this is art

april in the city

Spring is confusing. Any given day can let winds cut through the weave of the sweater, or let the sun's warmth reach your face unencumbered. Dressing for the weather feels impossible, rain is always in the forecast, yellow powder pools on street corners. It is no longer winter; that much is obvious. I finish a workday and am shocked to see the warm, reddish rays reaching between the Manhattan skyscrapers, even on nights when time gets away from me. It feels easier to get outside, to do more than just read and write at home alone.

In the glimpses of warmth, in the increase in light, the city seems to come more alive — my weekends grow fuller and more interesting. On Sunday, I go to a reading club hosted by one friend and a poetry reading hosted by another. Each of these events is well-attended; there is a clear appetite for art in the city bursting with people. It seems foreign to me, when my introduction to poetry was so solitary, when it felt like something stoic and serious, rather than a part of a lively social life.

I began to pour myself obsessively into writing and film and other forms of art more intensely during the pandemic. It felt indulgent to let these works expand my world in the face of confinement. At first, I thought taking writing seriously meant more solitary time tapping away at a keyboard, that art could only be created in isolation. I spent many hours alone walking in place this way, barely making any progress in my craft, my understanding of the medium. I got used to writing words, but it felt like I had hit a wall when it came to writing anything beautiful or interesting.

It wasn't until I found a writing group online that I really started to grow as a writer. I thought I had known what writing could be, but my knowledge was minuscule. Through these friends, I learned how to write poetry, how to pitch a story, how to submit to magazines and publications. I was introduced to so many new books, so many ways of working — the possibilities of the world seemed to multiply exponentially. With their feedback and prodding, I began to experiment in my writing and grow more quickly than ever before. I don't know where I would be without them.

Imagine if my friends had never formed the group in the first place. Imagine if we hadn't put in the effort to organize monthly workshops to pull each other forward in our writing journeys. Imagine if art were just a solitary act, away from all of the joy and love we had to give each other. Imagine if five years ago I hadn't met these people. I don't know if I would still be writing.

Instead, there was this weekend — the digital group turned physical, as my writing group friends hosted events. Catherine brought people into her home to have snacks, drink lemonade, and talk about books. A calm familiarity hung in the air, balanced with our shared love of literature and the fact that most of us could only fixate on Hildi the cat causing a ruckus. Right after, we all headed to a local wine bar, where Zoë and her friend Michy had organized a poetry reading.

It's National Poetry Month in April, and the weather seems to sing its tune as we walk over. The temperature rises, and it feels like winter is slowly loosening its grip on the city. When we arrive, the bar is so crowded that it makes one start to wonder about the fire code. How many people can fit in this place? How are there this many people interested in spending their Sunday afternoon listening to poetry? I think about the sparsely attended poetry readings I used to go to in San Francisco and notice how lively it is here in contrast, how everyone seems interested in talking to one another as they find places to sit or stand before the poets begin to read.

Over the course of the afternoon, we hear from all sorts of poets, hearing humor and sorrow, laughter and sniffles. The audience sits in rapt attention. The poets speak and whisper and emphasize their words into the microphone and electricity emanates through everything. This is art, I think to myself over and over again. A mantra to reinforce what I'm experiencing and to remind myself of what I love. I think about how exciting it would be to read my poetry on a stage, how the writing is only a part of the art-making, how sharing the work matters just as much.

I think about art in general. There’s art for art's sake, there’s art for one’s own sake, but that type of art isn't what I am interested in. I dance in big rooms filled with dozens of other people, and I feed off the energy of those around me moving to the same beat that I do. I learn to enjoy certain songs more when someone dances more passionately to them. I love that I can see the most beautiful work of visual art among so many other people in museums and galleries, see the structure of a work more clearly in a student's sketch of a painting or overhear a new perspective from an art connoisseur. I love that I see my favorite movies in a room full of strangers, can hear their giggles at different times or their reviews as they walk out. I love hearing the hmms and mmms and snaps of others during the poetry reading, especially when they react to parts I wouldn’t have thought twice about. The poem's meaning expands when shared, when heard among a crowd.

At the end of the reading, I have fallen in love with poetry all over again, seeing it anew. It is the warm spring day in April among friends, it is the energy in the air, it is the love of my friends who brought everyone together. Days later, even as wind and the cold return, I am still seeing the world with the same warmth, and I feel grateful.

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💧 Drops of the Week 💧

• ALBUM - 1996 by Ryuichi Sakamoto - it’s good

• POEM - “Lily Pad” by Charles Theonia - with each new person arises an ever / more highly specified self-consciousness