HOME CONTACT
spoken word poetry

- WORDS, MOMENTS, FEELINGS -
SPOKEN WORD, POETRY,
WORDS AND MUSIC, SONG.
ELSA WITH MOMENTS OF LIVING.
LOVE MOMENTS, POLITICAL MOMENTS.
LIFE!

We point to an old photo and say, Yes, that's me.
But really, who is this person I call me?
CLICK FOR VIDEO

every day is flowing
into another going
who knows where . . .
who knows where
my life will lead
who is this person
I call me . . .

I've been in a lull this past year . . .
CLICK FOR VIDEO
I'm not on empty
I'm not on full
I'm not stuck in a rut
I'm in a lull
I'm looking for a track
a track that pulls . . .

****
****

- ELSA'S "WORD PIECES" -

THAT'S A CAT WITH A VERY LONG TAIL

Spring 1994. I started waking up with the first lines of "word pieces" in my head - words usually meant to go with music, often with a melody. I'd scribble the words down, then follow the words.

At the end of the first month, I had 19 pieces. I typed them up.

It was quite unexpected.

I had put so much effort into creative projects in my 20's, but none had completely come together. Then something in me changed direction: ideas, thinking, the situation of women, the role of fear.

August 1993. I had my PhD. Triple disciplinary - Psychology, Sociology, Literary Theory. And I landed tenure track college teaching. I thought this would be my direction for life.

It wasn't.

I kept on writing more and more of these things that I called "word pieces." Hundreds.

Over the years - the decades - sometimes the flow has been very strong, sometimes it has ebbed, but it has never left.

1994 wasn't the beginning, actually. I loved stories and plays as a child. I wrote a couple of short plays and even put one on, with friends. I wrote a film script and imagined turning this into a film.

In my 20's, I started writing one thing and then another - a film script, a book, a play - but nothing flowed fully. Also how to get the writings out into the world? How to find a publisher, for instance?

Plus, even when a beginning felt very alive, the whole project often didn't feel really right.

Plus how to take a film script and get it onto the screen?

Then this other side of me came to the fore - the thinking side. That took hold for over a decade. I loved doing the PhD work, even though I stalled at times, and found it so hard to bring it all together.

And then, just a few months after getting my PhD, these word pieces started coming. And have kept coming.

I still kept on thinking - so many ideas.

Almost immediately, I wanted the pieces to be more than individual pieces, to be strung together into a story, to be performed. But how to do this? I got stuck.

1999. I got the idea for a TV show, Zee's Cafe Cafe. At the center was Zee, an alter ego. The Cafe - any small cafe anywhere. Old wood tables. Old wood chairs. Friendly regulars. A small platform where Zee could perform. A home place for my writing.

Zee's Cafe Cafe

I applied for a grant, did not get it.

Within a couple of years, things were taking off on the internet. Again I applied for grants - this felt too large for me to do on my own. Again, I didn't get them.

2006-2012. BREAKTHROUGH!! I created a website. Elsas-Word-Story-Image-Idea-Music-Emporium.

Elsa's Word Story Image idea Music Emporium

For the first time, a dozen years after I started writing them, my word pieces had a place out in the world.

There were so many new skills to learn, like this strange thing called SEO - search engine optimization. How to get the search engines to notice your work. It was so hard for me to understand the ins and outs.

But I was eager for the rewards, and I loved the rewards when I learned how to do SEO well.

Within a couple of years, my first site was getting about 60,000 page views a month. That lasted for several years. Pretty good for poetry and ideas!

I put so many pieces online.

The site is still pulling 20,000 to 30,000 page views a month even now, though I haven't added pages for years.

But poetry doesn't date.

I've developed a number of other sites since, like Elsa's Emporium, especially for videos.

And now, something else is very important to me - a tribe. People who like what I'm doing, are nourished by it, and care to stay connected.

I did have a tribe of sorts by 2009. I was sending updates to thousands of people.

But then my life shifted directions. I saw terrible things happening - a taboo on thinking in general, and more than a taboo, hostility, on explorations of Islam, if you found some quite unpleasant things.

I came up against lots of hostility from the first tribe.

I didn't care. I was passionate about what was going on. Why the hostility instead of eagerness to learn? It made no sense to my logical self.

I started developing another tribe.

And now, yet another stage, another incarnation.

It feels like everything is coming together now. The word pieces. The ideas. And Zee's Cafe Cafe.

So, a cat with a very long tale, a tale stretching far into the future, in fact.

- MORE COMING SOON -

Elsa
Elsa
Elsa?
Elsa
Elsa