June Alchemy

Just got back from  the Alchemy poetry reading for  June and, well,  it  was  definitely interesting.  It’s usually all very polite and such, but that  broke down  at a couple of points.  There was an argument at my table between an Israeli and someone who felt strongly against what Israel  is doing, as most decent, sane people do.  The Israeli thought he was paying a compliment, I’m sure, when he said “Your shirt looks just like an Israeli army shirt.”  (It was green.  It looked sort of like all military  shirts everywhere.)  It was not received as  such.
There were two featured readers, which is a bit of overkill, but I guess you have to catch the visiting talent when they’re in Prague and I’d rather see two new performers than none, so there’s that.
I liked the first one, the girl.  She had a love of cheap puns and alliteration.  I don’t know that there was any earth shattering message, but she was  quite  entertaining to watch, put her heart  into  it, she did.
Then the  guy came on and wandered through about a 15 minute preamble in which he talked about some of his other projects, he’s written a children’s book (it’s the new Harry Potter!), and about all the voice work  he’s done, and how he’s really interested in Alchemy, like the real stuff, with us it’s just the name of a poetry reading but he’s all  into  the arcane writings and stuff, and he talked  about  how we all  need to be happy and live  in  the moment and yadda yadda, and then before he started  singing, he put up  his YouTube video on the screen, him being soulful at the top of a cliff, soulfully walking  through the  grass, kneeling in  an old church, and so on, and  then when he finally began, he had background music coming out of his notebook or whatever.  He actually had  a nice  voice and a couple of  good songs, if he’d just cut the intro to about 30 seconds, left off all the tech shit and just done it unplugged, it  would  have  worked fine.
He got a polite enough reception, so I thought maybe it  was just me but then we went out to smoke a joint and everybody was out there bitching about how pretentious he was.
That was the last Alchemy for the summer, so maybe I need to  focus on  my  next book.