Last night I went to the last Voices Merging Open Mic of the semester. If you live in the Twin Cities and you haven’t been to one of these, you really should. They’re free to attend and in my opinion, one of the most fun hip-hop shows around. And if you’re poetically, theatrically, or musically inclined, you can get some experience performing in front of a very large audience. I go whenever I can, and I frequently perform.
I’m not sure if it’s because the University of Minnesota is a fairly liberal place to be, because Voices Merging and their open mics are predominately African American, or just because college students like to rebel against something, but a lot of the performances tend towards the political. I like it. There are aspects of issues that I haven’t thought about that get presented in an interesting and artistic manner. There are issues I don’t even know about that I get introduced to that way. Plus, there is stuff that I’m really passionate about, and hearing poetry about it makes me feel less weird in the world. Always a good thing.
My poems tend to be…not political. In fact, it’s somewhat rare that my poems address “issues” at all. A lot of my stuff on youtube can be that way, because they are mostly poems I’ve written for other people or organizations. I like doing that, it’s a challenge, and I like to find an angle on something that I can relate to. But on my own, my poetry is a deeply personal reflection of emotions and thoughts that can’t be expressed any other way. And occasionally, I will perform those pieces in front of the 300 faces of Voices Merging.
So last night, after the Poetic Assassins raised the roof with their challenging and aggressive piece on walking the talk of revolution, I took up the mic to talk about losing a pregnancy. My hopes that the audience would think I was acting out a character crumbled away from me as I teared up in the last few stanzas. I wondered why I couldn’t write a nice rousing piece about mercury contamination or immigration law.
Partly, it feels safer, a lot safer, to write about larger issues and political angst. But there’s also a part of me that wonders if writing so close to the chest is self-centered and narrow-minded. I’m sure there are beautifully poetic thoughts on the universality of suffering or the ability of art to make something small and personal into a larger issue. Sometimes I can swim in that stream, and sometimes I sit on the shore and wonder where all that water’s going, anyway
Life is universally made up of small things momentous to those experiencing them.
“We read to know we are not alone” – C S Lewis
IMHO much of the reason for any kind of Art boils down to two souls sharing those moments in a special way.
You are a beautiful and amazing women, Lauren. Your willingness to expose your own life is both breathtaking and inspiring to those who are suffering silently. Thank you for all you do.