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current Monday
Report below!
This week's report by the Diatribe Media Collective
(including ULA member Emerson Dameron)
PASS THE MIC: DIATRIBE MEDIA’S
MONTHLY READINGS OPEN A NEW FORUM
For those who love putting on a show but lack self-promotional acumen,
MoJoe’s Café Lounge, nestled in Chicago’s Roscoe Village, is a splendid
venue. If ten people show up, it looks like a packed house.
But this is ridiculous. The room can barely hold this many people. As
Diatribe Media’s cast of lo-fi literary rebels performs, friends and supporters
shift their feet to make room. Stragglers weave through the crowd to buy
coffee, pausing to laugh as a reader hits her punch line.
Once a month, the Diatribe Media publication collective's showcase at
MoJoe’s bring us together. Admission is free, always. The organizers pick a
theme and a host, and a few of the city’s gutsy writers share their thoughts.
There’s little promotion - we post flyers, we alert our online networks. We
wait, hoping word of mouth will swell our ranks. Each reader invites a friend
or two. Sometimes, people drop in to buy coffee and stay to listen.
Every month, we’re a bigger draw. We see mysterious new faces and we
make new friends. Self-expression is infectious. After watching a reader
shock and amuse a crowd, people want to do it themselves. These
unpretentious literary potlatches welcome anyone with something to say -
anyone with the nerve to sign up gets an eventual turn on the mic.
We do inhale the fumes of mass media from time to time. It clouds the brain,
but at least it gives us something to discuss with strangers. By contrast,
clearing our own avenues of expression can be a lonesome endeavor. We
sit alone, scratching our passions onto looseleaf. We stay up late, ignoring
phone calls, banging on laptops until our words flow just so. We spend quiet
evenings in copy shops, collating and stapling. We cast our humble
publications to the wind, seldom knowing who’ll read them, much less how
they’ll respond.
Our loose group of regulars represents all ages and backgrounds. Most of us
publish zines. Some maintain weblogs. Most of us are self-taught; none of
us is particularly famous. Some of us rant, some share personal anecdotes,
some make use of their backgrounds in comedy and theatre. Our series is
now in its second year. The longer it runs, the less predictable it gets. We’ve
hosted musicians, magicians… as yet, no mathematicians, but the night is
young.
Some nights, our pieces overlap in ways we couldn’t have planned. Shared
interests are brought to light, and bonds are forged. Our companionship
reinvigorates our individuality.
Ranter Brandon Wetherbee announces his candidacy for president. Blogger
and zine-publisher Alicia Dorr makes light of her gravest self-doubts. Fiction
writer Mike Foster explores strained familial bonds. Comedian Leonard “the
Ludic Kid” Pierce brings us up-to-date on the industry of nostalgia. Actor
Billy Roberts performs a scene from an imaginary film.
The host signs off and invites everyone back next month. A few people filter
out to bars and parties. But most of us hang out for a bit. We intermingle,
asking questions, swapping zines and making connections.
There is no officially ordained approach to self-publishing. We all learn as we
go. When we’re in the same place at the same time, we see different paths
up the mountain.
When Diatribe vets meet in remote locations, impromptu readings can break
out with little notice. It’s happened at house parties. It’s happened in other
cities. We circulate Sanitary and Ship, a sampler of work from some of those
who’ve been with us the longest. But nothing generates publicity like action.
We entertain, in part, by showing strangers that they too can be entertaining.
As we break bread with our contemporaries, we realize that building small-
scale alternatives is more important than building our own careers. We can
get away with anything at MoJoe’s. Unmediated expression is one of life’s
greatest joys - so long as someone’s there to hear it. We give our
performers an audience, and we give them creative carte blanche.
There’s never been a better time to have something to say. And yet, the
mushrooming technology of expression offers little to draw us into the same
rooms, where we can drop our personae and share ideas in real time. This is
what Diatribe does, within a relatively small radius. We challenge folks in
other cities to nurture similar networks of writers and performers, to
organize their own events and get acquainted with their fellows.
No matter how fragmented independent media becomes, the consolidated
industry of the spectacle will vacuum up what it can. It will attempt to co-opt
that which speaks to a previously unnoticed niche. (Look at the way
advertisers and mainstream publishers have gobbled up successful blogs.)
Make no mistake; corporations will fight over every second of your free
time. Fight back. Be interesting.
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Check out the Diatribe Media Collective
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