JOURNEY. "I need to reach ESCAPE VELOCITY, ESCAPE FEROCITY, ESCAPE TENACITY. " But what was I trying to reach? What would have satisfied the hunger? Was there anything? Or would it have been easy?
Escape Velocity. I wrote that piece in 1998, when the flow of poetry had been happening for 4 years. It was another 8 years before I got a site for my many interests: Elsa’s Word Story Image Idea Music Emporium. I remember the summer I developed that site, one area after the other. So little knowledge of how to build a site, how to make the pages. So much determination. I remember where I was sitting, so many hours, day after day. For about 6 weeks.
But back to 1998, when I wrote Escape Velocity. That was a piece I did put online, in 2008, 2 years after I started my site. And it’s one of the early pieces where I did a video.
I remember the intense urgency. I need to reach ESCAPE VELOCITY:
My nerves shriek
I need to reach
ESCAPE VELOCITY
My nerves strain
I must attain
ESCAPE FEROCITY
Sometimes I snarl
Easy to quarrel
Hard to attain
my goal, my aim
ESCAPE VELOCITY
fueled by
ESCAPE FEROCITY
I am not meek
I am not mild
I seethe I boil
Like an A-bomb
I go wild
Can't keep
the force
INSIDE
I feel the strain
The shell won't hold ...
Here are the rest of the words (1998, put online 2008):
https://elsas-word-story-image-idea-music-emporium.com/rap-poetry.html
And here is the video (2013):
https://elsasemporium.com/rap-poems.html
It felt so strange filming this - so very unlike my calm reasonable everyday me.
What was it I needed so urgently? I remember being painfully bored at the country when I was a child. Weeks of nothing to do. And I believe I was painfully bored in my early childhood, when I was taken care of by a very nice neighbor doing piecework - not much time for me. School - also much was boring - but in general it was better than out of school. I loved learning. There wasn’t enough of that in school.
In Grade 7 I wrote a short play and could not let it go until it was performed, 2 years later, in the basement den of friends of my parents. I rounded up my sister and 3 other kids from the neighborhood -,they came to the rehearsals, learned their lines, and performed with enthusiasm. My sister had a flair for comedy. My mother, heavily pregnant with my brother, sewed the costumes. I remember those costumes - masses of work.
What do I need now? I have been trying, for a long time, to get a virtual cafe going. But there’s very little enthusiasm for it.
What do I need?
What size audience? In 1997, when I wrote the piece, I had no audience at all. In 2008, when I put the piece online, I was building a considerable audience. Within a couple of years it was up to 60,000 views a month.
The basis: massive determination to learn how to get visible. What are the best keywords and where is it best to place them - because of course they do not go in the poems. Lots of learning.
And then I left that audience in 2012 - though the site kept coasting, maybe 30,000 page views a month even in 2022.
By 2012, I had become very aware of the danger Islam posed. One day in April 2012, I had an idea how I could contribute to getting people aware - an interview series, a Truth Summit on the people speaking out about Islam. Who were they? What had they been like as children? What motivated them? How had they come to their concerns? What made them stick with these concerns instead of walking away?
But I haven’t answered: what do I need to satisfy the deep down urgency to reach escape velocity. The hunger is still there, or the piece wouldn’t be pulling at me. So what do I hunger for?
More connection?
On the page with the poem, people had the option to join a creativity group. Hundreds of people came to the poem. Over time, thousands. No one joined. I’ve just removed that never-used option.
The urge for escape velocity is a very intense hunger.
Could I satisfy it by directing it differently?
I love thinking and idea pieces.
But the hunger to reach with the creative pieces is still there.
Posted Feb 28, 2024