11-16-14
I had a nice day yesterday. I went to Taipei alone to the Red Room open mike, read an excerpt from my book and sang and played a song on my harmonica. No one took a photo of me or was there to record me unlike last me in July when Ariel went with me. I could have asked this young medical student I was chatting with but I forgot because the introduction I got was abrupt. I sold no books to the cold, noisy crowd of one hundred. Still, I had fun in Taipei,
When I got off the HSR, I took the metro to City Hall station, to the Eslite Dept. Store where they have two floors of books and a CD's. I got The Travels of Marco Polo, though the clerk said they didn't have a copy there. I got My Life, the autobiography of Helen Keller and a deluxe edition of Tommy by The Who. I couldn't find Green Mansions and I forgot to look for a Clapton CD anthology. The ride to the event Red Room event was convenient; a five minute walk from the train station. It was in an area that used to be Taiwan Tobacco Monopoly property. There were many cafe's there and stylish youth stores. I found the location that red Room rented by accident entering through the rear door.
Though everyone was friendly, I felt a bit uncomfortable because of the constant drone of crowd noise and no focus inside, unlike in Red Room's regular spot above the beauty salon; they rented this space for their 5th anniversary but there were no more guests there than there were in July, about 100 or so. The crowd talked throughout the acts. I sat on a wooden bleacher next to a young med student named Rowan (he was too young to get my Rowan and Martin reference) from NTU who had spent a month at the Mayo Clinic in Cleveland. He was cute but boring.
After an unprepared set of a rock 'n' roll group, Red Room threw in an unannounced readers' theater-type radio show which was too long and not listened to by most people there. When Trevor asked me if I would be the first open mike I said "yes" though I was hoping to go on later; I wasn't sure when I arrived if I was going on at all because I hadn't received a confirmation and Trevor, one of the organizers, hadn't responded to my inquiry I sent a few days earlier. I could have called but it didn't matter; a guy named Mono (who received a goodbye gift because he was leaving) showed me a sign up list. I asked about setting up the books I brought to sell and was told to announce them during my open mike. Though I played a populist self-publishing attitude, it didn't translate into any sale. I passed around two books as if they were chocolate samples (something a food table did later on) but it didn't get as far as ten feet away and was put down by whomever looked at them last. One lame-brain young woman seated to my right treated me and my book like a patient at a hospital emergency room when I returned from my set; "Oh, that's so heartfelt," she said concilatorily. "I recall seeing your book on a Facebook page," she said as she fingered the cover of a copy. "How many have you sold? Really?" She handed the book back to me not wanting to buy or even look. The announcement Trevor made for me was lukewarm and the book was swept under it. They should have been displayed on their Red Room table but I wasn't invited to put them there. The 'new-age' honcho of Red Room didn't remember to welcome me personally (he should have remembered me) but gave a little speech about his purposes in doing this thing of his.
After an unprepared set of a rock 'n' roll group, Red Room threw in an unannounced readers' theater-type radio show which was too long and not listened to by most people there. When Trevor asked me if I would be the first open mike I said "yes" though I was hoping to go on later; I wasn't sure when I arrived if I was going on at all because I hadn't received a confirmation and Trevor, one of the organizers, hadn't responded to my inquiry I sent a few days earlier. I could have called but it didn't matter; a guy named Mono (who received a goodbye gift because he was leaving) showed me a sign up list. I asked about setting up the books I brought to sell and was told to announce them during my open mike. Though I played a populist self-publishing attitude, it didn't translate into any sale. I passed around two books as if they were chocolate samples (something a food table did later on) but it didn't get as far as ten feet away and was put down by whomever looked at them last. One lame-brain young woman seated to my right treated me and my book like a patient at a hospital emergency room when I returned from my set; "Oh, that's so heartfelt," she said concilatorily. "I recall seeing your book on a Facebook page," she said as she fingered the cover of a copy. "How many have you sold? Really?" She handed the book back to me not wanting to buy or even look. The announcement Trevor made for me was lukewarm and the book was swept under it. They should have been displayed on their Red Room table but I wasn't invited to put them there. The 'new-age' honcho of Red Room didn't remember to welcome me personally (he should have remembered me) but gave a little speech about his purposes in doing this thing of his.
The next time I go, and I will go next time, I will not play my harmonica or sing; only read a poem and excerpt from a story. And I will not let Trevor put me on first, a no-no according to Ariel who warned me about it in July and put me up in the middle; let the crowd see the other acts first to appreciate me more.
And the other acts were shitty. Some guy in a Chinese pirate get-up swooped around the floor instead of doing some real tai-chi or something. A woman with a nice voice did a karaoke the second time after a technical difficulty the first try. A white haired dude in a Panama suit spoke of nothingness for longer than my set and a drunk redhead raved on about not joining the army (she had pre-stress syndrome) and Mono and Trevor cut her off, just as they cut me off, mercifully, since no one was listening to either of us, anyway, though there was nothing better to swallow afterwards. One black dude played with his belly-button in poems about who he really was; it got the most sympathetic response from the lost crowd used to playing with their own navels. A pudgy novice did a ridiculous partial strip tease to sleazy music. When the music continued after she left the set, I was expecting Trevor who took the mike to continue the strip tease; that would have been funny. My policy of not making red Room the focus of my visit to Taipei was wise; I was too satisfied with the rest of my trip to be disappointed by it. Even the free meal and drink that came with the 350NT ticket wasn't enough; I had to go to Mo's Burger when I left the show early at 9:30pm in the middle of an slumber party improv by four language school buddies; where were the pajamas? 
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