We're down to the nitty-gritty, the terrifying crap. This is what the Patreon is for, letting you see (and hear) the stuff in development.

In this performance of the new solo show, I come very close to performing the musical story-telling show I wrote. This is very exciting. The beats are all there. The stories and songs come in the right order.

Two important jokes got lost entirely. Several jokes that I've done for years I screwed up for no reason except that the focus of doing a performance via ZOOM messes with the focus. You can sometimes see the audience laugh but there's no sound from them at all. Also, I was focusing hard through a slight delay echo coming back at me throughout.

I need to find a musical director who can both give me the vocal training I need and help me build the multiple musical dynamics I want to create. The tentative guitar work for LOOK AT ME, but I want THIS NEXT RENAISSANCE to play like a Rock Anthem at the end and I just don't have the confidence and technique to let it build. This is partly because I can feel myself holding my voice back for fear of -- you know -- ruining everything by being out of tune and proving all the people who told me I couldn't sing correct.

Anywhozle, it's coming together. I know the songs. I can perform them in front of people (better, I think, than I can perform them in front of small images of people alone in my office). I make fewer of the verbal blunders and fuck-ups/and/fixes-on-the-fly with each run through.

We're starting to book some live gigs and so far, the response has been extraordinary. I expect people to look at the piece as a work-in-progress when I do it in small spaces for little audiences. I expect them to approach me with notes and I brace myself for the ego blows as which those come in the moments after a performance. Thus far it seems as though the piece is, as Parker Bennett said, "ambitious and affecting."

I got an e-mail after performing segments of it at the THROCK a few weeks ago. Apparently one of the jokes keeps running through an audience member's head on a loop like a song. Do you have any idea how proud I am to have written a joke that does that? Like a song!

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