VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
JAZZ: This kid came up on the street, “Hey, you’re Jimmy Jazz. I saw you naked when I was 15. I saw you read from your book 10 years ago, naked.” This delayed gratification proved better than the reading itself. We played this Avant-Garde fest at SDSU. It was fun, we spray painted FREE ART on the wall, Ted Washington came out glistening with body oil, we spit poetry and pissed on Salinger in a bucket, and some young couple started making out on stage and the whole thing ended in a cloud of dope smoke, cum, blood and broken glass. But the experience codified the next day, with a class of MFA students. This very severe adjunct with a German accent like a riding crop said, “This was not shocking.” Ha ha. And there was that time at the poetry slam, all the poets were inside competing for a high score. But I climbed up on the marquee of the condemned theater across the street and used letters I found to spell out our credo from Whitman ‘Resist Much, Obey Little.’ It’s the poem you don’t expect that wins.
Jimmy Jazz is a writer from San Diego. He is the author of several novels including The Sub & The Cadillac Tramps. His latest work is called The Book of Books.
Come see Jimmy read at 3rdSpace in San Diego on Saturday, April 15 at 7pm.
Photo by Anthony Scoggins.