Please verify your existence
Why is my cellphone more real than I am?
To whomever is reading this, even if it isn’t the person to whom it was originally addressed:
How many times this week did you have to prove you were real to an electronic device?
Not just choosing (and forgetting!) passwords, but now every app on your phone seems to require you to verity your email address or some random social media account which verifier then sends a code to your phone which you input into the app and then - violà - you are deemed real by the very technology that you are trying to access.
You frequently have to do this even if you are calling another human being by voice.
Our personal humanity is now solely verified by data.
How many times have I checked the box to agree to never have to verify again? I allow the device to prove that I am who I say I am. Yet, the next time I always have to verify again. Every time.
In fact, not only do I not get automatically verified when I check that box, I usually have to change my password the next time. (To a password that I’ve never used before. The program easily remembers all my one-and-done passwords back ten years - but it can’t remember ME.)
I tend to spend most of every work day proving that I am myself. To a math program.
Writing News:
I got to do some interviews this week with a company called ButterDocs (it is a vast improvement on Scrivener, designed specifically for writers, particularly those that might collaborate) - here’s one such interview… about finding a writing community.
I watched a screening of BlackBerry which I loved - it fits right in with The Social Network and the Steve Jobs biopic. It made me laugh aloud a few times, and the acting was terrific. The talk-back with the actor Glenn Howerton was fantastic. He had some pretty stunning commentary on how it felt for him, who has a lush head of hair, to shave for the part. He said it was incredibly vulnerable at first, and then after a while, it was empowering in a completely unexpected way.
This week I did an alumni event for my undergrad university (fingers crossed might be doing a book event in Baltimore) and I did a meet-and-greet with local business owners. Plus another movie (With a friend. Friends are so good) - the Hunger Games prequel. (I definitely missed the costumes of the later Capitol years.)
I had the coolest moment - a Pen Parentis regular recognized me in an elevator! She said “aren’t you Milda De Voe of Pen Parentis?” and I said yes and she told me that her first essay was published because of the organization (and me!) - I couldn’t believe how wonderful it felt to know that something I made actually changed someone’s life as a writer. Marvelous.
Saw Danny DeVito in Theresa Rebeck’s newest play “I Need This” and then I wanted to clean out my house. He was performing with his real-life daughter, which is either admirable or incredible. Or both, maybe. The set designers didn’t put nearly enough paper on the set. (Truly, my desk is disastrous.) — I had about a million conversations about whether Danny DeVito’s character was actually a hoarder. The play didn’t address this, but if you’re simply hanging on to things as mementoes of your long and awesome life, and after 30 years your house is too small to hold all of it—does that make you a hoarder?
I published a piece on Medium describing my sheer joy that a friend of my brother’s wife (i.e. a total stranger to me) took a photo of my book in a very unlikely place - her local library! Read it here.
Most exciting: today I zoom in to a book club that just got done reading my collection. I am so excited to speak to a room full of people who only know me as an author they have read. Imagine that.
COMING SOON:
I’ll be reading on my own show in December!! I’m up as a featured author on an “ask me anything” holiday edition of the Pen Parentis Literary Salon - join us! it’s online, livecast & free!
I’m also reading in JANUARY - at Richard Jeffrey Newman’s fabulous Queens series in Jackson Heights “First Tuesdays” — and you can perform along with me! I’m the featured reading but there’s an open mic! Come read with me!
Date: January 3, 2023
Where: Espresso 77, 35-57 77th Street, Jackson Heights, NY 11372
Time: 7:00 – 9:00 PM (open-mic sign up at 6:30—I think I read last)
Other: $5 minimum purchase at the food counter.
Also Save the Date for May 24th in Brooklyn! I’ll be reading at Randee Dawn’s excellent Brooklyn Books & Booze series at one of my favorite bars: Barrow’s Intense Ginger at Industry City. I just found out I’m sharing the stage with my writing group’s one-time-leader Nick Kaufmann. How cool is that?
RANDOM FINAL THOUGHT:
I was baffled by the strange message on this sign —so much so that I didn’t even notice the typo until an hour later.
