Performance Art

Our performance on Saturday went beautifully. My friend handled most of the teaching instructions, thank goodness. I just sang it for them. What was the performance? Well...

Our performance was part of the Talking Image Reading Series. The idea is to connect writers with visual arts. The writers attend an exhibit and create a story, poem, whathaveyou inspired by that exhibit. Then everyone gets together at the exhibit and shares what they wrote.

This particular exhibit is called "The New Land of Milk and Honey". It is a satire on communal living and new age touchy feely-ness. It's splendid. It is at the Soap Factory. You should check it out before it goes away next week.

My friend Jen is a fantastic poet. She was inspired to create something with the audience. So we created a song. She wrote a poem and asked me to put it to music and to find a chorus within it that everyone could sing to. Then, at the show, we handed out the different lines to different people within the audience. They were asked to restructure the verses how they think they should be. Each person called out a line and we put it all down. Then, when complete, I sang it for them as a song while Jen and Sarah performed a dance they created. It was a great moment.

Though they were not my words, it was so amazingly beautiful hearing people sing along to something you had a hand in creating. I was a bit choked up when we sang the chorus for the 4th round at the end. I was just so happy that people participated.