Something from All

This week I'm visiting my sister and friends in Illinois.  After a deep nap on Sunday afternoon, my sister and I walked to the neighborhood coffee shop where our friend Rachel welcomed me to town, took our order, and invited me to this film screening with some other friends that happened last night.  Like many good films, this documentary spoke loudly and subtly to several rooms in my heart. As I contemplate beauty, I wonder at the young minds that participate in the Louder Than A Bomb festival, awed by their brilliance.

These students, uttering universal truths and personal struggles from the depths of their souls, create transcendent experiences for one, for all.  Yet while the art of Spoken Word, made of air, lingers in the air for a fleeting moment, I am sure that none of these artists would allow that they have made something from nothing.  Quite contrarily, these poets have reached deep inside themselves, poured the very essence of their essential souls, their experiences, their visions for the future, out onto the page and then re-inhaled and  reincarnated themselves to create and give life to an audience. The aptly named festival illustrates the resonance of the poets' spoken word, the gift to the world from a person's entirely vulnerable self - an outpouring of all of one's inherited gifts.

Thank you, poets.