I ended up going to something called Whimsy last night, a semi-regular performance art thing. There was some poetry (some pretentious, some quite good), someone read from his morning scribbles of dreams, someone playing a theremin (which I don't think I'd even heard of before), someone couching telling about some bad stuff that had happened to her recently as "interactive storytelling", a video piece about gender, where the person who did the piece started out in a dress and female wig, and ended up in a suit, sans wig, a performance piece by someone pretending to be a little girl coloring with her doll, and, what I think was the best part of the evening, richmackin. He writes a zine and now has a book (which I bought from him at the thing) published of letters he writes to companies and the responses he gets back. Really funny stuff. Sometimes he gets no reply, and sometimes he gets a form letter reply, and sometimes he gets personalized replies. One example: he wrote a haiku to Starbucks talking about their proliferation. They wrote him a haiku back. And sent him coupons for free coffee.

I think I may like to do some sort of performance art. I'm not sure if I'd fit in with that crowd or not, since almost everyone there made me feel more normal and straight than I've felt in the recent crowds that I hang out in. I think I would like to read poetry, but I guess I just don't think that anything I could write could be good enough. Of course, some of the stuff I saw last night wasn't necessarily "good", whatever that means, but it was all enjoyable, seeing what people created. I frequently get a creative urge, but I usually don't follow through, or I don't finish what I start. I used to always just attribute it to laziness, but I think the laziness is a manifestation of my fear of failure and rejection. If I don't do something at all, then I can't do something that is less than perfect. But maybe if I had a semi-regular place to just read some poetry or give little rants or shave my head or something, I would actually find motivation to follow through on the creativity, even if it were not perfect. We'll see what I end up doing. Maybe I'll contact the organizer of this thing. I wonder if there's any sort of tryout thing, or if he has to know you first, or if he just lets anyone get up there. I guess it won't hurt to at least ask. Heh, maybe I could start off by reading some of my old poetry. I recently dug out the journal I kept when I was in France, where is recorded the first bits of poetry I ever wrote. The very first one was written elsewhere and recorded in there, and it's the only poem of mine that I have memorized (I rattled it off to cthh a while ago, not having seen or thought about it in years. Actually, cthh suggested that it could make a good song, or I suggested it and she agreed with me or something). Anyway, I have again misplaced the journal, so I should probably clean my room so I can find it. Maybe I'll sort of test the waters by posting it here first. Yes, poetry from an angsting 15-year-old, how exciting.