Serendipity: Listening for the Language In Your Head
Sojourner K. Rolle -- March 4, 2006
Write about what you know about -- the people, the places, the culture, the customs, your family, the macrocosm, the microcosm.
I often say that writers come to recognize their own place in the history of their surroundings. We become scribes for our selves, our families, our communities, our region and. in many ways, our generation. Writers often present their own impressions of the world but I believe we write most authentically about that of which we are a part and those from whom we spring. The late August Wilson, who wrote poetry and short stories before he became one of America's most celebrated playwrights, listened to stories and experiences of people he met in the streets of Pittsburg. He hung out in coffee shops and neighborhood bars engaging in conversation with the patrons, hearing their cadences and expressions, as they told him their stories. We all carry the repositories of our entire lives from which to draw authentic voices and multi-dimensional landscapes.
Most of my growing up years were spent in a small mountain town in Western North Carolina. I moved to New York when I was a young adult. I tried to transform myself from a twanging hillbilly ending every declarative statement with an implied question mark to a more urbane sounding commentator giving each word its full syllabic count and appropriate inflection. I tried to mimic city slang and so-called hip jargon, Whatever my endeavor- especially writing - I wanted to be considered sophisticated. I smoked Pall Malls, took my coffee black and drank liquor straight -- no chaser. I worked hard to mask my own country soul and humble expressions. It took hearing the poet Nikki Giovanni embrace her back-home culture and read her poems to the accompaniment of a gospel choir to flame my inclination toward self-expression and poetry. I began to write in secret but became bolder as I realized the things I knew about and could tell about were things that people wanted to hear -- from me. I discovered my bi-lingual ability to speak boardroom and talk street -- to converse in "canon" and "culture." I gave voice to the languages in my head.
Finding What I Never Lost
During the early nineties, in a workshop about poetry and jazz, I wrote a poem about my father. The original poem was written in the third person and was about how my dad dominated the record player in our house with his imposition of jazz music. Each stanza included one of my father's colorful references like, "dap daddies in two-button jackets that don't even cover their behinds." which is how he referred to young pop stars who in his estimation "didn't know a half note from a quarter note". The poem was called Jazz at Big John's because it went on to tell how my father eventually tried to bring jazz music to our little mountain town. Several years after writing the poem, I was attending the Squaw Valley Community of Writers summer workshop and one of the staff that year was Al Young, now Poet Laureate for California. Participants could sign up for 15-minute consultations with the staff poets. I took advantage of my 15-minute meeting to show Al my Jazz at Big John's poem. By now it was a typed two-pager. Al read the poem, liked it and made one comment: "Let Big John Speak! "
Keeping The Voice Alive
I immediately transformed the poem from a third person memory to a first person, active voice poem. Later I transformed the poem again -- into a script. Jazz at Big John's was produced by Dramatic Women as a short stage play in 1998. Actor Henry Brown played Big John in a nostalgic setting of my family's basement and creative dialogue with various family members. Even though mocking my father was great family fun throughout the years, I shocked myself when I remembered so many of his expressions and attitudes -- his philosophy. It was one of the most gratifying experiences of my life to watch and hear my father's persona so realistically portrayed. The ultimate affirmation came when I visited home and showed the script to one of my younger brothers. He was similarly moved. The amazing discovery was that not only did I have my father's voice in my head but also every member of my family and many of the folk in the community. As another famous poet Amirii Baraka remarked in his book, Blues People, "every man has his own voice, his own way of shouting, his own life to sing about". What I have come to understand is that the listener, the writer, can be the scribe for all those voices. Several days after my father's funeral, I was sitting on the front porch at home when a passing neighbor paused and said in her slow hill drawl, "Gerrrl, long as yu livin' yo daddy wont nevah be ded."
I cherish the thought.
See the Ink Byte Feedback page if you want to share your opinions and questions with other readers, or, to contact me privately, send email to Serendipity@InkByte.com.