Bek and Dan, your gracious hosts at the Curve surf shop, Currumbin, are holding another of their surf culture evenings on Friday, May 8, from 6.30 pm. There'll be music by Mick Wheeler, Christopher Ernst and Kym Campbell, and artwork by Richard Harvey, Paul Lefevre, Adrian Turner and Christian Chapman. Cover charge is a very reasonable $5 including food and drinks. I'm familiar with the work of a few of these people and they are genuinely good at what they do and well worth checking out. I'll be doing a couple of short readings of my own work, which I've been doing a bit of lately and quite enjoying. It's a bit of an odd thing - getting up and reading in front of a bunch of people, especially a fairly noisy, rowdy social occasion where people are drinking and having a good time. But I've been amazed how people tend to be quiet and respectful and actually listen for the short duration of a reading. My take on it is, some of us are actually tiring of all the short attention span, dumbed down culture of the times - the 10 second sound bite, the two minute You Tube clip, the 300 word nasty web jibes trying to tear people down. I actually believe there is a bit of a hunger out there for good old-fashioned story-telling. It is a human urge, afterall, that has been expressed in one form or another for thousands of years and I don't foresee it vanishing from our gene pool simply because of technological changes. I reckon ultimately we are all looking for a sense of connection, shared human experiences to make our passage through this strange and shifting universe a little more friendly. And if past experience is anything to go by, these little gatherings are a great example of a community cultural event which achieves just that. I'll have books available for purchase and signing too, and I'm sure the other various artists will have their work available for sale, so there'll be a little surf commerce going on along with our surf culture. The Curve surf shop is at 35 Currumbin Creek Road, Currumbin, just near the pub and the post office .. though I wouldn't venture too close to the pub late on a Friday night, just quietly.