Taken in our entireties, we’re each of us a bit lacking in places. A tad weak here, maybe a touch too much there.
But in excerpt? We can all add up to something to recommend us in excerpt.
Witness: this opening segment from a 2004 Mountain Xpress story about a karaoke world championship south of Asheville, N.C. (though the rest of the piece is intensely local, and often just a whole lot of nuts and bolts, essential, but, meh: categories of winners; history, both western North Carolina and international; contenders’ hometowns; rules, oh, God, the rules).
One bygone night in a Key West bar, after exactly the right number of gin-and-tonics to polish shame into confidence, I took to the stage. And beneath the not-all-that-bright lights, and guided by the little bouncing ball on a TV on a nearby wall, I sort of held the assembled several, bathed then in the besotted glow of a star being born right in front of them, as I sang the lines to the full version of Don McLean’s “American Pie.”
My (then) wife, (plus) a colleague from the Key West paper, were there for the entire eight-and-a-half minutes of it; they hid in a dark corner.
I tell you this because I have been among the fallen. I understand.
My name is Frank, and I have done karaoke
Or maybe this, from the middle of a 2003 Mountain Xpress story on the sterling Native American singing trio Ulali (though the rest of the piece is mostly dialogue, often flat and workmanlike, and unlike the three ethereal singing souls at the heart of the story, too rarely again ever sings):
When these three unalloyed voices entwine, it’s as if some dizzy fool with a paintbrush has swashed shades of ocean-sunset orange, red and purple; hues of fall-maple gold; hints of the heartbreak-blue preceding a heartland storm; smears of eddying, salt-wash aqua; and tints of mountain evergreen, all through your ears – you become drunk on some mysterious, living tonic. For days afterward, Q-tip cleanings will raise bits of trees and wind. Drops of cool water. Sky.
And from the intro to a story about a Greenville, N.C., production of The Vagina Monologues, from The Daily Reflector, February 2006 (the rest of the piece simply loses steam against the initial shock value; alas):
Vagina.
There, I said it.
Note that nothing bad happened. No fiery bolts from on high. No plague of frogs. No hike in interest rates. It’s just a word, after all.
But as one half of the title of East Carolina University’s annual benefit production of The Vagina Monologues, which opens today at Wright Auditorium and runs through Sunday, for many people, it screams.
Sex! Sex! Sex! There’s ladies on stage at ECU talking all about SEX!
Well, yes, this play does talk about that – a little. But mostly, it’s about a whole lot of other things. Important things. Sad things. Happy things. Heart-tugging things. Funny things.
So let me start again:
Vagina.
Finally, this start to a novel I will likely never finish. And I love this; I really do. I wish it alone could reignite the fire in the belly that sparked it:
I am holding myself above water. The salt has pickled my sinuses, left powdery white trails on the tops of my ears. My movements are becoming estranged, desultory, fleshy windmills of fatigue. There is little chance I will live through this.
A waitress brings me a beer. “From the lady,” she says, pointing to the lady.
“Return it,” I say, “with my thanks.” What I need is a raft, a life preserver, a sturdy piece of driftwood. “You might also ask her,” I suggest, “if she floats.
“Some people do,” I concede, my windpipe closing up for sure this time. “But I’m not one of them. I’m going under, sister. My arms are lead. This paddling in place is just too much. Soon my lungs will be filled with water, the tiny fish darting in and out of my startled alveoli.”
“So should I bring the check, then?” She abandons the beer in front of me beside an empty she does not retrieve, removes my restraining hand, backs into a colleague, a tray with coffee, steaming cups. The angry clatter reminds me that the tide is only getting higher, and that short men rarely get the good air.
“Maybe you’d better,” I gargle. “Yes.”
I’m also pretty taken with the last lines of this probably-won’t-ever-bet novel (yes, I’ve also written the ending; the middle, the essential middle, is the sticking point). But I’m not sharing those last lines here. Cuz maybe, I’ll manage one day to pull this all together in full. And then, all excerpts be damned.
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