Performances
Hammer Museum
PEN reading, Los Angeles, CA, July 20, 2011
West Hollywood Book Fair
PEN reading, Los Angeles, CA, October 2, 2011
Los Angeles Festival of Books
PEN reading, Los Angeles, CA, April 30, 2011
SilverLake Jubilee
PEN reading, Los Angeles, CA, May 21, 2011
Hotel Cafe
PEN reading, Los Angeles, CA, April 17, 2011
Audio recording of A Stitch Of Time Reading
2nd Story,
Chicago, IL, May 1, 2010
The Moth StorySLAM,
Santa Monica, CA, May 25, 2009
The Moth is storytelling done live and without notes - which is, basically, an aphasiac's nightmare. For someone who has a speech impairment, improvising onstage is both terrifying and thrilling (And I think can be illustrated in how many times I close my eyes in this video...). The Moth has locations in New York and LA - and offers free podcasts. Check them out.
Articles
Spark Off Rose, Santa Monica, May 4, 2009
Facing The Music
[excerpt] The second surgery was more risky and more rare than the one before it. First, I was afraid I would lose my life on an operating table. Then, I was afraid I would lose my language.
I thought of the brain as a map, and the distance traveled on that map was measured in millimeters. When the surgeon’s scalpel travels a distance in the patient’s brain, he alters the map. A slice could cut out your love of tempura or the use or your right hand or your ability to reason morally. Changing that improbable topography, the surgeons could change the person the map belonged to. If I woke up, who would I be when I woke up? I had to believe that the Worst-Case-Scenario wouldn’t happen—and I couldn’t plan for that if it did—but I had to deal with the terror of language loss, of starting over.
[download PDF]
The Awakening
An aneurysm is hardly a straightforward injury. It is not a leg that can be re-set, a gash to be stitched back together. The blessing of awakening from an aneurysm is also the complication of awakening to a new brain... Now, I find that my mind is not a single, individual thing, but many more unknown and disparate things.
Read more at the Brain Aneurysm Foundation website.
To download the pdf, click on vol 7, No. 2, Summer 2008.
Nuts
We know of Hazel because she is in my Grandma's water aerobics class, though I have never met her. But last year, I had brain surgery, and Hazel dropped off a couple of gifts; an afghan and some baklava. Nice, though the heavy afghan was somewhat unnecessary in LA, and I couldn't eat the baklava because I'm allergic to nuts. If Hazel had known me, she would have known this. But she doesn't know me. She is a total stranger that leaves sweet and misguided gifts on my doorstep.
Published (in entirety) at the Mad As Hell Club.
My neurologist seriously advises me to sing along to the radio, a prescription for a neuro-plastic routine. I slough through the songs, the pledge of allegiance. I spend hours in the shower, memorizing a line to try to repeat it back: Deep in the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing..." Thirteen months ago, I was a PhD student, a performer, a writer—thirteen months ago I was a brain patient with a vocabulary of 30 words. So, I soak up the mimic, the music in language, anything I could borrow from. I mimic the song, mimic you singing the song. Why not? If once I had a small way with words, words are now having their large way with me.
Read more at freshyarn.com