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bliumchikOn Wednesday we held the first Lofty Words night of the year and it was wonderful. I ducked out of Advertising early to help set up - we tried to steal the mic and speaker from the people who had the space before us because they just sort of left it there, but the somebody showed up to fetch it, so we got another mic from the guys at the bar. First up was a blond guy called Shivv Rath - named and raised by hippies, y'know - who was in the same position I was last year, first performance ever. Except he could play guitar! I went up and had an encouraging word afterwards, god knows I needed it. His voice was a bit shaky at the start and lyrics had clunky bits but both showed a lot of potential.
Next up we announced open mic. Me and David from my writing class were judging, although he also got up to read something out noncompetitively when it became apparent that only three people had screwed up the courage, and one of them had a poem about having sex with midgets while another was not even with us. His friend briefly dragged him up from the suits networking thing downstairs and insisted he read out a poem he wrote in high school English class. It was really awful, at least the guy with the midgets understood rhyme and meter. (...there was also a nun involved, you guys. Seriously!)
Then the first scheduled performer showed up, Popi Silk. Apparently she's a rising star on the spoken word scene in Sydney, she went to high school with Writesoc president Hannah's sister and is about my age, kind of tiny and vaguely androgynous. I'd never heard of her but I was very impressed with her stuff, it was totally compelling and had a beautiful rhythm to it. Another performer was a girl from our uni whose name escapes me now but had an awesome coat and even more awesome poems. One that really caught me was about Australia vanishing from maps, it was like a really good sciffy short story.
The main musical attraction of the night was the literally dread-full Danger Jones. He was very good, his voice is amazing whether he's covering Bob Dylan or playing his own sentimental but catchy tunes. After he was done Hannah gave me some books wrapped in purple crepe paper and told me to hand out prizes for open mic. Dave had left by then, but we'd come to a vague agreement in between gossiping about writing and politics and laughing at Dave's drunk actor friend Dave's Dave impression. So I handed a book to the winner-by-default and then gave the other one as a special "WTF Prize" to midget guy.
Next up we announced open mic. Me and David from my writing class were judging, although he also got up to read something out noncompetitively when it became apparent that only three people had screwed up the courage, and one of them had a poem about having sex with midgets while another was not even with us. His friend briefly dragged him up from the suits networking thing downstairs and insisted he read out a poem he wrote in high school English class. It was really awful, at least the guy with the midgets understood rhyme and meter. (...there was also a nun involved, you guys. Seriously!)
Then the first scheduled performer showed up, Popi Silk. Apparently she's a rising star on the spoken word scene in Sydney, she went to high school with Writesoc president Hannah's sister and is about my age, kind of tiny and vaguely androgynous. I'd never heard of her but I was very impressed with her stuff, it was totally compelling and had a beautiful rhythm to it. Another performer was a girl from our uni whose name escapes me now but had an awesome coat and even more awesome poems. One that really caught me was about Australia vanishing from maps, it was like a really good sciffy short story.
The main musical attraction of the night was the literally dread-full Danger Jones. He was very good, his voice is amazing whether he's covering Bob Dylan or playing his own sentimental but catchy tunes. After he was done Hannah gave me some books wrapped in purple crepe paper and told me to hand out prizes for open mic. Dave had left by then, but we'd come to a vague agreement in between gossiping about writing and politics and laughing at Dave's drunk actor friend Dave's Dave impression. So I handed a book to the winner-by-default and then gave the other one as a special "WTF Prize" to midget guy.
