"You play the violin?" A 5-minute essay about "gigging" life, unfair speeding tickets, and the unexpected turn.

What this episode covers

I’ve been taking this amazing Live Lit class with the great Ian Belknap, here in Chicago and of course, the class has come to a halt, due to the Coronavirus pandemic (weird words to be typing). So, over the next few weeks, I will be sharing some of the writing I did in the class here, for your amusement in these quarantine-times. Ian offers wonderfully rich prompts and all the pieces must be performed live and they must not exceed 5 minutes. It’s quite amazing how this crystalizes all the bullshit thoughts that normally takes up meters of paper and forces you to get to the point right quick because the clock is literally ticking. Not to mention all the trees we’re saving. The prompt for today’s piece was to tell the story of the most frustrating/maddening time you dealt with a bureaucracy (DMV, Bursar's office, traffic court, etc).

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