The Poet

[shadowkat]

She ambled into the college lounge, her brother with her. Tall, almost six-foot five in stocking feet, all legs and arms, and thin as a pole, yet he managed to remain unseen. A neat trick that. Red cooper hair and brown eyes and a face filled with freckles from too much sun, he folded himself into one of the chairs, or rather cushioned benches that masequeraded as chairs in the dorm's lounge. It wasn't his school, he was just visiting, few weeks, maybe a month, not sure how long. Just long enough to get away from the rents, who his sister called folks, and get his head together.

In the front of the room she sat, cross-legged, big like him, yet not as big she couldn't fold her knees under her. The other chairs were taken by a mixed range of people, students he quessed. Like her. Some looked older, some closer to his age. Male and female, mostly white, although he caught a few blacks and other races, not many though.

He watched as she pulled out a couple of sheets of paper. A man ambled in front of her. No, not a man, a boy, lean like him, but shorter, with facial hair, but not much, just enough to make him feel like a man. Said her name aloud. Announced she'd be reading her own poetry. Scattered clapping. He waited for her to begin, his stomach knotting for her, wondering why she did it. Art he got, painting a picture or aiming a camera at a person. But reading one's own thoughts, words, aloud to strangers? He thought of her as a loner, off by herself. So it seemed against her character somehow to be doing this. Sitting up there, alone.

She opened her mouth and the words tumbled out, her fingers trembling as she read. After a while her whole body shook, much like their mother's did when she was nervous or himself. He looked down at his own fingers. Steady. Smoking helped. Could use a smoke now. Roll one. Inhale, exhale.
Gritted his teeth trying not to think about it, to focus on her.

Not great poetry he thought. He'd heard better, but he was picky, he knew that. But she read it in such a way that the audience was captivated. So was he after a while. Her words, simple as they sounded, ripped at him. Pain was there and it was personal. Made him think of her stories in their mother's chest and the drawings - the harsh lines of red, such anger. The poem she read was he thought about lost love, about friendship, about...rejection. And while her voice and tone were light, sarcastic, mocking, he caught the rage beneath. He wanted to pull her off the chair and out of there. Take off into the woods of their childhood, where it was just the two of them, telling stories, no onlookers. Quiet.

Afterwards, someone approached her. Asked to look at the poem and gave her, what best could be called a back-handed compliment. "Great reading. Oddest thing, your reading of the poem is riveting, the best I've heard, but the work itself is not good at all. Don't know how you do it."

Later as they walked back to her house, she turned towards him, asked what he thought. Did he like it? He chose his words, picked over them. Like wasn't the right word, he thought. "I think you should be careful how and who you expose yourself to. Your poetry seems private to me. Personal.
I'm not sure these are the right people to hear it."

She looked at him in confusion. They didn't say anything else. There was nothing else to say.

Comments

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

That is beautiful. A wonderful expression of the poet and the performance (great to have it from the POV of someone who cares but isn't the poet).
I loved the term 'rents' for parents... and somehow I was really caught by the phrase: "The other chairs were taken by a mixed range of people,"
I'm not sure why that phrase worked so well for me, but it seemed expressive and unexpected.

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

Funny how creating can be that way.. and how it can connect, so I should have said contain all those. You have me thinking now too (again) about art and craft. The base of this is really good, sk. Thinking about it is one of those rolling rippling thought onto thought onto lightbulb onto more...

Really good. Did you see both the recognition and the challenge in that last sentence?

Here we are thinking and saying more. :)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

It's a snippet really, a prose poem - not meant to go anywhere or build into anything else. A snippet taken from an old memory that continues to haunt.

It's also an idea I've been playing with - the idea of writing the memoir (which is really a composite of one's own memories of one's experiences) from everyone but the writer's pov - haven't really seen anyone do that - most memoir's are first person gigs. Imagining what someone else in the memory was thinking at the time as opposed to reporting what the writer/I was or thought they/I were thinking. Be fictional of course, could be nothing else, but then I believe are memoirs, if they are being honest, are fictional.

Also been playing with or rather turning over in my head the feeling of over-exposure. Some artists, commericial artists, don't expose themselves in their art. Their art is "stylistic" or if not that, removed somehow from themselves. There's many layers of protective gauze between them and it. But doing that makes the art less emotionally accessible to the person who wants to buy it or appreciates it. I think you can feel the disconnect or dishonesty in it. Watched the film on Johnny Cash recently - and when he goes into record a song, the studio head tells him that he doesn't believe Cash when he sings it. It's a song they've heard any number of times, Cash sings it well enough, but it's not coming from his heart - there's nothing of Cash in it. Nothing for someone to connect to. Cash takes a leap of faith and exposes himself by singing his own songs, songs he created. Singing them is far trickier, far scarier - because he is emotionally invested, as opposed to the song that was written by someone else and been sung over and over and over again.

The unanswered question is - do you do as the commericial artist does which is create art that is meant to be bought or as the fine artist does - create, without thinking about the purchase, just creating?
One can make a living as an artist, one cannot. Or if they do, it's usually scraping by. But the art that lingers...is the art, I think, that contains the emotional resonance - like in music, the pop song that has been created by a committee, that is manufactured, and the song that a Nick Cave or Leonard Cohen or Joni Mitchell or Aimee Mann or other songwriter writes from their heart. It may be more flawed than the manufactured song, with discordant notes, but it lingers. OTOH, it only lingers if it is good. And whether it is good or not...can be a subjective as opposed to objective thing. Ah, I'm not sure there is one answer...

I do know that I can't do commericial art or commericial writing. Have tried. I appear to be, rather I like it or not, the fine artist, whose work comes from an emotional base. Which I suppose brings us to the question posed at the end of the snippet....