The Neighbours

It’s been funny to watch the levels of procrastination I have gone to as I’ve been editing my poems to start publishing them through this newsletter. The perfectionist has come out in new, snaring ways from corners I didn’t even notice before…

Oh you’re there too?!

I’ve been obsessing over the formatting, the font, the tonality of the reading, the pace, the grammar, the spacing, you name it…. any way I can buy more time obsessing, I have taken it. All, of course, to slow me down from actually posting. Isn’t the brain curious in the ways it tries to protect us from being seen?
Knowing what power that has to make us vulnerable.

The interesting thing about this particular mechanism of avoidance - disguised by words like ‘discipline’ or ‘devotion to my editing process’ - is that the only way we’re really going to find our voice, our style, our tone, our signature is by starting to do it! Imperfectly. Vulnerably.

We can’t discover our tone as a singer if we never sing! I guess it’s the same with writing and the process of sharing it. It is through observation that we gain greater insight. Through the witnessing of ourselves, we gauge a different sense of ourselves, and we recalibrate accordingly.
Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

It’s true that we gain a lot of new and unwanted insecurities through being witnessed or having to witness ourselves through others. For example, sometimes I get the sense that I’ve been perceived as a scattered musician in my style. From a kind standpoint, one might call this experimental! eclectic! diverse! But on my harder days, I’ll internalize this as incohesive! all-over-the-place! confused!

And what do we do when we sense people have an idea of us that we don’t want? We over compensate to demonstrate the opposite (cue perfectionism). We try to actively work against that perception, although we have no hard evidence that the original observation is in fact true, perhaps we just read a review by someone having a bad day. Music reviews are interesting like that because they say a little about the album, and a lot about the reviewer. Their opinion is a result of what was uniquely stimulated in them by listening. Because, music is a mirror to our inner worlds! Much like silence. Silence appears to mirror us through the removal of stimulation. Music does it through stimulation.

Music is an onslaught of stimulations, manipulations and literal vibrations shot to the senses, immediately creating a response. The violin line evokes a memory, the time signature in the drums stirs a disruption and confusion, the ethereal synth tickles an energy of Eros from deep in the gut. Music chases our imaginations and at times violently shakes us with oratory information that will help us to either engage with our feelings or drown out the ones we don’t want. It’s a physical, spiritual and emotional experience. To me, the power of a song is more powerful than a presidential speech with its ability to congregate people toward a common goal, a common dream, and a collective vibration, subtle as it may be…. we absorb bass and get titillated by trebles in our nasal cavities or wherever those harsher frequencies like to collect. Naughty top-end.  

I cant help but think of the Songlines here. The Aboriginals of Australia, when journeying to new terrains, would carry a song with them, also known as Dreaming Tracks. The songlines marked paths across the land (or sometimes the sky) carrying intricate geographical, mythological and cultural information to the people they encountered along their way. Instead of bringing their rucksack, spears, handwritten maps or medicines, they brought their song. It was their most sacred asset! For within it there was everything they needed. The melody was a vehicle to carry navigational pathways, ancient traditions, landmarks, water sources, secrets of the land. With the songline they could likely foster a tenderness and empathy. Instead of a rigid, abrupt or hesitant cadence as one might expect when speaking with a stranger from a new tribe, they used sung, widening sounds suggesting an invitation with their vibrational quality. What an incredible thing to evoke in a potential enemy, standing in the face of threat or annihilation.

Angelas Songlines by Tarnia Raynal

There is inherent vulnerability to singing and the sharing of songs. Our throat is gesturing with long openings, not seized up and stiff. Our breath is not being held. We must flow to sing, we must open our mouths without closing for extended periods of time, a very submissive posture, and one that makes us slower to action or seizing power over others. The more open you are, the greater chance of invasion or attack from bacteria. The greater risk of contamination from the outside world.

And yet we must do this when we sound. We must open to make ourselves understood. We open to connect. Think of how vulnerable (and euphoric) it is when we all cry to a song together in a public setting or sing an anthem at a sports match. I’ve always sensed the seriousness of singing in this way. To make sound in public spaces, drawing attention from people, even moving people to action through a song… well, that feels like a superpower. I mean, to send shivers up a persons arm with sound? I cant think of anything more beautiful and powerful than that.

I come to know my voice through sounding.

I come to see my image through looking.

I come to understand my words through writing them.

I come to feel my emotions through feeling.

It seems quite obvious doesn’t it? But I have to confess I find so many ways to procrastinate from doing the above.

Sometimes I don’t want to expand. Sometimes I want to stay small.
Sometimes I want to stay fragmented. I’m scared of so much wholeness…. and of what it would ask of me…. What it would reveal to me or invite me to include. Who it would tell me to bring home. How it would show me all the sides of myself that I have othered. Exiled. Marginalized.
Sometimes I don’t want to love in that way.
To be that big and caring.

Today, I’m vowing to just post the first poem. To experience what it’s like to be witnessed, seen and known for a moment even when it’s not perfect. To risk safety. Because, of course, it is safer to have all these poems saved in drafts than to let them out of my sight. As long as they’re sitting there in the ‘editing process; I can hide behind my ‘work ethic’ and ‘attention to detail’ when really, I just want to have worked hard enough on it to feel worthy of being taken seriously.

Oof. 

This is right around the time I like to employ the original ‘Punk’ mindset. For me, punk is protesting the status quo, protesting the patterning of society (or your own critical mind)….

I ask myself, what is the best way I could protest today? Maybe some days I do this by not holding my stomach in so tight challenging the patriarchal view I’ve internalized for years of what makes a woman’s body beautiful. Maybe my protest for today looks like pleasure, a massage, a bath and a decadent cookie…. a protest to productivity culture! Maybe protest looks like posting an imperfect poem, a deliberate Fuck You Very Much to the inner voice that insists on perfection.

Photo by Roger Hutchings

The truth is I fell in love with poetry because of how punk it is. You can do what you want in a poem. All the poets I knew were deliberately in-cohesive in their arrangements, refusing to appear one way, breaking out of conformed notions of grammar, using words like maps (or songlines!) into places you’ve never walked before. One poem might be all lowercase, one might have indentations every third and fourth line…. because why not! The opening stanza could feel jittery and manic in tone then the final line could land with the serenity of a swan. There were no rules! No English Teachers tweaking in the margins with black ink and proud blouses. It was so radical! At times it felt extremely serious. Stark and cutting on that white page, eerie and dancing like the ghost narrator in my mind. I came to hear my own voice more clearly in the reading of poetry. I witnessed new parts of myself through their observations.

I also liked how poems could feely silly, schizophrenic, cryptic and even irreverent towards meaning, prioritizing the feeling of the word in your mouth over their philosophical ideals. I loved the rhythm and the secrecy of poems. They always felt a bit private, not revered or esteemed. They felt smaller and humbler, and they weren’t reviewed in newspapers and passed around in bookclubs or given as last minute gifts bought at airports.

The poetry books I read came from dusty vintage bookstores. They smelled weird. They had no prologue or acknowledgments or references to justify anything they said. They didn’t need justifying. They asked to be experienced. To be touched. To be held not just in your hand but in your mouth. The imagination of your mouth because you hadn’t said the words out loud yet. You’d just said them in your mind and swayed to the cadence and spacing and skipping and hopping along the curvature of lines.

I loved that poems don’t need me to understand them. They don’t claim to fix anything, or explain anything. They don’t want that kind of status. They’re there for pondering and the wandering around in. For waking you up or ushering in a liminal space.

So, I grant myself liberty to dance and provoke and play in this new format. To protest with the forming of words against all preconceived notions and perceptions about my small self.

I have chosen the stark background of silence for the reading of my poems but before each poem you will hear a short snippet of music which will be a preview of something I’m working on (just an instrumental). Todays piece is the start of a song I’m writing with Tommy Raps and Phillip Yancey. Perhaps you’ll hear it on a record one day and you’ll remember when this small excerpt accompanied a small poem. The music will act like a mood-gong or a tone-setter to lead you into the firmer, land of speaking.

Now that I’ve taken the first leap, you’ll be getting poems from me more regularly. I hope they echo in the cavernous spaces of your soul that haven’t been touched yet. Or maybe they’re just a little wink. I won’t know until I try. My life has been about songs for so long that it’s nice to return back to this familiar place and remember how green the fields are and how slowly the animals move.

Watercolour from 2018

The Neighbours

by Kimbra Johnson

After we saged the living room
I cried for an hour straight,
stripped the walls from sky blue
to the crisp white of china plates.

Remembering those before us,
(their energy dark and loud)
wonder what the walls would say
if they could scream and shout.

The kitchen is burning
I’m in the corner again
with wounds that weep
and collect on the linoleum.

Smoke alarm belting
in heaves and waves
and smoke
and thoughts of running away

down the street past the well-kept families
and the ancient blooms, and the used up Coke cans
and the pastel siding, and the thoughts colliding
into one another

I’m thinking of screaming out loud and washing my face
I’m thinking I love you but I want to leave you somedays
I’m thinking about going back to the bed I made

But who would that make me
and what would the neighbors say?

For those who would like to hear this poem read aloud :