Dear Reader Missed
At Dear Diary night, folks go onstage to bare their souls
It’s the Wednesday night before Mother’s Day, and Ashlee Fairchild Jones has the stage at the Brick.</p><p>She is in costume and in character, reading to a room full of listeners. She is playing the role of her mother, Deborah. The book from which she reads is her mother’s diary. The passages are funny, brash, tender and peppered with profanity. In one, she recalls a guy who apparently questioned her maternal judgment.</p><p>“There’s nothing that pisses off a mother more, than some (jerk) telling her not to have MY baby in any place, be it a bar or hotel or anywhere. … As Stevie said, anyone who gives advice like that doesn’t have kids or hates them if they do.”</p><p>Another expresses devotion to Jones’ stepfather, with a disclaimer.</p><p>“Our first Valentine’s Day married. I hope that you are happy. Maybe we’ll always be together. I know I’ll always want to be in your arms. I know I’ll always want you next to me. Because I love you more each day, even though you’re a major pain in the ass.”</p><p>The reading took place during the Mother’s Day edition of Dear Diary, a monthly event that features performers, typically women, willing to stand before friends, strangers and fellow performers and read entries from the pages of their adolescent diaries. No subject is taboo. No revelation is too personal. </p><p>On Friday night, Dear Diary will celebrate its first anniversary with a show at the Brick, in the Crossroads Arts District.</p><p>The Dear Diary founder, Meghan Whelan, said the show has evolved quickly over its first year.</p><p>“I’ve found as we’ve progressed through each month, the shows have become more varied,” she said. “They started out pretty light and raunchy and hilarious. Lately, we’ve had some poignant moments. Tears have been shed, followed by more raucous laughter. Emily Frost, our host, calls it the Bipolar Express. We take you up and down and back up again.”</p><p>Whelan based her event on a similar series in Brooklyn, N.Y., called Cringe Night, which started in 2005. </p><p>“The idea has been co-opted and spread throughout cities around the world,” she said. “They even have a Cringe Night in London now. The woman who started it, Sarah Brown, began transcribing and emailing excerpts of her teenage diaries to friends. She decided to do it in front of a live audience and invited others to participate.”</p><p>Kansas City’s first Dear Diary was in July 2010 at the Fishtank Performance Studio at 17th and Wyandotte. It has since moved to the Brick. The show’s original host was Susanna Lee, a comedian and burlesque performer (Lucky Deluxe) who moved to Los Angeles in late 2010. Her replacement is Frost, a jazz singer and previous Dear Diary performer.</p><p>“I hosted the Love Sucks edition of Dear Diary and performed an impromptu lip-sync of the Def Leopard song ‘Love Bites,’ singing to myself in the mirror,” Frost said. “Those were the Fishtank days. … Heidi Van (Fishtank’s owner) would write down the best one-liners on the chalkboard wall. One example: ‘Let’s time travel so I can tell you how (bleeped) you are.’ ”</p><p>Jones, 30, has been a Dear Diary regular, having missed just two or three readings, she said. </p><p>“I’ve revealed everything from obsessive teenage crushes and spiteful jealousy issues to drunken family dramas involving my colorful parents,” she said. </p><p>“The Mother’s Day reading was really important to me. My mom passed away six years ago from cervical cancer. A few months after she passed, I found an old journal of hers from when she was my age. My mom was an extremely eccentric and colorful character, and I wanted to show that on stage.”</p><p>So she dressed like her mother and sipped her mother’s favorite drink, a vodka with cranberry juice. “I embodied her the best I could. I never got to have a funeral for my mom, so the Dear Diary reading was the closest to a public homage that I’ve had. It was, as always, pretty therapeutic for me.”</p><p>That sense of catharsis is common among the participants.</p><p>David Wayne Reed, actor, stage producer and emcee of choice in several arts and music circles, read at the first six Dear Diaries. </p><p>“After that, I stopped because, honestly, I had exhausted the best of my teen journals,” he said. “I don’t remember what I read at my first Dear Diary experience, but I do remember that it was cathartic, kind of like coming out of the closet to strangers by revealing your deepest thoughts and feelings.</p><p>“When it’s read aloud, you just connect with other people and, simultaneously, with yourself. You realize that everyone had a miserable, horny adolescence. … I also realized what a judgmental little (bleep) I was.”</p><p>Whelan imposes a loose set of guidelines for each reading. She also advises people on how to make the best of their performance. </p><p>“It’s usually best if someone who wants to read has been to a reading first as a spectator,” she said. “Then they understand the concept and what kind of material we’re looking for. The point is to entertain. </p><p>“The only guidelines I set are time limits, usually 10 to 15 minutes per set. And if there’s a theme for that month, obviously I want (the material) to stay within those parameters.”</p><p>But she is flexible with those parameters. For the Mother’s Day show, for example, reader Mel Neet read about her grandmother.</p><p>“Meghan had no problem with me sharing about my grandmother, who died two springs ago,” she said. “As much as I wanted to read about my mom, I didn’t have anything close to being ready, and my diaries from my teen years weren’t the tone of voice I wanted to use that night.”</p><p>Billy Smith, who performs with a few local rock bands, took even more liberties with the Mother’s Day theme, using music as his medium.</p><p>“I’m pretty sure I volunteered to Meghan before I had any idea what I would read, because I don’t keep a diary,” he said. “I decided to relive this kind of painful yet highly emotional teenage experience with my mom, but I had to sing it.”</p><p>The equivalent of his diary during his teen years, Smith said, were mixtapes, “the perfect way to express a certain emotional flow. … This was a way of keeping a journal or diary.”</p><p>“I had been in trouble by my father, who was struggling to raise a big family. His only solution was to ship me off to my mom’s for a while so he wouldn’t kill me. So I called my mom, and she simply couldn’t do it at the time. The timing was simply horrible.</p><p>“I felt shattered and rejected, so I made a mixtape for my mom. It was a 60-minute cassette that contained only one song, looped over and over and over until the tape ran out. The song was the Smiths’ ‘I Know It’s Over.’ The opening line: ‘Oh, mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head.’ ”</p><p>Whelan said performers read from old diaries “98 percent of the time,” but she is willing to make concessions and exceptions, as she did with Smith.</p><p>“I have one reader who writes up essays or monologues of his experiences as if he’s writing in his diary,” she said. “But everything he reads is a true account and comes from earlier writings. I’ve also had readers who read their (instant message) conversations or letters from friends. The point being, the material was never intended for public consumption.”</p><p> Dear Diary has produced some memorable moments and some favorite readers. Whelan mentions Jones, Frost and Reed as being part of “the core” of the series. Everyone who has been more than remotely involved mentions a now infamous and hilarious “List.”</p><p>“A lot of readings have put me in tears laughing,” Jones said. “One was Sarah Mundy’s list of each person she has ever gone to first, second, third and home base with. She inspired me to read my own list of teenage make-outs and then-somes.”</p><p>Mundy, 25, is a graduate student in English literature at UMKC and has tutored at the university’s Writing Center since 2008.</p><p>“I have always written, it seems like,” she said. “I started keeping a journal when I was 11 and did so until I was 19, when I moved into blogging and Xanga and then MySpace.”</p><p>One of her first Dear Diary readings involved an entry about a friend Jessica and a boy Michael, some ice cream and the licking of the ice cream off legs and toes. She was 14: “Michael went nuts! He lept up, went behind the couch, pacing back and forth and walking like he had to pee.”</p><p>The response was so enthusiastic, it inspired Mundy to come back and read “The List,” a compilation of dalliances. The list has several categories, starting with “people I’ve kissed” and ending with “sex.”</p><p>In between are the various stages and acts, some split into “given” and “received.” There’s no narrative or commentary, just a list of names and everyone’s age at the time, including Mundy’s. Some partners are designated “question mark.”</p><p>Adding to the “nakedness” of revealing “The List” in public: Her parents were in the audience.</p><p>“I invited them,” Mundy said. “I invited my mother first. I remember saying, ‘Don’t tell Dad. Say we’re going to a movie or something. I’m his baby girl. He’s not going to want to hear some of these things.’ He ended up coming.”</p><p>Mundy said she read the list “straight-faced, dead-panned. No real inflection. No giggling, Very dry.” Eventually, the room started erupting to the routine and litany of names.</p><p>“I looked over at my parents and my mom was smiling,” she said. “My dad’s face was beet red. He was laughing, but in a very nervous way.</p><p>“It made me feel good to be so open with people. I’m not embarrassed by any of it. I’ve always had this tendency to be really candid, even with strangers. It’s a quality that works well with Dear Diary. I have a surprisingly low level of shame.”</p><p>Fearlessness is a good quality among Dear Diary readers, Frost said, no matter what you’re reading. So is brevity.</p><p>“I would say choose your entries wisely and keep the readings short,” she said. “Keep the audience wanting more. Edit before you read. It is a great opportunity for self love: facing fear, being vulnerable — a healthy vulnerability.”</p><p>The public airing of what was intended to be private is what arouses that vulnerability, Jones said, and what binds an audience and performers during the best moments of Dear Diary.</p><p>“There’s something quite profound when empathy collects in a room like that,” she said. “Even though we are reading about all these details that make our personalities so different, there is a commonality that is exposed. We are all humans just trying to figure out what the hell to do next.”</p><p><strong><span class="infobox-head">Friday </span></strong></p><p>Dear Diary will celebrate its first anniversary with a First Friday edition at 9 p.m. Friday at the Brick, 1727 McGee. Admission is $5. It’s a 21-and-older event.
Dear Reader Missed - News
It's a quality that works well with Dear Diary. I have a surprisingly low level of shame.” Fearlessness is a good quality among Dear Diary readers, Frost said, no matter what you're reading. So is brevity. “I would say choose your entries wisely and
Pausing in his descriptions of hippocampal microanatomy, he reassures us, 'Patience, dear reader, the punch line is coming'. Sadly, I missed it. Unfortunately, some careless editing almost jeopardises Freedman's project to make his science accessible.
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I'm there and you should be too: Two Gallants & Swans | Overdose ...
So it’s Monday and you’re probably drowning in self pity after partying too hard. Work, school or a combination of both are making your life miserable and the only thing you’re looking forward to is the next weekend. Chin up dear reader. Bear with me and I will show you a world of musical splendour. Every other Monday, I will point out the best indie, folk and rock shows you might not want to miss. Get your ticket, enjoy the music and get straight to bed after. This is just what you need to slide a bit smoother through another cruel week of hard work.
Two GallantsWhy: This duo from San Francisco writes folk rock songs with a nice, slow yet dark vibe. Melancholic storytellers with music that works best in a small and intimate venue like the top floor of Paradiso. Adam Stephens has a beautiful, raspy voice that goes perfectly with their kind of Americana. They’ve been performing together since 2002, played on almost every continent, but stay under the radar. They do deserve a bigger crowd, so go out there, drink whiskey and you’ll be impressed with the songwriting of these guys.
SwansWhy: These no wave legends were on a hiatus since 1997 and just started playing again last year. Swans stands for an exciting time in the New York, in the post punk era. They’ve been building their underground empire since the eighties, with frontman Michael Gira as the only constant member. The band did a show in Utrecht, somewhere last year, but that one I missed. Got to see them at the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona though, where they blew everyone away with their raw sound. A very intense show and a definite must if you like it dark and loud!
So it's Monday and you're probably drowning in self pity after partying too hard. Work, school or a combination of both are making your life miserable and the only thing you're looking forward to is the next weekend. Chin up dear reader. Bear with me and I will show you a world of musical splendour. Every other Monday, I will point out the best indie, folk and rock shows you might not want to miss. Get your ticket, enjoy the music and get straight to bed after. This is just what you need to slide a bit smoother through another cruel week of hard work. (.
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