"When it came time for [Miranda] July to speak, she stood up and started singing. She was large-eyed and lithe."

"I don’t remember what song it was—something she had written herself, I believe. I was startled. Who was this woman? (Her performances and short films had not appeared widely enough to have caught my notice.) I was then mortified, not for her, since she seemed completely at ease and the audience was enthralled, but mortified for narrative structure, [the topic of the conference panel] which had clearly been given the bum’s rush.... Sitting next to Ms. July was the brilliant Denis Johnson, who, inspired by his neighbor, when it was his turn (figuring out one’s turn can be the most difficult part of a panel) also began to sing. Also something he had written himself. I may have laughed, thinking it was all supposed to be funny, realizing too late my mistake.... Then it was clearly, or unclearly, my turn. If not the wallflower at the orgy then I was the mute at the a cappella operetta (a condition typical of many a July character though not of July herself): I refused to sing. I don’t remember what I said—I believe I read from some notes, silently vowing never to be on another panel...."

Yeah, panels! Sounds like one of my nightmares, but I guess that really happened to the fiction writer Lorrie Moore. I don't know. Fiction writers! Talking about/singing about narrative structure, a topic "about which [fiction writers] are the most clueless and worried and improvisational."