Concrete jungle that dreams are made of ...
Headed off to NYC for a few days tomorrow. Reading tomorrow night for the Inspired Word reading series. Haven't been there yet, but I've been hearing good things. Very excited. Lea and I will be co-featuring with Gemineye, who was evidently on Def Poetry Jam. All in all, should be a good time. Hope to see some folks down there.
Mike Geffner Presents The Inspired Word
featuring Gemineye, Lea C. Deschenes, Victor D. Infante
One and One Bar & Restaurant (downstairs Nexus Lounge)
76 East 1st Street
Manhattan, NYC
(212) 598-9126
7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010
Venue is 21+; 12-slot open mic open not to poets and spoken word artists but fiction/nonfiction writers, comedians, monologists, singers, and musicians.
***
Yes, there's evidently an investor group looking to buy the Boston Globe, and consequently, the Telegram & Gazette. No, I don't know anything more than you do.
***
I've been dilettante in blogging about what a wonderful time Lea and I had reading at MindFull books in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Such an amazing little bookstore. And it had a bookstore cat! (Which is important.) VERY glad Brandi MacDonald invited us up. Great, attentive little crowd. Felt amazing.
Read a lot of the new stuff, such as "On the Outside," "Sixteen Was the Year" and "Toxic Waltz," and they seem to be going over well. May well reprise them in NYC tomorrow, if the room feels open to them. They're odd poems -- part of a series, and probably headed for a round of edits. It's vulnerable territory, writing about adolescence and a lot of the less-than-fun things that shaped the decisions, good and bad, that lead me to where I am today. Looking back at adolesence is a lot like looking across to the other side of a fire. That's where all the scorched earth is, and you can still sort of feel the flames.
It's different, though, when you look back at it from this side of 30. It all seems so long ago. The big traumas I've written about over and over again, of course. In a lot of ways, writing about my father's murder is almost easy at this point. Almost. It's writing about the big, obvious thing and it's big, fairly obvious impact. But the smaller cruelties of youth? Oof. Even beginning has been rough. I take it one poem at a time, and I take it slow. Just see where it all leads me.
After Steve died, writing about that journey from awkward youth through Rocky Horror, punk rock, poetry et al seemed almost a compulsion, and I have to admit, the recent media light on the suicides of gay teenagers has made it feel even more necessary. I'm not gay, but I don't think that particularly matters in this instance. I was sleight in my early teenage years, and even now still have effeminate mannerisms and a trace of a lisp. I was geeky and interested in culture. That I was attracted to girls seems almost beside the point when looking back at those years.
Was I bullied? Sure. I recall the insults, I recall being beaten up. But what seems amazing is how far away it all seems now, like I'm looking at it through a cloud of smoke. I've long let go of most of that, and in a lot of ways, I was lucky. I found my tribe of friends, found a place to be. a lot of kids don't find that until they're well out of high school. I was lonely at 14, with only a handful of friends. By the time I was 18, I had a full life, to which high school was only tangential.
"It gets better." That's the catch phrase of Dan Savage's worthy video project. And it IS worthy. But I don't know if it's so much that it gets better as it is that you get better, that you learn how to withstand the cruelties of other people, learn to see their weakness for what it really is. If you're very lucky, you learn how to greet it with a modicum of pity, cultivating kindness in your heart. Not for their sake, but for you own. Because there's some serenity in that. And I confess, I wrestle with that one to this day. Even now, I confess there's a part of me that always wants to lash out at something, and writing that makes me realize that maybe I haven't let go of as much as I think I have.
It's a process. But the important thing to learn, and what makes Savage's project so important, is that you don't have to be alone in it. Eventually, you find friends, fall in love, and yeah, sometimes you have to do both over and over again. Eventually, you can move on -- go to college, move to the city, wherever your road is taking you. But in the meantime, it's good to know that other people have gone through what you're going through, whether it's through someone telling their story on YouTube, or through someone writing a poem that gets heard at the right time.
Pain touches pain. That's the single, most fundamental element of art, and the thing that's probably most easily lost track of in the bustle of it all. I don't know if my poetry has ever saved a life, although sometimes I suspect it's failed to once or twice (and that line of thinking will drive you down some impossible rabbit holes if you let it, let me tell you.) But that's not the point. Some of these poems, these scattered messages in bottles, inevitably will. We never know which ones, and really, it doesn't matter if it's mine, or yours, or anyone's in particular. It only matters that someone's does.
Mike Geffner Presents The Inspired Word
featuring Gemineye, Lea C. Deschenes, Victor D. Infante
One and One Bar & Restaurant (downstairs Nexus Lounge)
76 East 1st Street
Manhattan, NYC
(212) 598-9126
7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 21, 2010
Venue is 21+; 12-slot open mic open not to poets and spoken word artists but fiction/nonfiction writers, comedians, monologists, singers, and musicians.
***
Yes, there's evidently an investor group looking to buy the Boston Globe, and consequently, the Telegram & Gazette. No, I don't know anything more than you do.
***
I've been dilettante in blogging about what a wonderful time Lea and I had reading at MindFull books in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Such an amazing little bookstore. And it had a bookstore cat! (Which is important.) VERY glad Brandi MacDonald invited us up. Great, attentive little crowd. Felt amazing.
Read a lot of the new stuff, such as "On the Outside," "Sixteen Was the Year" and "Toxic Waltz," and they seem to be going over well. May well reprise them in NYC tomorrow, if the room feels open to them. They're odd poems -- part of a series, and probably headed for a round of edits. It's vulnerable territory, writing about adolescence and a lot of the less-than-fun things that shaped the decisions, good and bad, that lead me to where I am today. Looking back at adolesence is a lot like looking across to the other side of a fire. That's where all the scorched earth is, and you can still sort of feel the flames.
It's different, though, when you look back at it from this side of 30. It all seems so long ago. The big traumas I've written about over and over again, of course. In a lot of ways, writing about my father's murder is almost easy at this point. Almost. It's writing about the big, obvious thing and it's big, fairly obvious impact. But the smaller cruelties of youth? Oof. Even beginning has been rough. I take it one poem at a time, and I take it slow. Just see where it all leads me.
After Steve died, writing about that journey from awkward youth through Rocky Horror, punk rock, poetry et al seemed almost a compulsion, and I have to admit, the recent media light on the suicides of gay teenagers has made it feel even more necessary. I'm not gay, but I don't think that particularly matters in this instance. I was sleight in my early teenage years, and even now still have effeminate mannerisms and a trace of a lisp. I was geeky and interested in culture. That I was attracted to girls seems almost beside the point when looking back at those years.
Was I bullied? Sure. I recall the insults, I recall being beaten up. But what seems amazing is how far away it all seems now, like I'm looking at it through a cloud of smoke. I've long let go of most of that, and in a lot of ways, I was lucky. I found my tribe of friends, found a place to be. a lot of kids don't find that until they're well out of high school. I was lonely at 14, with only a handful of friends. By the time I was 18, I had a full life, to which high school was only tangential.
"It gets better." That's the catch phrase of Dan Savage's worthy video project. And it IS worthy. But I don't know if it's so much that it gets better as it is that you get better, that you learn how to withstand the cruelties of other people, learn to see their weakness for what it really is. If you're very lucky, you learn how to greet it with a modicum of pity, cultivating kindness in your heart. Not for their sake, but for you own. Because there's some serenity in that. And I confess, I wrestle with that one to this day. Even now, I confess there's a part of me that always wants to lash out at something, and writing that makes me realize that maybe I haven't let go of as much as I think I have.
It's a process. But the important thing to learn, and what makes Savage's project so important, is that you don't have to be alone in it. Eventually, you find friends, fall in love, and yeah, sometimes you have to do both over and over again. Eventually, you can move on -- go to college, move to the city, wherever your road is taking you. But in the meantime, it's good to know that other people have gone through what you're going through, whether it's through someone telling their story on YouTube, or through someone writing a poem that gets heard at the right time.
Pain touches pain. That's the single, most fundamental element of art, and the thing that's probably most easily lost track of in the bustle of it all. I don't know if my poetry has ever saved a life, although sometimes I suspect it's failed to once or twice (and that line of thinking will drive you down some impossible rabbit holes if you let it, let me tell you.) But that's not the point. Some of these poems, these scattered messages in bottles, inevitably will. We never know which ones, and really, it doesn't matter if it's mine, or yours, or anyone's in particular. It only matters that someone's does.
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