Today’s episode is guest hosted by Myka Kielbon.

Transcript

I’m Myka Kielbon, and this is The Slowdown.

A couple of years ago, I got tired of the questions at parties and bars – the “so what do you do for work?” kind of talk. My friend Shawn and I were dead set on perfecting what we called “riffing” — turning conversation into something more like jamming than a performance.

So, I came up with an inciting question. Something to start a conversation about nothing at all in the best way. Not about what anyone had or what they had done, but how they saw the world and how they received it. A slippery, delicious way of talking. Something to access the strangeness.

I would ask “are you a vessel or are you a portal?”

I understand how ridiculous that sounds. It is an imperfect question by design. Vessels and portals aren’t opposites, nor do they form clear metaphors for any human way of being. It’s not about saying “there’s two kinds of people.” It’s a way to get people a little riled up.

The question genuinely confused some people. Others were game from the start, and would answer with certainty right off the bat. We were at a restaurant when my sister, who is not the kind of person who enjoys this linguistic, theoretical play, pulled out her phone and started reading out the definitions of the two words. This pissed me off but I tried to repress that. The definitions had many lettered entries, and those of us at the table turned our ears close and listened.

Despite my resistance to the technical approach, I loved the tactile specificity of these definitions. They made the potential metaphors even weirder — better. Are you a tiny blood vessel or a black hole? Do you relate more to a watercraft larger than a dinghy or to a door? Do you feel like a drinking glass or a digital academic workspace?

I’ve since retired the question and tried a few more, especially in times where I couldn’t stand to answer a basic “how are you?” I’ve learned that, when times are tough and chaotic, I don’t forget how to be silly. I am always down to go deep with strangers, or even people that I’ve known for years. What I forget under duress, or can’t access, is how to be normal, whatever that really is. So I make structures for myself to throw off normal. I never really wanted it anyways.

Today’s poem has that kind of intimacy you only achieve by deciding to be weird together. When we forgo a tight grip on meaning, sometimes we get a little closer to the truth of feeling.

Mother of the English Language
by Nicole Arocho Hernández

A worm is not a worm until it recognizes itself. 

Frilly sounds are for the weak-hearted. 

I build a house of worship. For self-improvement. 

I can be inaccurate, sure. 

You seem to like to lick splinters. 

Tell me why. 

Something about feeling the edge of time. 




Somewhere in this house, you are crawling. 

"Mother of the English Language" by Nicole Arocho Hernández. Used by permission of the poet.