Reading

I'm wide awake. It's 2:41 am. 

It was a wild ride this week. Wednesday, I had to rush home after work to do my podcast. My account got hacked, my computer crashed and everything went wrong that could go wrong until showtime. Then, it all worked out. 

The next day, on Thursday after work, I drove to Venice. I left about 4:30 pm, thinking I would be early, but the drive took over two and a half hours. That damn LA traffic. 

The performance was at Beyond Baroque and I was reading with a legendary NYC writer and musician Peter Cherches and a Southern Californian writer, musician and one of my publishers, the awesome Dennis Callaci. It was intimidating to be performing alongside such great talent. And so I felt I had to step it up.

For the show, I focused on being present in my performance. On letting go. One of the pieces I read was a story called The Big O. It requires a lot of changing of voices. My YA voice, my mom's voice and my dad's, and there's a lot of dialogue. It's hard to keep my breath but I decided to try to do it the way I've been wanting to. I didn't practice because that messes me up. I just tried to be there, in the now.

I don't think I'm ever satisfied with my performances, but I did disappear while reading it. Meaning, I wasn't overdoing it, and I was present, in the moment, and just going with the flow and the story. 

My dad's voice is the one I so ache to hear. Yet, I never get his voice quite right. The tender side of it. My presentation of him sounds wrong to my ear perhaps because it's not him. It's me trying to capture him. On the page, I see and hear it. But when I try to perform it, I always fall short in my head.

Maybe one day, my dream of recreating my dad on the stage and/or screen will come to fruition. 

Until then, I'll just keep on reading.