Saturday, September 23, 2006

My first reading

I have never been to a reading before, and so I always had this impression we must not read for too long (just enough to give everyone a flavour of what you write) or everyone will get bored!

So I arrived for the Bangsar reading really, really late. There were flash floods and hailstones around the Bangsar area, and for a moment, I expected to see frogs raining down too (it can happen), all because it was my first reading and the powers that be are conspiring to keep me from it. But I was not be deterred and I arrived 1 hour late.

(I also wished I had driven my Harrier instead of my very low Cellica, then I would have gone through the flash floods in a twinkle of an eye.)

I arrived when Joy (I don't know her, I got her name from Ted's blog) was reading a part of her script. Ted was there too (hi Ted!) and I met Aneeta. Sharon was busy coordinating everything, what a dear. Then Faridah read one ofher poems from The Art of Naming, about being a Muslim woman behind the veil, and I thought it was pretty poignant.

Then it was my turn! Sharon introduced me, and when she told everyone my book had been banned by the Singaporean National Library, everyone laughed. I read the first part of One if By Land (thanks Argus). After that, Aneeta read the shortest story from Snapshots (I can verify it was really short), and then it was all over because Jit Murad couldn't make it.

I had fun. So if you have a reading, you can invite me anytime. And maybe next time, like Yvonne, I will get a few friends to enact a scene. (PG rated, of course!)

2 comments:

Lydia Teh said...

Xeus, read about the eventful reading at Sharon's. Did the 'high-brow' crowd lap up the 'low-brow' story?

Artemis Hunt said...

Hee hee, Lydia, I didn't finish it. But listening to the others read, I suddenly realised my story isn't low brow at all. In particular the language. It just fits right in.

A lot of people there are would be writers too who haven't published anything yet.