Open Mic Night

Students become the teachers.

At last Thursday’s Open Mic and Café hosted by Dr. Fred Arroyo, students, faculty, and staff shared some of their awe-inspiring work. We had flash fiction, short stories, and poetry giving us a wide variety of form and topics. Each performer shared their writing with grace and earnestness. I thank everyone that had the courage to present their work in process.

After the event, I was able to ask specific questions to most of the presenters, and the responses I got were simply beautiful.

Keaston Sigler presented a piece of flash fiction.

Keaston, one line that stuck out to me was, “Dead skin went ungiven.” I thought this imagery of fish feeding on dead skin was interesting. What exactly did that mean to you? Were you trying to personify them?

I don’t think I was actively thinking about personifying them. More so when I was writing this, it just kind of came out. When I wrote it, I felt that there was something there, something unique. It just cemented me in the moment, and it carried me through the piece. But there was something in it; I felt compelled in a way by thinking about the fish wanting something we could give.

Growing up, did you wade in rivers?

I mean, just like every other southern kid, you find yourself in a river at some point.

Yeah, that was something else I noticed; you give these characters that Southern voice, that Southern twang.

That was a very conscious thing I was trying to do without overdoing it. I felt sort of like I was discovering that too. It felt like wading in the river and having fish nibble on your feet is a very Southern thing, so I wanted to carry that out.

So that’s important to you, Southern writing?

It’s something I have been thinking about a lot in my writing, so I'm trying to reconnect with it. It's a new thing for me, so I want to appreciate what I’ve got.

Jill Hunt presented two poems.

Jill, in your first poem, it felt like you were directing some feeling towards specific people, and I was wondering what your ideal audience would be for this poem?

I didn’t think of an ideal audience. It was supposed to just be a silly narrative. It was OBVIOUSLY not from personal experience (wink wink)-Girl Scout's honor. It felt a little bit Scarlet Letter-esk, so I wanted to do something provocative and eye-catching and funny. So, anybody that would enjoy that would be the ideal audience.

Do you normally write in a provocative way? Is that how you express yourself in writing?

Yeah.

What do you feel like that adds to your writing? Is that something that is innately you?

I don't know that it’s innately me, but it is innately human. I think talking about things that everybody feels but can’t talk about is important. Not that I think what I’m writing is “new,” but unearthing it is fun and funny.

What do you mean the things you are writing aren’t “new”?

Sex isn’t new; provocativeness is not new. It will be here forever, so it is not necessarily bold, but I think it is something that is important.

I think there is a lot of value in continuing that, and I wouldn't say that isn’t bold. I think it makes people uncomfortable to be bold, so kudos to you!

Matt Thomas shared a short story.

Matt, you said you wrote this story two hours before this event, right?

I have a folder full of short stories, but they are all about a year and a half old, so I didn’t want to present stuff that old.

Was this a spur-of-the-moment idea, and you slapped it all on a page, or was it a concept you had thought about previously?

The idea has been rattling around for a while. I saw a movie recently where someone's grandfather was sleeping on a mattress in the middle of a living room on hospice, and I just thought, how fucked-up would it be if someone slept in his bed? I wanted to, obviously, bring the comedy of the situation up but also determine how it would really feel to be in that situation.

It sounded like you were really trying to share a message with college-aged people.

One thing that I really am interested in is my own mindset and the mindset of a lot of artists and creative people I knew going into college. There is such a tangled mess of narcissism and its furry and ill-founded philosophies. That’s kind of what the intense dedication to nihilism from the character was. Just how hell-bent people get on that sort of thing, and I wanted to create a situation where that is challenged. These childish ideas of the world come into a reality of death. The character is put into a situation where real grief is something they have to deal with, no matter how comical a writer can make it.

Is that something you base a lot of your work off of, grief?

No actually, this is the first time I have tried anything like it. I just think it’s funny. Maybe not. I don’t know.

I thought it was hilarious! I was so impressed when you said you had written it two hours before this.

Emilio Rockwell shared two poems.

This poem was about the admiration and love you have for your wife, and I got a lot out of it when you got to the part where you talk about her giving birth. So, in writing that, as a man, talking about the experience of watching your wife give birth, what did you gain from that?

Partly it was, I've seen so many fathers who were never present or connected to that experience. They were detached watching a football game out in the hallway, things like that. And for me, it was really important that I was there for her, but I think it was also about admitting the terror as I saw them wheeling her down the hall. About not shying away from that fear that makes me feel weak. About letting her know she wasn’t alone in that fear either, because at the time, we were trying to be stoic as we got through the situation as much as we could. But later on, it was when we sat down, and I realized how scared she actually was. When I shared how scared I was, she said she had no idea because I was so calm and holding her hand. I told her it was one of the most terrifying things I had ever experienced. It’s important to be present, to connect, and also not to shy away from that fear or sweep it under the rug.

Jeb Bushey shared a short story.

You had a really interesting look into a spiritual experience of a young woman at church camp. Growing up in the south, that is something I experienced. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that: Is that something you experienced?

So, this is an excerpt from a much bigger essay. My main point with the story was to show that in that one moment, Olivia (the character) went through something. In that one moment, that experience was valid, and it didn’t really matter if it was divine or not. Now, as for the story, it's a combination of things from my life and things from people I know. Growing up, I went to a church camp called Camp Sumatonga. and this is where the story takes place. But it is taking place with two girls I met in college, and I used them and their relationship as the characters. Because it is part of a larger picture, I only had a limited amount of space to use for the story, so I had to craft it in such a way that captured all the experiences that they went through, and I went through into a small framework. I hope the message got across.

Yeah, what I took out of it was that this girl didn’t care anything about God, spirituality, or religion, and then she is getting into this place where she has this euphoric experience.

Really what I’m trying to highlight is that experience that people go through. I have two other examples that don’t involve religion. They just involve experiences in life. I try to place each in their own context and give a story with unique characters so the focus would be less spiritual. But I wrote this in 2019, and I realized that the words on the page aren’t the story I want to tell. I was trying to go through and mark up a better way to tell it.

Kylie Petrovich shared a poem.

Kylie, I thought the choice of hands as the main focal point was so interesting, and I was wondering why you chose hands as opposed to any other part of your body.

I think as you age, your hands do change; they physically look different. And your face does too, but I literally was in the shower one night, and I was looking at my hands. It was this strange almost questioning of identity. Like, how are these the same when so much else has changed? Everything about me has changed, but I still have the same hands? It just seems like they should be different. So, it was less about them physically looking different and more about not being able to understand how they are the same when I have gone through so many different experiences.

It sounded like, towards the end, your hands did change, and maybe I’m wrong, but you don’t seem happy about that.

I say, “I wish all of me could be reborn.” There is something about looking at my hands and them seeming new to me, or different to me, and I wanted that to carry over into my persona. I felt like my hands had been reincarnated, and I wanted my whole person to be reincarnated with them. So, I’m kind of stuck with these hands that I don’t recognize anymore, but I’m still the same. It was an actual experience though. I was standing in the shower looking at my hands and thinking these aren't the same.

I get that. Sometimes I'll look in the mirror so long, I get that realization of, “Oh my god, this is what I look like.”

Yeah, if you stare at something long enough it changes.

Do you feel like that with any other parts of your body, or is it just your hands?

My hands have always been a topic of conversation. That’s why I wrote about them. When I was born, the nurse said, “She’s going to be a piano player.” Because even as a baby my fingers were so long. My entire life, my hands have been such a topic of conversation that they felt more important than other parts.

Well thank you so much for sharing that, and thank you to the rest of writers for presenting tonight!

“The Afterthought” is a weekly column by In Process Intern Lillian Reid.