Before we went to lunch on Saturday we went to a Magic Show that was great too (I'll find links later). Near the end this guy was introduced as a Slam Poet. (He has the link to my blog so let's hope he stays with me on this one). My daughter and I exchanged looks like "Ummm random white rapper without a beat box in the middle of the magic show.. Yeah, okay.." But I listened to his words and would have said he was reading my every thought except when HE said it, it didn't sound insane. I looked at my daughter and asked if she minded if we went to his workshop. This experience wasn't about me and I gave her advice on classes for things she is currently doing in improv and drama but there was no question in her mind that she was going to indulge me, because I was so moved. We went to lunch and talked to her drama teacher who had just been to the workshop and said it was amazing. THAT was an understatement...
Sean Critchfield:
By the time we got across the campus we were a tiny bit late but he welcomed us in anyway. Not that every moment of this workshop isn't worth relating I'm going to hit highlights for me. We began with something much like a pranayama exercise. We began bonding with the large number of people in this classroom with nothing more than Sean's urging and trust exercises. A couple of teens stood up and gave monologues. Both were amazing but he taught them how to tweak them with even better results. The last girl rang every amount of emotion out of hers by personalizing it, again with Sean's help. But we were with her. I was the first person she looked at and she saw support from me, some people were sobbing and they'd never met her in their lives. We had another mad dash afterwards but I managed to get his email address and a request for that first poem but he's proven to have a treasure trove of work.
Having left with the weight of the outside family behind, this felt like a life boat to me. I keep thinking that I need to fix this. I need to be the bigger person, but Sean spoke of our flaws and how he wasn't asking for us to leave them behind because they are a part of who we are. They are our story. I don't need acceptance. I don't need sympathy. Understanding would have been nice but I'm not going to get that either and that is what defines them as well. I can live with some angry moments but I can't beg for acceptance. Especially when I already have it in my own little world. I came home to my family a new person determined that what I do here may be worth something to someone, if only it's for me. I'll keep blogging. Sean told me to :)
Here is the poem that changed my world:
I am words. I am a gift. I am the voice of the artisans of this age. I am slam. I am beat. I am rhyme and meter, sometimes sloppy, sometimes neat. I am in San Diego trying to learn to teach Yoga and struggling to cope with the rage. I am the writing on the wall as well as on the page. I am torn into trying to figure out what to do with what I am learning and what I know. I am an ex-pastor named Joe, who wants to stand up and be seen. Who loves the machine, and the lights, and the stage. But loves the truth more than his own video age. I am an edge-walker. One who sees the buildings as just another wilderness. One who sees the trees as part of a concrete forest. As the cities dumbs down, his awareness is heightening. A modern day primitive, as rare as autumn lightning. Or maybe I’m an English American but mostly Mexican sociologist who is also a Kung-fu master. Like some kind of twisted Shao-lin burrito in a fortune cookie made of plaster, served up in a vegan restaurant smack dab in the middle of the ghetto. With a fortune in the cookie made up of a cynicism sometimes so brilliant, it blows my mind. Or maybe I’m a sniper one who still doesn’t know what he’s trying to find in making that shot.
What did you feel?
The recoil of my rifle.
What did you feel?
The light they were trying to stifle.
What do you feel?
Hope. Love. Peace. Beyond anything you can dream. Picking his shots on the battlefield, only now it’s with his soccer team. Only “dead” he had to learn was the lyrics to the dead head songs he learned on tour. As he finds that it’s up to his head if his heart is pure. Or maybe, maybe I’m fighting the good fight and feeling like I fail most of the time. As I watch the world around me that covers up the crime and I won’t take it. Maybe I’ll carry the child in my womb to the prisons I teach in and write the words on the walls of the tomb they keep free speech in. And I will fight for the strong women who haven’t found their strength yet until they do. Because it is far too long that the world goes barefoot when I can give them shoes. Or maybe I’ll see the day coming when one to many of my friends are dead or in jail and I realize it’s time to say what the hell and cut my losses. Realize that maybe I wasn’t supposed to be all that I could be in the mind numbing prison of the U.S. Army, but maybe I’m a little more blue than I deserve so I find a reason to protect and serve. And maybe I’m a brother, taking one more shot to the chin of that white boy who thinks he can spit, cause his pad and pen and race don’t fit and his words won’t ever amount to shit. What if I’m a poet laureate with just enough slam to make her tough, who fights disease, and family, and ghosts, like she just can’t get enough. And maybe she doesn’t pray to above, but her prayers got answered when she fell in love. And maybe she’s a single letter of the alphabet at the top of a letter that just runs on and on but hey, Mmmm. It sure is good. Or maybe you had to push the pause button on the tape recorder of the music of your life to learn the words to the song of your daughter and wife, learning once and for all that, that is true music. And maybe you’re a bum just looking for a meal. Or maybe you’re a dealer, trying to make that deal. Or maybe you’ll shackle me happily, grinning in your power. But you can’t cage my tongue and you can’t stop the hour. And we all got time. We’ve all been around the block. And maybe we’ll laugh it, or cry it, or bleed it. But get to it. Now. Write your story down. The rest of us need it.
In the email he said that my email came at a crucial time for him. If my little speck of near nothingness means something to this Wordmaster, how can I not keep writing what is in my head and my heart? He moves people in incredible ways. I watched it happen. Sean Critchfield changed more lives than just mine that day. I hope he can keep doing it.
He's the secret to world peace.
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