Thanks to Mike Else for the flyer!
Program from the second Nature of the Muse event:
NATURE OF THE MUSE
fireside reading & live writing @ LIC BAR 4/4/13
there are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom. – li-young lee, excerpt “from blossoms”
the players:
AUDREY DIMOLA is a journalist, editor, poet, and arts event curator born in Astoria/Long Island City, Queens where she (proudly!) still lives. She has performed at Bowery Poetry Club, Brooklyn Museum, and the NY Aquarium, and her articles, poetry/prose, and photos have been published in print and online. Audrey is the author of Decisions We Make While We Dream, an original collection of work spanning 2000 to 2012, and she has been writing about, participating in, and helping to promote Queens culture since her college years. Audrey thrives on the urge to create and explore in as many ways possible, aiming to always stay wild and stay grateful. audreydimola.com
AIDA ZILELIAN is a NYC writer whose short stories have been featured in over twenty literary journals. She launched a new reading series in Astoria, NY called Boundless Tales (boundlesstales.blogspot.com) that she will be hosting in the winter and upcoming months. Aida is also on the editorial board of Newtown Literary, a new literary magazine that strives to represent new and emerging writers from Queens, NY. Last year her novel THE HOLLOWING MOON was one of the four semi-finalists of the Anderbo Novel Contest. THE HOLLOWING MOON was also chosen as one of the first round of semi-finalists of the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. She is writing a sequel – THE LEGACY OF LOST THINGS, from which she will be reading an excerpt. aidastories.blogspot.com
TIM FREDRICK is a fiction writer whose work has been published in Burningword, Circa, TC Record, and Changing English. He is also the founding editor of Newtown Literary (newtownliterary.org), a semiannual journal dedicated to publishing and promoting the work of Queens writers and poets. He is currently working on a novel called A Book From Which You Will Learn A Great Deal. More information on Tim can be found at timfredrick.com.
JOE YOGA is an artist and songwriter based in NYC. His band Downward Dogs (downwarddogs.com) plays all over the city and released their debut, Familiar Techniques. He also plays bass in Killy Dwyer’s punk performance-art comedy rock supergroup Kill the Band, who also released their first full-length. His most recent solo record, Life Out East, is available on iTunes and Amazon. His website is mrjoeyoga.com.
GREG KIRKORIAN is a rakish New York homosexual and his poetry and writing reflect that. His work is filled with images ripped from city streets, tiny apartments and cramped trains. He describes himself as an anti-romantic searching for beauty in the ugly screeches of obese pigeons on spattered awnings. After spending the last year in the Dublin scene, he recently moved back to New York to pursue his writing career by performing his poetry around town and writing for an internationally-focused blog called The Ci-Pher Project. Like his page: facebook.com/GregoryKirkorian.
SIOBHAN O’LOUGHLIN is a writer, performer, storyteller, puppeteer and activist with a BA in Acting from Towson University in Baltimore, MD. She studied contemporary theatre at Dartington College of Arts in Devon, England, trained in Theatre of the Oppressed with Julian Boal, and is now a trained Joker with TONYC. Before moving to Brooklyn, Siobhan served as a puppeteer apprentice for Peter Schumann at Bread & Puppet Theatre in Glover, VT. Her original work has been seen at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Stage Left Studio, The Women at Work Festival, Occupy the Empty Space, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, The Bushwick Starr, The Hot Cheap Living Performance Festival at the Living Theatre, Miz Stefani’s House LIVE, FRIGID New York, tinyDANGEROUSfun, and the Plus1Solo Festival. Every third Thursday, Siobhan hosts a monthly performance art salon called “Honey & Poison” at Two Moon Art House in Brooklyn (submit to perform at her website!) Her next performance is with HB Studio’s Production of “The Irish Crystal,” April 11th-27th. siobhanoloughlin.com
PAUL WEINFIELD is a singer, songwriter, and meditation teacher. He is also the founder of Tam Lin, a New York City-based band whose sonically- and lyrically-adventurous brand of folk music has earned it comparisons with Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake, Radiohead, and Talk Talk. Tam Lin’s newest album, Medicine For a Ghost, will be out this spring. tamlinmusic.wordpress.com / tamlin.bandcamp.com
local resources:
NEWTOWN LITERARY JOURNAL newtownliterary.org
please participate in QUEENS WRITES! weekend 2013 – April 13th & 14th
BOUNDLESS TALES READING SERIES boundlesstales.blogspot.com
GLITTER AND DOOM webzine featuring everyday creatives glitteranddoom.com
ALSO SEARCH: Jackson Heights Poetry Festival’s First Tuesdays readings & open mic; Oh, Bernice! Reading Series; Waltz-Astoria open mics; Mission to (dit)MARS’ Launch Pad Reading Series & Propulsion Lab Writers Group for playwrights; REZ Reading Series – ALL IN QUEENS!
about the series:
“Nature of the Muse” came out of many things – my experiences as a writer, reader, curator, audience member, and writing workshop participant, as well as a lover of improv and the unexpected – what happens when you push creative people to produce work on the spot and share it with spectators. Going forward I’m aiming to have the series drift through Queens every few months in interesting locations, perhaps even working in multi-disciplinary performances. At it core, though, “Nature of the Muse” will always play with the nature of inspiration and what moves us to create. If you’d like to get involved (not only limited to writers – musicians, playwrights, artists, etc.) please contact audrey.dimola@gmail.com.
audrey wholeheartedly thanks:
everyone who has supported her and helped to promote this event, my beautiful friends for participating, all the open minds in the audience, and of course LIC Bar and especially GUS RODRIGUEZ for giving this event its first home and for always encouraging his fellow creatives to pursue their dreams. MUCH LOVE!
you must not fear, hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings. it is also true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake, to imbibe, to nourish yourself and not be afraid of fullness. the fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and into writing. permit yourself to flow and overflow, allow for the rise in temperature, all the expansions and intensifications. something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them. – anaïs nin
THE PROMPTS:
AIDA ZILELIAN
Prompt: “If life is a tale told by an idiot, you are…”
“Do you want to meet my new boyfriend?” she asked.
She leaned back on the pool table despite the very intense game being played by the two men she did not know. They scowled until they noticed her long blond hair that fell to her waist and her unusually large breasts that were uncomfortably stuffed into a very small purple bra.
“Sure,” her friend said.
She had not seen Shari in weeks. Her phone had only rung minutes ago and Shari had said, “I’m at the Galloping Green. Come hang out.”
Sabina had no friends. For this reason among many others, she had tolerated Shari’s whimsical cameo appearances in her life since they had met at Queens College several years ago.
“Hey sugar,” Sabina heard.
A tall blond guy snuck up behind Shari. He wore an army green flight jacket and a tall pair of combat boots with red laces.
“This is Bo,” Shari said, leaning back to welcome Bo’s long, drawn-out kisses on her neck. “I’m going to have his name branded on my back.”
Like a pig, Sabina thought.
TIM FREDRICK
Prompt: A man and a woman are in a bar arguing about their impending divorce, write about it from the perspective of the drug-addled teenage busboy witnessing the argument
That man and that woman are not pleased with each other you can tell because his face is all red like really red like that time I stared at this drop of blood on my arm for twenty minutes that kind of red and she’s different not red not any color she’s just quiet and not just in that she doesn’t say anything but that her whole body is quiet she doesn’t move a muscle except maybe to blink yeah she blinks every so often but not as much as normal people do how often do normal people blink now I’m blinking a lot that feels crazy and he’s talking and she’s just sitting there not blinking and Susie the bartender is like totally afraid of them and she won’t even go over there whoa the guy just did that thing where you get so upset that spittle comes out your mouth and I’m pretty fucking sure that it landed on the woman’s cheek but she didn’t bat an eye and I mean that she didn’t even blink its like she’s used to that no wonder they’re having problems I’d be all scary quiet if my spouse was pretty much fucking spitting on me I wonder if he meant to do it I wonder if he meant to just spit on her that’s crazy Harry the bar owner is whispering in Susie the bartenders ear and they are both looking at the couple and Susie shakes her head no I bet he asked her if she thought he should call the cops because it’s getting mad loud now and you know he fucking spit on her but she’s sitting there taking it all in and I bet she’s just planning how she’s going to kill him and I bet she imagines doing it and then spitting on him that would be cool why doesn’t Harry ask me what I think about if we should call the cops cause I totally think we should the guys crazy and spitting and the woman’s just sitting there planning his murder I can see it I can see what she’s thinking but Harry would never ask me because he thinks I’m a piece of shit he told me that when I got here a little late I was like an hour late and he’s all fucking crazy and oh my god I think he was all crazy with spittle too.
GREG KIRKORIAN
Prompt: Is someone calling me?
I get the feeling that somebody’s calling me and I have no privacy every time I take a shower. No Joan of Arc, I stink now and walk the streets with a scraggly beard full of lint. It’s like that most of the time until I can’t bear it.
I’ll splash some water in my eyes and, eyes closed, suddenly hear a serene voice humming on my ear drums. The thing is… I’m committed to humdrum and fancied plumbing as a job if not for this… this… I don’t know. Disability?
It’s not the same as the days when you could go around talking about quests or revelations. At first, I tried and they were all–
They who? Oh. Well, stupidly I thought I could trust friends but as time went on they wanted to commit me! Family was no better.
No… it’s not the kind of time when you can tell people about this kind of thing. Crazy! Me!? I’m about as standard as you can be. Boring family life. Not bullied. Looks so forgettable everyone’s always reintroducing themselves. I didn’t even mind. That’s how I am. I cope. Shoot, I was happy! Then the voice and in this time a voice means you’re a nutter.
The pills made me slow. I stopped talking about the voice and yet they still wanted rid of me. No job. In the street. Never asked for a calling. Never asked for this at all.
AUDREY DIMOLA
Prompt: immortality
immortality –
what better word
for me, this –
fact, this thing
i feel inside
my bones,
no question –
how
do we find
this?
how
do we claim
this?
as ours –
by –
grinning white
knuckled
as we shoot
screaming
into the
gorgeous
bloody
wild
abyss –
love harder
hold longer
laugh louder
and write your
goddamn
gorgeous
bloody
wild
heart out –
show ‘em
babygirl
what keeps you
up
what
makes you
shake
what
bursts the soul
out
through
your veins
and you will
know
without
question
immortality
is
right here,
right now,
today.
audrey di mola - folkloric futurism 