May 21, 2024, 12:39 pm
message from my friend RyanI had a vision today. And I think you might be the person that can help me achieve it.
Is this the best text message I’ve ever received? I am not sure how I would quantify “best” or even begin to analyze my emotional response to the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of texts I’ve surely received in my lifetime. But let’s just say it’s up there. For sure.
I was driving back from fishing today and I had this thought that people don’t read to each other anymore and I was like I should have a party where everyone just brings something they want to read and we take turns reciting it to each other. And then I was like that does sound kind of weird, but maybe I could sell it to you guys as it’s like karaoke which is pretty socially acceptable at this point. And then I thought well that’s a good idea.
Ryan’s idea makes me think of myself as a child, hearing Goodnight Moon and Rainbow Fish, tucked in my pink flowered sheets of my twin bed in New Jersey. I think of hearing Evie read The Pout-Pout Fish to baby J, the easy cadence in her voice that reveals this is not her first, or second, or tenth time reading this particular book. I think about church, how the readings were always my favorite part. I loved to count how many times the reader looked up, or hear them clear their throat in the podium microphone after introducing the gospel. But also about weddings, about how reading in my friends’ weddings are my most treasured memories.
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Last Tuesday, Ryan and I co-hosted the inaugural Read The Room open mic at White Whale bookstore. I read the beginning chapters of Notes From The Road and Ryan reads Joe Humphreys’s prologue to his book Trout Tactics. You surprise me! You read an entry from your dad’s Substack, a poem from your cutting board, a poem that made us laugh. You read Kurt Vonnegut because his writing is absurd and our current times feel absurd, you read from the thirty second president’s inaugural address. You read a passage from your grandfather’s memoir and I feel like I’m sitting on the front porch of your family’s cabin in Wisconsin, illuminated by the setting sun on a sticky summer evening.
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The past couple days, I’ve been with friends at a cabin in the woods. Around a gorgeous fire (thanks Matt), we talked about community. What is community? Where do you find it? How present does it feel in your life right now? (Also, wow, THE OLYMPICS, so much to talk about there.) I’ll continue to think about these questions. Last Tuesday, a bunch of us sat in a room together and read to each other. When I spill out of the bookstore and onto the sidewalk, I’m lighter.
We enjoyed the evening of "Read the Room"!