Having lived abroad, I’m no stranger to the awkward feeling of being l’étranger (the stranger) in an unfamiliar room of regulars — encroaching where I do not belong is my specialty. Comment, Monsieur Waiter? You do not want me in your trés chic restaurant? Too bad, I’d like a grande café crème, s’il vous plaît.
They say life begins at the end of your comfort zone. But though I made a point of visiting every bar in Pigalle and still dream of Bali and New Delhi, I’m pretty self-conscious in new scenarios. Nevertheless, I am taking heed of Thursday columnist Ariel Egan’s advice by “de-perching” myself from my comfortable apartment to set out along the red brick roads of Boston and go exploring.
Last week, my efforts proved successful, and amid familiar street names and buildings I stumbled upon a new world: The Underworld. Just kidding. My new hideout is no Hades-dominated hot house, nor is it similar to the underground clubbing scene of East London. By underworld, I’m referring to the Cantab Lounge basement’s Wednesday night slam poetry scene, where $3 buys entry to a venue boasting dim red lights, Pabst Blue Ribbon décor, the scent of an old bowling alley and exposed orange and black piping that reads “Death of the Cool.” Unsure of what to make of things, I sat down and eyed the girls with blue and pink hair sitting next to an entirely normal looking middle-aged man as the host announced, enthusiastically, that flash photography is not allowed because experience is more important than documentation.
In my hometown, the city of love — Paris, not Minneapolis — duh — la poésie is a crucial part of a well-cultured and promising existence. If you can recite Rimbaud to your date, you can count on eggs in the morning. Regardless, as accustomed as I am to being lost in translation with a bunch of well-versed Science Po studs, I have zero knowledge of the Boston slam poetry, spoken-word, open mic terrain. I can work my way around a few language barriers, but I’m usually at a total loss for words in the field of shameless self-expression, loud and proud description. If you’d asked me who the poetic voice of my college generation was, I might have answered Sam Adams (the rapper, not the long dead brewer of beer).
And so it begins. First act, surprisingly, is not a depressed or dreadlocked teenager, but an old man in his 60s in cargo pants and a T-shirt reciting e. e. cummings insights about how “a salesman is an it that stinks to please.” I don’t get it, but the moral of the session is that freedom is a breakfast food. Up next is a Ryan Gosling look-alike spending a good five minutes defending the rights of a McDonald’s public restroom.
Some read their poems on their cell phones. A young man named Nathan, who left his poem in his printer, wrote a poem on his laptop in the voice of the moon who was not happy about being compared to your lover. “I shine on others, so obviously I shine on her,” it begins. A newcomer named Marcello pretty beautifully described the cannibalistic sensation of tasting the insides of his own mouth, and a young woman ended a poem by saying that her rosy cheeks keep mistaking themselves for ankles.
I’m as confused here as I ever was in a French movie theater, but listening to the words of a woman who claimed she hadn’t written since graduate school, joining in rambunctious claps and woots after each act, hearing the host complain about how bad the new house tequila is, I couldn’t help but feel that my tweed blazer and suede boots were, in fact, an acceptable addition to the colored hair and bike helmets around me, and that as long as I appreciated new and beautiful thoughts, I wasn’t out of place. In Converse and clogs, with Magners and Moleskines, people come to the underworld of Cantab in the middle of week to embrace, if not just remember, with prose a bit more beautiful than that of dinner table conversations, such rampant human topics like disease, death, hearts, houses, newspapers, cholesterol, Alzheimer’s, certainty, the future, family, tragedy, coffee, diners, shelter, fortunes, brunch, check-paying, broken hearts, video stores, lighthouses, oceans, storms, sun, shoreline, still nights, love, dreams …vous comprenez?
Turns out a slam poetry scene is just basic people with basic voices expressing basic sentiments in a non-basic way. (I mean, really non-basic: On Wednesday — I almost forgot — it was National Speak Like a Pirate Day. “ARRRRR!” we all said, when a pirate poet read his campaign for captain-hood, describing his opponent as a “barnicle-arsed whale f—er who likes to flog people.”) Can’t get much more welcoming than that.
Maybe next time I’ll try it. I’ll write a satirical piece about France, or something about how adventure is out there, particularly when you’re lost in Bastille but also, it would appear, just an MBTA bus ride away.
Anne Whiting is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences and a Fall 2012 columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at aew@bu.edu.
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