Picture this: you’re sitting front row at a literary event. Two creative writing professors from the local U are sharing some of their words. It’s the first time you’ve heard them speak their words. You’re sipping a Taro bubble tea with mango jellies. You got it with a friend you call Beautiful. Everybody calls him that, and you’re not sure why, but he always has a smile on his face. Something about finding happiness in any situation is certainly beautiful.
Before that you were at work, the day dragging on, interpreting for patient after patient like a machine. You were tired, you were stressed, you just wanted to go home. You didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before, because of a weird roommate situation, and because you got a new phone that kept you up with all its new features. Test drive, test drive, take everything for a test drive. And when your work day was done, tired, you went to prepare yourself for the reading.
You can’t just walk into a literary event dead tired off a long shift at your stressful job. You have to put yourself in a different state of mind. You have to become a creative person again. You have to leave working-stiff mode. You take off your masks, set them on the counter, rearrange your face to something recognizable in the mirror. There, now you’re ready to be Proper Audience. Now you’re ready to receive literary transmission. To catch those vibes, man. It’s always a vibe to be caught.
Now you’re speeding towards your destination, the sun beginning to dip into the first stages of set. The weather is warm, the windows are down, the sunroof is open. It’s moments like this you remember what it means to be alive and happy and well. And you wish you could hold on to these moments a little bit longer, but you’ve learned to appreciate them for what they are – impermanent. You appreciate feeling the moment slipping away as time passes. The sweetness of the moment is often defined by its brevity, not in spite of it.
And the show began, the show began. Two creative writing professors walked up to a podium in a room dedicated to a dead poet inside of a library dedicated to a dead white man of unknown origin. Outside the window, you see a giant auditorium, Greek in its design, inscripted with large block letters across the top. It says something about preserving knowledge, educating young minds and PROTECTING THE STATE.
Odd thing, that. It never occurred to you that an institution of higher learning was really just a tool to protect the state, but then again, what isn’t? We live in the state, the state dips its greedy fingers into every pot it can reach. You are a pot, the state will have as much of you as it can stomach. But that’s not important, the show is about to start. Focus, young, focus.
The first poet shares her words and you’re enjoying it. Ah, yes, literature. It’s always nice to see someone who works hard at their craft. It shows. It takes effort to keep grinding away in the dark. To keep looking for words where there are often none. To keep on keeping on, or something like it.
The second poet comes up and you’re excited. The thing about poetry is that anyone can appreciate any poem, but certain poems are meant for certain people. You knew you were one of those people before the poet even spoke, because you’d met the poet before, and you know that the poet is doing that good work. The work from ’96, ’88.
From 1991 with a sonnet.
For the rest of the show you stop being a spectator and become an audience of one in conversation with a living poem. The room falls away and you just feel it. You feel it. There’s no other way to say it. Good poetry should make one feel more than they think. A little of both would be nice, but definitely more feeling than thinking. Poetry should move. And you were moved, are still moved just thinking back on it.
You felt, reborn in those poems, every feeling you feel as you walk through white America with black skin. Every look, every denial, every purse clutched by a lady walking the street in broad day. You felt in those poems everything you wish you could say to the entire management structure of any corporate job ever; the things which are always on your tongue but must be retrained for fear of losing your job. No one wants to be on the struggle bus, so, in order to survive, you compromise.
And the compromises hurt, no doubt, but you know it would hurt even more to go back to struggling to pay the bills. So you swallow your pride, and your tongue, and hold it all in, releasing it in your writing, in your poems, in your venting sessions to friends near and far. You see all those feelings, as if transported directly into the poet, being spit back at you, as if the poet felt them himself, because, in all likelihood, the poet did. The poet does.
The poet works, and if he is not at work, he is earning his keep. Like Denzel said, in Training Day:
Pelican Bay. Twenty Three Hour Lockdown.
Every time you go to a literary event, you’re doing the work. Be content in your little big heart, young. As a friend told you recently, don’t focus so much on your present. You have so much to look forward to in the future. Let that be your motivation. Let that be the reason you don’t take today so seriously. Let that be the reason you smile.
Smile, young, smile.
You’re doing the work.