Do More. Be Better. Suck Less.

The title has become the mantra of our rehearsals.

The next week or so, please excuse me if I go a touch mad, as the play is bearing down on me and there is a great deal of work to do ere it is any position to be seen.

Some of you may have gotten my massive out-of-town email invite, although I would not be surprised if it ended in the spam filters for many of you.

StrowlerCon thoughts.

All the live feeds for StrowlerCon are up here, it seems. They are a bit painful to watch for me, as I am so CLEARLY unprepared and winging it as I go. The Key story in particular is so obviously me having no idea what I'm talking about or where it is going until the end (and thus it ends weakly and the structure doesn't hold together too well) that it's awkward. Ninety percent of emceeing is keeping the crowd there, so I did fine, because that went well (the crowd WANTED to be there, which makes it easy) but I can't help but see so many missed opportunities.

It has been interesting reading other people's response to the con. The description of it as a swan - elegant and graceful to view, but kicking like mad under the water" is probably as good as any. It was clearly full of chaos on the backside, but everyone seemed to be having a delightful time. Which is good. I didn't see the magic in it that so many seemed to, but that's ok, I am glad to have contributed.

The constant refrain of "community" has been odd to me, since I can't say I saw that. Mind you, I am notoriously bad at "community". Certainly for this con, I met lovely people and they were nice, but that doesn't seem to be what people are talking about. For them, there seems to be this sense of "coming home" or being "among my people/tribe" (that word always gets me antsy, btw), none of which I felt.

As I said, though, I am notoriously bad at that. I still remember someone in Boston commenting that one thing she found so interesting was that I was offered an instant community there (in the form of the BostonPoly/Diesel/Burner/Geek/Pagan crowd) and didn't take it. I've paid a price for that tendency, certainly, but it has still felt truer to me to just like people I like.

I am glad that there seems to be an effort to do another one, clearly people liked it. I'm still not sure exactly how it distinguishes itself from the many other cons around, as I think Strowler remains largely undefined in my mind. If it remains hinged on a sort of "music and making" axis, with little barrier between the performers and the audience, I think I'll be happy to call Strowler an attitude and be happy to support it.

p.s. - The con has been described as "flirty", as well, and again it isn't something I particularly noticed. Most cons seem flirty to me, and 90% of my flirt experience at StrowlerCon was with Lee. (Not that I'm complaining, he makes me look like a reluctant and inept flirter.) I found it mostly full of polite friendliness and a certain detachment/distance. Then again, I was busy with the show and did have to leave early, so maybe that was part of the deal.