That was the shittiest gig ever. Thank you to the handful of people who showed: sleazemonkey, nuwishas_tail, drjon, mireille21, thunderfoot23, why_lederhosen, anachronoclast.
The projector they assured me would be there wasn’t there. I checked with them on Friday that they had a projector. They said yep, no probs. If I’d known there was going to be a hassle, I could have borrowed the projector from Melbourne Uni. I was *there* half an hour before the gig. All I needed was a car, and we could have had it. But since I don’t have an after hours key, that wasn’t an option after the fact. Then when someone went to get one from another venue, it required sticking to the ceiling and no one knew where the inputs were. Then when nuwishas_tail stepped into the breach (three thousand thank yous) to try and help fix stuff, it still didn’t work. The main person who was supposed to be organising all this had just not bothered to show up. Great.
So, we started the gig an hour late. Dorothy Porter asked to go on first. Okay, she’s the star, we were running late because of me, the organisers agreed. She hadn’t said hello to me at all before the gig, but that’s to be expected, I was running around like a chook trying to get my damned projector working to display the slideshow I’ve spent this entire goddamned week putting together in every spare moment I have between jobs.
But then, she just left, straight after her bit. I’m really unimpressed with that. I think she would have the courtesy to stay and hear us too. Especially since I’m an ex-student of hers and I was so flattered to be on the same bill.
Anyway, finally went on, did okay, poems went down well, but I was just so drained and exhausted and the whole thing was just such a let-down.
And hardly anyone I invited came. Thea rang to say she was feeling ill, which is fair enough, but this was my big travel poetry thing, a year after I returned, finally all together how it was supposed to be. And I sent e‑mail to maybe 100 people and posted it here which is another 50 Melbourne people and of that whole crowd, maybe 7 people showed up, I’m pretty demoralised by the entire experience.