Clicked Off

Photo by Wasabi Lion via Flickr"I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that’s what I want! I know I can write, but it remains to be seen whether I really have talent.

And if I don’t have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death!

And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me! When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived!

But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?"

~Anne Frank

I didn't think they'd draw my name, but there I was, in a dimly lit lounge crowded with unfamiliar faces and, maybe worse yet, encircled by a small gathering of family, and I heard it. To the stage of the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge in Chicago, I was summoned. While I'd practiced every day for a week, rehearsed both silently and aloud everywhere from the shower to the stillness of my bed next to my sleeping spouse, I was not prepared. Not even remotely. But I wasn't nervous. I was scared half to death. 

It was all Sara Holbrook's fault. Sara is a poet and author who presented a workshop at a writer's conference I'd attended, and she got me all worked up. She talked about this weird thing called the Poetry Slam, where folks mine deeply for their most vulnerable feelings, craft them carefully, step in front of a microphone, and trust a roomful of strangers who aren't on stage to decide if your work has any more worth than the cocktail napkins stuck to the bottom of their newly re-corked Birkenstocks. 

I found myself in Chicago, the birthplace of the Poetry Slam, shortly after Holbrook had infected me with the idea of performance poetry. Meeting the Slam on its home turf, the Green Mill Lounge, was the only thing I really wanted to accomplish during my visit, but I was highly intimidated. I was a privileged, white, chubby mom from northeast Ohio, not an edgy poet from the inner-city. I had no right to performance poetry, no biting message to deliver. I wanted so badly to participate, but I was afraid I'd be discovered for the fraud that I was.

I showed up at the Green Mill with intimidating company; both of my conservative in-laws, my young musician husband, and my uber-talented, uber-hip brother-in-law who, I was pretty sure, thought this all ridiculous. If I was going to make a fool of myself, I figured, I might as well do it big. 

There are only so many slots in a poetry slam, and, one by one, they were filled by angry middle-aged men who shouted their political opinions, sexy young women who batted their eyelashes and exposed their cleavage, hatted urban cowboys jacketed in black. If the audience liked them, they'd continue. If not, fingers would begin to snap. If the poet couldn't recover, the snapping would get louder and louder until the humiliated performer snuck sheepishly into the shadows.

I was pretty shocked when my name was called. I'd dared to hope, but it would have been alright to slink away unexposed. I decided on one of the three pieces I'd prepared, partly out of inspiration and partly in hope that I'd survive the first round because, man, how awful it would be to motor on to round two and sputter to a stuttering stop with an embarrassingly empty poetry tank. 

I inched my way from the safety of the back to the scary, bright center stage. I couldn't see a single face, had no idea who I was speaking to, or even who I was. I wanted to be a sassy black woman with dreds and a directive. I wanted to be a tall, lanky man with black-rimmed glasses and a manifesto. I wanted to be a pretty blond feminist overflowing with angst about the injustice of looksism. But as I prepared to present the thing I'd deeply mined, carefully crafted, pulled out into the bright spotlight to birth to these strangers, I decided that it was adequate to just be me. I had a voice. I had things I wanted to say. I had a newborn poem, ugly, fragile and vulnerable, its dried brown stump of umbilical cord still attached and slightly infected, that needed to be welcomed into the world. That, alone, would count for something. That, alone, would be enough.

Boy, was I wrong. 

The clicking began almost immediately, but I soldiered on. I was, after all, a brand new face, and I needed to prove myself. If I could just get them to hang on through the first stanza, they'd catch the rhythm. The clicking got louder. Good God, they're really going to do this. Louder still. To go any further would only heighten the humilation for me, for my family. I stopped talking. I gave up. I slunk away. I let them defeat me, and I never wrote poetry again.

The end. 

Now, wouldn't that suck?

To be honest, I don't remember much of what happened after I was clicked off. I know we left the Green Mill. I know my loved ones were kind and gracious. I know I didn't write poetry for quite a while after that. And I also know that, for a time, I let that experience define me. But, eventually, I got over it.

Mostly. Sorta. 

Here's the thing: if you're letting strangers, either real or perceived, determine whether your talent has value, it's time to tell 'em to hit the road. You have talent. You have value. The words you want to write should be written. The songs you want to sing should be sung. The art you want to create should be created. Why? Because it means something important to someone, even if that someone is, for now, just you. Even if it only exists, in this moment, to help you shake off all of your cares, disperse your sorrow, and revive your spirits. Your talent is a gift. A FREE gift. No overhead. You can take it and, at no cost to you, create joy from it. For yourself. For others. How cool is that?

By your obedience to that calling, you have no idea what legacy you'll leave behind. If your desire is to be something more, you have to start somewhere. You have to cultivate that gift and exercise it. No one's going to beg you to do it. Not at first, anyway. In fact, they might even click you off the stage. And you might even let them.

But, while they can put a bit of a moratorium on it, they can't steal your joy. And when you've recovered, when you've licked your wounds clean, you need to get back in there and keep at it. You never know who your words will reach, what God has in store for you, for your words, for those who read them. 

Now's the time. What are you waiting for?