The Furious Spinner

It's late. Almost midnight. Mario and I had our program tonight. Twenty-five people attended, including us. That's a fairly good number for a weeknight. I always figure it ain't the number of people in an audience but the quality of the audience that matters, and we had good quality. I always plan to put on a good show if there's one person or one hundred. Mario and I had decided that I would give a short introduction about our beginnings. This was a mistake. Since I started off talking, it seemed more like my program than "our" program. I tried joking around with the group at first. I always forget that my sense of humor doesn't go over very well in this part of the country. (In other words, I can sooth my ego by thinking, "That joke would have killed in Detroit.")

Usually when Mario and I do a program together, we have a nice comfortable (and somewhat witty) repartee going on between us. It relaxes us and the crowd. Tonight, to me, Mario seemed a bit disengaged. He doesn't enjoy talking about himself in the first place, and this program was about our creativity and life together. Our talk seemed disjointed, to me, unfocused. It went on too long. Finally Mario started reading his poems from Love Life, and the audience was with him. I think they really wanted to hear more from Mario than from me, since most of them see him every week at work (which was fine with me).

Then it was my turn. I read my essay "Light" from Counting on Wildflowers. I had read it to Mario a few days ago, and we thought it sounded fine. It is a good essay, but I was a bit worried that it was too long. When I still had about five pages to read, I could tell the audience was getting tired—at least I thought they were weary. So I stopped and tried to summarize the essay, which didn't really work. If I could have written it better shorter, I would have. Then Mario read more poems, and people asked us questions. Most of the questions were directed to Mario, which told us he hadn't talked enough during our presentation.

We sold some books, though, which is nice. I felt we hadn't given as good of a presentation as we could have. Mario thought we did great but I broke the storytelling spell when I interrupted myself reading "Light." He thought the audience had been with me. But I had seen three people with their eyes closed!

I wasn't very happy by the time I got home. It was not my best performance. Mario was satisfied and excited. Who knows whose perception was correct. We decided for our next presentation we would do completely separate segments, like we usually do. We collaborate well in our life together, but we don't do well collaborating on creative pieces unless our roles are completely separated and clearly defined.

More than you probably wanted to know. But there you have the "other side" of an event.

Once home, we ate blueberry cake and frozen bananas mixed into soft ice "cream" and watched an awful movie. Then we watched another one to get the taste of the awful one out of our brains—and to keep me from having nightmares from the first movie.

Now it is time bed. Another day, another day. 0 comments

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