Our Narrative Medicine Live Virtual Zoom session tonight brought together 27 people from across the country – and the world – to watch and listen to a video of Joshua Bennett perform “Tamara’s Opus” years ago at the White House. We listened to the artist’s words and watched his movements enhance a lament and an apology to his sister who is Deaf. He tells of the time, as a 5-year-old, he was shocked to hear his father say that there is nothing wrong with his Tamara. She is different, his father says. Viewers feel the long-ago shattering of Joshua’s innocence. How strong must have been their sibling-bond before he felt the nine letters of the word “d-i-f-f-e-r-e-n-t” as hammers shattering his “stained-glass innocence.” His lyrics bring sounds (of rain and crickets), which he realizes Tamara never heard and evoke images of his sister and others dancing not to sound but to the vibrations of music coming from loudspeakers cranked to the max.

His narrative takes him from before either the sister or brother was born “all those conversations we must have had in Heaven ” to the present moment when he laments “no poem…can make up for all the time that we have lost” and offers an apology by dancing his digits in Sign Language that he has learned. In so doing, Bennett shows us the power not only of opening our ears (like lotus petals) to deeply listen but also the power of learning an other’s language. Participants commented on the abyss they perceived between the two characters, and the efforts Joshua puts in to overcome it. In enjoying this beautiful performance and piece, we reflected on the ways to overcome such an abyss: by learning a new language, apologizing, or simply being present.   

In response to the prompt, “Write about shattering the silence” participants echoed back to Joshua Bennet strong visuals, sense perceptions, a list poem, the physicality of breaking cups and platters and marching in the street to shatter unjustly imposed silences. The prompt took us in many different directions in asking us to think of a silence shattered, whether it meant the novelty of introducing a new sound into a space or the tragedy of removing an ongoing sound from a scene of daily life.

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Please join us for our next session Wednesday, June 17th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

“Tamara’s Opus”
by Joshua Bennett
 
Tamara has never listened
to hip-hop
Never danced
to the rhythm of raindrops
or fallen asleep to a chorus of chirping crickets
she has been Deaf
for as long as I have been alive
and ever since the day that I turned five
My father has said:
"Joshua. Nothing is wrong with Tamara.
God just makes
some people different."
And at that moment
those nine letters felt like hammers
swung gracefully by unholy hands
to shatter my stained-glass innocence
into shards that could never be pieced back together
or do anything more
than sever the ties between my sister and I.

I waited
was patient numberless years
anticipating the second
her ears would open like lotuses
and allow my sunlight sentences to seep
into her insides
make her remember all those conversations
we must have had in Heaven
back when God hand-picked us
to be sibling souls centuries ago

I still remember her 20th birthday
readily recall my awestruck eleven-year old eyes
as I watched Deaf men and women of all ages
dance in unison to the vibrations
of speakers booming so loud
that I imagined angels chastising us
for disturbing their worship
with such beautiful blasphemy
until you have seen
a Deaf girl dance
you know nothing of passion.
There was a barricade between us
that I never took the time to destroy
never for even a moment
thought to pick up a book and look up
the signs for sister
for family
for goodbye, I will see you again some day
remember the face of your little brother.
It is only now I see
that I was never willing
to put in the extra effort to love her properly
So as the only person in my family
who is not fluent in sign language
I have decided to take this time
to apologize
Tamara, I am sorry
for my silence.

But true love knows no frequency
So I will use these hands
to speak volumes
that could never be contained
within the boundaries of sound waves
I will shout at the top of my fingertips
until digits dance and relay these messages
directly to your soul
I know
that there is no poem
that can make up for all the time that we have lost
but please, if you can
just listen
as I play you a symphony
on the strings of my heart
made for no other ears on this Earth
but yours.

Brave New Voices slam champion Joshua Bennett performs "Tamaraʼs Opus
at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word 
on May 12, 2009.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

With participants from Bahrain, Calgary, Massachusetts, Northern Ontario, Norwich, England, Pennsylvania, San Francisco and more, we began by looking at a video of Maya Angelou reciting –or more accurately, performing her poem, “We Wear the Mask.”  The video begins with her explaining that the poem was written to honor a maid she routinely encountered on a city bus, whose seeming-laugh Angelou recognized as “that survival instinct.”  Her poem draws, she explained, upon Paul Laurence Dunbar’s 1892 poem of the same name.  Despite the wonkiness of the video reception on Zoom, we were all deeply affected, as we went on to read the poem silently to ourselves.  Participants remarked on Angelou’s moving and emotional presentation, noting their initial reticence to react, which was perhaps due to the personal and emotional impact of the piece, a deference to or in reverence of the recitation, or the feeling that one needed to “meet the challenge” of its presentation.  As we proceeded, the responses to both the performance and the written word took us into the complexity of laughter as a human response, how it can express irony, submission, defiance, self-protection   –and what it can conceal.  The on-goingness of racial suffering and the presence of generational trauma expressed in the poem were observed, “There in those pleated faces/I see the auction block,” as was and the poem’s final note of gratitude to those who wore a mask of submission, “From living on the edge of death/They kept my race alive”.

The responses to the prompt, “Write about the last mask you encountered,” were stunning in their depth, and seemed to answer the poem in a way.  Participants bravely experimented in their writing and gave voice to both individual and community experiences, of feeling marginalized and adjusting personal behavior, to navigate spaces that at times may not accept their identities.  It was a remarkable session! 

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Please join us for our next session Monday, June 15th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

We Wear the Mask
BY Maya Angelou

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O my God, our tears
To thee from tortured souls arise.
And we sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world think otherwise,
We wear the mask!

When I think about myself,
I almost laugh myself to death,
My life has been one great big joke,
A dance that’s walked,
A song was spoke,
I laugh so hard, I almost choke,
When I think about myself.

Seventy years in these folks’ world.
The child I works for calls me "girl";
I say, “Yes ma’am,” for working’s sake.
I'm too proud to bend
And too poor to break,
So, I laugh, until my stomach ache,
When I think about myself.

My folks can make me split my side,
I laughed so hard, I nearly died.
The tales they tell, sound just like lyin',
They grow the fruit, but eat the rind.
I laugh, until I start to cryin',
When I think about myself,
And my folks, and the little children.

My Fathers sit on benches,
Their flesh count every plank,
The slats leave dents of darkness
Deep in their withered flank,

And they nod, like broken candles,
All waxed and burnt profound
They say 'But, Sugar, it was our submission
That made your world go round.'

There in those pleated faces
I see the auction block,
The chains and slavery's coffles,
The whip and lash and stock.

My Fathers speak in voices
That shred my fact and sound,
They say, 'But Sugar, it was our submission
And that made your world go round.'

They've laughed to shield their crying ,
They shuffled through their dreams
They step 'n' fetched a country
And wrote the blues in screams.

I understand their meaning,
It could and did derive,
From living on the ledge of death,
They kept my race alive.

By wearing the mask.

We welcomed 22 people from U.S. states including New York, New Jersey, and California and other countries including India, Bahrain and Canada. Together, we watched “The Last Performance,” a one-minute film written and directed by Reza Moayedi (2013, Iran). 

After two viewings of the film, we opened the discussion by asking what we knew about people in the film — the musician, his companion, the person in the control room.  Hands were “raised” immediately, and participants shared aspects of the film that resonated personally for them. We wondered if the two people on stage were a father and daughter, or perhaps a patient and caretaker. We also thought about how the story might have changed with different casting — for example, what if the director had chosen actors with other apparent ages or genders, or if the musical instrument had been a piano or electric guitar? One participant drew a parallel to two plays by Eugene Ionesco: “The Chairs” and “The Lesson.” We explored how the film’s title shaped our ideas about what we saw, especially because it came at the end of the work rather than at the beginning. 

Our prompt was “Write about a space you’d like to return to,” which opened up the many ways that we can think about space. One writer discussed the architecture of space and the difference between public and private spaces. Another spoke from the personal perspective, thinking about conscious and unconscious spaces, and the way we lose ourselves to become part of the larger world.  We also thought about the spaces that we’d like to go back to that no longer exist, such as spaces where our parents were still young and healthy, or spaces of innocence before we knew things we wished we did not. Our final two readers used sensory details to populate their spaces. For one, that was the French Alps, a place dotted with red poppies and “peppered by hamlets,” and open to freedom, and for the other, Hanging Basket Lake, with water so ice-cold that the narrator shivers just to look at it. That latter piece ended with a tumble, and we noticed how the earlier details let us feel the impact of the fall in our own bodies.      

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Please join us for our next session Sunday, June 14th at 3pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Together, we read the poem “The Explorer” by Gwendolyn Brooks (posted below). This text stimulated many questions about the spaces we exist in and the “quiet places” we search for, particularly in the context of our current national and international events. “We are all looking for a quiet place,” observed one of our participants, as this poem highlighted for them the interplay between the personal private to a larger, broader social context. “It’s a poem that sends the reader into spirals,” commented another participant, highlighting the mental and sensory “work” the poem requires us readers to do, as explorers “sifting through” “the fabric of life” and “the general confusion” that comes with it. Together, we explored the “complicated connotations” of the word “noises” in the first line: what kind of noises is the explorer moving through? We noted how “noise can be subjective”: what someone hears as noise could be, “music”, “dissent”, or “neutral sounds” for someone else. We experienced comfort in the “velvet peace”, and someone commented how this made us aware of the “texture of the things around us”. We found ourselves wondering about the different dimensions in which peace can be achieved, both in the exterior and the interior realms. Many of our participants were drawn to the end of this poem, “fearing the choices that cried to be taken”; as someone observed, choices are “made”, rather than “taken”. In the eyes of some of our participants, the explorer in the poem unites people to make choices together… only to find no peace and no quiet rooms to negotiate and decide the next steps of the journey.

For our writing activity, we dove further into the “choices” the poem raised for us. We wrote to the prompt “write about the choices crying to be taken.” Our readers reminded us of the feeling of smallness we may feel in front of the insurmountable height of some choices, whether in the past, in the present or the in future. “How do I move forward from this virtual time?” asked one of our readers. Throughout our dialogue, some participants shared a sense of relief at the thought that “we are not the only “ones” that have choices”, as well as the strong sense of responsibility that comes with knowing that “choices impact those around us”. At the end of our conversation, we returned to the image of the explorer, moving through the world one step and one choice at a time. In the words of our participants, we left each other having “awakened the explorer in [us], especially after spending more than 75 days in lockdown” and reminded that “we are always exploring”.

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Please join us for our next session Wednesday, June 10th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

THE EXPLORER  
- Gwendolyn Brooks (1959)

Somehow to find a still spot in the noise
Was the frayed inner want, the winding, the frayed hope
Whose tatters he kept hunting through the din.
A velvet peace somewhere.
A room of wily hush somewhere within.

So tipping down the scrambled halls he set
Vague hands on throbbing knobs. There were behind
Only spiraling, high human voices,
The scream of nervous affairs,
Wee griefs,
Grand griefs. And choices.

He feared most of all the choices, that cried to be taken.

There were no bourns.
There were no quiet rooms.

Published Harpers Magazine, September, 1959

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our text was “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou, posted below.

Our prompt was “Write about a time you either sang or heard the caged bird’s song.”

More details on this session will be posted soon, so check back!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Please join us for our next session Monday, June 8th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

We look forward to seeing you again soon!

Caged Bird
By Maya Angelou

A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind   
and floats downstream   
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and   
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings   
with a fearful trill   
of things unknown   
but longed for still   
and his tune is heard   
on the distant hill   
for the caged bird   
sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams   
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream   
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied   
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings   
with a fearful trill   
of things unknown   
but longed for still   
and his tune is heard   
on the distant hill   
for the caged bird   
sings of freedom.

Maya Angelou, “Caged Bird” from Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? 
Copyright © 1983 by Maya Angelou.