Today’s soundtrack: I swear it’s getting warmer
Today at 6:42pm: Clearing my throat and adjusting the microphone.


I finished writing the story at 5:30pm and printed it in a hurry; the reading was at 6pm.

It’s been nearly two months since I did a reading, so I found myself incredibly nervous on the way there. Ten blocks later I was at 308 Bowery at 6pm on the dot. The place was virtually empty.

Poetry and spoken word gigs always start late, so I cooled my heels on the sidewalk while the place gradually filled up. Ishle, the organizer, appeared and after fifteen minutes there was maybe 20 or 30 heads inside.

I was having a cigarette out on the sidewalk when I saw something interesting: An elderly, blind black man in a fedora, dressed like a jazz musician, was being escorted into the place by an assistant, a young Asian kid of maybe 22 or so.

The black man looked like a Somebody. I watched them go inside and people seemed to treat him with reverence. He looked familiar to me; I knew I had heard or read something about this man but I couldn’t remember what. After the show, I found out who he is.

The show went pretty well. I was bookended by two eloquent poets, Anantha Sudhakar and Maiana Minahal, and it’s nice to be part of such a classy reading.

The story I read got a pretty good response, but after reading it aloud I was only half as happy with it as I could have been. It’s definitely in need of some work but seems to have a good skeleton so I’ll try to revamp it for a future reading.

I posted the date and time of the reading about two entries down, and someone from LJ actually showed. Some cat from Toronto who was in town for the week and decided to stop by. He seemed like a nice guy and didn’t try to stab me so I thought that was good.

So after the show I’m walking out to leave and the Asian kid I’d seen on the sidewalk rolls up alongside me. “Steve Cannon wants to talk to you,” he says in my ear, in the same tone someone might say Don Corleone would like to have a word with you.

He leads me to the bar, where the blind man is sitting. I’m a little nervous because it’s obvious this man is important.

“Hey man,” says the blind man, introducing himself jovially. “Steve Cannon. I liked your stuff, man! S’funny!” He starts asking me what else I do, what am I working on, how many finished pieces do I have, etc.

I like him right away; he’s energetic and talks in the ambling, jazzy manner you’d expect of a beat poet or a lifelong scat singer. He does most of the talking, light on the bullshit and heavy on the “Here’s what you ought to do, now get your shit together” and I call him “sir”; I tend to address elderly black men as such, out of respect because, as Chris Rock said, these men have experienced true racism, lived through the real shit.

(When I say real shit I’m not talking about things like being denied a job; not that that’s not bad but I’m talking about when churches were being blown up, little girls spat at on their way to school and people you looked up to were assassinated.)

He tells me he puts out Tribes magazine and to send him some stuff. His assistant, the Asian kid whom I find out is named Paul, hands me a couple flyers with contact info on it. Man. I gotta thank Ish for hooking me up with this gig.

A woman director also approached me, Korean by the looks of her. In the loudness I couldn’t hear if she was directing for film or stage but I got the sense she was working on a smaller-scale type of production. Said she was looking to cast some roles and she gave me her card. I’ll follow it up and let you know what happens.

I’m not expecting much, I tend not to get my hopes up too much with these kinds of things. I’m not an actor and I don’t really have what you’d call Actor’s Looks; I’m a short writer and have more of what you’d call Gollum’s Looks.

She talked a little bit about the project she was working on. Since I couldn’t hear most of what she said in the din, Lam pointed out that I had probably just volunteered for some type of porno.

I’m going to play Gollum in a porno.

Afterwards we grabbed some chow at a Vietnamese joint, then headed down to Silk Road in Chinatown for some tea. Lam and I went over both the book project we’re working on and Lam’s screenplay, which is pretty fucking good. I can’t wait ‘til he finishes it.

My own book of short stories is in Writer’s Hell, but the book project Lam and I are working on is proceeding apace. We’ve got a rough six-month timeframe and I’ll post news as it nears completion.

I’ve gotta get to bed now. Tomorrow our little writing group is meeting to work on Jenny’s project, and my hapkido school is having a cleaning day. Have to scrub the floors and such. I think this week will be busy. Right now I’m listening to New Order and Elvis Costello full blast on the headphones and feeling tired, but good. Good times around the corner.