SPIN Magazine and Housing Works host an evening of music and literature with a reading by author Augusten Burroughs (Running With Scissors; A Wolf at the Table) and performance by musician Tegan Quin (Tegan and Sara) to highlight the mutual effects of music and literature and celebrate the SPIN Book Club, an eclectic collection of literary-minded musicians who hope to foster a love of reading amongst music fans.
The evening will also feature a performance by musician Colin Frangicetto (Circa Survive) and readings by musicians Elizabeth Seward (Spelling & Grammar) and Stephen Christian (Anberlin), who recently published his first novel The Orphaned Anything’s. All proceeds from the event will support Housing Works, which serves homeless New Yorkers living with HIV and AIDS.
The other day, journalist form the UK asked me about fame. “You’ve written about how when you were young, you wanted to be famous. Now that you’ve achieved fame, is it as you expected? How does that feel?”
And my answer is always, after Pighead (from Dry) died, a lot of things that used to matter to me no longer mattered. And to this day don’t matter. One of the things that died in me was that childhood desire for fame.
And the writer “fame” that I have, if it can even be called, “fame,” isn’t nearly the same thing that I wanted as a child. For the most part, nobody knows or cares much writers. And by “nobody” mean, the mass media. I don’t’ have journalists peeking up my skirt trying to photograph my snatch; I don’t have a camera literally in my face, capturing a macro-shot of my blackheads and pimples and wrinkles (well, if I had wrinkles, that is).
Fame today isn’t nearly as appealing as the fame of my childhood. So what, exactly, was the fame of my childhood? I have described it as, “Silvery curtain fame, Oscar Awards show fame, black Lincoln limousine, one or two flashbulbs, a camera on a dolly fame.
And today, I found on YouTube a perfect example of fame, circa 1970. This, to me, is fame.
Not this.
Just so you know.
Okay, off to take my daily goat milk bath and answer some fan mail, before signing a few autographs in downtown Amherst, when I run out to have my toenails surgically removed and replaced with platinum “hubs.”
