Here is the piece I performed this week at the Not-So-Silent Planet Spec Fic open mic. After a good 4 year run, this was the last time NSSP will be at Kieran’s Irish Pub. I wrote this specifically for the occasion and so will probably never be able to do it anywhere else again. I thought I’d share it with you. Hopefully, I will have video of the performance to put up soon.
No Longer Home
We returned one last time, to see, seeking closure. This place was no longer where our heart’s dwelled. But once…
The words fell tripping like lightning off lips and tongues to waiting ears, spun tales into the hearts of audiences, stories filled the room transporting us from the sadness of the day into imaginations deep with joy, transformed us from dull drones beaten by the relentless stamp of jobs and bills and fears into shining beacons of light and story.
We morphed into our truest selves, touched worlds unexplored, laid out verbal vistas like playgrounds of the mind. We pushed back entropy, struck sparks against the darkness, raised glasses, raised voices, raised each other up, created our chosen family, made space for professionals or first-timers, young, old, angry, funny, sad, joyous. We sought to centered those once silenced, once abandoned in the margins; oh, my brothers and sisters, in this space we were mighty.
All things change. This is truth. All things must change, even this place we loved, created as our heart’s home. This place no longer held us in its embrace.
And just like that, it no longer felt like home.
It no longer felt like home, so there was no reason to stay, and though the future seemed uncertain, filled with monsters built to feed our fears, our anxieties lurking poised to shred the community we’d built, we remembered. We remembered these walls, this shell, is not home. Home is where your people are. Remember this: home is always were your people are.