these kids today, they're just slaves to fashion

last night for the first time in my life, i felt old. the evening started out plenty odd with musky overtones of intensly bizarre. i can't explain why. maybe it is because it was raining so hard and i was with a friend i haven't seen in a while. maybe it was because we were going to an all ages show that started at 6:30 as opposed to 10:30 or 11:00 that most shows begin at. maybe ti was because we were driving there (running late i might add) and ti was still plenty light out or maybe it was because we broke a long standing tradition of getting drunk at shows.

a friend of mine met us there and that prevented us from having to wait in line. when we walked in we were greeted with the strangest sense of things i have ever experienced at a show. maybe it's common among all ages shows, which i normally cross three states to avoid. the room was filled with 15 year olds, sixteen year olds. enough that even the 18 years old's must have felt out of place. i haven't been 18 for quite some time, but i am by no means old, so perhaps, if am lucky, you can imagine the strangeness of feeling like you stumbled into a librarian's school reading of "the puppy who lost his way" or some similarly silly children's book. not that i have anything against 16 year olds, who seem by and large seem just fine to me (though i must admit i have not spent any time with them in years), it's more that they bring a certain elemnet of TRL to the crowd feel. at least, that's what i assumed for the first few minutes. then it occured to me that maybe it is not them who are out of place. maybe it was me. maybe i am listening to the music that relates to pimply teens rather than me. maybe i am, in fact, getting old. i wasn't the only one feeling it. my friend oz was only a little twitchy and uncomfortible, but he felt it too. i asked him if he thought we were getting old. he said that was impossible. the truth is that the music playing was way over the heads of your average 16 year old (though i like to imagine that, at 16, i would have gotten it).

despite the young ages of everyone, the club has an upstairs lounge that is regulated and restircted to those 21 and over. it was all but abandoned other than your frequent teen with his hand covering his wrist thinking honestly that he could pass for 21 when it's obvious he's never had to shave. his balls have yet to drop. he must have snuck up when the guy at the stairs was off taking a leak or something.

the upswing of all of this is of course that there was plaenty of comfortible places to sit in the upstairs lounge while the first two musicians played, the second of which i am an old fan but who has drastically redone their sound since i last heard them. that was only a little offputting as the musicianship was great, i am just not as much for out and out howling and unintelligible lyrics as i used to be, and more importantly, it is not what i expected from the show. here re-enters my question about whether or not i am getting old. i lean over and ask oz again, if we are getting old. he suggested that maybe the adults didn't come until later. that maybe they have jobs and so accordingly have to come late. i am breifly hopeful.

when the second band ends one of my companions lets out a sigh of "thank god!" and we relax into two or three beers before the next act, the one i really wanted to see, a reading by the great american poet, saul williams, who comes out onto the stage kind of shy and nervous looking, but when he begind speaking his face is traansformed, he becomes a creature of such passion and longing as to only rewrite you into something more, something better. when he rants on about using words to change the way we think, you can't help but want o be a better person.

around this time one of my companions gets kicked out, for reasons that will go unnamed but have nothing do with them acting a fool and more to do with the club being a silly sort of place with dumb rules and bad management. either way, she calls me from outside and tells me she's going down to to velvet hookah to a poetry reading and for us to call her when we the show is over. i hesitate briefly over whether or not staying is being an asshole and then decide that if i stay thorugh saul and then see what's happening it will be okay. i have been waiting nearly a year to see saul again.

i wish terribly that i could explain to anyone who has not seen saul read the power he commands. i wish that i could push into you, by sheer force of osmosis the way his words, which seem so scattered and strange on a page take life when he reads them. how i understand why he was allen ginsberg's favorite poet at death, how allen ginsberg kissed him just days bvefore his death asking him to carry on the torch of transformation through words. how it makes sense when you see him read. or rather recite. only a few does he actually read, the rest he has memorized which is nice because it leave shim plenty of room for his plailing arms wild eyed frenzy of a delivery. oz and i decided after the first piece (a dazzling piece about how everyone has within them the capacity to be a great mind and influence others) to change postions to the balcony that hangs almost directly over the stage. there we can hear better, and see his facial contortions and expressions with greater ease. between poems he speaks a bit about politics, a bit about organized religion, a bit about racism and various other toppics that are important to him. his in-betweens are more like sermons but they still have the feel of poetry, rapid fire and beautiful. awe-inspiring. he is irreverant and kind at the same time, making clear on mulitple occasions that he is angry with no one person or group of people, but rather with the ideas that are becoming more and more rampant in society. he talks about how texas has the highest rate of sexual assault of any state as well as the the highest number of death row inmates. something else happens while he is speaking, i begint o notice how many people of drinking age have arrived and begin to loosen up from that perspective so that i may enjoy the 45 minute session of full-body chills that is always comes with a saul reading. he speaks intelligently and humorously about many subject with the wit and cunning of sarah vowell or nick hornby, but serious in a way that can only be described as mind and life-altering. there is nothing else on earth like it and i pity anyone who passes on an opportunity to listen to him read. he breaks once to read a particular peice that someone in the audience requests. an old poem that he can obviously abrely remember, but he does his best, skipping about in it and joking about his lack of memory while still mangaing to move you. he finishes with his most well known peice to which he added several new stanzas relevant to today's life and time. everyone in the entire place is speechless, except of course for the poeple who are angerd by his accusation that black people are incarated for crimes that routinely get probation for white offenders (which he has facts and statistics to back up) and his off handed commmand that all confederate flags are inhumane. a little booing in ensues but the prevailing emotion seems to be genuinely wanting to listen and learn, even if you don't agree with everything he says (and surely he said something during the night that each person takes personally and disagrees with, but such is the nature of the saul williams beast). suddenly i do not feel old, i do not feel young, i feel like a person, like any other person who is trying the best they can to get by in this war-waging world.

at some point i decide we will skip the last act on account of my friend being expelled, which is regrettable, but i have been blessed to see them several times before, so i don't mind too much. i got what i came for. a rejuvenating of the human spirit. my human spirit. without it, why bother? before leaving the stage, while everyone seems to be filing into a line formation to purchase one of his books, he makes a humorous little stage remark about how most of the people there don't care about poetry and maybe still don't but thanks us for taking the time to listen to his words and ideas and for that he is grateful. so are we, saul. so are we.

2004-06-10 | 1:16 p.m.
0 comments so far

previousnext

background