Parting of Ways
Hosea says I can be vindictive sometimes. I never thought of it that way. In the past, I''ve been quick to anger, but I'm a little mellower this decade.Robert Ricks met with me at my place last evening to dicsuss the Open Minds over Open Mics on Monroe Avenue. He was my partner in that and other endeavors. Rob felt that the venue was failing because there haven't been large crowds. Because the Ciara White fiasco made him look and feel bad. He wanted to close the venue. He had the nerve to imply I wasn't doing enough to promote the venue.
Wait-a-fucking-minute, Speedy. I've sent over a thousand emails, produced and distributed over a thousand flyers, made dozens of calls and numerous mentions to the shit on my open mic nights. I have inserts on that shit in my booklets and I've been trumpeting it from my web site. Blurbs in the daily paper and the weekly entertainment rag both mention Open Minds over Open Mics on Monroe Ave. What the hell else did Mr. Ricks expect?!?!
He thought I should have been visiting schools and churches, sticking flyers under windshield wipers and some other shit. He's on some other shit! Maybe my way is a little too high tech for him; maybe he doesn't appreciate effort of an electronic nature. Why should I beat the pavement to talk to a couple dozen people if I can click a button that will reach out to a couple hundred? Why go out to plead with the faculty of a school or the congregation of a church when I can send them a tidy email and point them to a tight web site? Work smarter, not harder - that's my motto!
Rob never bothered to look at the newspaper ads or check out the flyers. He says he read the emails and visited the site (once!), but I disbelieve him.
I asked Rob if he minded stepping aside and to let me continue developing the venue on my own. "What makes you think it will work with you running it alone if it didn't work with both of us running it?" he asked. Well, maybe because I'm willing to give it more time. I do have a history of success with this open mic stuff. Look at the Marqee, the SPoT, Julius cafe... I mentioned the amount of time and effort I had already put into promoting this venue and how I didn't want to let it go so abruptly. Ron knows how committed I am to this open mic movement. He can't be considering I might want to do something else on Thursday nights...)
"I'm not willing to relinquish control just yet," he finally said. "I have a possible grant coming through from the city and I'm planning to do a youth program." Ahh, so there it was. I sat back in my little black leather chair, fingers steepled my chest. Contemplated, cogitated, meditated. Robert didn't let the silence last long.
"So what are you gonna do?" he asked me. Do about what? Thursday nights? "Yeah." Now it was damned near in the open. He didn't want to do the Thursday night open mic thing, but he wanted me to throw my lot in with whatever this new project was, which he hadn't even discussed with me. Rob, Thursday night is my power night for poetry. I'm going to keep pushing it, if not on Monroe Avenue, then someplace else. He thought about on that for a minute. Then changed the subject, asked me if I would still look at the half-dozen computers in his Teen Empowerment office that he wanted me to network.
I had verbally committed to setting up a LAN system at the office for a nominal fee. I was also locked in to a lead role in his upcoming play: Where You At, Lord? (which I had also done extensive rewrite work on.)
By the time Robert left yesterday evening, I was still agreeable to doing the LAN work and playing the role. But the more I thought about how he had handled things with the Open Mic, diametric to my support of his endeavors, a little steam started coming out of my ears. I wrote 5-star reviews for his novel on amazon.com as well as barnesandnoble.com. I played equal time opposite him in his Down Here In the Dirt production for a measly hundred-fifty bucks (and gave him a third of that back as "investment toward future projects together"!) I had links to his organization and to his book on my web site, and plugged him as my favorite author on the back jacket of my SeptaVerse series.
Well, those links are gone now, and my next version of SeptaVerse will probably tout Steven King or Robert Jordan. The 5-star review on Amazon has disappeared into the great beyond (I can't figure out how to delete the barnesandnoble.com review). I will eatthat script with tobasco sauce before I study another line (although he can keep the measly fifty bucks!)
Hosea says I'm vindictive. But I could have put up a one-star review and brought his struggling book ranking to a mortuary level. I could have bad-mouthed him (like Ciara did!) on my web-site or discourage participation in his venues from my open mic. I did none of the above, nor to I plan to, and I pointed this out to Hosea.
"No, you weren't vindictive to Robert - Actually, you were kind of mild in your reaction," he said. "But you can be vindictive, Jahaka."
Okay. I won't argue that. Too Subjective. But whatever I am 'being' - it sure felt good to purge a little Robert Ricks out of my system.
Ahhhhh.
posted by JahStorm @ 2:34 PM
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