Feel Something

 Usually when I talk about significant moments in my life I picture expressions-- the look in the eyes of the people around me, the lines that deepen in the corner of their mouths when they smile. I think of the environment I was in-- what the lighting was like, the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. All the little things that paint that moment in my mind. Significant moments for me are those moments when I lose my breath. Moments when my chest aches from the explosion that happened inside. I don’t take time to think of the casualties or all the rubble I’ll have to clean up in the morning. All I can do is look up, close my eyes, and pray it lasts a little while longer. And when I think back to that night I walked into the music venue in Provo, Utah all those thoughts come flooding back to me.  

 I was with my two closest friends, we had heard of a Journal Jam happening that night and wanted to bathe in the words. A Journal Jam to our knowledge was where people would bring their childhood diaries exposing their most embarrassing moments and read them to an audience for who knows what reasons. We walked into dim lighting and a whole lot of indie vibe. The place was covered in passion, the walls were sweating it onto the floors. It was the type of place that makes your hair 10x heavier and your heart pump that much faster. Everyone was already sitting at the candle lit tables so we took our seats in the back.

They told us at the beginning to put our seatbelts on, unclog our ears, and pray we didn’t lose it completely. People went in turns sharing their first kiss stories and their angry rants about mom sending them to their rooms. They read to us about their darkest moments in high school and their highest moments, literally.

Then this guy stepped onto the stage. He wasn’t holding a bedazzled notebook or a torn up journal, it was just him and the microphone. His hair was a little bit longer than Macklemore’s, I remember because when he started speaking I thought he was trying to be Macklemore. He wore those thick rimmed glasses everyone’s trying to pull off and a worn out cardigan. But the things that caught my attention first were his hands. He had words dripping from his hands. When he recited a slam poem he had written himself, you could feel the audience fall into a haze that would take years to explain.

The room’s temperature dropped 50 degrees that night, sending chills all over our bodies. He spoke with his eyes closed, like he didn’t even need them to begin with. It was like he had us all under hypnosis, like he was that bridge jumping friend our parents had warned us about. Because I’m pretty sure if he’d asked us to, we’d all be shivering in the lake underneath the bridge. I remember looking at my friends and seeing their eyes light up, wondering where this had been their whole lives.

Once he finished everyone’s eyes were opened, when I say opened I mean opened. Everyone exhaled at the same time and I swear you could hear solace in the silence that followed. It was just like in the movies, the slow clap that leads to a standing ovation everyone wants to get after a performance. I know all this sounds painfully dramatic, but for me it was.

A sixteen year old girl who didn’t know what the inside of herself looked like. A girl who had no idea what poetry was except for “Roses and red, violets are blue..” This was the beginning of an addiction. An addiction that for once didn’t ruin you but build you. The days that followed were used to research anything Slam Poetry related. A hurricane had struck and I was left to put the pieces back together. I watched video after video, tried my pathetically beginner hand at it giving me an end result of a garbage full of crumpled up paper.

Later I came to find a high school class at a different school that had Slam Poetry written in its heartbeats. After weeks of begging I was able to take the class just as the new semester began. The rest of the year was filled with never ending fireworks, my teacher’s passion seeped into me and made me want to do anything poetry for the rest of my life.

 To this day, I wish that I had written down the name of the man behind the microphone. I wish I could tell him how deep I am swimming in his effect on me. All it took was 10 minutes, 10 minutes I will forever be trying to repay with my own words. Slam poetry has given me hope that one day I can aspire to be one of the greats. Be someone they teach teenagers about in high school.

I want people to find themselves in my words. I want them to tell me their son needed to hear what I had to say. I want people to seek refuge in my words, like they’ve been preparing for the world to end but it only ends up being a 1.2 quake under their feet. I want people to feel like they’re climbing into bed for the first time in weeks. I want them to feel something. I want them to feel something.

    Ever since that night something has grown inside me. Slam Poetry has allowed me to voice myself in a way I never thought possible. I can express myself in a way that relates to others, which helps me feel like I’m not alone. Slam Poetry has taught me there is beauty in everything, you just have to look for it. It’s taught me to try to get something out of everything that happens, good or bad.

           You asked me to share a moment where writing implanted itself in me. You asked me to hang a piece of myself on the rack with everyone else. You asked me to show you a hidden window looking inside my heart. Well here you have it.

Hats off to you for actually reading that beast.