The Moth: A Social Refuge From Social Media

Last week, at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, Salman Rushdie, chair of the PEN World Voices Festival, closed an evening of Moth storytelling on revolution and change.

In the late '80s, Rushdie, plagued by writer's block in his London office, was invited to Nicaragua during the Sandinista revolution. Faced with hundreds of pages he didn't like, he hoped that a change of scenery might cure his ails. It did. He survived a war zone and finished what would become The Satanic Verses. It's a story he's told before, but, steps from the East River, it reached a new audience.

Before Twitter, Facebook, other social media tools and blogs, the Moth gave us a live peek into the minds of authors. It still does. Outside the digital universe that sometimes belies authenticity, the Moth, now an old hand in New York City literary circles, is still a chance for creatives to leave the house with the common goal of sharing stories with the public-at-large. There's no filter. There's no screen or page.

Started in 1997 by poet and novelist George Dawes Green, the Moth launched the culture of storytelling and became a sure bet for an evening of illumination. Beginning in smaller venues like Nell's on 14th St., the Moth began to hold events at the Museum of Natural History and other large spaces. Eventually, it expanded beyond New York City.

Reading at a Moth gathering became a badge of honor. Authors -- plus lawyers, therapists, cab drivers and the unemployed with a tale to tell -- had an instant audience, long before the millions of digital eyeballs we now take for granted. But, unlike the sometimes raucous, awkward web-o-sphere that is morphing into a brand-centric wonderland, the Moth wasn't noisy. It was pleasant to the ear. It still is.

The Moth launched before the book business began to falter when branding was a different beast. Sure, there was plenty of promoting, advertising and audience targeting, but there wasn't the same cacophony of brand-speak.

Rushdie, who came of age before the onset of the author-as-brand, is refreshingly out of touch with the trend of branding in the book biz. When asked about it, he said, "I can't really wrap my head around that. I have no idea what I'm going to do next."

The Moth is a culture of its own, free of texts, tweets and self-conscious, digital branding and filtering. It's a social refuge from social media -- and its sometimes tiresome onslaught of me, me, me, sell, sell, sell.