Slam!

It’s Monday, and even though Monday is traditionally the day we all dread, I actually really really like Mondays – because of a little thing called slam.

Here in Eugene we have the University of Oregon, and there’s a coffee house in their student union building. On Monday nights that coffee house is taken over by poets all over the city, for a “poetry slam” that goes from 9 pm. until midnight.

I’ve been going since last year; as a writer it gets into my blood, and I get to spend a lot of time with an interesting and really varied group. It’s a supportive bunch, with people of all stripes and lives and ideologies – not just pretentious jags in berets spouting espresso-fueled angst-ridden rot (well, there is a little of that). There’s everything from sappy love poetry to “here’s what’s wrong with American culture” hippy stuff to beat-style trip-out verse that suddenly has you going “Damn when did I start tapping my feet?” and fueling a lust for life like kerosene on a fire.

Everyone gets a hearty round of applause. Some people go just to have an outlet, to get up on the mike for a while and just say something that’s a part of them and pass it around for everyone listen to. And no one gets a bigger round of shout-outs, hoots and “Go on now!”s than the nervous soul who when their name is called gets up and says “I’ve never done this before…” Just getting up there gets respect, because everyone knows it ain’t easy.

The slam can seem like something very different from travel, but really they’re quite similar. Listening to poets and poetry can make you look at things differently, can make you think about life and your own existence in a slightly different light – something that travel is also notorious for. Even if only for a few minutes and a few lines, you get to see the world from someone else’s perspective, and you get to stand a little while in their shoes.

And there’s something amazingly liberating about being up there. I’m a writer, yet I don’t know that I could ever articulate what that something is. But for the few minutes every week where it’s just me and them and my ramblings and a microphone, there’s something about the world and my life that takes on an even sharper focus. It’s a focus I try to carry on through the rest of the week, and it’s renewing that focus that makes me look forward even to a Monday.