Is it quitting time?

So I'm watching this show where there's an interview with a man I only knew as an actor. Turns out he's actually a singer and songwriter too. I was impressed and admired him all the more. He isn't an 'A-Lister' so to speak, but I always thought he had a strong screen presence about him. At the end of the short (and poorly conducted) interview, it is announced that the singer/songwriter will perform a song after the break. 'What a treat,' I thought.

I thought wrong. So very wrong.

It was painful to listen to. My heart hurt for him. He may have just been having an off night, but the sour performance, complete with missed notes on his solo acoustic guitar, made me think about how we sometimes hold on to who or what we were long past the prime. For some, it might be a sport they use to play exceedingly well. For others, like my friend on the tube there, a musical instrument. And then I wondered something that made my heartache a bit more personal; what am I still holding on to?

I know I've had my revelations about poetry so I'm not worried about that. But what about my abilities as a designer? Will those skills wane as visual languages and creative tools evolve? Will there come a point in my career where I'll have to bow out of the design arena making room for a new generation of artist? Most alarmingly, will I know when it's quitting time?

Taking a closer look at my buddy on stage there, I observed the special connection he had with his soulful lyrics, his stealthy black guitar, the 'folk' in his voice. There was no sell-by date on his ability to put life to letters and sorrow to song. He's always done this. He'll always do this. And it doesn't matter if he's performing for a sold out crowd, or a intimate audience of what must be his adorable grandchildren. It's in him. It is him.

Thinking better of my woeful wonders, I decided not to concern myself with the struggles of holding on to that which should be let loose. I can't lose love for something that has enriched the line of my life no more than I can lose the chocolate pigment of my skin. I love expressing myself through design. I love it beyond a mastery of design tools or fluency of visual languages. And if I lose my seat at the world's table, discarded as irrelevant, then I'll put my own t-shirt on my back, hang my own illustration on my wall, and recline to twenty pages of my own book of poems.

For who I am is design and rhyme. And shall be long past quitting time.

'I Came Here Seeking'

I've written before about the collection of old poems I've been going through while in the process of anthologizing (I think that's a word) my works. How I found myself disappointed in my abilities as a writer but later found respect for who I was and how I processed the world around me in verse. I was younger, had a lot to say and perhaps wasn't confident yet in my own, plain voice. But recently, I rediscovered a poem that really made me a fan of me again.

It is a poem I wrote in 2000 whose form, depth, execution and flow are all so much more mature compared to most of what I'd been reviewing. The work certainly shows my fondness of Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Raven' in the way it tells the story of a secular man literally searching for Jesus. After reading it, I thought to myself, "If I'd only ever written one poem, I'd want it to have been it."

Allow me to share:

I Came Here Seeking

In hopes of echoed questions ceasing
And feeble efforts to live peaking
Or the visions which I’ve been before seeing
Unveil themselves like a butterfly entwined.
I came here seeking,
but will I find?

In hopes of meeting some miracle man
Who is unlike man I’m to understand
I study the door to see who stands
But enters no being I seek.
I came here for his hand,
but things look bleak.

Then all of a sudden, like a crashing wave
Against the rocks that stood un-swayed,
Behind me sounded a mighty praise
As my face was turned toward the door.
Startled, I turned to discover its meaning,
but heard the sound no more.

Shoulders shrugged, I returned to my seeking.
Retired my eyes to the crowd with a peaking,
Studying the silence of each one un-speaking
For I’ve heard this man was meek.
But no quiet mouth
did to my soul speak.

Short of patience, now I hungered
In my eyes that steady wondered
From one pew onto another
Longing to be done.
Longing sorely to discover
this mighty “Son of Sons.”

To my dismay, the service ending—
Eyes now shutting, arms extending—
Met not my finding while in my sitting
He whom I direly sought.
Be church as good as it certainly may,
I felt it all for naught.

Still, in passing each one greeting
I studied the faces with careful sweeping
Hoping to satisfy my needing
And behold a holy thing.
A miracle man, a sudden change,
or perhaps a feast with kings.

Alas, the day had not the will
That matched my own; to mount the hill
That was my anguish and be fulfilled,
And low did I go from the doors.
Sobbing for I was broken still,
but now unlike before.

Sorrow must have trailed my walking
For with a tap someone was talking—
“Excuse what seems to be my stalking
I believe you left this behind.”
And with his arm extending gesture
I looked down toward his find.

It was a sketch I faintly knew
A sketch of doors—surely two
And a sign that read: For walking through.
May entry be your own.
I knew these doors. I knew these words.
But I knew these things alone.

I asked the man from where it came
And with not pause his answer plain:
“Aside your seat you left it laying
How strange you did not know.
For I watched you cradle that very sheet
and sketch with subtle strokes.”

Now, surely, I’ve seen days forgetting
Where I left some item sitting
But his words were too unfitting
If this were mine I’d know.
For it was sketched with careful penning
and spoke the words of poems.

“Sir”, I said, “your noble deed
Will go with out reward. You see,
That sketch does not belong to me
For it came not by my hand.
Perhaps back to the Church you’ll speed
to find the worthy man.”

“This man is you” I heard him say
As I turned to walk away.
I stopped to hear his voice explain
But the air was dense and still.
No words came from behind my stay
and to turn I had not will.

For somewhere amid the pieces of heart
That laid about my feet apart
I knew the very being I sought
Was standing just behind
With tears in eyes, I knew the time…
“I’ll turn, but will I find?”

Pardon me, but does this suck to you too?

When I was younger, I use to write poems galore. Every day, every place, every moment was worthy of a portrait of poetry, and so I wrote like mad. I don't know if I had a lot more to say then than I do now, but I admire those times and am occasionally tempted to review a few old poems and wax poetic for a bit.

That old temptress came around again recently. I blew the dust off the medium sized cardboard moving box and cracked open one of the first notebooks I saw.

As I snuggled up to the tattered, spiral bound little book of treasure, I began to get this strange feeling. It took me by surprise. I knew I'd be feeling something when I started to revisit my works, but not this. To my dismay, I was...underwhelmed.

In fact, after the first 15 poems or so, underwhelmed devolved to a rather deep disappointment. I thought I was better than what I was reading. At times I wondered "who wrote this crap?" What happened? Why didn't anyone tell me I sucked?

It took many poems and pages and notebooks (and days) later for me to come to my senses. So I wasn't some master poet like I might have thought all these years. But I was young, inexperienced, open, curious, ambitious. Back then, I worked into each poem what life offered at the time; age, friends, school, girlfriend, work, wants. I wrote from the prospective of someone who has seen little in life yet, but was looking for so much. I realized that, in essence after all, I was a poet.

Then I had a most important revelation; I am who I am because I was who I was. Sounds simple and hardly profound, but when I examined the thought, my underwhelming poetry became as important to me as the fruitless doodles of the most famed artist.

I realized that because of my poetry, I began to take an interest in writing lyrics for songs. That lead to the pursuit of a career in the music business while in high school, which landed me a number of paid internships in New York City, which meant I never had to work a day in my neighborhood supermarket in the South Bronx like many did.

Because of my poetry, I tried my hand at graphic art, attended trade school at night for visual communications, and worked hard to be one of the best future creatives in my class. Because of my poetry, I learned early in life how to express love for someone, how to tell the difference between good and bad relationships, and made the decision to leave the comfort of the relationship I knew for the one I knew was meant to last.

Indeed, largely due to a dusty box of underwhelming works that never stood a chance to uphold my high expectations, I was fortunate enough to have lived a life that would likely have only been a dream without the gift of poetry. In that revelation, I found new respect for who I was and what I had to say.

I'm looking forward to the next tattered notebook.