Bookstore Interview
Monday, November 24th, 2008
Overhead, the floorboards cracked while I sat chatting among the bookstacks, worried that my tape recorder would pick up the background noise and not the conversation. I was conducting an interview for Present yesterday in the basement of a local bookstore. While I can’t yet divulge the article topic (the piece will be appearing online this week,) the discussion involved Kansas City’s bohemian arts scene and the proprietors’ role in fostering passionate local poets and hosting wild open mic readings.
We sat with legs folded near the stairwell and by the History and Local Interest sections and the record bins. An occasional customer would stand in the shelves and flip through books while pretending not to listen, but the conversation was incendiary. We talked about poetry readings that were raided by the police in the middle of the night. We talked about new literary voices rising in the Midwest. We talked about the beats and the fact that Burroughs scored his mescaline from a place a few doors up from where we sat.
I was inspired. I could hardly wait to write today. I kept envisioning myself among the band of talented local writers and artists reading work to them that would otherwise be kept to myself. But my temptation to read before an audience would only detract from the time I would ordinarily spend writing or journaling.
In these delusions of grandeur, my reading voice is rich and steady. I recite some passages so fluidly it would seem the words came from memory. A few especially emotional passages keep the audience at close attention, waiting for the finish. Afterward, there is plenty of lavishment and compliments. I’m invited to come back. I stay late into the night sipping Boulevard and listening to the other poets let loose until the police lights flash through the broad windows and I slip out the rusted back sidedoor, into the neighborhood behind, running free into the shadowy night wherever my feet will take me, the equivalent to the same random places my mind takes me on the page.
Look for the full story here in the next few days.
