the echo of many voices

Nate and Wil have always been pushing for new voices even when we had a good crop of poets coming regularly, if they were primarily male we wanted female voices. If we had primarily hip hop voices we wanted to move away from it. Once you establish something you know is good, you have to work on your weaknesses.

The reading last week and the week before have struck me, having Marion Sprague back in the fold helps us a lot and having new people like Katianna and Tricia who go up there and challenge not just the audience but their own talent, makes me happy. It has finally felt like not only do we have talented poets challenging each other but we have a wide range of ideas.

I never understood why we were always looking for some other demographic of thought when we had so much already but I finally figured it out. There is no such thing as having too many diverse voices at an open reading, no such thing as too much overflow on a list. It means that everyone has something to say and some of it can counteract itself, we don't want to sing as a chorus we want to all have solo time. We all deserve it but we have to fight for our ideas, we have to keep bringing new things and experimenting and putting it on the line every single time. If you lose that you lose your whole voice.

I don't feel like I'm being dramatic, the power of positive thinking does apply in writing and the voice that stifles you often times is your own. Every Tuesday I want to walk in and listen to someone new who can come off the street and offend me or make me a fan or stir things up somehow. I want new people to find out whether or not this is their medium, a lot of times people aren't even familiar with it. I wasn't when I first came.

The same way numbers trail off into infinity that is the potential of new voices, the ability to speak clearly together while remaining individual. Just keep it to five minutes.

Most important day of my life

So I tried to give away a little of what I had planned for the October 14th slam in my previous post. Port Veritas means a whole lot to me and I've given a lot to it but never really fully given my talent to it, I've never focused directly on it in a way where I would become what I could be. In August I decided to change that, I picked three pieces and practiced them over and over and over until I knew not only every word and how it was said but how it should be acted out. October 14th was going to be a prepared invasion for me and I was going to make noise.

I was also going to ask my girlfriend to marry me. Why not kill two birds with one stone? I was going to marry that girl anyway, everyone knew it so I might as well do it big and not just big but proud. I'm not talking about halftime at an NBA game on bended knee. I was going to go on stage with a new piece that I know better then the ten commandments and belt it like I was fighting for my life. To let her know that I will fight for every second with her the same way I'll fight on stage, she's the concept that drives me. Whatever, thats corny I don't care.

Big Poppa E is one of the funniest people on the planet, I saw him on Def Poetry Jam over Wil's house and ever since we have been fighting to get him here. He was featuring that night and then he guest judged the slam. I asked both Wil and Nate to get him as guest judge. I wanted more pressure, marriage, relative lack of experiance wasn't enough. Put one of the most acclaimed slam poets in the nation in the front row to grade me. Part of me is an idiot that wants to push the other part to the edge of losing just to see him come back.

It went down perfectly, I am so proud of that slam because everyone did VERY WELL. Wil Antony was there and he has the best command over a crowd that I've ever seen. Jazzy was a ball of energy and a savage and Tricia was there as well to wrench hearts out of position with her tense suspenseful verse. I'm proud to have lost, lost to the man who gave me my emotions back. Wil beat me by 2 or 2.5 points and I couldn't help think of those times where my dream was to write like Hemmingway, with not a scent of emotion on the surface but maddening symbolism a cold masculine giant. Wil tore all of that out of me and left me a full person someone who could come to tears and pull back and marry the right girl. On stage.

He taught me to live life with the decency not to deceive people in my writing and to own it all every adjective. So I married my girl and I took second place and I got a spot...just a possibility in april(if i'm not mistaken) to compete for a spot on the national team. It was a great day but just a grain of sand on a beach. I've still got tons of work to do but with enough time, I'm not sure there are that many people in this area who are obsessive enough to compete with my preparation.

Beastly tuesday on 10/14

A lot of people have strong feelings about things that they would like to pass off as a certainty for the future. Some political forces are so certain in the "end of days" that they feel ecological legislation is a waste of time, some sports prognosticators can predict the outcome of a game before the season has started. I am none of these wise men, I woke up today nervous and sick in my gut but not like call out of work and barf all day sick, i'm talking about first date i wonder if I get tongue with that kiss nervous. It's for the slam coming up on 10/14.

We have a lot of hungry poets out there trying to make a point and they want to do it next tuesday, Sean just came back from taking 6th out of 64 poets at the individual slam tournament so he is hungry like JAWS hungry. The kid always gets robbed on slam scores(in my opinion) but has been getting better and better by the second and at some point will not be held back anymore, he will be the man.

Dudley is an ex-factor he's such a natuaral fun loving kid that its hard to see if he's ready to be as ferociously egomanical as a top poet needs to be(TAYLOR MALI) but he's hit a stride that could take him right into the top tier of talent we have. He's been working on seperating his singsongy stuff from his verse and he's GOOD. Jazzy and Olivia and that whole group is so talented that on a good day they can beat you with their least favorite poem, they are natural performers. I don't even want to imagine how good they will be when they are reading their favorite pieces on their best day.

Wil wins these slams a lot, i mean a lot. He's already got a spot locked in to contend FOR a spot on the 2009 slam team BUT this is what he does. He sits around and writes and writes till its perfect and then memorizes it until its flawless, he told me he was going to slam with all new pieces that he has choreographed. Secretly Wil wants someone to beat him at a slam REALLY badly so that he has even more motivation to dominate that next time.

There are always X factors in a slam and you can never fully know until you see that list who is going to participate but I feel like its big. So many people try so hard to win this thing and the prize is sweet, the winner and 2nd place member get the chance to compete for one of five slots(including the sub or backup guy) on the 2009 national slam team. Its an opportunity to flex your artistic components for the countries best, to meet and beat people that you admire or lose to them either way is better then not going.

I forgot to mention....I'm going to compete as well. I'm not competing to test who I am or how good I am at this point. I'm going for that spot.