I read at Konglomerati Foundation, in Gulfport.
They printed a story I wrote,
"You Used To Could Catch Snook
in Downtown Delray Beach," in Konglomerati
magazine, and asked me to
record myself reading it for their audio archive.
They told me to go by
the local public radio affiliate. They would donate the
studio time.
I did and they wouldn't. I had made fun of them in my newspaper
column.
I said they had gone over to an all-fund-drive format. They out-Heroded
Herod
when it came to being commercial. I defined commercial as being "preoccupied
by,
or with, money." I said they watered down the programming and played
anthologies,
movements, warhorses, and what worked at fund-drive time,
instead of whole pieces,
original compositions, or experimental music.
No shit, Dick Tracy. No tickee,
no washee. Was I naïve?
Was I a purist? Of course they were non-commercial.
I
told that story. Then I told the audience
I had quit my job, mortgaged my house,
and
given myself an evil genius grant
to write a book, which I would probably
publish
myself, stigmatizing it as vanity press.
They thought that was a damn fine thing
to
do with my life. Later, I went to Richard Mathews' house
and met his friends
from the University of Tampa and Eckerd College.
I remember Kathryn Van Spankeren.
At Harvard, they invited her to
a faculty-graduate student mixer as Van Spankeren
and said her wife
could bring home-baked cookies. A female graduate student did
not compute.