the black lullaby

Last night  was by far the best gathering I’ve seen at any open mic so far. I don’t know whether it was because everyone did more than read something or if it was Mariam’s breathtaking voice or the fact that Richard Simon called me the most beautiful mic stand he had seen but whatever it was, it made me smile.

We have our own take on how things are and how they should be and I think the one thing we don’t have is an audience to share these thoughts with. We’ve become so intoxicated with our own beliefs and viewpoints that now, no matter what someone else has to say, we’re not willing to listen or even if we do listen (as Shanaka said last night) we don’t hear them, because we’re probably too busy hearing ourselves.

Whether we like to admit it or not, we are a bunch of people who are strongly opinionated and I think it’s a good thing to have those opinions questioned now and again or to simply hear what someone else has to say about them. You’d be surprised at what you find out, which is why I think I liked last night’s session than some of the ones we’ve had before. People actually interacted and shared their views on someone else’s piece. I was thinking, had those pieces been blog posts, and some of them were, you’d probably have a response to each and every one of them because you’d have the time to craft your words and drive your point across clearly. You’d be able to think and re-think what you want to say and how you want to say it just to be politically correct.

But there is so much more beauty in the transfer of words that happen face to face because you don’t just read into what other people are saying, you feel them saying it, with all the emotion they carry with each word.

I really don’t know why I’m going on about this but it’s probably because I went home last night a happy-chappy knowing that if a small gathering of those who were willing to listen to each other was possible, then there might be hope for us after all.

Thank you for the experience, hope it gets better next time.

B.