Setting A New Stage
As I stumbled off stage at an open air poetry festival in Berlin, the final I would likely do for the summer and finally sat down I realised, ok I think I’m ready. It felt like there were no more hurdles to overcome, I’ve spent the summer reading a re-reading attending short courses listening to podcasts, buying Laptops and adobe subscriptions, trying to knock off all the tasks on the list which Marc sent. Yet I haven’t written my SCAB, the last and arguably the easiest task, for someone so used to proclaiming emotional turmoil to crowds of people.
The truth is, since dropping out of my Economics degree and fleeing to Berlin 3 years ago, with what was left of my student loan and a few clothes on my back. I’ve been directionless, not really knowing where I wanted to go and not willing to risk unless I was absolutely sure. But I’m older now Ive figured out my passions and formed myself into someone that knows what they want, just maybe not quite how yet. I’m still in Berlin, and my passion for performance poetry lead me to now own a stake in a poetry bar, but I want more than the nomadic romance of a struggling artist, so appealing at 21 years old, yet at 25 my mind set has changed, path, AND SCA is that path.
I Don’t want to vanish in the puffs of cigarette smoke. My outlook on life has changed, been knocked into place by staring and the mirror of my soul, I am so glad that it turned out as it has.
Although my poems and wordsmithed syllables are sometimes long winded behemoths and manifestos of emotion. I realised that all they are are stories. I remembered my parents, working over the campaigns of their clients. I remembered that I am the son of two advertising professionals. Two former students of this very school and all I was doing was writing adverts of my own emotions and feelings, then performing them to crowds gathered outside, letting my voice vanish into the wind. I want to imprint that voice into concrete with all the tools I can, then paint over it with increasing detail and skill, I want to learn and use what the last few years have taught me. While staying true to who I am and where I’ve come from.