Harrison Scott Key

He Makes Me Happy

The alarm went off at 5 am as I had wanted it to do, yet I was not happy to hear it. Only four hours earlier I had laid my head on the pillow in hopes of sleeping fast and hard to make up for the short time I had to offer the bed.

I hopped up, ok I guess hop is not an appropriate adjective to use. I rolled myself off the bed catching my left foot in the covers and falling to the floor with a thud.

After assessing the damage and realizing I was ok, I had to laugh at myself.

Lack of sleep is commonplace when you hook yourself to a musician. My son, Eric Erdman, is a musician and I enjoy attending all of his shows I can. I realize there will come a time when I may not be able to keep up, so I am enjoying every minute until then. He played until about 11:15 the night before and by the time I got home it was nearly midnight but today we had to get up early and head to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Our destination was the Louisiana State Book Fair. I love authors, it feels like heaven when I am amongst them, he also loves authors and reading. He is a singer/songwriter, which is an author with a twist, one that sets their words to music. 

Eric is a part of a new multi-media art project called TRIO. This is a project in which a book is given to a singer/songwriter and to a visual artist. They read the book and create something that represents the book in their medium. So he read a book and created a song that he sang at the TRIO display which was set up in the Louisiana State Library. Meanwhile I met authors that I had not known before so we were both content. At first he seemed reluctant to sing in a library, he had been taught all of his life this was a place of silence. He leaned to me and whispered, “I am about to make noise in this library!” Then he sang his song with a big smile.

We went to the lectures that were given by the authors that day. There were far too many to catch them all so we had pre-planned who we were most interested to hear and how we could make it to each of their shows. We made it to most of the ones we had selected. There was our friend, Shari Smith (who had invited me) and her lecture was emotional. She told the story of her book, "I Am A Town". This book tells of a time when she was feeling low and searched for a place where she could hide from the world as she healed from whatever had hurt her. This small town and its occupants changed her life and lifted her spirits in ways she could never have imagined. It is a wonderful book that is well worth your time and money; I recommend you get it. You will enjoy her humor and her observations of regular people, doing irregular things. Then there is Judith Richards, an award winning author of Thelonious Rising. It is her 6th novel (two of her novels have won Alabama Library Association awards). This one is part of the TRIO project and it is a story set in New Orleans. A fascinating story which involves music and the way we hear it and feel it. She is a sweet lady with stories to tell and she tells them well.

My personal favorite was a guy named Harrison Scott Key. His book was “The World’s Largest Man”. I knew after the first sentence of his reading that I had to have that book. This man tells the story from the bright and innocent eyes of a child who often felt he did not belong. Though you felt a bit of his pain as he never seemed to be able to please his dad or fully earn his respect. He told tales in his own manner, which was so entertaining that it left you with pains in your gut from laughing so hard. He has the best way of looking at life and dysfunction of anyone I ever met or read. It was my first introduction to this man and to his writing but I will buy everything that he has written or that he writes in the future because he makes me happy. I felt some of the same feelings he experienced and I loved looking back at the absurdity of those days when I was a child; Harrison Scott Key helped me to do just that. I wish I could thank him in person. If you ever get a chance to read his books, grab on with both hands and don’t let go!