have one complaint about most slam poets, it's that their stuff isn't personal enough. i want to get to know the poet, not just their politics.
i kept saying i wasn't nervous this wednesday. even though i threw up between rounds, i really wasn't. i don't suffer stage fright. i'm a straight up ham. but what really convinced me i wasn't nervous was, after the second piece was done, i didn't feel any relief. i just felt like me. it could have been the vicodin. i won't have the benefit of that on june 12th.
there's one venue that hosts slams and i'm told that if you stay until the end, they give you a recording from the mic of your performance. a couple of months there and i could put together another CD. this time in CD format. it would be kind of cool. i have a really nice mic and i plan to do some recording here, but it would be great to have live stuff, you know? more to distribute, more to get my voice around.
i really should start actively looking for DJs wanting voices for their musical inspiration. that's what i really want to do. get my words mixed in with music. another subterfuge, like reading it calmly and quietly. let the words do the work. distract from the words so they sink in slowly and hit you on the way home. that's where i want my work to go. i guess i could look on craigslist, or put an ad on there myself. then there's the few DJs that follow me on twitter and the music management company that follows me on twitter, i could contact them and let them know of my talent and my interest.
which would be a dream come true for me. i can't sing. i never could. and all i ever wanted to be was a singer and musician. but while this isn't a genre, it isn't unheard of. think of Run Lola Run . . . "Wish", "Running", bot dance songs with spoken word over it. and fucking amazing.
i've had some exposure in denmark. in a club. the thought of people dancing to my voice just thrills me. and i'm more into making a splash in europe than america. to do it here i would need some kind of foreign accent or language. in europe, i just need to be american. but not a stereo-typical american. which i'm certainly not.
onto another, completely unrelated subject . . .
i have no idea where to hang my art. i have my art, professional art, kelli's art, and now Red's art, which i want to make a part of the scheme of things. and i don't know where to hang what. i guess my collages in the hallway. kelli's big painting in my room. the picasso over the tv. and then my smaller and kelli's smaller paintings on the wall with the book shelves. that leaves the wall over the couch for Red's stuff. it just seems silly that our first year here is almost up and i still haven't hung anything. i have a south american woven wall hanging that i think i'm going to bite the bullet on and give to doc. because half of his room has a south american theme and the other half an asian theme. the wall hanging would look great in the south american half.
i need to clean the living room. it's gotten cluttered again. time to clean it out and dust the shit out of it. i guess i'll straighten it tonight and then dust after i vacuum tomorrow. i love my Fifth Element disk, i need to find that tomorrow. i want to watch it and no one seems to be playing it. i'm sure i could find it On Demand, but it hasn't worked since they changed our cable boxes last july.
i hear growling. with seven cats, i'm surprised i don't hear more of it. in all they get along pretty well. simon has issues with everyone getting in his space, but he's not really aggro about it, just a warning meow and imposing stretch. everyone has a problem with vader because he's always trying to get them all to play with him. by ambushing them and pouncing them and chasing them. the rest of the cats have to be in the right mood for this, and poor vader has lousy timing.
felix gets growly after dinner if i don't let him out right away. but normally he gives nose bumps to everyone. he was actually licking lelu's head the other day. it was so cute. she didn't know what to think of it.
and freddie has issues with simon. more issues than a news stand. she won't even let him in the same room with her. and he is three times her size. but he won't chase or attack her. it's like he knows she's smaller and harmless to him, just really vocal. he kind of seems to get a kick out of it. sometimes he gets near her just to make her growl louder. he also ambushes her like she does him. it's funny.
whew, over 1,300 words. i guess i had a lot of nothing to say. it's fun to talk about poetry again, to talk about some form of my art. i'm starting to feel more me. did i mention i made some jewelry the other day? i was showing my beads to Red and just threw together two pair of earrings. one of which i gave Red, and they look great on her. i'm making her wear them to First Friday next month. i want to sell my stuff there eventually, so i should start wearing it and having other people do so, too.
ick, my hair is all fuckered. i think i'll go wash it and detangle it. damn wind and curly hair. and it's too damaged to straighten. it looks like a stack of hay when i do. i've been putting a nourishing oil on the ends to try to mitigate the damage to them. i'll get them cut off in a few weeks, but they aren't split, i've never been cursed with split ends. they're just . . . damaged, frizzy, something not right. plus with the temp going up i sweat too much to straighten my hair, it just curls up at the scalp as i sweat and ends up tangling and looking . . . strange.
okay, enough. i'm going to go read twitter and watch V for Vendetta for the 108th time. bless BBCAmerica for playing it over and over on mother's day. just another day for me until the cats learn to make cards.