Sarah Kay: What We Build

when i am inside writing all i can think about is how i should be outside living when i'm outside living all i can do is notice all there is to write about when i read about love i think i should be out loving when i love i think i need to read more i am stumbling in pursuit of grace i hunt patience with a vengeance on mornings when my brother's tired muscles held to the pillow my father used to tell him for every moment you aren't playing basketball someone else is on the court practicing i spend most of my time wondering if i should be somewhere else so instead i have learned to shape the words thank you with my first breath each morning my last breath each night when the very last breath comes at least i will know i was grateful for all the places i was so sure i was not supposed to be all the places i made it to all the loves i held all the words i wrote and even if it is just for one moment i know i will be exactly where i am supposed to be and where i'm supposed to be right now is on the elm tree lawn at scripps college speaking to the class of 2015. [Applause] good evening everybody good evening parents and families esteemed faculty and staff and guests of the class of 2015. thank you for inviting me here today to witness your amazing accomplishment and by accomplishment i'm of course referring to the folks who managed to walk on grass and 5-inch heels what a beautiful day to celebrate what a beautiful place to be olivia you're so right it's certainly a very pretty campus to get to spend your time on isn't it amazing the way a place can inform and shape who we are and how we grow i grew up three thousand miles away from here on the opposite coast manhattan yeah is no place to raise a baby and yet my earliest memories are of street walk and crosswalk of learning to look both ways for cars to pass i was street sign literate long before i could read a book i rode the subway alone at age 11. i fell in love on a rooftop and had my heart broken on a highway overpass freeways i watched the bodega down the street become a jewish diner become a korean deli become a clothing boutique become a for sale sign my city sheds its skin and reinvents itself again and again and within it i am always in a continuous process of becoming what i understand as now what i know as true in an instant becomes abruptly incomplete and requires me to begin again to adapt and change once a city like new york was a wild imagining a science fiction dream a vision so far from possible but hearts and hands and eyes and glass and bricks and years and years of work have created a pulsing breathing beast and now it stands and stumbles lurching forward squinting into the bright and menacing future and isn't that always how it feels just when you start getting used to something it begins to change a new building appears on campus a new graffiti wall new trees new faces the faculty here has only just gotten used to you traipsing about leaving your mark on things and now you are gone a college campus is a place of constant change of continuous becoming of building and rebuilding there's an old fable that i love that tells of a young girl who visits a construction site she approaches the first workman she sees and says excuse me what are you doing he says can't you see i'm laying bricks she approaches the second workman who's doing the same work as the first and asks excuse me what are you doing he says can't you see i'm building a wall she approaches the third workman who's doing the same work as the previous two and asks excuse me what are you doing he says can't you see i'm building a temple when i hear this story i think what kind of person am i what am i supposed to be do i focus on the task at hand laying brick do i connect myself to a job a project building walls do i dedicate myself to a movement a cause larger than myself larger than my lifetime even some temple to pray to when i write poems it feels like i'm laying brick i move the words around i place them here and there i put concrete in between them and my brain to make them stick when i visit a school it feels like i'm building walls building connections and sometimes rarely i get to see a glimpse of something larger than myself i witness a trans boy in northern california celebrate his transition in front of his entire high school through a poem on stage i learn of girls in singapore finding videos online to study poetry when their school gets rid of creative writing class in this scripps graduating class there are many different workmen some people are working on one specific goal they write papers and do research others work on forming a necessary part of a team to build the connections and projects we need still others are dedicated to a purpose they are envisioning a new future a utopia we can move towards my friend andrea gibson used to work with a radical feminist performance collective called vox feminista whose motto was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable this motto deeply resonates with my experience as a writer and performer both in what i want to create for others but also in what i want to create for myself as an artist there are moments i find when i've become comfortable with an idea an experience or even a specific word and i want to disturb it and excavate it more thoroughly or i'm disturbed by something and i want to seek comfort in writing through it and sharing it with others lately i've started to think that this motto might also serve as a way to exist in the world as a guide for how we might try to build when black men and women are being murdered in our streets when there's sexual assault rampant on our college campuses it is our job to disturb the comfortable to force those who consider themselves blissfully unaffected to engage acknowledge learn witness and act to challenge spaces that need to be challenged and it is also our job to seek ways to comfort those who have been disturbed to provide for those who've been victimized by natural disasters or unnatural violence and tragedy it feels like i'm always trying to learn how to hold myself gently but also hold myself accountable as well as do the same for the people around me sometimes it's hard to believe that we can be working on the same thing sometimes the way you build is so different from the way someone else does you want to be big and visible and radical and loud someone else wants to work quietly under the radar out of the public eye it is possible to have many front lines in the same war it is possible that the people you disagree with are really trying to do the same work trying to build the same future even if we see it different ways you can lay bricks until walls are constructed until a temple is built or you can dream towards a temple until you figure out which walls to build and which bricks to lay you can shape behavior until it changes minds or change minds until it shapes behavior you create options by choice and example in december of 2012 i received a grant from the u.s state department to spend two weeks teaching and performing at schools in kathmandu the capital of nepal while in town i worked with a group of young 20-something-year-olds who called themselves the word warriors and were curious about spoken word poetry i led intensive workshops on writing performing and teaching and each time i visited a school i brought the word warriors with me i had them perform with me and teach alongside me and the kids got a chance to see not only what spoken word poetry sounds like in english with an american accent but also what it sounds like in nepali or in english with a nepali accent and that might have been the end of the story except that it isn't last year the word warriors applied for and received a grant to create a two-year project called right to speak which will allow them to introduce spoken word poetry programming to six different regions in rural nepal the project's primary purpose is to work with marginalized groups who are traditionally suppressed including members of the lgbtqia community people with physical disabilities survivors of abuse and people recovering from drug addiction in nepal the highest cause of death for women between the ages of 15 and 49 is suicide countrywide cultural expectations of subservience and degrees of violence that women face is ongoing it is complicated to be a foreigner in someone else's culture and community and there are nuances i know i am unable to see or understand but i am so proud of the word warriors for tackling this matter in the same spirit as the vox feminista with spoken word poetry they are disturbing the comfortable system that devalues women's lives and they are comforting women by creating community and opportunity for women's value and voices to be honored this past december i returned to kathmandu to help the word warriors plan and facilitate this new project we worked on teacher training and curriculum development i was spending the holidays on the other side of the world away from everyone i love i could have felt the loneliest possible instead i was surrounded by young poets who are bright and passionate they are fighting a lot of odds and a lot of demons but it is poetry that is fueling their fire something that seems as simple as laying words side by side is helping someone find what they are looking for it is helping someone fall in love it is helping someone heal it is helping someone dream big enough to make changes in their community it feels like the type of temple i believe in three weeks ago on april 25th an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 ruptured through nepal killing over 8 000 people and destroying homes lives and unesco heritage sites that had been standing for centuries i scrambled to make contact with my friends i learned that the word warriors had been at work on their spoken word poetry program introducing the art form to a rural community in birgunj 130 kilometers south of kathmandu and 230 kilometers from the earthquake's epicenter they were all together and safe it is not that i believe that poetry saved their lives but i am grateful that their love and dedication to their work and art placed them far enough out of harm's way that day nepal is still experiencing aftershocks and the entire devastation of this event cannot be fully quantified the neighborhoods i fell in love with are rubble my friends are so far away it might seem like a moment when poetry is silly or inconsequential there are more important things to worry about there's so much rebuilding to be done homes buildings roads lives infrastructure but healing is also a type of building creativity is also a type of building and even if you do not know how to lay the bricks that rebuild a city perhaps you have words and poems and care to create community shared experiences and opportunity for empathy maybe you can help rebuild the people who have been left to fight another day the heart and mind deserve rebuilding too in september of 2001 my neighborhood was turned to rebel and my entire world was turned upside down we had many more resources than the majority of people in nepal right now and yet still it felt like nothing would ever be safe or whole again i was 13 and terrified and aware of how small i was and how little i had to offer the adults around me did not have time to answer stupid questions did not have time for my doubts or fears they were trying to rebuild the world not long after i got accidentally signed up for my first poetry slam the experience of performing in front of an audience was terrifying and i shook the entire time but two things were remarkable to me first everyone was listening everyone saw me and second everyone was allowed to explore their fears and flaws and joys without having to feel stupid for being human it was through spoken word poetry that i found community and empowerment a way to heal and a space to build today you are graduating from college you are off on wild adventures and you are not just one of those three workmen laying brick building walls building temple you are all three sometimes you will be searching for a cause to believe in and fight for and you will worry that there is something wrong with you if you can't find it there isn't sometimes you are busy dealing with the task at hand sometimes you are falling in love or taking care of yourself or writing papers and you do not have time to build a temple or to find a temple you believe in you are allowed this time or you may find it and believe in something immense that gives you purpose but overwhelms you you want to solve world hunger or fix global warming you want to build the temple all by yourself but you feel like your hands are too small they are not lay some bricks other times you will look for the job that feels fulfilling right now you want to be a necessary part of a project or mission you will focus on building the connections there will be time for all these things lay the bricks until the walls are constructed until the temple is built or dream towards the temple until you figure out which walls to build and which bricks to lay allow your perspective to shift and shift again you are in a continuous process of becoming as you walk the streets here of your home see the way it has changed is changing next year the new resource center for survivors of sexual violence will open the new dorms will be leed gold certified we are always learning new street signs you have helped build this you are already building the world around you just as you are already always building who you are once the person you are here today was a wild imagining a science fiction dream a vision so far from possible but hearts and hands and eyes and glass and bricks and years and years of work are creating you pulsing breathing beasts and together we are standing and stumbling lurching forward squinting into the bright and possible future the first girl i met as a freshman in college ended up being my best friend in the world she is the smartest bravest strongest woman i have ever known but by the end of our senior year she wound up in a relationship with a man we had both trusted that eventually became abusive i racked my brain and heart trying to figure out how i could stop it what could i say to convince her that she deserved so much better than this how could i prove to her that she was worthy of a love that did not hurt but she could not hear me i think that sometimes the people who love us most in the world are the ones it is hardest for us to hear for weeks i searched for a solution or words to offer or something to do with my hands i discovered a poem by a man named richard seikin and in it he writes everyone needs a place it shouldn't be inside of someone else i carried that line around with me for weeks and finally it found its way to this poem i wrote it for her but today i share it with you if you grow up the type of woman men want to look at you can let them look at you do not mistake eyes for hands or windows or mirrors let them see what a woman looks like they may not have ever seen one before if you grow up the type of woman men want to touch you can let them touch you sometimes it is not you they are reaching for sometimes it is a bottle a door a sandwich a pulitzer another woman but their hands found you first do not mistake yourself for a guardian or muse or promise or a victim or a snack you are a woman skin and bones veins and nerves hair and sweat you are not made of metaphors not apologies not excuses if you grow up the type of woman men want to hold you can let them hold you all day they practice keeping their bodies upright even after all this evolving it still feels unnatural still strains the muscles holds firm the arms and spine only some men will want to learn what it feels like to curl themselves into a question mark around you admit they do not have the answers they thought they would by now some men will want to hold you like the answer you are not the answer you are not the problem you are not the poem or the punchline or the riddle or the joke woman if you grow up the type men want to love you can let them love you being loved is not the same thing as loving when you fall in love it is discovering the ocean after years of puddle jumping it is realizing that you have hands it is reaching for the tight rope when the crowds have all gone home do not spend time wondering if you are the type of woman men will hurt if he leaves you with a car alarm heart you may learn to sing along it is hard to stop loving the ocean even after it has left you gasping salty so forgive yourself for the decisions you have made the ones you still call mistakes when you tuck them in at night and know this no you are the type of woman who is searching for a place to call yours let the statues crumble you have always been the place you are a woman who can build it yourself you were born to build thank you thank you for allowing me to share poetry with you thank you for including me in this celebration of endings and beginnings thank you for being brave enough to take up space in this world for having a voice and using it class of 2015 listen to the ones who love you fiercely fight together disturb the comfortable comfort the disturbed i wish you courage i wish you joy i wish you adventures and mistakes to learn from i know you will build us a world i am excited to see thank you and congratulations [Applause] foreign

Channel: Scripps College

Views: 372,372

Keywords: Scripps College, Claremont, Scripps, Scripps College commencement, Claremont Colleges, Sarah Kay (Author), Spoken Word (Musical Genre), VOICE, Poet (Profession), No Matter the Wreckage, National Poetry Slam (Organization), Brown University (College/University), Grinnell College (College/University), Theatre (TV Genre), California, Scripps College Class of 2015, Class of 2015, commencement speech, commencement speaker 2015, graduation speeches

Id: StE7b5mRWHk

Length: 22min 8sec (1328 seconds)

Published: Tue May 26 2015