I don’t promote artistic events anymore
because I don’t, for the most part,
host artistic events anymore
because no one went to my artistic events
– but this may be because of the anemic energy
I invested in my promoting artistic events.

I would create event pages
in my favorite forms of social media
which were ancient forms of social media
like Friendster and Fraudcicle
which I always insisted on calling Fraud-cycle
and everyone insists on never having heard of.
I would send out an invite, describing what was going on
and put in a post about it, maybe once,
add a picture
maybe send out a message.

Once or twice I would send an email.
I used to hand out flyers with little poems of mine on the back
(people used to like those)
but that tended to promote the website
more than the specific show
even though the show’s information
was planted right there on the piece of paper.
When I lost a physical office,
it became more cost-prohibitive to print them out.

I knew people who would call folks to invite them to shows
or glad-hand about it,
going to open mics and pressing the flesh.
I could never look people in the eye
with enough sincerity
to pull that off.

People just wouldn’t come out.
Maybe I performed too often.

Perhaps the art wasn’t good.
Most likely my promotion strategy was weak.
It couldn’t really be about the quality of what I offered…right?