Square Dancing with Giants

Too many thoughts to properly record here, brother. At the moment, I’m drafting a proposal to help bring The Strivers Row out to London to do a workshop series with the young folks out there. It’s my sincere belief that British youth, and young people worldwide, could greatly benefit from access to the sort of creative outlets for their frustration that I had back when I was in high school. Simply put, I was a really, really angry kid. I was lonely, insecure and truly felt like no one understood me. I was 17 years old at an elite New York private school, on the cusp of graduation and yet, nevertheless, this pain I felt was undeniable; I was a boy with a heart full of rage and nowhere to put it all.

This was the year I discovered spoken word poetry, and my entire life changed. It not only helped me pour my pain into the page, but also helped improve my public speaking skills, confidence, and willingness to share the most honest parts of me with absolute strangers. To my understanding, these riots, if nothing else, were a reflection of the very real pain and anguish that was lying latent inside of hundreds if not thousands of people. If I can play any part in helping those wounds heal, if I can go across the ocean and minister through some poems & a kind word or two to people who have been told for much of their lives that they are, at best, second-class citizens and at worst subhuman? That, to me sounds like a week, or two, or three very well spent. It sounds, in fact, like a large part of what I believe God put me on this Earth to do, to use words, whether written or spoken, to breathe life into spaces, and moments, where death has masqueraded itself as king. Transformation is possible. Restoration is possible. There’s just some very real, very hard, work that needs to be done. 

I hope that answered your question!

Thank you for the encouragement, sis! I’m glad to hear that your first experience with spoken word as an art form was a positive one, and hope that you continue to hear poetry that edifies and inspires you as time goes on. Trust me, the feeling of excitement that you left that venue with is mutual. To my knowledge, every single one of us that touched the stage that night left “The Classics” feeling like the show was a success, one far beyond what we with our all-too-human expectations could have imagined. How grateful I am that the God I serve is not limited by the minds of His children! Every time I try to box Him in, or assume He won’t show out, the Lord just goes above beyond all that I could ask or think yet again. 

Thanks for writing. I hope we get the chance to see you at our next show!

Truth be told, I became an English major after watching the film “Stranger Than Fiction” with my mother, and coming to the realization that I really thought words might be that powerful, that they might have the ability to play a part in re-shaping the world around us if used properly. It sounds cheesy, or at least like hyperbole, but you can ask my Mom. That’s actually how it happened lol