Spoken word reading the script?

Reading is less cool than reciting from memory. Of course you all know I am in complete denial about my age, but it is weird, recently I have actually started to feel my brain failing to form short-term memories. The short term is about 5 seconds and then it is like fractals dissolving.

I saw Sarah Jones recently. Amazing actor/spokenword artist. About as Brummie as you can be, but be American. Her dad descended from enslaved African-Americans and I think Scottish immigrants. Her mum white Jewish New Yorker. Sarah herself, New York-raised, and she says, passing LatinX. She has an amazing collection of grannies and aunties and uncles and boyfriends and girlfriends. Her thing, her show, is talking to America in all these voices, like America is a 15 year old, mixed-heritage, brat girl, asking, “America. Who hurt you?”

So, she is amazing but the reason I bring it up is because among all her voices she holds up her script and introduces it to the audience and doesn’t beg forgiveness for memory (like I might be doing). Her script is just one of the artist’s voices, the voice of the maker of the whole piece back when it was being made.

So now, I will work my script in as a companion. A voice from my past.