Slam

I went to a live Poetry Slam/Spoken Word Festival for the first time tonight. It was in Sayles Hall, I think, and the headliners were a group of five poets who just happened to be in the area before going on a national tour. Collectively, the five of them had won every single international and national individual and collective slam title in the past five years, except for one. So this was like, the best of the best - except there was no Taylor Mali and no Beau Sia.

At first there were some people from Brown performing to get us "warmed up," and I think their names were Ryan (a white guy) and Sarah Kay (half-asian girl?), both wearing blue. I forget what Ryan's poem was about - I think I might have missed it - but I remember Sarah's started off about Hiroshima, and an entire city turning into powder by the power of the temporary supernova of the A-Bomb, and then she was talking about being in a birth nursery and looking around at all the sleeping children waiting for their parents to pick them up, and thinking, "I've been here before." And she was talking about the only things left not turned to powder: a watch, a tooth, a bike lock, a page of a diary.

And she talked about her name, Sarah. It was a biblical name, and in the Bible, God told the very first Sarah that she would do something impossible, and Sarah laughed because how would she do something that was impossible? And Sarah Kay said, I don't know what I would do if somebody tried to tell me I was going to do something impossible, but I can tell you I try every day to do something impossible. I try make the connection, she said, between two people, a connection where two people are feeling the exact same thing at the exact same time and they're not waiting for their turn to talk but they're actually listnening and every time she met someone new, she said, she tried to connect with them, but it seemed somehow impossible. And she talked about her performing, and said, "You can measure out my self-confidence in teaspoons or less and you can mix it up with whatever you want and dilute it and expand it but it'll still taste funny in your mouth." I forget exactly how she came to the end, but I remember her saying strongly, "Maybe I don't believe in reincarnation... but I'm just trying to get it right this time around."

The next guy who came up was a Brown student who just graduated and moved to Seattle, WA, and came pretty much just to perform tonight. He won last year's national individual competition. His poem was about The Distance, and I can't remember the whole of it, but I do remember two really good parts. The first was when he talked about going to a pawn shop at the end of The Distance, and finding there a shopkeeper who kept clean his beard with the razor you gave to him in exchange for a second chance. I don't know why, but I thought the idea of trading something in for a second chance was a very interesting one. The second was at the end of his poem, his close, when he talked about reaching the end of The Distance, and realizing you would trade in everything you had just found to find your way home.

I don't think I need to explain why I found that line powerful.

Then Ryan and Sarah got back up, and they started going back and forth doing little things a bit at a time... They said things like, "When you pee your pants, I will still play four-square with you," then the other, "When you need a date to the prom, I'll let you go with my cousin," or "When you come out to your parents, I'll let you stay at my house," or "When your need a place to run away, I'll be your home away from home." They said so much, and they went on for so long, and it was all so beautiful... I wish I could remember it all. If I do nothing else with my time at Brown, I will find out every word and every line of that poem.

The only other really interesting part of the night, I think, was when the first famous poet came up and started You Have Just Been Given an Official Order to Rock the F*ck Out. And he would start listing ways and reasons to rock out. Rock out as if someone was holding a weapon to your head and said to you Rock out as if your life depended on it because it damn well does. Rock out like you just won both showcases. He spent about three minutes, and it was all very good and very entertaining... the one that really stuck out to me, though, was the line, "Rock out like your dead grandfather just came back to life to rock the f*ck out with you in your new car." And it just kind of made me think about doing that... and for the first time ever, I felt sad that I never knew my grandfathers. Either of them. And I wonder what I am missing out on by not knowing them. I wondered if my life would be different if I knew them, and if Nana and Grandmom would be different if they were still with them... is it bad that I feel I miss people I have never even known?

Peace out.