Spoken Word & Me

I happened upon spoken word poetry through my sister. She sent me this TED talk that Sarah Kay gave ages ago and I was sold.

When I saw her perform, I was consumed by the connection that she so simply established. There was vulnerability and authenticity, sprinkled with humility that drew me in to embrace the oneness that humanity beckons. It was a ray of light amidst the chaos that seemed to be engulfing my mind back then. I don’t think I have ever wept so hard.

Shane Koyczan was the other poet that shook my earth. If Sarah Kay is the reason I got into poetry, Shane Koyczan is the reason I started writing. Not dealt a favorable hand, Koyczan turned his depression into some of the most beautiful, heart-wrenching works of art.

I learnt that spoken word is this powerful, accessible tool that can unleash and unite, cradle and conquer, amuse and amaze. And that it is meant to be heard, not necessarily read. It is meant to be said aloud by the person who wrote it, emoting the visceral nature of hurt or joy that shaped them. I wanted to get in on this, stat.

But then, there was the other side to this whole spoken word thing that kept pulling me back.

Spoken word begs for vulnerability in a world that is focused on being unfazed, unmoved – “strong”. Apparently, being emotional is for wusses. So, for many, this art form screams eye-roll-worthy cheesiness – “embarrassing”, “awkward”. My best friends really try to like the spoken word I do, but it just seems too hard for them, too squirmy. A+ for effort, but it’s okay that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

I think the fear of ridicule made it harder for me to embrace this art form though.

I was living in New York back then. I quietly started going to an open mic at the Bowery Poetry Club every Sunday; just observing. The idea of getting on stage seemed like a wormhole that I wasn’t even looking to find. But whenever I got the chance, I went to see and hear. I saw and heard the likes of Sarah Kay and Andrea Gibson and Olivia Gatwood. I heard my almost-namesake Anis Mojwani shake the dust. I heard Neil Hilborn find beauty in the pain that OCD infuses. Consumption was enough, right?

Not quite.

It took me a year to gather the courage to get on stage. It was at the Bowery Poetry Club; it had to be. It was a place where encouragement was easy to find, where making a mistake was applauded, where courage was rewarded. It made me realize that there are times when being allowed to make mistakes is the most important thing.

Queue all the clichés – my legs were shaking, my voice was nervy, my hands were trembling. Overwhelmed with inexplicable fear, I ripped through my first ever piece, fumbling along the way, realizing that the perfect start is always an imperfect one.

And then, the tap opened. Open mics suddenly saw me contribute in addition to consume. In fact, if I didn’t get on the performer’s list, I’d be all mad. I would go an hour early at times to ensure that I got the perfect spot – not the first spot, the third or the fifth, depending on how confident I was in the poem I was going to perform; the more vulnerable the piece, the further down the list I wanted to be.

There is something about sharing explicitly, especially in a place where it is expected. I didn’t like going to just any open-mics. They had to be specifically for spoken word. And with that, New York was generous.

I feel like while society has accepted the art of musical performance as universal, it is still confused about spoken word. Maybe because it seems so easy – just get on there and say emotional shit, right? Perhaps. But it is its accessibility that makes it so powerful.

The fact that it is ridiculed is what made it important for me. Before this, I seemed hooked onto conformity. Because conformity seemed like the easiest path to be liked by everyone: don’t ruffle anyone’s feathers, don’t give anyone fuel to laugh at you, always “be cool”. Spoken word made me break through that trap to embrace what I thought was cool and connect with those that were open enough to embrace that.

So, I embraced and engaged – I performed as much as I could. At the Bowery, if you performed something new, you were always met with a “new shit” chant, and that became enough encouragement to always write something new.

So, I wrote, and I shared. I made new types of friends who hooted, snapped, laughed. I even got to the chance to perform for Sarah Kay at the Bowery, and my old friends just couldn’t understand what the big deal was. I got to attend a workshop by Shane Koyczan and see him live in India of all places in the world. And now, this has just become a thing I do.

And in that doing, there is a bunch of poems I wrote. And then I recorded them. And then I convinced my musician best friends (who try really hard to like my poetry) to write music for it. They took awfully long, but they did, and they did so quite wondrously. And now I’m putting it out there because Liz Gilbert said so. And because Brene Brown says that it’s important to be vulnerable. But mostly because I want to.

The first piece (first video up top) is something I wrote when I was in Guatemala. I was on a newfound path but missed the best parts of my old path. Because everything about a bad thing isn’t bad and everything about a good thing isn’t good. You might find your own meaning in all that jazz though.

And there’s a whole album out that you can listen to on all the streaming services out there.

P.S. My 10-year old niece, Janakee, along with her mother, Aditi Bhabhi, helped design my album art.