Very Bad Poetry Night
Greetings neglected blog readers. I have been away and now I'm not and other things.
How are you?
If your response is positive, I am pleased. If your response is negative, I am sorry. Both of my reactions are of course laden with the proper nuance that your particular situation requires.
Enough bullshit. Time is money. I wish time was something else like love or candy but it's not. It's money.
*
If you're not a regular Black Hockey Jesus reader, you'll need two pieces of background information in which to contextualize this post and enrich its meaning.
1). I'm concerned with, troubled by, and excited about issues of identity. Who is concerned with, troubled by, and excited about issues of identity? See? Exactly. It's totally confusing.
2). I have cool friends who throw the best parties.
These two facts recently met, shared interesting conversation, went to bed together, had crazy porno sex, and I'm trying to get a baby metaphor in here but I'm tired of this sentence.
*
Vanessa and Jeremy throw a party. So they invite a bunch of people over for drinks, put out a veggie tray, and a bunch of middle aged people have conversations about the economy and what's going on with their 401ks. Wait. No.
Vanessa and Jeremy instruct you to invent a character, come to their party as that character, remain at the party in character, and provide a performance on camera. What kind of performance? The only requirement of the character you invent is that he or she needs to be a very bad poet because, after all, the name of the party is Very Bad Poetry Night. So at some point during the night, you go in the garage and recite your character's very bad poetry in front of a huge green screen and crazy hot lights while Jeremy films you. Then (and this is of course after the actual party party), he edits the whole damn thing and builds a website.
I told you. Cool friends. The best parties. I'm not bragging. I just luck into this kind of shit.
*
So here's a link to the poetry of Chris Heart. Again, this is Chris Heart. It's a mistake to say this is Black Hockey Jesus acting like Chris Heart. It's the same mistake people make when they say that Black Hockey Jesus is really Heather Armstrong. In a way, that's true, but in a truer way, none of us are these static things that can be known. We're never the same thing long enough to be a name, Names are games. But the fact that there's no such thing as you is no cause for despair. It's only terrible and meaningless from the nostalgic perspective of your illusion. But the joyous secret that lingers inside being no one is the cracked open vast expanse of all your provisional and possible someones. You can be anyone. You already are. Of course I'm the man represented by my social security number. But I'm also Black Hockey Jesus. I'm also a lost yellow dog with jangling tags. I'm an asshole. I'm the gentlest woman you've ever spoken with - just hearing my voice calms your storms. I'm a mountain. I'm a motherfucker. My name is Chris Heart.
*
Thank you, Vanessa and Jeremy, for being Vanessa and Jeremy and for not being Vanessa and Jeremy.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Reader Comments (22)
i adore you. really, i do.
...can you please swing me an invite to Vanessa & Jeremy's next party?
Thank you @nic.
And @Bon. Vanessa loves PEI. She totally wants to spend the night at your house.
i heart Chris Heart <3
i wish someone wrote a poem about stalking me.
genius.
boats! bushes! too good.
vanessa and jeremy should start a house party tour circuit. including ottawa after PEI, preferrably.
identity, that's a tough one pour moi. adoption = questions. regardless, THIS is mental magic to me -> " the joyous secret that lingers inside being no one is the cracked open vast expanse of all your provisional and possible someones"
p.s. "pictures of you" in the background is awesome. hey, is the amazing chris heart the american cousin of corey heart?
never mind. it's corey hart. silly me. still, it could happen. maybe chris needs his own path, dropping the e.
i'll go now.
You do have awesome friends, I might be a little jealous, but in all honesty, the thought of pretending to be someone else when I have so many problems being me would probably send me into the depths of mini panic attack mode. So I will admire from afar...
I love it. My friend Mark has a party kind of like theirs every year. It's called "Famous for Five". You do a 5 minute act, which can be anything.. Singing, dancing. poetry, demonstrations like tree pruning, bridge building, or cocktail making. It's fun.
Genius.
That was beautiful man. Thank you. I want to hang out with your crowd.
I just read this quote, s "all the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is." Your post made me think of it.
Lonelinesssssssssssssssssssssss....
Wonderfully bad...ass...
I just couldn't watch the video-then you would be real. Anything real has the potential to go horribly wrong, so I will just read and make myself believe.
How in the world did you keep a straight face through that? You're awesome and should be famous.
I come back after spending a weekend on my skates to find the best possible companion to my morning coffee...Chris Heart!
I snorted coffee through my nose...more than once. Merci beaucoup mon ami!
This made me cry for Chris's heart.
I don't even like parties, and I wish I had been at that party. GREEN SCREEN BAD POETRY! Except, you know, it's really hard for me to be bad at anything.
[cue giggle fit, and I don't even like giggle fits]
Hi. Welcome back.
I do love PEI. I want to live there. In a light house. And throw bread out the window.
BHJ, you're pretty awesome, and I'll always be your friend, electronic or not, and we'll have to keep bugging each other about space alien tea until one of us succumbs to the goodness.
Our parties are pretty awesome, too. Don't forget the What are You Listening To? one. Long Live the Mountain Goats! (Blah!)
To all you nice lovelies who left the nice comments about Jeremy & me, you are all invited to Very Bad Poetry every year! Maybe Chris Heart needs a poem for two voices, or five.
funniest shit i've seen all week. you rock my world.
I am a mountain. I am a motherfucker. That is awesome. You should put that on a T-Shirt. Seriously.
I picture you more as Chuddly Happenstance than Chris Heart. But perhaps you two are really the same ....