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| The author/publisher, Dane F. Baylis |
A DAY IN THE LIFE
AND OTHER BORROWED TITLES
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UPDATED READING SCHEDULE
Dec 3, 2013, 9:00 PM at the
Cobalt Cafe, Canoga Park, CA.
(Featured Reader for the Hollywood Institute of Poetics coordinated by Jessica
Ceballos.) Also open mic.
Dec 7, 2013, 4:00 PM at Beyond Baroque, Venice, CA. (ASKEW Poetry
Journal #15 release party.)
February 8, 2013, 4:00-6:00
PM at Grenada Books, Santa Barbara, CA. (Dane F.
Baylis and Fernando Albert Salinas.) Open mic follows.
March 9, 2013, 2 pm, All
Erotic Reading at Sylvia White Gallery,
Ventura, CA.
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In the words of the Prince of Denmark, "There's the rub." It can be easy to forget that you're still a small fish in a large ocean. You find yourself with a schedule that needs updating, posting, and actually complying with and, before you know it, you start feeling like somebody. It would probably be better to remember another quote, one from the movies. You remember Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront"? There's the famous line from that screenplay that comes to mind when I remember how long I've been at this: "I could have been somebody. I could have been a contender!"
Why this tack all of a sudden? Because I'm looking back at the number of times I've come that close and either let other things get in the way (booze, drugs, bad relationships), or I just plain spooked myself and hit the road. (I saw a lot of places, and wasted far too much time on things I fooled myself into thinking were important.) That, and the realist thing. There is only so much time and so many chances. You can screw yourself out of both before you know it.
Tomorrow night I'm center stage again. Standing behind a podium, poetry in a tidy bundle before me and a voice in the back of my mind, whispering like the slave riding behind a conquering Roman general as he guided his chariot through the streets towards the Forum. That voice reminding me that, "All glory is fleeting." In a town like Los Angeles that's even more the case. As they say down here, "You're only as good as your last project."
All of this reminds me that I was born with and cultivated a talent that shouldn't go squandered. So, once again, here I am in the limelight. Only, this time it's going to be different. I have never been this sure of what I'm doing. Whether or not that amounts to anything significant to the world does not matter. What matters is this time I've planted both feet and I'm not even thinking about anything but the next line, the next phrase, the next word. Because it's not about what I might be, but what I might create. Everything else is pretty much bullshit.
See you at one of the events above, or further down the line, but I will see you. Sort of like a leering and perverted Santa Claus!
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Meanwhile...live, love, write - With conviction!
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