The Art of Writing - Spoken Word Poem

I’ve had a lot of fun exploring different creative writing techniques this week. It’s important to test our minds and challenge ourselves, so when I saw Sarah Kays work I immediately began admiring her and her creative expression through Spoken Word Poetry. I thought I’d give it go! (If you like this, you all should google her! Especially her performance of “when love arrives” with Phil Kaye.)

Admittedly, I’ve always thought of myself as a prose writer rather than a poet, so it’s interesting for me to explore different creative avenues, whether I’m good at them or not! I struggled when brainstorming what I wanted my poem to be about. Then I realised I just had to be honest with myself and write about what’s on my heart at the moment, mainly my writing; suddenly the poem pretty much exploded onto the page. So, I decided to write this poem based on the ‘art of writing’ and what it really means to me, after all it seems to have encompassed my entire life. 

An important point to note when watching this is that I have definitely enjoyed hiding behind my computer and have never ever been a good public speaker (my neck freezes and I can’t move my head, very robot-esque and entirely embarrassing). I am terrified of posting this, it is so far out of my comfort zone I should be wearing a life jacket. So why am I doing it? Because sometimes, we have to push the boat out, take the leap, look like a complete idiot when doing so as we don’t really understand whats happening, just so that we might get the opportunity to learn and grow.  I’m at a time in my life when I am open to embracing change, challenges and learning. What I’m learning right now is that life is a guessing game. P.S Sorry about the wind/planes overhead  - it annoyed me too.

“I’m not happy” – and you probably don’t want to hear that.

This is my social experiment, can you guess from the photos that I just posted that I’m not happy? No? Me either, in fact I almost convinced myself that I was the happiest person in the world. In actual fact I’d say that today I am feeling mediocre at best. So what can you tell from these picture of me winking at you with a cheeky grin on my face? Perhaps I feel confused (second photo), or I feel flirty (all of the above photos). Can you for instance tell that I’m hungry or tired or just been crying at the latest episode of The Good Wife. No! In fact you can tell very little from the photos in this post, apart from what I had engineered you to think about ‘me’.

I’ve become acutely aware of social media as a source of creating ones identity. We can use our Facebook, Instagram’s, twitters to emit parts of us that we don’t like and create an image of ourselves that we want to project to the world.

We can edit our faces, so we look more tanned, less tired and give a little bit of authenticity to our not-so-real smiles. We can go on a night out and take a thousand photos of an otherwise ordinary evening and make it look like we are having ‘the time of our life’.

It’s easy to pretend when we’re just our computer screens.

Then there are those that whine all over Facebook, that we quickly hide from our feed because it doesn’t fit the ‘happy-go-lucky’ world that we’ve created online. And whilst we find those people irritating and somewhat undignified for airing their dirty laundry publically and without discretion, we know too, that we’re feeling the exact same.

Still we continue because we want everyone to believe that we are the perfect person living in a perfect world and any trouble that comes our way we brush aside with a smile. We want our friends to adhere to this same policy because we don’t want to have to be reminded that this perfect world doesn’t exists, that we aren’t all coping, that we’re not all happy and some of us are struggling.

This is the point where you stop reading.

It’s way too depressing for you.

Right?

We all live our life by inspiring quotes and clichés such as ‘we’re only human’, when in reality we don’t accept nor act as though this is the truth.

We can spread our incredible lives, our true joys and happiest moments (and there are many of them because life is fruitful) across our internet personas but how many of us, are willing to do the same when we’re just not okay?

Are you brave enough to admit that you messed up, that you made a mistake, that you’re not where you want to be, you’re going through a break up and it’s hard, your relationship with your kids is difficult, you’re struggling with alcohol, sexuality, life?

Even better, are you brave enough to tell your friend that, it’s alright because I’m the exact same.

Hiding behind our edited photos and perceived wonderful life creates an illusion, a façade that we have 400+ friends, when in reality the majority of people on Facebook, are lonely and that’s why they’re on there.

I think it’s time we took away the taboo that is “unhappiness” or even “depression” because it’s not infectious, it’s real and ignoring it doesn’t help anybody.  We’re living in a separate reality that has been created by our desperation for perfection but take away that unhealthy obsession and what we’re left with is this reality. In turn that will leave us to focus upon what we have, how we’re really feeling and hopefully lead towards a happier life.

Represent who you really are on social media today, not just the best edited version of you.