Jason Roeder

Thanks to everybody who came out to hear me read at Word Books last week. Really, there weren’t many of you, so every beating heart was appreciated. I didn’t expect a tremendous turnout, though. I’ve been in New York three months (unemployed for the duration), and it’s hard to put together a fan base when you’re spending most of your time writing cover letters about exciting opportunities you recently found on Monster.com. (”I feel this editing position allows me to combine my passion for mutual fund prospectuses with my longstanding interest in never being thanked. I look forward to meeting with you in person to discuss this position that will make me feel, not dead, but just kind of lingeringly stupefied.”)

Radar likes me. The Harvard Crimson does not. Regarding the Ivy League, all I can say is that most readers have appreciated not being treated like breakable objects. They recognize that the writer is one of their own.

Other people can tolerate “pointed humor” only when it’s not pointed at them.

As I left my interview at Cookie magazine (sort of a lifestyle magazine for upscale families), I saw a gnarled,* wheelchair-bound little girl singing “Part of Your World” from the soundtrack to The Little Mermaid. You may know that song as the one Ariel sings because she’s yearning to live among people—in other words, she wants functional legs. Yikes. Her mother—clad in a gray sweatsuit, arms folded—stood off to the side, monitoring. In about a minute, the girl earned about ten dollars, though her voice was nothing more than what you’d expect from any seven-year-old singing from the back seat of a minivan. I imagine the girl found herself busking in Times Square through one of two scenarios:

1. This little girl has seen performers on American Idol or some Disney Channel show of the moment. She says, “Mama, I want to sing like them. But look at me.” Mama says, “You listen to me. If you want to sing, you will sing. Maybe you can’t walk, but you sing like Jesus himself.”

“Can I sing The Little Mermaid song?”

“Well, I don’t know. That might be a little exploitative.”

“Pleeease!”

“Okay, but if it ever—ever—doesn’t feel right, you just tell me you’ve had enough, and we’re heading home.”

“Yay!”

2. This little girl is singing because Mama needs to raise bail for her boyfriend/rapist.

What do you think?

*Not meaning to be cruel, just apt. She was gnarled. That is the word.

Posted November 8th, 2007 | Comments are open