– Succinct
–<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m inspired by this idea that one day, my future grandchildren could be digging through a
cobweb-filled attic, long after I\u2019ve passed, and find an old box labeled \u2018Why I Was Put on
This Earth\u2019. And after blowing off the dust, they search through the box and find the work I
have published, and recordings of my performances. They would barely be able to tell it was
me.
\u201cGod, she looked so pretty back then.\u201d
\u201cI guess we know where I get my good looks\u2026\u201d
Then after an afternoon of discovering this life I had lived long ago, they could come back
down the stairs and after a moment their kids would come running up to them and ask \u201cYou
were up there for ages! Did you find any old and cherished memories of great grandma Astrid?\u201dAnd my grandkids would share a glance, and then laugh, and whisper to each other \u201cHonestly I can\u2019t imagine anything more embarrassing than being a poet, let’s just keep this whole thing to ourselves, shall we?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not exactly a gig but recently I was in an uber and the driver asked me what I do for a living
so I said \u201coh I\u2019m a comedy poet\u201d so he says \u201cok hit me, give me a poem, make me laugh.\u201d
My mind went completely blank so I just tried to explain the plot of Robots (2005) and pass
it off as my own material. I was able to pass off the weird names by just insisting that my
\u201cfriends\u201d (the characters of the hit movie Robots (2005)) were all nonbinary and chose
obscure names so people wouldn\u2019t assign them a gender based of off their names alone.
Anyway, all was going well until we got to the scene in the boarding house and when I insist
to this uber driver that I know someone called \u201cAunt Fanny.\u201d Uber driver goes crazy, starts
laughing his head off. He turns around to me and says \u201cyou ain\u2019t half bad, y\u2019know that
Astrid?\u201d and I say \u201cshouldn\u2019t you be keeping your eyes on the road?\u201d And that\u2019s the story of
the second time my poetry got me into a car crash. Sorry, what was the question again?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(This one isn\u2019t a joke answer)
People not giving trigger warnings when covering sensitive topics. Yeah, I know I have blue hair & I look like the kind of person who gets annoyed by this kind of thing but come on. You as a performer may have gone through a traumatic experience. And you may find that you get a lot out of writing and performing poetry about said traumatic experience, so the least the audience can do is sit through you talking about something when you\u2019re the one who had to go through it, right? No! This opinion is bad and self-centered and does not anticipate the possibility that someone who you are performing to may have JUST gone through a similar experience, and might not necessarily want to be confronted with that right this second. Or maybe they do, but give them the option ahead of time to decide that for themselves. Trigger warning your work. No it isn\u2019t \u201cspoilers\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n