I had to try it; and maybe I know myself a little better now.

One of my favorite places does an annual show of one of my favorite things. I noticed the show with delight the first time I stopped in, posted as a coming attraction - the next year I caught a part of it - and the next year, I stayed for all of it. A man in period garb reading works of a very Halloweenish poet; a writer of whose sound I am fond.

I don't know the guy that does the shows - you never see him at the place except at this time of year. It's as if he claws out of some bricked-up cellar each year, when the air and the moon are right, and walks the earth again solely to recite the arcane writings that drive him. I've great respect for him, standing and speaking through an hour long set without notes. It's an excellent show.

I'd decided to skip the show this fourth October, though; much as I love everything about the show, I found I disliked his actual readings of some of my favorite works. I've been reading them aloud myself this time of year for a long time - since I was a child and she was a child, in fact. The readings that I hear in my head always clash with the readings he does. When I listen to him, I just hear my pride saying I'm better, that I'm the one that really gets it, not him.

Unintentionally, though, I wound up passing through the place while his show was underway. It was a night for pushing my luck for me, and part of the karmic price I paid for emerging unscathed was having to hear one of my favorite works done "wrong", between one peril and the next. Of all the things that should have stuck with me out of that night, the urge to read that poem right is what did.

I had a spare hour tonight to screw around with it. I decided I'd allow myself one take, record it, listen to the result. Again, I've been doing that one for decades, it wasn't like I'd be doing it cold.

I did that thing, and felt the feeling again. The power of waves crashing at the site of the loss of a lifetime; the strength of a man standing strange after the end of a world. I gave the reading what scope I could, and felt good about doing it. It's been some years since I spoke aloud for a living, but I brought what I could to it, from what I learned then.

And then I played that recording back.

Line by line, I felt the same critical reflex about the words as they flowed, the same lip-tightening distaste for the flaws in how they sounded. Mis-timings, mis-emphasis, even mis-pronunciation. Turns out I don't like the way I do it either.

One gets better by being critical of the quality of one's own work. I've always struggled with doing that without being critical of me as myself. How to get the improvements, without the expense of the self-disgust, has been a constant quest for me. I've wound up spending much more than my hour, going through that constructive tenseness again.

It seems I'm always surprised by the things that set that off.