There was an unexpectedly large number of people filling up the room at 401 @ Hibernian House last night.
Piled onto mismatched seats, sat beside the baby grand piano, perched on a milk crate, or standing room only at the back.
We poit, poet, puet.
The visuals go the crazy and it’s all a bit stressful before. But the people come, and we make the poetry, and they listen. I dream out to Emily’s version of “Daddy”, electro-space-leisure dreaming after the beer starts to kick in. Liv and Patch (don’t) see red, I am afraid, but Liv is brave in the moment of a real review, the re-seeing, the seeing again, the not looking away. Candy and Jade hold fort, sponsoring, putting their good name to our good names. Thomas does the thanking of you, you who so deserve our thanks.
I often wonder if, in an evening of intense poetry, visuals, sounds, and images – you are doing rather well if you can remember a single line from the whole event. I mean, your mind has absorbed and responded to so much that you can barely hang onto language. Sometimes this is a beautiful wonderful thing, and the point has not been to hang onto every word and every note, but to experience the entirety of the evening, to be immersed and bathed in all that has gone on. Sometimes, it’s a bad thing, and your cerebral cortex is shutting down operations to save you from the crap.
I’ve been quietly restful all day, cutting off conversations earlier than I might normally, languishing in some verbal hangover. Have much of the first kind of brainsorption, and none of the second brain numb.
The words “community” and “communication” both find their roots in the Latin communitas: cum, “with/together” + munus, “gift” – this is the fellowship of people.
This is the line that I remember, perhaps slightly paraphrased and maybe misaligned, but staying with me still:
the shortest distance between two humans is a story
– from someone pursuing beauty to its lair
eleanor j jackson 