At the Senior Citizens' Center this morning
- From: Ejucaided Redneck <rlsloan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 11:41:36 -0400
I agree to show up here and there to read something fairly often. It's
what you do if you want to sell books. Some crowds are toughies though,
and this morning shaped up to be one of them.
At a monthly meeting at the Senior Citizens' Center, a bunch of old
folks hear a program, sing a couple three hymns, play Bingo, and before
all that, listen to a speaker.
Today was my turn in that particular barrel.
Most of the time I can hold my own at a reading, but all through the
earlier part of this event, the room was buzzing with conversation,
people were shuffling around greeting friends, getting coffee, calling
across the room to get someone's attention.
That's a hard thing to read through, though I've never taken it
personally. If a reader or speaker or singer or preacher or teacher
can't keep the attention of his or her audience, ninety nine times out
of a hundred the problem doesn't lie with the audience.
I had some stuff printed out to read before leaving the house, and at
the last moment ran off a copy of "Enex Ground," a five or six year old
essay I haven't read in public in a long, long time. (It's at
http://tinyurl.com/8u6to in the event you want to see what I'm
referencing.) I'm glad I took that particular piece.
Before the program got started I got into a conversation with a woman
about how kids today are "missing" so much of what preceding generations
had in the way of cultural touchstones like old hymns and other music,
family history, folklore and the like. I tactfully suggested that if
youngsters in our families don't have or know those things, it's because
we aren't passing them on. Again, the problem doesn't lie with the
audience. . .
That's what "Enex Ground" is about, really, the blessing bestowed on my
undeserving self by second cousin John I, who honestly answered every
question ever asked of him --except for one, and it's covered in the
essay-- and told me truths others wouldn't.
I prefaced the reading by asking these grandparents and great
grandparents seated in front of the dais to make sure their offspring
and their offspring's offspring knew "the whole story," so to speak.
Then I read "Enex Ground."
To a profoundly quiet and attentive audience.
That was so _cool_.
--
The work of language deserves our
greatest care, for the tongue's fire may
devour the world, or may light the way.
-- Scott Russell Sanders
--
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