big moments - part ii

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the slam:

there is something incredibly special about having a group of friends supporting you so large that they take up half the place. every time i got up i felt like i had the home advantage, which was powerful, heady stuff!

the first piece i did was the slam. i turned the third line humorous by doing it in the voice of the caterpillar from disney's alice in wonderland, and pulled out all the stops with the rest of it. there was a lot of finger-snapping and laughter, and i stepped off to crazy applause.

the satisfaction from that moment turned to confusion when the judges all scored me really poorly. so poorly, in fact, that i was surprised later to hear that i'd made it into the second round.

the feature poet was perry visionpoet divirgilio. he's almost as big as his words, it was fantastic listening to him!
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for the second round i took a bit of a risk. i took the microphone off the stand and crouched down next to it, eye-level with the audience. i deepened my voice and, having all the time in the world for such a short piece, slowly performed signs in the dead of night.

the first few moments were awkward for me as the first lines got a lot of laughs, and i'd been hoping to set the tone an octave darker. but i felt like the rest of it did the job. i finished, paused, stood up to put the microphone back and walk off the stage. not as much applause, and the scores... well, they were worse than before.

i guess the judges just didn't dig me. i felt a bit better about things later, when one of the other poets came up to tell me that what i'd done was really powerful. at least that.

so, to summarize: it was a wonderful evening with amazing performances by most of the competitors. i'm extremely proud of what i did even if it didn't get me onto the team. those who did make the team were all amazing, especially rabbit who took first place.

and aaa had come for the first half and left without any drama, so that was cool too :)

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