Big Poppa E (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} poetryslam) wrote,@ 2008-04-24 13:56:00 |
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contemplation on slam some more again
i'm in lansing, michigan, sitting in a perfectly awesome little internet cafe just a mile or so from the campus of michigan state university, a perfectly enormous campus with something like 40,000 undergrads. rumor has it that msu has forestry as a major, so they have their own forest. for real. they have a fully-functioning hotel and restaurant for those majoring in hospitality, a full-on dairy farm and ice creamery for those studying such things.
i wonder what they have for aspiring astronauts.
i'm in lansing, michigan, and i'm in a cafe preparing for a poetry slam tonight. i've prepared five poems for the four-round set that offer a variety of style, intensity, and subject matter to show range and prepare for any unforeseen circumstances, such as drawing the 1 or having some poet before you do a poem that sounds exactly like a poem you're about to do.
i've checked out the list of poets invited to this slam, and they are all awesome and amazing and powerful, and i've tried to pick poems and styles and energies that i suspect might serve as a counterpoint to the majority of what will be presented on stage, allowing for the strong possibility that i could be totally wrong. my goal is to not sound like everyone else, not cover the same subjects in the same way, to zig when others zag, to ebb while others flow, to to whilst others fro.
and i am fairly certain i am not considered a legit threat to anyone performing tonight, which is always to my advantage... even though... sheesh... it would be nice to warrant a pause... a quick contemplation other than, "what? big poppa e is here? why? i thought this was 2008, not 1999."
i don't slam anymore.
i quit.
i don't consider what i do at my local slam in austin as slamming even though i sign up and slam every week that i am available, but that's more about church, more about support, more about my one time a week that i force myself to become a social person before slinking back into my cave of back-offishness.
but actually slamming to try to win? like to slam for a place on a team? to try and win a slam? to enter a big slam with big name slammers and try to win the whole thing? nah... not really interested. i was good at it, made a mark (i'd like to think, hope, wish), then moved on to a place better suited for whatever it is that i do, which is to say i moved onto featured readings and roadtrips and tours where i could stretch out and improv between poems, offer more of myself on the stage than three-minute chunks of slam.
i still get the urge now and then, though.
to slam.
i kinda feel like if i keep writing work that can stand side-by-side with my older stuff, then i am doing a good job. if my set list on tour can mostly contain work from the last few years rather than relying on "the classics," then i am doing okay.
better to be pearl jam than the violent femmes, you know, forever damned to play every song from their first album, being 45-year-olds playing the songs they wrote at 20. better to be the rolling stones than night ranger, doomed to doing endless county fair tours with the same ten song set peppered with the same two or three semi-hits you scored on '80s mtv back in the day when mtv actually played videos, when the M in MTV stood for MUSIC rather than EMPTY.
if all i ever had to whip out at a slam was "wussy boy," a piece that was written nearly ten years ago, i wouldn't bother, but i pretty consistently come up with new shit that's just as good or better than the old shit, and that makes me feel pretty good about it all.
(although i haven't written anything new in over a year that i like, and when i look at the stuff i've written that i don't really like, there's only one piece there. that's it for a year... one measly half-assed attempt of a piece that didn't even try to accomplish what it set out to do. i've gotta start writing shit poetry again and failing... otherwise i'll never get to the new good stuff.)
anyway, every once in a while, i'll get the urge to slam, and it's always kinda odd, like i kinda get this feeling that i'm "coming out of retirement" or something, like some former major leaguer who tired of managing his string of bbq joints and used car dealerships and squeezes his middle-aged ass back into that dry-cleaned uniform kept pristine in the back of his closet and tries to get back into the game to show people he's still got it, can still throw those 100-mph fast balls and shoot for three points and head butt that ball like the old days, like the main character in some movie starring kevin costner or dennis quaid.
except, i've never really retired. i'm still writing new shit, still touring, still performing, and still getting all the same old positive responses i've always gotten, just enough to keep me thinking i might be pretty good at this and should keep going. i've just moved on from slam, and every now and then i kinda wanna show some motherfuckers what's what, the old man's still got it, that big poppa e got on that fucking cable teevee show for a reason, bitches, not just because they were short a coupla funny white dudes.
this reminds me of a slam i did while on tour in the bay area of california. i did a gig in oakland called "tourettes without regrets" and slammed with a host of really good slammers, and i took it all the way to a tie in the end, then took out my competition by a few tenths of a point to win it.
it was awesome, especially when considering the competition, and the host of the event, a really good slammer who had come up in the last few years, came up to me and said, "wow, big poppa e, i didn't know you could still do that. i mean, i knew you toured and had made a name for yourself back in the day, but i just didn't think of you as a contemporary slammer."
and that made me feel... complicated. i mean, i wanted to say, "damn straight, boy. i still got it! i can still win a slam when i put my mind to it. i'm not a footnote yet, you punk! i'm not a fucking asterisk!"
but then another part of me was like... a little deflated that he had been surprised, that his expectations had been low, that the assumption was that i could no longer compete with the current slew of slammers who had arrived in the last three or four years, that it was quaint to see bpe scrape the yellow tennis balls of his walker across the stage to the mic to wheeze a poem like old times. awww... look! awww... isn't that sweet, he's slamming!
and i sometimes want to point out that i never stopped slamming, i just stopped caring about it so much, about how it defined me. i just chose to focus on other things. i never really enjoyed slamming at the national poetry slam as part of a team, to be honest, so i now focus on hosting bouts, and i have WAY more fun doing that, but it doesn't mean i can't make a team, as if i host now because i can no longer make a team, as if those who can slam and those who can't host, no, i just have so much more fun hosting than i ever did slamming, so i figure i have more to give back to the community going that route, you know?
but i can still rock it, and every now and then i get the urge to prove myself all over again, and i am not necessarily proud of that, but there it is. sometimes i hit up slam just to show i still got it.
and i surprise some people, and that makes me feel... complicated. i mean, how many 40-year-old slammers do you know that are still in it? maybe there's more than i know or want to admit to. but the people i think of around that age -- danny solis, wammo, patricia smith -- they just don't slam competitively anymore, and i think that's a shame... we need mentors and teachers and oh my god wouldn't it be cool to see a slam bout with patricia smith in it?
there was a big money slam just north of houston a few years back called the bluebonnet slam, and it drew some big names, including sonya renee and joaquin zihuatanejo from dallas, and when i arrived and saw the line-up... oy... i just kinda put the idea of winning behind me and focused on delivering good work to the best of my ability and being satisfied with it.
and you know what? i got the highest score in all three rounds and won.
that felt really good, to dive back in and prove myself all over again, especially against some of the best. i was recently in a gig called "the ill list" in modesto, california, and the poets on the stage were fucking awesome... imagine performing with this set of folks: sonya renee, alvin lau, mighty mike mcgee, anis mojgani, ed mabry, john "survivor" blake... i mean, these were some of the very best in the scene, and who was i?
i mean, i felt like an outsider, like a has-been, because i've never sort of made my name as a slammer, you know? i had never been on the finals stage of an indie bout at nationals or at iwps, so who was i? i was on a winning team back in '99, but what have i done to distinguish myself in slam since then?
and i really didn't care, so i didn't prepare, didn't strategize the best way to compete or even present my work on stage, and yet out of the first round, i got the highest score by far, outscoring the second place poet by nearly two full points.
it caught me by surprise, and i am very sure it caught everyone else on stage by surprise, too, to suddenly have to factor me into their plans when they had no doubt instantly dismissed me as irrelevant, but i still SO didn't care that instead of trying to build on that energy of the first round, i instead chose to read a poem i had not yet memorized out of my notebook, and my scores weren't enough to carry me.
and i was really disappointed. had i only prepared as if i had given a shit, i might have taken the whole damn thing, but i was unprepared, and that was that. it was probably easy to see the high score i had garnered in the first round as a fluke, and my reputation as a slammer no doubt remained low as ever. has-been. never-was. retired.
and ALL of this, of course, is playing in my head, you know, it's being manufactured by me, so i have no one else to blame for it but myself, you know, this inner dialogue and need to "prove" myself.
still.
there it is.
sometimes i succumb to it, and then i kinda half-ass do it because i really don't care, or maybe don't wanna care. maybe not caring or even pretending not to care protects me from hurting when i fail, that way i don't put too much of myself on the line... but maybe it's that holding back that has kept me from accomplishing more, not just in slam but in everything.
well...
tonight?
i'ma bring it.
i am not holding back. i am bringing everything i can, everything i've got, and i'm going in to perform my ass off and win. and if i don't win, i'll know it was because i wasn't good or messed or was not prepared, i'll know i simply got bested, and there's no shame in that.
tonight, i'm going in to win, and motherfuckers better move they ass outta the way of my walker as i scrape my way up to that stage and rip it like it was brand new.
i'm in lansing, michigan, sitting in a perfectly awesome little internet cafe just a mile or so from the campus of michigan state university, a perfectly enormous campus with something like 40,000 undergrads. rumor has it that msu has forestry as a major, so they have their own forest. for real. they have a fully-functioning hotel and restaurant for those majoring in hospitality, a full-on dairy farm and ice creamery for those studying such things.
i wonder what they have for aspiring astronauts.
i'm in lansing, michigan, and i'm in a cafe preparing for a poetry slam tonight. i've prepared five poems for the four-round set that offer a variety of style, intensity, and subject matter to show range and prepare for any unforeseen circumstances, such as drawing the 1 or having some poet before you do a poem that sounds exactly like a poem you're about to do.
i've checked out the list of poets invited to this slam, and they are all awesome and amazing and powerful, and i've tried to pick poems and styles and energies that i suspect might serve as a counterpoint to the majority of what will be presented on stage, allowing for the strong possibility that i could be totally wrong. my goal is to not sound like everyone else, not cover the same subjects in the same way, to zig when others zag, to ebb while others flow, to to whilst others fro.
and i am fairly certain i am not considered a legit threat to anyone performing tonight, which is always to my advantage... even though... sheesh... it would be nice to warrant a pause... a quick contemplation other than, "what? big poppa e is here? why? i thought this was 2008, not 1999."
i don't slam anymore.
i quit.
i don't consider what i do at my local slam in austin as slamming even though i sign up and slam every week that i am available, but that's more about church, more about support, more about my one time a week that i force myself to become a social person before slinking back into my cave of back-offishness.
but actually slamming to try to win? like to slam for a place on a team? to try and win a slam? to enter a big slam with big name slammers and try to win the whole thing? nah... not really interested. i was good at it, made a mark (i'd like to think, hope, wish), then moved on to a place better suited for whatever it is that i do, which is to say i moved onto featured readings and roadtrips and tours where i could stretch out and improv between poems, offer more of myself on the stage than three-minute chunks of slam.
i still get the urge now and then, though.
to slam.
i kinda feel like if i keep writing work that can stand side-by-side with my older stuff, then i am doing a good job. if my set list on tour can mostly contain work from the last few years rather than relying on "the classics," then i am doing okay.
better to be pearl jam than the violent femmes, you know, forever damned to play every song from their first album, being 45-year-olds playing the songs they wrote at 20. better to be the rolling stones than night ranger, doomed to doing endless county fair tours with the same ten song set peppered with the same two or three semi-hits you scored on '80s mtv back in the day when mtv actually played videos, when the M in MTV stood for MUSIC rather than EMPTY.
if all i ever had to whip out at a slam was "wussy boy," a piece that was written nearly ten years ago, i wouldn't bother, but i pretty consistently come up with new shit that's just as good or better than the old shit, and that makes me feel pretty good about it all.
(although i haven't written anything new in over a year that i like, and when i look at the stuff i've written that i don't really like, there's only one piece there. that's it for a year... one measly half-assed attempt of a piece that didn't even try to accomplish what it set out to do. i've gotta start writing shit poetry again and failing... otherwise i'll never get to the new good stuff.)
anyway, every once in a while, i'll get the urge to slam, and it's always kinda odd, like i kinda get this feeling that i'm "coming out of retirement" or something, like some former major leaguer who tired of managing his string of bbq joints and used car dealerships and squeezes his middle-aged ass back into that dry-cleaned uniform kept pristine in the back of his closet and tries to get back into the game to show people he's still got it, can still throw those 100-mph fast balls and shoot for three points and head butt that ball like the old days, like the main character in some movie starring kevin costner or dennis quaid.
except, i've never really retired. i'm still writing new shit, still touring, still performing, and still getting all the same old positive responses i've always gotten, just enough to keep me thinking i might be pretty good at this and should keep going. i've just moved on from slam, and every now and then i kinda wanna show some motherfuckers what's what, the old man's still got it, that big poppa e got on that fucking cable teevee show for a reason, bitches, not just because they were short a coupla funny white dudes.
this reminds me of a slam i did while on tour in the bay area of california. i did a gig in oakland called "tourettes without regrets" and slammed with a host of really good slammers, and i took it all the way to a tie in the end, then took out my competition by a few tenths of a point to win it.
it was awesome, especially when considering the competition, and the host of the event, a really good slammer who had come up in the last few years, came up to me and said, "wow, big poppa e, i didn't know you could still do that. i mean, i knew you toured and had made a name for yourself back in the day, but i just didn't think of you as a contemporary slammer."
and that made me feel... complicated. i mean, i wanted to say, "damn straight, boy. i still got it! i can still win a slam when i put my mind to it. i'm not a footnote yet, you punk! i'm not a fucking asterisk!"
but then another part of me was like... a little deflated that he had been surprised, that his expectations had been low, that the assumption was that i could no longer compete with the current slew of slammers who had arrived in the last three or four years, that it was quaint to see bpe scrape the yellow tennis balls of his walker across the stage to the mic to wheeze a poem like old times. awww... look! awww... isn't that sweet, he's slamming!
and i sometimes want to point out that i never stopped slamming, i just stopped caring about it so much, about how it defined me. i just chose to focus on other things. i never really enjoyed slamming at the national poetry slam as part of a team, to be honest, so i now focus on hosting bouts, and i have WAY more fun doing that, but it doesn't mean i can't make a team, as if i host now because i can no longer make a team, as if those who can slam and those who can't host, no, i just have so much more fun hosting than i ever did slamming, so i figure i have more to give back to the community going that route, you know?
but i can still rock it, and every now and then i get the urge to prove myself all over again, and i am not necessarily proud of that, but there it is. sometimes i hit up slam just to show i still got it.
and i surprise some people, and that makes me feel... complicated. i mean, how many 40-year-old slammers do you know that are still in it? maybe there's more than i know or want to admit to. but the people i think of around that age -- danny solis, wammo, patricia smith -- they just don't slam competitively anymore, and i think that's a shame... we need mentors and teachers and oh my god wouldn't it be cool to see a slam bout with patricia smith in it?
there was a big money slam just north of houston a few years back called the bluebonnet slam, and it drew some big names, including sonya renee and joaquin zihuatanejo from dallas, and when i arrived and saw the line-up... oy... i just kinda put the idea of winning behind me and focused on delivering good work to the best of my ability and being satisfied with it.
and you know what? i got the highest score in all three rounds and won.
that felt really good, to dive back in and prove myself all over again, especially against some of the best. i was recently in a gig called "the ill list" in modesto, california, and the poets on the stage were fucking awesome... imagine performing with this set of folks: sonya renee, alvin lau, mighty mike mcgee, anis mojgani, ed mabry, john "survivor" blake... i mean, these were some of the very best in the scene, and who was i?
i mean, i felt like an outsider, like a has-been, because i've never sort of made my name as a slammer, you know? i had never been on the finals stage of an indie bout at nationals or at iwps, so who was i? i was on a winning team back in '99, but what have i done to distinguish myself in slam since then?
and i really didn't care, so i didn't prepare, didn't strategize the best way to compete or even present my work on stage, and yet out of the first round, i got the highest score by far, outscoring the second place poet by nearly two full points.
it caught me by surprise, and i am very sure it caught everyone else on stage by surprise, too, to suddenly have to factor me into their plans when they had no doubt instantly dismissed me as irrelevant, but i still SO didn't care that instead of trying to build on that energy of the first round, i instead chose to read a poem i had not yet memorized out of my notebook, and my scores weren't enough to carry me.
and i was really disappointed. had i only prepared as if i had given a shit, i might have taken the whole damn thing, but i was unprepared, and that was that. it was probably easy to see the high score i had garnered in the first round as a fluke, and my reputation as a slammer no doubt remained low as ever. has-been. never-was. retired.
and ALL of this, of course, is playing in my head, you know, it's being manufactured by me, so i have no one else to blame for it but myself, you know, this inner dialogue and need to "prove" myself.
still.
there it is.
sometimes i succumb to it, and then i kinda half-ass do it because i really don't care, or maybe don't wanna care. maybe not caring or even pretending not to care protects me from hurting when i fail, that way i don't put too much of myself on the line... but maybe it's that holding back that has kept me from accomplishing more, not just in slam but in everything.
well...
tonight?
i'ma bring it.
i am not holding back. i am bringing everything i can, everything i've got, and i'm going in to perform my ass off and win. and if i don't win, i'll know it was because i wasn't good or messed or was not prepared, i'll know i simply got bested, and there's no shame in that.
tonight, i'm going in to win, and motherfuckers better move they ass outta the way of my walker as i scrape my way up to that stage and rip it like it was brand new.
