TRANSCRIPT

I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

So many times, I witnessed it; no, I felt it; a young trumpet player with a raw need to hear the notes in her head, played at the speed in which she feels them; or the rapper whose delight is wordplay to the nth degree, but even more, locates the cypher so deep within, that the joy is not cleverness, but the way the atmosphere changes when his rhymes hit the air. Or the modern dancer striking moves with such force, we in the crowd feel concentric waves of energy pulsate to our seats. Equally so, the actor who delivers their lines so convincingly parts of our selves are reawakened. 

I used to believe great art emerged from intense passion, a committed discipline driven by a purity of purpose. Of late, I use the word hunger as a measure of art, as an aesthetic value. Hunger as that inexplicable quality that conveys the artist’s works as their unique form of living, how they breathe where creation is existence.      

When I read a poem of such power, articulation, and image-making, I close the book thinking the writer had no other choice; the poem came into the world out of a voracious need. Even in the quietest of poems, set in a forest or garden, I hear an intense longing, for solitude, for evidence of our connection to something larger than ourselves.  

On this subject, today’s poem is unapologetic. Its rhythms are bound up in the speaker’s self-worth and their massive feelings; with such depth of cadence, repetition, and emotion, I cannot help but be moved. 

Playback
by Lauren Camp

Let there be footfall and car door. Let me 
be finished with fire. Let
the man get on a plane for his morning
departure, erasing each reverie. Soon
there will be only daylight,
maybe a blue envelope, torn. Maybe bracelets
of color from the petunias. I will need 
to know how to recover
the familiar, how to open the door
in the evening. How to again lock it.
Almost everything about me goes unspoken, 
but commas and colons. I live with this
heart rate, multiple times, its direction,
its tempo: my 4/4 with acceleration, sometimes
tuned to an alternate signature. Think of Brubeck’s 
“Take Five.” Those blocky chords were the result
of an accident—dead on arrival, they said,
after he smashed to the surf. Think how
he switched it around, made his hands
do what he wanted to hear, and forgive me
for the analogy. May I never
rush a surge for a better experience.
Every Sunday all over the country,
apologies gather. When I’m not in this
small cottage, unreacting, I cascade sound
and a few sentences from a cramped 
room to whoever will listen. I know some 
people think it is sinful to love such temptations,
but I stay with my face soft against
microphone, announcing my moral
directions. Sometimes, I’m convinced my blood
needs all those crossings. I’m not after
absolution. The man I love taught me to want
without lyrics. Remember I haven’t
gone anywhere. I’m in a thirsty way
sort of possessive. I shouldn’t show you this
side of myself. Try to remember I’m also praised
for my kindness. We each need to learn
to turn off some dreams so we can play
hours without creases.

"Playback" by Lauren Camp. Used by permission of the poet.