Time to read: 9-12 minutes
Stand-Up at Past Lives Open Mic
I did something new recently! Something I’ve been wanting to do for 12 years, standup! My girlfriend hosts a monthly open mic at Past Lives Makerspace in SE Portland. In 2025, I attended a few times when we were just friends. The first time I showed up I shared some of my poems about Brazil and my best friend. It was the first open mic I had shared something at since COVID-era virtual open mics. Those were honestly.. depressing for me! I tend to feed off the energy in a room to get into the dissociative present-but-not-present flow state of performing. The energy at the PL Open Mic felt positive and caring, so I kept going back.
The next few times I performed at Past Lives, I incorporated something that was new to me. I read my poetry in sync with originally composed music that served as a soundtrack for my words. When I was a kid, I wished that books came with CDs. I wanted music that corresponded to the chapters to further imprint an emotional connection. As an adult, hearing artists like Gil Scott Heron, Lonnie Holley, and Laurie Anderson made an impression on me. To me, spoken-word feels so much more powerful with instrumentation guiding the stories. I share those names here to give credit where credit is due, since a handful of people have come up to me after performances to share they’ve never heard someone combine poetry with music.
I often feel the need to bring something new to open mics when I perform, to give repeat audience members something more interesting and novel. This spring had been an emotionally challenging one for me, where I spent some time evaluating people-pleasing as a trauma response, and also changing my medications. As a result, my poetry creation had faltered, and I felt like I had nothing new to offer for May’s Past Lives Open Mic.
My sweetie and I have a consistent date night on Mondays and one week in May, we went to an open-mic comedy evening at Coffee Beer as one of our outings. Sitting in a small room on that wooden chair reminded me of the open-mic comedy nights I’d attend as a junior in college at the now-closed Hodi’s Half Note in Fort Collins, CO. I never had the confidence to get on stage but always wanted to. Instead it was a way to have cheap fun as a broke student.
After watching a couple comedians at Coffee Beer spend half their set on jokes about Nazis and pedophiles, I figured I could give it a shot at the next PL Open Mic. My heart started racing with nervousness at the idea, which to me felt like it was something I should do. The opportunities that fill us with doubt tend to be the same opportunities that fill us with confidence afterwards, rather than indifference.
I told my roommates about my plan, and they all showed up for my first ever performance in May 🙂 I pulled some of my jokes from an old note on my phone that was filled with stories that made people consistently laugh, and some of the other jokes were more observational humor in my attempt to look at the world in a lighter way. Several people in the crowd congratulated me afterward and urged me to do it again, and that gave me the confidence I needed. I’m glad I recorded it (listenable below), as it gave me the opportunity to reflect and self-critique and realize that a funny story should still have a punchline. I was more cognizant of that area in which to improve when I devised my second set for last month’s performance.
After a bewildering experience trying to get my 2nd place trophy for the nonbinary division in my last marathon, I decided I would incorporate that into my set and do jokes that mostly revolved around Pride Month and being queer. I feel like my queerness is something that can often feel pretty emotional, so I’m looking forward to continuing to add more levity to that aspect of who I am. I think next step from here is to go back to Coffee Beer as a performer and see how my sets land with a different audience, since Past Lives peeps are known for being extremely supportive and encouraging, especially if they are newbies. Standup feels like something I want to continue doing, since it feels like storytelling for someone with ADHD.
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Catch Me There:
Past Lives Open Mic happens every third Friday from 7-10pm, signups at 6:30. Check out @pastlivesllc for more info.
Look With Me: Portland Art Museum
Another new opportunity for me recently (which is also its own kind of performance) was my first session as a volunteer guide for the Look With Me program at the Portland Art Museum. After volunteering with one of the guides from the first cohort at an event in December, she recommended me to PAM to be a part of the second cohort.
I became interested in the program after hearing its premise. Look With Me invites museum guests to slow down & sit with one piece of art. For 20 minutes. Then with the guidance of a facilitator, they’re asked to share what they thought or felt. I attended a few sessions as a guest to see if I would be interested in facilitating. I was immediately captivated. The opportunity to hear more about a stranger’s perspective? One that has been colored by who they are and where they have been? That’s my bread and butter! And by bread, I mean my desire to integrate sociology throughout my life. And by butter, I mean being the person that helps others understand their own beliefs a little more.
I attended multiple training sessions throughout the spring where we were taught in the method of Visual Thinking Strategies. This pedagogical philosophy has the facilitator asking three questions every time:
1) What’s going on in this piece?
2) What do you see that makes you say that?
3) What more can we find?
This style of open-ended questioning felt fairly intuitive to me. But once we got to live practicing as a group in the galleries, I did have to course correct. I needed to change something that I felt has served me well—my natural inclination to affirm others. This tendency is extra common when they are being vulnerable enough to share a unique thought in front of others. However, to encourage one thought but not another? This can dissuade people from sharing, as now the prescription of judgement is seemingly at play. Instead, after listening and paraphrasing, I had to learn to simply say “thank you for sharing”.
I also learned within this training how to better advocate for my neurodivergent needs. In two separate “classes”, we were asked to break into pairs to answer questions. Being in a room of 10-15 separate conversations trying to talk to one another can make my skin crawl. I start to dissociate and shut down. Rather than my classmate and I having a lackluster learning experience, I asked if they would be willing to sit on a sofa in the lobby outside the room to have our one-on-one time. The accommodation was happily granted both times, and I was able to actually have fulfilling and connective conversations.
The last thought from the trainings that I’ll share is a funny one. For context, the Portland Art Museum is leaning more into making the museum experience more fulfilling and accessible for disabled people. One such way is by having one weekend per month a “Look With Me in ASL” session. These instances have interpreters to translate ASL into English, or vice versa. As a result, my cohort had 3 people who used ASL. Some of our exercises were intentionally built to reduce our reliance on words.
One of these communication building exercises necessitated that (without speaking) we arrange our group of 20. We first organized by birth date order (month and day), and then by how likely we were to dance at a wedding. The two ends of the spectrum were “first on the dancefloor” and “you won’t ever catch me out there”. Before our teacher even finished the second half of the prompt, I put myself on the end. First on the dancefloor and first in line here.
Look, I know why I was put on this planet.
I was born to act a fool so others are able to enjoy themselves more easily. I have been the first person to dance at weddings, concerts, and parties more times than I can count. I wasn’t expecting my self appointed placement to be challenged. However, one of my classmates (probably twenty years my senior and probably twenty times more graceful than I) glided right past me once people started arranging themselves. She was dethroning me as the dancing queen! I didn’t think I had any pride in this. I thought it was more-so just self-awareness. But for her to be so bold to usurp me after I was so bold? At that point, she should have danced her way into the first rank.
As the rest were still folding themselves into the line, she leans over with a smirk. “So, what kind of dancing do you like to do? I’ve danced all my life and have done ballroom dancing in New York City and tango in France.” I shrugged my shoulders and answered her with a flat honesty. “I just like to have fun with my friends at the club.” It was evident that this program brought people from different worlds together. This was made even more evident a few weeks later. The same usurper told the whole class she had no idea what a zombie was.
So, back to present(ish) day, I finally had my first real-life facilitation session! On an ‘Art in ASL’ day at that, meaning that many of the attendees were Deaf people. This meant that I was having signed thoughts interpreted back to me while I tried to digest them quickly. I chose ‘Eye of the Storm’ by from the available selection pool ahead of time. I wanted to work with it due to its portrayal of chaos, and because it was created by an influential indigenous artist, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith.
All of the other five pieces discussed and dissected throughout the day were fairly straightforward and serene. This made it rewarding for me to witness something in real time as the facilitator: museum-goers sitting with their discomfort long enough to identify where that feeling was coming from, and also them exhibiting bravery by sharing their hesitancies with a room of strangers.
Two common themes came up: climate change, and the passage of death into the unknown. Of course we were squirmy! Despite the initial squirminess, I felt really satisfied with how it went. Both directly afterward and during our group debrief, I received affirming feedback and compliments. I was told that I seemed like a natural, that my presence and peace created a welcoming atmosphere that allowed for an emotional journey, and that I was brave for doing it on an ‘Art in ASL’ day.
And yes, I’m definitely writing these out here to brag on myself. I need to document my work in combating my people-pleasing related discomfort. In this case, receiving compliments that aren’t followed by me offering a transactional compliment in return. Once again, I learned that all I had to say was “thank you for sharing”.
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Catch Me There:
Look With Me happens every Sunday at Portland Art Museum from noon to 3pm. Find more info here. My next session is August 2nd, I hope to see you there. 🙂
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