A songwriter friend once told me that all an audience really wants is to get to know you… to see the innermost part of yourself… that they won’t feel satisfied in the end if you don’t reveal who you are. To me this is a very spiritual process. I consider all art a spiritual experience, its about revealing to me my true self… unlocking keys to WHO I am and WHY I am in all my varying forms. So the art is the process, the chronicling of the process, and the sharing of that process with others. … a full circle, a form of intimacy…
So when I was told I had to do this in twenty minutes I thought, Jeeze, a bit like fast sex with someone I’ve never met before. How can I take you on a journey to the inner depths of my soul in twenty minutes? More importantly, how do I do it gently… and lovingly so that in the end I can not fear the answer when I ask, "Was it good for you, was it good for me, was it good for that divine spark within us that is so much greater than ourselves?"
How do I reveal to you who I am and maintain its sacredness when it’s taken me the better part of forty-three years to get to know me? How can I possibly show you who I am with just a few short poems? Do I share the ugly, the angry, the denial poems along side the nurturing ones? What kind of lovemaking will we have to night? It’s such an intimate thing… and yet a public thing to be an artist.
I heard a guy recently say that men want relationships, but they will settle for sex; on the contrary, I’ve heard women say they’ll settle for a good relationship over sex anyday. Sex is such a metaphor for the creative process, perhaps, sex is the ultimate creative process. In any case, I have played both sides of the fence. I have sacrificed my heart for my head, and my body for heart. I’ve danced between the right and left side of my brain, sometimes gracefully though often clumsily and crudely.
Every poet that stands before you tonight will be revealing something of themselves, for better for worse, with fear, or joy or ego, we are all vulnerable… undressed and naked in some form another. Treat us gently like a beloved lover and you will see sides of us unfolding for years to come. I have lived among artists. I have watch them expand with nurturing and contract when they did not feel safe to show their faces… I have seen this in myself. Nurturing an art is like nurturing relationships… a bit like raising children. Art is life and life is love.
So what kind of lovemaking will we have here tonight?
Perhaps we will start with a dance? Because I am I greedy and I want it all. I want it all and I want it my way… but that is not a bad thing. I respectfully sacredly never assume my way is anyone else’s way, especially not yours, I wouldn’t want to do that to you…. I know the price of free will. Still, secretly I hope there will be some common ground found as I reveal myself to you. As I lift up my palm to meet yours and dance the light of life, Can you feel it? Will you dance with me? Will you follow my lead and be inspired by your own uniqueness, whether you are a poet, a parent or a banker? Hell, you don’t have to be an artist to be creative. Will you see the something divine in the way you interact in the world? I think we CAN have it all, both men and women. We can be free to be ourselves with our shared intimacies. It can be a healing thing. I know, these poems I will share with you tonight have been the essence of my healing process.
Twenty
Minutes