I never real­ly got into poet­ry slam so far. I always sound­ed too unli­te­ra­ry to me. I am real­ly used to books and I cle­ar­ly attri­bu­te to mys­elf to have some kin­de of tas­te in lite­ra­tu­re, which is quite nor­mal being con­fron­ted with tho­se clas­sics. Sla­me poet­ry always see­med to igno­re tho­se achie­ve­ments, the audi­ence sel­dom gives the impres­son of being inte­res­ted in deeper things. But for many this kind of sub­jec­ti­ve distinc­tion is wrong. They refer to the sub­jec­ti­ve tas­te whe­r­ein ever­yo­ne is the one to judge.

Doing so we have to admit poet­ry slam on stage is amusing and it often igni­tes a spark to lis­ten­ers:

But there’s some dan­ger. Some­ti­mes that spark lits a fire and lis­ten­ers get to the point whe­re they want to inter­pret things out of their peri­phery in meta­pho­ri­cal terms.

Keep tho­se guys off the stage!

Last week I had it on slam poet­ry, a spe­cial form of poet­ry not ever­yo­ne likes. They are quite simi­lar to other forms of sto­rytel­ling.

Short sto­ries and fairy tales are often con­side­red dif­fer­ent­ly: You love them or you hate them. To wor­ship tho­se parts of lite­ra­tu­re you have to take a look into their world. This world often is dif­fe­rent from ordi­na­ry life. For many peo­p­le that’s the main reason not to care about them.

But for others it’s such a fasci­na­ting trip into bizar­re worlds, books on fic­tion­al sto­ries is all they read. Har­ry Pot­ter was just that kind of hype. And today it’s Twi­light.  A groo­vy sto­ry on love, trust, being an out­si­der and bloo­dy vam­pi­res. It’s some­thing that can take con­trol of your dreams.

Cher­ryChain­saw is obvious­ly not rea­dy for such a trip into won­der­land:

That would make rea­li­ty quite sca­ry.

The spe­ci­es of man is still a wort­hy field of rese­arch. Men and women chan­ge their social roles con­ti­nuous­ly and ever­yo­ne is affec­ted by tho­se chan­ges when new roles aspi­re.

But it’s one thing to think of social or bio­lo­gi­cal roles and ano­ther thing to be such a bio­lo­gi­cal thing. Espe­ci­al­ly in being a man: You know your bio­lo­gi­cal move­ments and you know your social role, and more: you know the things that are com­mon­ly accept­ed.

And then there’s this man­hood moment, when not­hing fits:

As you get older black­outs seem to come more often: You remem­ber someone’s face but not his name. You recall situa­tions and don’t know if they were real. You’­re for­get­ting things you’­ve done, should have done or bet­ter not should have done. That’s somehow okay if no one else is invol­ved in that black­outs but you.

It’s not a nice situa­ti­on when someone tells you “I know what you did last…”, if you know what you’­ve done and it’s some­thing ugly.

How stran­ge would it be if you’­ve done such a thing, someone else could know it, but that one isn’t you?

Boys and girls have quite dif­fe­rent inte­rests when it comes to toys. You know that old sto­ry that boys are inte­res­ted in cars and elec­tro­nic stuff, whe­re­as girls fan­cy dolls.

If this assump­ti­on that many peo­p­le think of as ordi­na­ry is tur­ned upsi­de down things beco­me dif­fi­cult: Peo­p­le tend to think of boys being inte­res­ted in dolls as not being man­ly enough. And girls that are inte­res­ted in elec­tro­nic stuff are seen as unfe­mi­ni­ne.

As if inte­rests would repre­sent your per­so­na­li­ty! Every child knows this counts only for adults:

Your toys??? Ehm, say no more!