Opposites

A week or so ago, I was having dinner with the six-or-so people on my floor that seem to have developed into a group of friends. It includes Spencer, Matt D., Matt V., Maura, Danny, and to some extent Katherine/Abby/myself. I was talking to Spencer, and I don't remember how we got to it, but he was talking about how his friends used to devote a lot of energy to finding out the opposite of things. For instance, what's the opposite of an elephant? Well, try to think of every property there is of an elephant and find its opposite. Whatever the opposite of the elephant is, it should be: small, not grey, not living, possibly man-made, perhaps not a concrete noun, perhaps made of anti-matter. I don't know exactly why, but we decided that the opposite of an elephant was the little thing on top of baseball hats.

Last night, I went to a WORD meeting, which is the performance poetry group here. I showed up a little bit late because I was held up playing Rachmaninoff at orchestra until a little after 9:30, I believe. I walked in in the middle of a poem, and sadly, I've forgotten what it was about already, but I only heard a few lines of it.

Actually, at first I couldn't find the building. Then I walked into the Rites & Reason Theater and went INTO the theater. And I just looked around. There was music playing and it looked like someone was painting or building sets. I pulled out my map to see if I was where I thought I was. I was just about to decide that I was in the wrong building when I heard a very deep voice boom from behind me, "Looking for WORD?"

And I kind of jumped because I didn't expect it. And then I turned around, and it was a tall black guy, probably about 21 or so, who looked like he was doing some work on the sets. I felt really bad jumping because it kind of made me feel racist, but at the same time, I didn't even know he was black when I was scared by him. And when I saw him I was fine. But I still felt bad about it, and like I might have hurt his feelings by it. He told me that I just had to go down the stairs and to the right, so I did.

OH! The first poem was read by this guy Tomas, a racially-mixed and culturally-mixed kid in New Pembroke (NP) 4 [one of four dorms called New Pembroke] about the question, "Where are you from?" and how it was such a small deal with most other people, but such a confusing ordeal for him whenever he was asked.

That sparked another girl to read a poem inspired by when someone asked her, "What do you think of the n word?" [I should mention, she was black]. It was a really cool poem, and it started off with a scene of two people in a bedroom, but the girl lifting up her skirt and feeling pain at the same time because for some reason she could tell the lover wasn't hers, and she was talking about how that's how she felt in America, surrounded by a people that weren't hers. There was also this really cool part where she was talking about forgetting her name, and she did a little wordplay that was excellent, like "Forgot my - forgot? - for my - got my - forgot - got my - for name - forgot my name?" You probably had to be there, but it was really excellent.

After that, a girl who calls herself Kiwi [I guess I should mention she was black?] read a poem... it was hard to describe what it was about. She was an incredible speaker, though. I don't exactly remember the theme of her poem, but I just remember really really wanting to listen to what she said because of how strongly she said it.

After that, a guy performed a really short poem starting with the line, "A woman shot me today." He played it really well, and it took us all like twenty seconds to figure out he was talking about a camera. Then Sarah Kay read a poem that was along those lines, although I sort of forget it.

Basically, after each poem, people would just go around and say good things they liked about the poem, or if they REALLY thought they had a wonderful way to improve the poem, they could say that too. Just so you get an idea for what was going on. People often snapped or clapped a little bit during the poem to show approval.

After that, a black guy with really awesome dreadlocks read a poem called something along the lines of "I Can't Believe She Was Ever Beautiful." It was inspired by a personal experience, he said, but not quite true. He was talking, of course, about a girl he knew who used to be very beautiful, but then how she grew up and got corrupted and how when he saw her now, callouses and burn marks and lines and torn, it was hard to believe she was ever beautiful. And he had some really interesting lines, like how she was beautiful back when the word "baby" meant all the right things, and something about cooking up loneliness like only your father could make it.

Then an Asian freshman girl read a poem trying to summarize the senior-year-of-high-school experience. She made it seem extremely painful... I wanted to say, "You know, my senior year ruled...!" but that wouldn't have been very useful, so I didn't say it, of course. She had some really interesting parts, though. A couple good images included lines like, "I watched the greatest minds of my generation have sex with each in their cars, and daydream about blowjobs in the Sunday pews," and then she listed a bunch of things that people became disenchanted with, including my two favorites "...Garden State... and Jesus."

After people were done reading poems, Sarah Kay decided it was time to start the Workshop. Some people left, but I wanted to hear the prompt. Basically, if someone has a prompt they like, they get up and say, "Here's an idea or way to start. Now, write." So Sarah Kay had a prompt this week. Opposite. She said, "Your poem should be based off the thought or line or sentence: The opposite of _____ is _____."

And then she talked about her experience with that line. She goes into city schools sometimes to get kids to be excited about poetry and she would often use this line with them, too. Then she'd ask them, "What's the opposite of light?" and everyone yells, "Dark!" Then what's the opposite of night? Day! of course. Then she'd get a little trickier. What's the opposite of flip-flop? Flop-flip? What's the opposite of ketchup? And then she'd ask them to try.

And this one little girl said, "The opposite of stars is inside me."

Holy crap. I know that there's a 99.9% chance that the girl had no idea how profound that line was, but man, that .1% of me really wants to believe that this little girl was just that brilliant. And that .1% of me will be waiting to hear some poems from her.

Peace out!