VIDEO FROM LAST NIGHT'S READING AT THE CUTTING ROOM NYC

The noise in the background was coming from another closed off room, and the camera work is just my good friend John shooting from his iPhone. The beginnings were cut off. In this first one I had read the title, "How the Light Gets In" (from the Leonard Cohen line and the theme of the evening) before the video starts (not sure why I sound like I have false teeth or something, but you'll at least get a taste of the poem, written that afternoon for the reading and revised during the sound check and edited in my head as I read, which also goes for the poems that follow).

This next one is an excerpt from my long poem "Of" which I often read and had been introducing it by talking about my oldest son, Miles, who was on this same bill, or a song he wrote was (performed by the singers in the band Bell Engine, Miles plays bass in, but for this venue it was just the singers, John and Lisa in their beautiful harmony with John taking the lead to new heights, backed by the band's electric guitarist Dan, hopefully I'll have video of that to share too) and I was saying how touched I was by his song and how lucky that he survived growing up with me as the poem I was about to read would show.

And this was read partly in recognition of the passing of Lou Reed, a poem I wrote in the '80s I think, which this video catches the last word of the title before I muff the first line, the title being "Walk On the Wild Side"...'nuff said.