Step 23: Hang around like-minded people
Photo courtesy of Unsplash / Sraj Eiamworakul
Use your Google and find the others. Find your fellow weirdos and surround yourself with them.
The right people, not the ones you were incidentally placed next to. You're free to do it now. You can look for folks outside of your occupations and families and friends you grew up with.
I just came back from a gathering of such people. And before I did, man, did I write less, write worse and think my shit was waaaay better than it actually was.
Four years ago my writing amounted to hidden scribbles in handwritten notebooks, and one or ten poems, which I felt like a deviant writing, in a city filled with peers I imagined had grown up to be managers, for funds or offices, proud citizens of Fortune 500 companies, married and about to purchase their second house. They wore tailored suits and no longer play video games.
Or something. The masochistic fantasies varied. Whereas I felt like an asshole. To be fair, I still do sometimes. But less so, due to a bar in Soho called "Peel Fresco."
On Peel Street, Soho, there was a chalkboard I would walk by that proclaimed "Open mic poetry on Wednesday nights." That blew my mind.
Are you telling me that *I* could read my writing out to complete strangers? Me, a guy who writes with the same furtive embarrassment as an 11-year-old Googling porn. Hell no could I go. Even though I wanted to. I reckon we all do- amateur poets and writers alike.
I'd walk by that sign, always telling myself to just go, go one day- just once, but I kept thinking of that scene in the early Simpsons of beret-wearing assholes that were clicking their fingers in lieu of clapping.
It felt like I'd be going into some kind of S and M club. Then an old, old friend, Henrik Hoeg (this glorious bastard), out of nowhere messaged to tell me about what was poetry on Peel street (before the moniker 'Peel street poets' began to stick).
That first time was confessional, embarrassing, scary as hell and freeing all at once. The variety of poetry is incredible. Whatever preconception you have of poetry, I can all but guarantee you will find an example of it- someone who writes the way you expected (positive and negatively), but at the same time, you'll find that's just one truth among so much variety.
Poetry is a loaded word but I like to think of it as honest writing, writing without rules, writing that demands honesty because you can't hide behind the fictional. I don't care about quality as much as I care about whether the poem has blood in it. And when you get a shy banker who comes in and reads that one poem, which he wrote about what he's really afraid of, about his dreams and the toxicity on the MTR, his regrets, his secret desires- man, it's like getting a taste of something real. When the victim of sexual abuse reads the one piece she wrote, addressed to her abuser, and means every word; it's an act of courage you rarely get to see. The university students writing about first loves. The parents writing about their children. Geeks about video games. Gardeners about flowers. Activists about politics. Sex, music, drugs, love, lies, regrets- and some of it really fucking funny.
In the words of a drag queen I once met after performing at an art gallery opening- going to Peel is "soul porn."
Some crazy shit has happened since then. Things I never would have thought I'd have the opportunity to partake in- I'm amateur as fuck after all, I just write random shit same as others, but I've had the privilege of meeting literary stars, performing in front of hundreds, reviewing a really shitty film on the radio, writing dick jokes and swearing on a stage to the appreciation of an audience- crazy, crazy shit, considering that we used to have the same English teachers in high school. And now the bastards got a pretty damn good book of poetry published.
There are novels I could write about Peel, or the wonderful folks at Out Loud, or Liars League- all the collectives of amateur actors, stand-up comics, poets, musicians, prose writers- all of the weirdos who do exist in Hong Kong, and who are supportive as fuck. Performers who have become my friends. Hustlers and part-time artists. You won't find their work in a bookstore (well, not all of them), but that keeps us honest.
Being around like-minded people is insanely useful.
I would go on for far too long (already have eh) if I listed all the people I would like to thank for all of my growth and progress over these last few years, but the gist of it is that like-minded folks help in several ways.
They validate what you are doing. If you feel alone, or marginalised, having others demonstrate that they too LARP can sometimes be all you need to keep going.
They push you- directly and indirectly, to produce more, and to produce regularly.
They inspire you, whether with their own work or works they expose you to. They give you a reason to write two new sort-of poems every week for years.
You end up getting opportunities you never would have expected, and certainly ones you wouldn't find on your own.
It's a mutually beneficial relationship. I saw the fruits of practice at the last slam event, in which poets compete by getting ten minutes or so and a random prompt to earn the applause, laughs and adoration of both crowds and judges.
Everyone who had been at Peel for years seriously brought it. I kept meeting audience members who were kind of shocked, asking how these guys pulled these lines out of their ass. And the answer, as always, was practice.
10 minutes was more than enough to produce funny, witty, insightful writing.
It wasn't beret wearing finger clickers, but something primal, the campfire competitors of oral competitions each trying to one-up each other. It was witty wordplay and knock out punchlines; less art, more freestyle. The sort of thing that got whoops and "oh damn"s after a particularly well-phrased burn. Some of the pieces were really moving.
Personally, I did alright, coming in at the final round, but I got my dick jokes in, and the point is that it was a litmus test, a demonstration of how a community builds itself.
Find your community.
Seriously, if you got to the bottom of this post, whether coder or dancer, sketch artist or business blogger- fucking find your community. And I mean human beings, in the flesh- people that become friends (and rivals), not just an online village. People whose weddings you'll go to.
Whatever hobby, aspirations or heartfelt occupation you live- there's a community of folks out there who share it.
If I do well and get to eventually work professionally as an author, it will be the direct result of the time spent among these phenomenal human beings.
I know some of you glorious bastards are reading this right now. Some I might have performed with earlier in the night.
Well, my friends, excuse the bad prose of this post, the repetitive language, I mean it's 11:40 pm and I haven't proofread it, and my pills have kicked in, and...insert as always one of my insecure preambles here.
And thank you, as always, for reading, for listening, for supporting. From the bottom to the top of my soul.
To the rest: go find the others, and get very, very drunk with them.