Elina didn’t make it to this one because of a cold. I had one too but I managed to get there.
Simon ran this meeting and it was a nice change. For the first exercise, he played the song Sweet Jane by The Velvet Underground and asked us to write something after hearing it.
I wrote this:
Sometimes it’s when I’m right in the middle of it all that I feel the most outside of it all. When I’m safely at home, doing my own thing, I can say that all those people out there, those heaving throngs of regular people, the ones hanging out in the bars or the clubs, or dancing, they don’t matter to me. I don’t like dancing, it’s just not my bag.
But when I’m right in there, pressed up close to the leather-wearing cool-mongers wearing their shades in the crypt-like lighting - those shiny people that I know I’ve seen in some movie – that’s when I know it’s all a lie. I don’t like dancing because I can’t dance, because I can never step outside of my own self-consciousness for even a moment of carefree belonging. I don’t hang out because I don’t know how. I don’t go out because I don’t know where to go.
I got some good feedback:
J: Try to get rid of the first line. I can see how you needed it to get started, but it reveals too much too soon. (kinda like a thesis statement) Likes the last few – short, to the point. A little defensive, a little attitude.
N: honest. Wants to hear the story that’s about to begin.
S: Felt the attitude, wish he’d let the song take him there.
N: liked the cool-language reversed. couldn’t tell where it was going – home, or the club/bar. Would want to hear more.
I: liked the sense of alienation – no one else knows you’re out of it, but you know.