Napkin Scratches

The full-on pragmatic snap of the oyster

is sometimes the only thing we can truly feel.

When sitting with the other fools, I too am distracted by shiny lights through the bottles of vodka and such.

The master stroke of our creation

Is how we never really eat the way we should.

Vegetables are green.  Tea is red.

Fools are brown.

My shit is tight (say what? say what?)

Everything I am is echoes.

At what point did I stop learning and start

repeating?

Repeating…

I resonate with these fools

On such a bombastic and spectral frequency.

Music is good.

When I was 13 years old, I heard a song on the local alternative radio station that really caught my attention.  It was haunting, and the lyrics, while not really creating any linear narrative, had a kind of sadness and drama to them.  The song was called “E-Bow the Letter” by R.E.M., and even though I couldn’t quite figure it out, I liked it enough to put the album on my Christmas list. 

                I don’t think my grandmother had any idea what she was really picking up for her grandson when she bought that album: for all she knew it was just some “hip” pop music that he had heard on the radio.  I didn’t really know what I was getting either.  At the time, my tastes in music were just starting to transition.  I had grown up, probably like most kids, with the music my parents had liked, and in this case, I actually feel like I was pretty lucky.  By the time I was a teenager, I was familiar with many of the best rock bands of the 60s and 70s; everything from The Beatles and the Rolling Stones to Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton.  I was, as most teenagers do, feeling the need to branch out and explore my own musical tastes.  Unfortunately, this experiment had thus far yielded poor results, due mainly to the fact that I didn’t have that many friends, and even fewer friends who weren’t goody two-shoes churchgoers like myself.   This was long before music was widely available on the internet, so all I really had to explore was the radio, and for a boy in Memphis, Tennessee who was trying to get away from classic rock; who didn’t like country or R&B, the pickings were slim.  Most scans of the local stations only offered up the same pop anthems.  You know the type: the kind of catchy, insubstantial song that is often played 20 times a day on soft rock stations in dentists’ offices or in other places in which the management wants music but doesn’t want to offend anyone.  The kind of song that is really good at sticking between your ears, but manages to do so without really saying anything.  I’m not saying that pop music is inherently bad: it isn’t.  The trouble was, on my newly formed and wobbly musical legs, I couldn’t really hear the difference between what was and wasn’t good music, and at the time I wanted something more.  Even if I didn’t really know what that something was.

                I think that’s exactly why that album had such an impact on me.  New Adventures in Hi-Fi gave me the chills that first Christmas afternoon when I put it on.  Sitting in my living room with my new Sony Discman, I listened to the whole album front to back.  As I said before, I didn’t really know the difference between what I was hearing on the radio and what I was looking for in music, but I knew right away that this was different.  My only experiences with the band R.E.M. at that point were their more poppy songs.  And let’s be honest, who didn’t like “Shiny Happy People”.  I also had to admit, very guiltily at the time, that I had loved the song “Losing My Religion”.  But this album didn’t sound like those songs, either.  It was an album that had its own flavor: and I was experiencing the flavor of an album for the first time. 

For one thing, it was warmer than almost anything that I had been listening to on the radio.  The emotions weren’t scripted, and the lyrics weren’t trite.  In fact, I was stumped by them.  They were confusing.  They didn’t outright give you anything.  They held no easy answers. 

The music was the same way: it had depth.  I’m not speaking to the technical complexity of the music or the chord structure, but to the way I felt listening to it.  There were layers to the sound.  There was care and passion put into its construction.    Over the course of the next year, I probably listened to that album 100 times, and each time, it seemed, I caught a little bit of something I hadn’t seen before. 

I think, above all, it was the questions that that album brought me to that really had the most impact on me.  There were parts of that album that both glorified and stripped down for questioning who we were as a country.  There were love songs put back to back with sticky songs about sex.  And across the whole thing was this fierce individualism.  It was shocking to me: the protagonist of this album was strong, complex, and compassionate, but believed in living with no shame or guilt, and to him, religion was a crutch.  I couldn’t reconcile those things in my head.  How could the person who wrote the beautiful lyrics of “Be Mine”, have written outright and unashamedly that he respected, but didn’t love Jesus at the beginning of “New Test Leper”?  These were concepts that were, at the time, completely foreign to me, and right on time.  They were absolutely crucial first steps on the road to self-discovery: the end of my musical innocence, so to speak, and a testament to the capacity for change that music can have on our lives.  I hadn’t really understood that power until this album came along.

 I was in my car this week with the ipod on random, and a song came on from New Adventures in Hi Fi and I immediately switched over to it.  I once again listened to the album front to back after years of it lying forgotten.  I realized all that that album did for me: how it was a pivot point in my life, and how it opened a lot of doors for me into new realms of thought.  When I was 13, I didn’t have the words or the perspective to see it, but today, I have a bit more.  So I thought I’d share.  It just happened to be R.E.M. for me, but I know that a lot of you reading this had those pivot points or first steps in your own lives.  I encourage you to go back and listen to, read, or watch them again with your new perspective.  Feel free to share what those things were for you.  Or go download a copy of New Adventures in Hi Fi.  It probably won’t do for you what it did for me when I was 13, but it’s still a great listen.

Wrote this today...

Here is an open door

There’s a place to look through it

There’s a place to walk through it.

There’s sun on bone

Carrion-eaters swoop above

There’s dust in your mouth.

There’s color here

And a place to catch your breath

There’s a way to still breathe, oh yes.

Finally, there’s coolness between swelter and freeze

The sound of a plane high overhead

There’s the distance that sound always brings.

Here is an open door

There’s a place to look through it

There’s a place to walk through it.

Shore

Where to begin?

Where to begin?

Here.

In the quietest part of my mind,
I'm on that shore again.

In front of me is a darkness that breathes-
that curls its lips
and bares gums and teeth.

Cool, sucking black carries sand from underfoot.
It's soft here,
but the question comes again.

Would I dare an ankle?
Hazard a knee?
My nerve, a proud afternoon thunderstorm
breaks
and subsides. 
No.  No further.

I can hear, them, though-
hear whales singing to each other.
I can hear eels sweeping into reefs, blind as cavefish
(like me).
I can hear crabs sharpening their pincers,
shaving prime cuts
off of dead things,
and jellyfish
forever pulling water in,
pushing it out.

And among them there are also
beings of fathomless power, horror,
rage and beauty
roll silently in the pitch.
Undiscovered. Undreamt of by man.
I cannot see them, and something may brush against my leg.

My nerve is a red brick house in the sunlight
that proves empty and haunted in the dark.
No.  No further.  Not this night.

I know
in that quietest part of my mind,
that one distant and windy night,
I will stand on that shore
with the sucking sand and breathing dark,
and I will not be afraid.

I will disappear beneath black waves.

One distant and windy night,
I will explore all that reels beneath them.

Introductions all around...

Hello! 

My name is Steven Kuhn, and I am a writer who doesn't write.  At least not enough.  For years I have been writing poetry, occasional short stories, and random essays about various topics that affect my life, but not sharing any of my work outside of a few friends and family.  I have to say, at this point in my life, I'm beginning to stagnate with this formula.  So at the advice of a friend whose creative advice I trust implicitly, I am starting this blog as a way to share some of my work with a larger community. 

Odds are, if you're reading this, you know me- but here is a little bit of who I am at this point in my life, anyway.  I am 28, and I've been married for a little over a year.  I currently work as an English teacher for Memphis City Schools in Memphis, Tennessee.  I have a bachelor's from Indiana University, and a master's degree from the University of Memphis.  I have a bunny rabbit.  I like beer, video games, science fiction, and bad movies. 

I also like lists.  Here is a list of things I am:
1. Honest
2. Complex
3. A good friend, except when it comes to talking on the phone.  I suck at that.
4. Often, a walking cliche.  But I think we all are to some degree.

Here is a list of things that I want this blog to be:
1. A sounding board for my ideas.  Seriously- if you like something I'm doing, please tell me.  If you think that a poem I post on here is trite and hackneyed, tell me.  I respect honesty, and I'm a good friend- I need feedback.
2. A way to spread my work.  If you know somebody that likes this sort of thing- pass it along.  I would love to eventually gain an audience.
3. A way to show some of you who know me a different side of my personality.
4. A way to keep me writing.  Let's be honest here- I haven't been doing enough of what I have often proclaimed as my passion.
5. A way to share what inspires me.  Sometimes, I get numb.  So I will post song lyrics, pictures, poems, quotes, or anything else that I love as a means of spreading around the artists I respect and starting conversations.  I will always post the source, as well- so please don't sue me.  Feel free to do the same!  Post a quote, a picture, an article on here if you think I'd find it interesting!  Just make sure you post the source, also.
6. Fun.  I hold fun in very high esteem, and I respect those that have it.

Here's a list of things that I don't want this blog to be:
1. "Pity me.  I'm sad."  Most writers of poetry go through this phase at some point (usually in high school), and I think it is, for most of us, an important phase of growth.  I went through it too.  In high school.  I have moved on, and I want to continue to grow as an artist.  That being said, I want to reflect the human condition, and sometimes, as humans, we are sad.  There will be sad poems on here sometimes.  It is important for me to assure you, though, that I am not posting these things for attention, but to encourage reflection.
2. A circus gallery.  I have a very well-developed sense of humor, most of you know. This is also a free-speech zone. Funny is fine- post whatever you want here.  That being said, I would appreciate it if you would keep the more irrelevant stuff for other venues.  "LOLZ UR POEMS SUK!!1!" is not exactly constructive criticism.  If you want to share with me a funny video you found, awesome- put it on my facebook, though.  If you want to send me a picture of your idiot friend's penis, I'd appreciate you not doing it here.  Or at all, really.
3. This goes without saying, but DON'T STEAL MY SHIT.  If, God help you, you just really love something you read here and want to share it with someone else, by all means, do it.  Just make sure that you mention my name.  Everything I write here, I probably wrote on paper first.  I have the originals, I have the date stamp that shows when I posted, it'll be easy to prove it's mine.

All that being said, I'm excited to start this.  I truly want your feedback.  I truly want discussions to form here.  And I want to share the things I have to say.  I'll end with one of those things that inspire me- a quote from one of my favorite musicians.

"If I felt like I had something special to tell, why would I work against myself and hide it under my belt?"
-Atmosphere, "In My Continental"