Naked Girls Reading and a Love of Listening

On Friday night, I made my way up the stairs to the Everleigh Social Club with a friend, to attend the 2011 Naked Girls Reading Literary Award Gala. The fabulous loft space was candlelit and lushly decorated. We were among the first guests to arrive and took our seats in front of the swing, to the right of the stage.

Inspired by and named after the infamous Everleigh Club of the 1900s, this modern incarnation was founded by Michelle L’amour and is an extension of Studio L’amour. The Everleigh Social Club, while open to members for special events like the Naked Girls Reading Series and SPEAKEASY, is also the home of a modern art movement called Cyprianism, “creating art through a life lived artfully.” (A quote by Franky Vivid that I love. Read more here.)

From what I could see upon my entrance, the spirits of beauty, creativity, and sensuality are alive and flourishing in the Everleigh Club. Not unlike the ritual theater I adore by Terra Mysterium, the Naked Girls create a space and then fill it with intention, charging it with provocative elegance. On that night, the intention was to celebrate the five Literary Prize finalists, and I was honored to be in such good company.

The ladies on the stage disrobed at the start of each of the three reading sessions of the night. They did it gracefully, naturally, comfortably, at home in their skin and on the stage. Then they breathed the stories into life, charging each one with emotion, weaving the web of words around them. The crowd was rapt.  One word kept coming to mind: communion: a sense of intimate fellowship or rapport.

The word “communion” has an interesting etymology, a little different than its more modern and ecclesiastical definition.  It comes from the late 14th century Old French  comunion, meaning “community, communion” (12c.),  and from the Latin communionem (nom. communio) “fellowship, mutual participation, a sharing.”

The act of reading someone a story, or having a story read to you, is intimate. We don’t usually sit and read with strangers or people we dislike. If we read a story, it is with someone dear to us: a parent, child, partner. It’s often a part of a ritual, like “the bedtime story” or a “reading hour.” I love to read, but listening to a story is a different experience than reading a story. Listening takes us right back to our ancestors–sitting around a campfire to share in the storytelling experience, a sacred experience because it revealed ancient secrets, imparted treasured wisdom, taught life lessons, celebrated community milestones. The storytellers were both library and librarian.

Even today, when we listen, we receive something. Yes, it’s the same story. Yes, the words are the same. However we add the element of performance, the experience of emotion conveyed by a reader, the feeling that there is an exchange with a person and not just a text. Communion.

This is one of the reasons I love to listen to audiobooks, especially those read by the author. It’s like my own private bedtime story. In the reading of a story, the author has given me something, more than the words and the world they shape (although those are treasures). In an audiobook, as in a reading, they have given me an experience of the story.

It was an honor to hear my story read aloud on that stage, to experience my words delivered in such a beautiful and provocative way. I didn’t win the prize, but I certainly felt like I was given something to treasure. (It made me all the more excited to hear the audiobook for my novel when Xe Sands finishes recording The Silence of Trees for Iambic Audiobooks.)

The Naked Girls Reading Series is now in cities across America, so you too can experience the glamour and allure of Naked Girls Reading.

Rick Kogan said it so well in an article he wrote for the Chicago Tribune in April 2011:

It is a beautiful and bold experiment to be sure, with the emphasis on, well, beautiful and bold.

After the Naked Girls Reading, with a fully-clothed Michelle L’amour and Greta Layne.

 

Published by Valya

Valya Dudycz Lupescu has been making magic with food and words for more than 20 years, incorporating folklore from her Ukrainian heritage with practices that honor the Earth. She’s a writer, content developer, instructor, and mother of three teenagers. Valya is the author of MOTHER CHRISTMAS, THE SILENCE OF TREES, and the founding editor of CONCLAVE: A Journal of Character. Along with Stephen H. Segal, she is the co-author of FORKING GOOD: An Unofficial Cookbook for Fans of The Good Place and GEEK PARENTING: What Joffrey, Jor-El, Maleficent, and the McFlys Teach Us about Raising a Family (Quirk Books), and co-founder of the Wyrd Words storytelling laboratory. Valya earned her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her poetry and prose have been published in anthologies and magazines that include, The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Kenyon Review, Culture, Gargoyle Magazine, Gone Lawn, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium. You can find her on Twitter @valya and on Mastodon.social @valya

4 thoughts on “Naked Girls Reading and a Love of Listening”

  1. James P. Roberts says:

    Excellent commentary, Valya! You capture the unexpected magic and enchantment of a Naked Girls Reading, especially the idea, now sadly outdated, that reading is a communal experience to be shared. And constant practice reading aloud improves not only literary abilities but also self-esteem. You really get a sense of how much work goes into each selection in order to continually provide the audience with a fresh experience each time.

  2. Greta Layne says:

    Such a wonderful review of the night! Again, it was an honor for me to read your beautiful excerpt from The Silence of Trees.

  3. Valya says:

    Thank you, James.

  4. Valya says:

    Greta, truly it was an honor to participate in the evening. Thank you.

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