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The Blow by Blow

After a brief Open Mic(!) and a high energy feature in K-Swift and the Project (Jeez, now everything I write sounds like show reviews), we jumped into the Semi-Final Slam. Pretty nervous the whole night and wasn’t really speaking to anybody. Just bouncing all around the room, not really giving myself a chance to stay centered.

Guy announces the Slam and brings us all on stage. Still feeling uneasy. Taylor Mali is the Sacrificial and I am afraid it’s going to turn into a 10 fest. To my surprise, Taylor gets a 25.9 and now, it’s on. Sabrina starts with her father poem and gets little love from the judges. Dawn Saylor is next and hits a political piece that the judges (but not the crowd) rally behind. My turn, hit the Salsa poem. As per Roger’s suggestions, I lengthen the pause between the lines and become much more expressive in voice and face for the piece. Easily, the best Slam performance of the Salsa poem. The judges are still tight in their scores and I am ahead of Sabrina but a bit behind Dawn. Roger rocks out with “Song for Trent Lott,” and establishes a new score high ground as all but one of the judges score him above 9.5. Omar takes advantage at the high that Rog creates and rips put with a humorous political poem that does exactly what it should—Gives the crowd something to laugh with, establishing Omar as his own poet while still making the strong social statement the crowd wants to hear.

After one round, I am still in the mix and look to stick with my game plan. Rog starts out the next round with his father poem. The judges are not feeling him now that he is not the voice of their conscious. Omar rocks out his ‘Gigolo Serenade’ to an awesome response on a poem that just recently entered his repertoire. I go to get a cigarette to ease the nerves. Dawn returns and maintains her ground with a strong narrative. Here we go again, the Ceviche poem comes out and my nervousness emerges. Been a while since I’ve shook onstage and there is nothing I can do. Voice is trembling as well. All of this shakes out halfway through but the judges are not feeling me anymore. I slip lower in the scores. Sabrina is also facing the uphill climb as she drops her sister poem.

Round Three, I am up against the ropes. If I can’t make up ground now, it’s over mathematically. Rog, adjusting from his previous performance, delivers the ‘overtly political poem’ and gets a perfect 30. The crowd is feeling all the social commentary. Unfortunately, I don’t have any. Omar returns with the “Secret Language of Fucking” and emotionally loses it onstage while keeping the poem together. The shit we put ourselves through. Dawn’s going up, I lose faith in my Canto poem and pull in the bag, literally, for Capicu, which I was saving for the last round. I have a few different versions and I have been getting all kinds of weird feedback as to which is the best version. I go with the original, hit a shot of whiskey, and go to the stage. Normally, page reading is a big no-no but Omar has been doing it for some of his pieces and it hasn’t hurt him none. While I nail the Capicu yell, it is not enough and my poor page reading sinks me down deep. Sabrina, back on deck, as some yahoos try to come in and start laughing at the door when confronted with the sight of a poetry Slam. I rush them out quickly and hope it doesn’t throw Sabrina’s energy off. Fish joins me in the stairwell and we start cracking some jokes. “Punch me in the eye!” I joke, “It may get me some sympathy points and I’ll do a poem about defending 13!” “You don’t need that. You’re doing Fine” “I’m out of the running,” I say. He assures me that it’s still possible for me to make third. I laugh and already start thinking about next year.

Final Round. The judges have just about made up their mind. All you need to do is stay the course and you are fine. Another situation develops in the stairwell. Can’t let the crowd know what’s going. New Yorkers are nosy fucks and need to be in the mix for everything. We initiate some quick crowd control and back to the mix. Rog drops a whimsical poem from his chapbook (I wonder if he read it off page?) Little matter, he is way ahead and not looking back. I am still in the stairway as Omar hits a classic with his Goth poem & I totally miss Dawn’s last poem. Strong performances insure their placing. Sabrina finishes up strong but her early low score held her back the whole night. Last chance, Guy tells me I should actually be in the four slot and can tie for third if I bust out a 29.8. Sure, why not? Anything can happen, right? And then here it comes, I am the last poet of the night, nothing to lose and I reach so fucking deep and come out strong. I drop a brand new, more conversational, lighter Spanish, version of Leticia. I flirt, smile, scream, get somber and soft. Maybe it’s the emotion of the night. Making believe that I am OK with losing when I’m not. Could be that I don’t want to go out like a punk. Who cares? Two rounds too late with the poem that I thought wouldn’t do it, I win the judges over and get high nines across.

And there you have it… the results of the first Semi-Finals… Roger, Omar and Dawn advance to the Finals as Sabrina and I bow out gracefully.

Much compliments from the crowd the whole night and I made a few new fans. “I really loved that Ceviche poem.” “I felt that dancing poem.” “That last piece was so pretty.” Kinda hard to smile at that stuff especially when it’s a judge that wasn’t rewarding you scorewise saying it. Jayme comes up to me and remarks on the emotion I put into Leticia. “Yeah, I need Nazdak’s video. I have no idea exactly what I did.” I’ve heard about that back against the wall feeling and how the poem kinda takes over and you don’t really have any control. It’s a weird fuckin’ place to be. Jayme gives me a congratulations hug and I start wondering if I can ever do that poem that exact way ever again. The whole emotion of the evening starts coming out and for the first time, I think I may lose it. Still thinking of that place.

“Don’t want to hear no negative shit in your journal tomorrow, aight?” Guy tells me at the end of the night and he’s right. I came in dead last, at least I think I did, but that doesn’t really matter. Except for one poem, the crowd saw me at my best last night. I can run with the pack and deliver. Not much more to say than that.

Vampirism and Skydiving.

If you have ever done either thing, even once, you never really have to do it again. It automatically adds you into the hall of the elite or despised and no matter what the circumstances behind the incident always leave you as marked. OK, the vampirism thing only happens in Eastern Europe or Oswego County, NY, but you get the gist of it.

Found out that my compadre, Al B Back, was Slammin’ at the Nuyorican again. Originally, I had no desire to head on downtown as I’ve spent the whole week in and out of the City and was looking forward to a casual Friday uptown. Maybe head over to the Blue Ox and check out that Jazz band they have coming in. Fish made me an offer I couldn’t refuse in that he would be the ride downtown so I said “Sure, why not!” Worked out quite well, in that I almost got to be the feature. The original scheduled feature, Karen Ladson, was having some type of difficulty getting to the Café. Nothing new, I’ve seen two features pull a Houdinin and know that da Boogieman got lost coming to the Nuyo once, so I wasn’t too shocked. Karen Jamie, the new host, asked me if I could fill in.

Let’s step back here for a sec, less than two years in the game and I have an opportunity to perform at one of the most easily recognized venues in all of poetry. I mean people that don’t know shit about poetry know about the Nuyo. Not to mention that Semi-Final bout at 13 this Monday. The opportunity to drop five pieces anywhere would be welcome.

Karen, the host, decided to star the Slam without the feature. Went a whole round and then Ms. Ladson showed up, dropped a great set, had a break and then continued with the Slam. It threw the dynamic a bit out of whack which didn’t make anything easier for Al or Ed Garcia who was also Slamming. I ended up doing a piece between rounds two and three. Got to plug Acentos, synonymUS and the PPG play before doing ‘Ultimo Canto’ and had a blast performing the piece. Al came in third, Ed in second and Vanessa Hidary won the night.

Am I disappointed that I didn’t get to feature? Nah, Karen Ladson rocked and she had her start in Slam at the Nuyo so the night was a type of homecoming full circle thing and you know how I feel about them cycles. The cool thing was that I had a full set ready to go (four pieces memorized only one would have been off page!) and was not nervous that I was short changing the crowd. I knew that if I had gone up there, the house would have had a dope show and that is an awesome feeling.

The thought of adding… “featured poet at the Nuyorican Poets Café,” to my poetic resume sure was tempting though.

Next time, we’ll see if the circle comes back.

El Numero Tres

Hosing can be the worst part of the Spoken Word experience. Your words, maybe more than the poets, are under a microscope all the time as you have the set the pace of the evening while making sure the spotlight remains on the performers.

My hosting at Baruch College was horrible and the only thing that saved my credibility was my performances. My last hosting duty at synonymUS was also sub-par. I co-hosted a night at 13 and almost had a heart attack as I felt that if I dropped this ball– I may never be able to show my face around these here parts again. The initial outings of Acentos have been fun and it has taken me a bit of time to get into the hosting groove but once I did everything was smooth. After both shows I have had a pretty serious post-mortem and really hit at the negatives of the evening.

Happy to report that this Acentos went smoothly, real smoothly and I have no negatives to report. Once again, the Open Mic has been a great eclectic mix of voices. My crowd (nice ring to it) is very new to the game and has some way to go in regard to serious content and engaging performance but they are getting there. Little by little, show by show, and that is so great.

Highlights of the evening included an older gentleman by the name of Caramba (stage name, of course) falling instantly in love with Acentos and gushing over what a great setting we have. This, in turn, led Victor, our resident senior poet, to declare himself the ‘grand-father’ of the series and tore the house down with an ode to a beer poster model and her handling of a longneck… too funny and it was great seeing him put his stake in the Acentos family. Moniqa also brought the noise to Acentos for the first time and brought the only female voice to the Open Mic which is a little tarnish on the night but I am working on having a variety of Latina’s dropping at the next Acentos.

Sabrina was a fantastic feature and displayed excellent range on the mic. An amazing roller coaster ride of images and experiences were delivered both with the dynamic aspects of her performance and the universality of her material. Her deft use of pacing out her pieces and how they bring out the different strengths in her delivery is a lesson that some future features in the crowd will have to note. Reflections on family, immersion in cultures both familiar and foreign, a duet with me (Sabrina’s part done entirely in Spanish!) and a sweet gospel serenade was part of a feature that had the Blue Ox transfixed throughout. …Thank you guys for sitting through what will be part of my Acentos report for the newsletter ;-)

Distinct advantage of hosting, you get to do three poems as a warm-up for next week’s slam. Yup, I started the night with ‘Ultimo Canto’ closed the first half of the Open Mic with ‘Ceviche’ and ended the night with ‘Capicú.’ Good performances throughout and I just need to nail down the transitions in ‘Canto’ and highlight a few moments in ‘Ceviche’ I worked ‘Capicú’ off page and felt pretty good about it but I have to commit it to memory. Roger was in the house and we went over a few things in my performance.

That’s that… a good show in the books and now, at last, I am looking forward to having another great one.

Focus Daniel-San

“It’s a poor musician, who blames his instrument.”

I’ve always let the truth of this saying guide my endeavors but last night, we had some poor ass instruments. The Anniversary louderJAM went well in that all the musicians and all the poets brought the noise. As for our crowd, they were the poor instruments. “That’s fucked up O, they came out in the snow!” Truth be told, people gripe too fucking much and the snow was not that big a deal. Put it to you like this, if that same amount of snow dropped in December, no one would have said anything or really cared. It was an average day of snow, that did not merit any type of unaccustomed discomfort. The fact that it happened in April, where the showers bring… blah, blah, blah, is what made it into such a headline. I was out in the street and on the road yesterday, this snow was the equivalent of a child’s tantrum— loud, obtrusive, annoying but, most definitely, tolerable and manageable.

So here we are, 13 beautiful poets, 5 musicians and a mini-griot ready to whip it all out to an… average Monday night crowd?!? Disappointing when considering the talent to audience ratio but the show went on and, as stated, kicked ass. Sometime last week, Guy was contacted by a TV producer who expressed genuine interest in the Slam scene. This conversation prompted Guy to record last night’s event to provide her with good footage of the louderARTS doing their thing. Everybody knew this and was told to prepare accordingly and what did that mean… almost the whole crew busted out brand new work. For me personally, I could have busted out the Salsa poem or even ‘Ceviche’ but I love ‘Ultimo Canto’ so much now and the workshop gave me some great new ideas for it that I had to go with that piece, even though it is not my most showcasable (is this even a word?) performance. The fact that the rest of the crew was in the same mindset was fantastic. Even more so that all the new work rocked!

The musical acts were wonderful and diverse and it seemed so poetic to see them all go up there with their voices and guitars and see what happened. Think about it, as a writer I have only twenty-six letters to fuck with and look what happens… same with these artists… there are only 5(?) chords on a guitar but what they do with what they have is amazing and how it is so disticnct is what makes it art.

The one real let-down was the Semi-Finals Lottery. What should be a very dynamic and important part of the night became just a hum-drum ten minute break of which even I found it tough to clap for by the end. The bottom line on that, at least in regard to me, is that I an in the first match and have the third slot. This means I have five days to get my shit polished. Not good, in that I would have wanted more time to prepare for this field of combatants which includes: Omar, Roger, Dawn Saylor & Sabrina. The first thing that strikes me from this group is that they have all been to Nationals as a part of a team so they know what it takes. I am dead in the middle of that order which means I will be going up after Dawn and before Roger. A very interesting slot for sure and I am not sure of what, if any, strategy I will employ. (Note: I know of another Slammer who posted their strategy online and had someone else trump them on it… so, even if I had one… I wouldn’t post it)

This time next week, I will be either very happy or quite disillusioned… not! That was my mindset last night but in really letting it sink, there would be no dishonor in losing to any of these poets. I have enough in my one-year old arsenal to hang with these writers that have anywhere from three to seven years of experience in Slam. In itself, that is an accomplishment.

Time to psych up: I am that character in the movie where the underdog comes up to bat and has nothing to lose and everything to gain. At worst, I will have developed my repertoire to a fine edge and know that I can run with the best and keep up.

Enough of this shit, time to write and recite and memorize and get ready to make my mark.

Desert CD

Spent sometime last night at the Virgin Megastore in Union Square and couldn’t pick anything new to listen to. I have been rocking Coldplay’s “A Rush of Blood to the Head” for the last three weeks and am STILL not tired of it. Love albums that let you find deeper meaning and here small nuances the more you listen to them. Add that you start switching up which song is your favorite and the reasons and that, my dear friends, is what an album is all about it.

I had the same thing happen with their last album, “Parachutes.” Originally, I got it for “Trouble” then fell in love with “Yellow” and finally the whole CD became the quickest 45 minutes of my life. Most U2 albums are the same way (big exception—Pop that album lost me half way through even though the first half is very good).

Virgin, Union Square, is pretty high on the rock tip, a nice contrast to Virgin, 42nd St, which is all about the rap. Ah… hip-hop, we knew ye once. When you were the voice of kids on stoops trying to say something that would get them noticed by turning to the cheapest most accessible technology. My theory has always been that early hip-hop was a direct backlash of the 70s mega funk bands. Kids that wanted to make music had to get expensive instruments, then get together in large groups and put on outrageous concerts to get noticed. Hip-hop changed that but now rap has become the same animal. You need crazy gear, street-rep (that is going to require a high-priced lawyer), videos and an entourage. I am wonder what the backlash to this will be, since rock-rap, to me, is more a child of punk than anything else.

What, no poetry? Au contraire, mon fraire, much good poetry this weekend. GK had her birthday party this weekend and we had a ‘closed’ mic performing poems just for her and a little rock and roll followed by an after party that was a bit too much for me, as I passed out within a half-hour. Worked more on the play, not really but I sure made the attempt to. This project is feeling more and more like a bad girlfriend every day and I am counting the days until it is over and I can focus my poetic energies to other poetic endeavors. Managed to make Kool-Aid out of old sugar by attending GK’s poetry workshop and had a blast. It was all new faces and it felt nice to get away from the familiar and work myself into new circles in the, quickly-becoming-more-familiar, role of elder statesman. The workshop had a great flow and we were able to hit a variety of subjects and critique a lot of work, my own included. This workshop is much better than my other one and has me wondering if I should drop one in favor of the other. Perhaps I will ruin the same poem through both groups and see what kind of feedback I get and let that be the litmus test.

Had some post workshop dinner with some of fellow poets who view me as some part of a higher echelon. I’m starting to get tired of the, “I sucked when I first hit the scene stories,” which I told anyway but also focused on how, if I’m here (wherever the fuck that is) then so can they. All but one, who is letting her own self-doubt become prophecy, have the potential and I am sure they will be making a nice splash on the scene soon. Really good to see how they all claim 13 as their own and have noticed the difference between the venues and realized they like the space that is made for them.

Back to Virgin, tried to listen to some Ani Difranco, which I keep hearing about but there was some girl listening to her like if it was a religious experience. She was jotting down lyrics or thought like a mad woman and then later was just tapping her head and rocking back and forth like if she was on medication, maybe I won’t pick up Ani. Could be worse, she could’ve been dancing like a rabbit on Ecstasy which is what some poor folks do when they listen to CDs in stores.

Time for new poems, y’all.