Tagged with an interesting meme by the Squib, so I thought I’d give it a try.
- Go into your archives. (Yo).
- Find your 23rd post. (That would be this one.)
- Post the fifth sentence. (Interesting; there were only seven sentences in total. I’ve become much more long-winded in the years that followed. Anyway: here it is: “It was his first ever poetry reading.”)
- Post these instructions. (Done)
- Tag five other people to do the same thing. (Okay, with apologies, I tag Dave at Blogography, Brett Lamb at Blamblog, Greg at Sinister Thoughts, Jack Cluth at the People’s Republic of Seabrook — ‘cause he’d have to search waaaaaaay back, and finally Mike Brock of Brock: on the Attack)
Now, Mark Rayner at the Squib gave this meme a twist — one which I think makes this particularly random meme interesting, and I’m going to pass on the task to the five unlucky vict— I mean, fine fellows: write a short fiction or five-minute-or-so stream of consciousness that emerges from that sentence you’ve pulled. So, here goes:
It was his first ever poetry reading.
It was his first ever poetry reading, and as such the audience should have known better. The fact that he went up to the MC’s knee. That they couldn’t lower the microphone far enough and instead had to take it off its stand and place it between his legs to play with. But it was open-mike night, and nobody was turned away, even when they crawled up to the stage. And when he fell forward and drooled into the mike, the sounds that he made were pure poetry. The audience were enraptured, and when he finished declaiming his first verse, they went wild with clapping. This was revolutionary. This was anti-lyrical! It was precisely the sort of didactic verse they were looking for.
A book followed, carefully transcribed by the team of editors, listening in on every word. Then somebody thought up the idea of backing him with music. A record was pressed, which went up the charts. Motown called, and assigned backup signers, dressed in costume appropriate to the new star’s unique age and act.
And thus the Goo Goo Dolls were born.