Writing Poems For Coachella
I don’t go to these things… but this gig was too good to pass up…
I’m on my eighth hour in front of a 1936 Remington manual typewriter. The line of people waiting for a personal poem hasn’t receded all day. The monitor from the DJ set is blasting in my left ear. A shirtless man sets his beer on my desk, peels off a couple one dollar bills, tosses them on the table. “Write one about my girlfriend back in Sydney,” he yells over the techno music. “I miss her.”
I’ve been writing these all day. And I did it all day the day before, and the day before that. Last weekend, too. I’ve missed The Lumineers, The Violent Femmes, Moby, Wu Tang, and Phoenix already. It’s a dry ninety seven degrees outside. But as I feed a half sheet into the machine, none of that bothers me. I think of the pretty girl across the Pacific Ocean that I will never meet. I think about the man before me who came to this flesh-ridden Bacchanal desert without her. I wipe my sweat and begin to pound out the first few vowels of a song I hope can be some kind of bridge between them.
Typing now on my Mac keyboard after spending a cumulative 48 hours over two weekends writing on a 1936 manual, I’m struck by the differences our literary forebears had from us. For one thing, on a 1936 manual, there is no backspace key. Once you head down a road, you have to keep digging. The artistic censor doesn’t have a chance to talk you out of it. And for another, the very act of typing is a muscular activity. You had no choice but to put some of your guts into it. Your hands become strong, the hands of a pianist. It literally feels like you’re building something. Composing. It feels like work, and it is rightfully exhausting.
The set up was simple. I’d shake the hand of whomever was in front of my typewriter and ask them to tell me a bit about themselves. Where they were from, what brought them to Coachella, who they came with, if they were camping. I’d ask them what they did for a living, what their passions were. If it was a couple, I’d ask how long they’d been together, where they first met, what they first remembered about the other. Once I got a few details or if I was struck by some poetic reflection of those details, I’d sit down and get to work. Even if I came up short, with absolutely nothing for them, the most boring people on the face of the planet, I still had to sit down and give them something. In one way or another, they were counting on it.
Once I sat down, I relished the performance. The “bar” I was in had a Speakeasy theme and I was hired to play a writer from the prohibition era. I’d roll a sheaf of paper into the machine, loosen my tie, and take a long drag of an e-cigarette, blowing smoke into the empty page. I’d run my hands over the rough keys. Most of the time I was truly looking for a beginning, but I also knew dozens of eyes were on me. When I tore in, I kept my face to the paper, clinging desperately to concentration from the loud music, the commotion, the dozens of eyes, the camera flashes, the Instagram uploads. I banged away carefully and occasionally furiously, even through typos. I learned how to move with the old machine. When I got stuck, or distracted, I’d stop to read what I had so far, blow more smoke into the machine, steady and realign myself, pick a direction and then go again. People liked the performance, but also, I really wanted to generate something memorable for them based on what I gleaned.
And here’s the damn truth. Of the hundreds of poems I wrote, probably none of them were worth any sort of publication. Even a first year English major could tear apart my work or at the very least identify which major poets I *completely fucking robbed*. (From sentence structure and metaphor, my favorite hijackings came from Neruda and Bukowski). But my audiences were not academics at The Paris Review. My audiences were festival-goers seeking sensory pleasure. Often they were drunk or worse. I’m not a poet by trade, merely an admiring amateur who has tinkered in dozens of journals. Perhaps this kind of gig would be better suited for someone who has spent a decade composing their own stanzas, or at least an MFA. But then again, maybe not.
Crafting seven to ten short poems an hour that are tailor made for people you’ve never met based on only a few scant details that you can barely make out over blaring music might not be the kind of atmosphere in which one crafts Cien Sonetos De Amor. Mine was the novelty work of a caricature sketch artist. Cause the other thing I learned is that at that rate and in that environment one runs out of ideas pretty damn quickly. Images are reused. Even phrases. For someone who might pride themselves on creating poetry, it is easy to discover you are little more than a hack when your customer has been waiting and you are totally dry. I’m not sure if poets work on deadlines the way I do as a playwright/screenwriter. But with a line forming, and customer’s eyes watching you compose, waiting to hold that paper in their hands any minute, believe me, that deadline is felt.
I think I described two dozen women as some form of wildflower, be it a standard desert rose or indian paintbrush. “Blooming.” Mirages and Oases and Howling Coyotes also recurred. Again, at that rate, I was often flat out of ideas. Several poems ended up on Instagram and I was embarrassed how similar some of them were.
But also, to my surprise, many people loved the poems. The first tip I received was for a poem I’d written for a mother to give to her two daughters. Other people hugged me after I wrote to illuminate their MDMA trip the night before, or if I made a couple’s otherwise dreary “meeting at a bar” seem like a mythic encounter written in the stars. I wrote apology poems for men who’d messed up over the weekend to give their girlfriend. I wrote love poems for women that floored me. I wrote for hitchhikers. I wrote dirty fuck poems for the raunchy. I wrote a poem for a father on the east coast recently diagnosed with lukemia. Two men celebrating their one year anniversary visibly teared up at my commemoration for them.
The easy ones were for the lovers and women. The harder ones were for friends and dudes. Particularly interesting was when I asked people what they were passionate about and they stared blankly, searching. After getting that kind of response too often I recognized why so many people cherish these festivals. Events like Coachella might be the best shot some people have at feeling fully alive. For those, I had to prod and dig. One woman begged me not to write about her boring job working for a solar energy company, but I did anyway, referencing Apollo and Icarus. It wasn’t always about the words, it was about the lens through which you looked.
And also, dollar bills fell hour after hour. Sometimes fives. The occasional twenty if they were really happy. In two weekends, I’d paid my rent writing poems. That is something most professional poets might actually hate me for.
My hands ached at the end of each day. I strengthened my ability to concentrate. Though I had a few chances to slink away to see some bands I loved, I thought I shouldn’t leave a truly once in a life time opportunity. I stayed put, worked the line, and kept typing.
Another man told me he planned to propose to his boyfriend later that night in the desert. I wrote, I think, the finest, truest words I knew.
I hope he said Yes.
