“Your triggering subjects are those that ignite your need for words. When you are honest to your feelings, that triggering town chooses you. Your words used your way will generate your meanings. Your obsessions lead you to your vocabulary. Your way of writing locates, even creates, your inner life. The relation of you to your language gains power. The relation of you to the triggering subject weakens.”
Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town
It’s not about the subject which triggers you but about the language you create because of that triggering. And in creating that language, you gain power. You create more inner life. You find ways to exist within the folds of your inner being, to describe what you’re feeling, to yourself, and to others, too. It’s all about the process.
I’m not that big into poetry (biggest joke I’ve ever told) but I like finding voices. I like speaking with voice in my writing. People tell me that my work is very voice-driven, not to say that my voice has a strong presence, or maybe it does, but more to say that the voice drives the work. Sets the pace like a runner do. Can’t set records without someone helping you push yourself, showing you how to breathe.
My hands are cold and I’m trying to let them breathe. This that old classic Said way of writing. Talking to myself on the page, I miss it. I know this voice so well. I am this voice, I think. I’d like to think.
I like to read Rankine. I keep going back to her book, DON’T LET ME BE LONELY. I don’t know if I’ll ever fall out of love with it, or stop learning from it. I wish I could tell more people about it. But telling them wouldn’t let them feel what I feel because of it – because they haven’t felt what I’ve felt leading up to it – and because they don’t feel what I feel after it. This is it. Michael Jackson is dead.
And Weezy said, “This that Old South, I’m spittin with that Old Soul.”
- Linear thinking won’t save you.
- So why waste your time on linear prose?
Letter To Myself:
-You Already Know What It Is
Look, I love you bro, don’t give a eff what a hater gotta say (I made a couple million dollars last year moving weight). The weight of these words should feel like a weight is being lifted from you, bro. That’s why you write this heavy stuff. Because if you kept it inside, it would only hold you down. Keep you from being able to swim. If you wrote only fluff, you would drown in cotton candy. Cough and choke on it.
You gotta keep it real. Keep it a buck. A stack. A thow-wow, like E-40 said. That means a thousand, to the uninitiated. You gotta keep it Keebler like Nebil used to say. Look, dude, I had a friend named Nebil in high school. And now I have a friend named Nabil in grad school. Isn’t it funny how life works?
I don’t like having Somali friends, as much as I like having Somali adjacent friends. Eritrean, Oromo. Borana. Close enough. Take me back to Borama. Closing off. I feel my heart closing off to the world and I can’t go back to a place of productivity.
(Said’s Note: white people always ask for more explanation of foreign-sounding words. “I’m so interested to hear more about the difference between Borana and Borama.” Hell out my face, whitey! Laugh/cry emoji)
I once wrote:
“Sometimes I wake up with indigestion and use it as a chance to pray. I pray for the indigestion to go away. I pray for my soul to find a resting place on this plane. To find comfort. I write about so many things, but. Where is my writing about faith? Does that mean that my faith isn’t here, within me, if it isn’t here, within the writing? No, not necessarily.
It’s hard for me to write about faith because faith isn’t something that can be easily – or at all – explained to people who are not of faith. And I guess most people who read my stuff are not of faith. Is that a fair assessment to make? Do I even know my audience? The vast majority of people nowadays seem to be without faith. Or, I should say, be without a form of faith I recognize.
Everyone is searching, though, make no mistake.
Everyone wants something to fulfill them, deep down, in that place that can only be occupied by remembrance of God. Of Allah SWT.
Look, these are my views and you don’t have to agree with them. But it’s my faith and best believe I won’t change anything about it to make you comfortable. Whoever you are.
I want you to go out in the world, and like rappers say, get money. Now burn it, money can’t save you. Find a place to pray. Prayer will save you. And I know you don’t like being told what to do. But this is good advice, take it from me. Or don’t.”
-Said Shaiye, 10AM On A Friday.