Come Join Us

Our first live event in Philadelphia

Talking Writing will kick off its first live event of the year on Saturday, May 31 at the Tired Hands Mt. Airy Beer Garden, Philadelphia.

The event features a multimedia documentary performance of Weird Music created by TW’s Creative Director, John Vogel. Our special guest, award-winning author Juliet Diaz, will give a reading from her much-anticipated book, The Altar Within (Revised 2nd Ed).

The event is free for everyone. No RSVP required but it would be nice if you let us know you were going in the comments. For any other inquiries, reach out to us at talkingwritingeditor@gmail.com.

Note: While the venue is (supervised) child-friendly, the event is meant primarily for adults, and there won’t be any kid-related areas or activities.

John Vogel on Weird Music

Weird Music has been intertwined with my relationship with Talking Writing from the get-go. The first piece that I submitted to TW in 2014 was an edited version of the last section, even before I had fully figured out the audio version. At that point, I had worked out the first two sections in a live setting, which I recorded shortly after submitting my piece.

I continued to work out the rest of the piece live throughout the next six years, and at various times I would publish snippets in TW. Although I started it on my own and it remains a personal passion project, TW has always been the place where I’ve shared my progress.

By 2020, just as the pandemic started to lock everything down, I had finally gotten Weird Music to a place where I could play through it front to back. Once things started to open up, I started playing shows and playing around with different edits that would clock in around 30 minutes so that I could do sets in line ups with other bands.

I’ve played all the material in the project at various times, but the event at Tired Hands on 5/31 will be the first time that I’m playing the whole 50-minute piece for an audience. I’ll be taking a chance, because I don’t know how well a live audience will pay attention for that length of time, but it’s been a goal of mine for the past few years, and I figured I might as well take the plunge and find out how cold the waters are.

Weird Music explores people’s motivations in continuing to make art —in this case, mostly focusing on making music. Going into the interviews, I had a vague grab bag of questions that I knew I wanted to ask, but the at the root of everything was a sense of, “What do you get out of this?”

Once all the interviews had been collected and edited, the major themes that bubbled up were: the telepathic elements of art; how ideas arise, become artwork and are then communicated to an audience; comparing and contrasting live playing versus recording; and how artists are adapting to the ever-changing digital landscape and the effect that has on their livelihood.

The interviews were all collected from 2009 to 2012, before the popularization of streaming. Since then, the issues that the artists brought up have been exacerbated by the further devaluation of music that digital service providers have ushered in.

Featuring: A Reading by Juliet Diaz

Another reason to come check us out: we’re thrilled to have award-winning author, literary activist and mentor, Juliet Diaz as our special guest. She will read an excerpt from her much-anticipated book, The Altar Within (Revised 2nd Ed.), which is launching in the fall.