Break on Through (to the other side)

On Writing and Perception in the era of Collective Hallucinations

Photo by runnyrem on Unsplash

Yes, I’m making a reference to the Doors of Perception, as Jim Morrison of the Doors was slyly making in the song title in the subject line above.

This past Thursday, I attended a reception and reading at UNLV. It was to celebrate the poetry of Donald Revell, a professor and mentor of mine, who is retiring this spring. The reception was far too long (a two hour reception…can you imagine?) but the reading was perfect.

I don’t spend enough time around poetry anymore. Most of my days are filled with marketing and communications speak, social media and event planning. It’s fine. What I do most of my day pays the bills and I find it challenging and creative enough that it doesn’t bore me. But it’s the opposite of poetry in that it doesn’t strive towards any eternal truth.

The poetry Donald Revell has written has always been grounded in truth. Every poem he read at his goodbye celebration struck hard and not once was I bored. During the reception, I mentioned to another poet who was there that I often find the poetry being written and published right now to be trite and hollow. I was grasping at a way to describe it when another poet standing next to me said, it’s the poetry of NOW and then he began to equate it to those cheesy compilation CDs that would pull all the greatest hits under the brand of “NOW that’s what I call MUSIC”. “Now that’s what I call Poetry”…haha. And I had to agree with him that it was exactly like that. The poetry of NOW is pop, even if it seems like it’s taking on societal ills, it’s still pop. Because it’s pop, it lacks what is necessary to sustain a poem through the ages: universal truth.

Somewhere, deep down, we all know this. I’m up for a debate though.

I’ve been thinking about what it means to write (and live) honestly in an era full of absolute bullshit. For all the “bring your authentic self to work” mantras, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion seminars on bias, etc. which are meant to make people more thoughtful and open to difference, I find that people are actually getting much more conformist, crueler and far less authentic than they were even a decade ago.

There is a lack of trust that is needed to be among others, a lack of necessary love needed to co-exist in spaces together, even if we do not know one another very well.

In the vacuum of this lack authoritarianism thrives.

What’s a poet (or a playwright or essayist) to do? How does one keep oneself fiercely honest when we are inundated by propaganda and lies, when we have to function under authoritarian bullies, when the never ending barrage of nonsense and hallucinations infiltrates everything, blurring the real and the unreal?

Many in this era are rewarded for upholding the propaganda by repeating what we all suspect is not true. And it may benefit their careers at this time. But it’s a trap. I don’t wish to write for the NOW but I also struggle with the question of perception, how to break free of the imposed false narrative. How not to self-censor? How to avoid being ostracized in an era when the truth is shunned. How to break on through to the other side?

At the end of the reading, one of Don Revell’s friends exclaimed that he was a “forever poet” and I could tell that it really made him happy to hear this. To be a forever poet means that your writing, the gift you’ve given to the world, will be in existence long after you’ve passed from this plane to the next one.

After re-experiencing Don’s poetry again, I agree with his friend. The reason he is a forever poet is because he doesn’t write for the now. He writes in dialogue with other poets and artists, some long dead, about questions and ideas and feelings that we all have.

How to do this in my own writing? Of course, I’ve done this already but I also feel like I’m at a place where I want and need to have a wicked amount of growth, to break on through the language traps, the collective hallucinations we are all inundated with through all the 21st century noise, to write something that rings true and lasts far beyond my lifetime.

It is a worthwhile struggle we should all be working towards.

Poetry

Speaking of Donald Revell, here are a few of the poems he read:

Vietnam Epic Treatment

My Trip

Death

Writing Workshop

If you are looking to get jump started on a writing project - especially if you’re looking to get started on a play, or to use the structure of a play as a jumping off point or outline for a novel or something else, consider investing time and money in yourself and attend Kate Tarker’s Draft Zero workshop. She has another one coming up in May and it offers six weeks of excellent support and community. It’s mostly for playwrights but she’s had other writers in it as well. I really enjoyed my time during those six weeks and I finished with close to forty pages of dialogue completed.

Visual Art

Speaking of breaking on through to the other side, check out the work of Ken Miyazaki. He is an artist and former colleague of mine who I met when I lived on Ishigaki Island in Japan. I featured his work on the cover of Interim several years ago. He’s shown work at galleries in Tokyo but the world deserves to see more of his art. Take a look at the work he is creating and posting on his Instagram.

Fashion

Hilary Hattenbach takes a look at “quiet luxury” and offers some great tips on where to find second hand fashion that is fun, colorful, and the opposite of the grey and beige blah that our fashion industry thinks we should all start wearing.

QUIET LUXURY, SCHMIET LUXURY

Cultural Analysis

Freddie deBoer parodies the crime and criminal justice reform debate. I laughed because, after several tours of academia, I know exactly where this is coming from:

A Conversation About Crime

Got any recommendations you’d like to share? Drop them in the comments.

Have a wonderful week ahead and see you next week.