About Saturday's live poetry reading

 Yesterday was a live poetry reading via Second Life at the Makazi HQ for Nova Echelon. I had originally agreed to do it in honor of the 10th anniversary, but then the leader discovered that he had miscalculated the date (It will be the 9th in...February or January, I forget which right now). So instead the festivities went to celebrate the harvest season.

I am still incredibly shy. It is one thing to facilitate a religious ritual or meditation through there. I am used to those and the focus is not on me, even though I do still get nervous at the voice part until I fall into it. When the focus is on me though?

Yipe.

Even with my mild panic attack from speaking and being heard by so many while reading my work for the group, and the coughing fits from the cold I'm fighting (thankfully I HOPE I got the mic off for those), the reading went well. There was audience participation as some of those present volunteered to read individual poems. Dante, Methos, and John Krauss/Grease Coakes were the volunteers. It was really neat hearing how it sounded with others reading them! It was even better knowing that they were being enjoyed.

We even got to hear some of Methos' work after, which was also very cool.

It is a shame that there were people that missed the reading that had expressed interest in going. It was a good gathering just the same though. Something that I like about Second Life for function like this is that once a person has an account and knows the location, or a group to join to ask for the location, it is possible for new people to drop in or wander up. That makes it more open and inclusive, very much like going to a tavern or coffeehouse.