Amygdala

July 28 2015

A poem about fear,

without immersion

loneliness

tip-toeing close to the edge.

Electric sockets

market losses

rabid dogs.

An airless coffin,

loose earth, scrabbling across

its burnished lid.

Or failure, unsparingly watched,

eyes, like spotlights

blinding hot.

I recite my poem

with sweaty hands, trembling voice,

and the audience softens, fidgeting stops.

Are they merely polite

beginning to slumber?

Or do they see me as a sensitive man, overcome?

Who, like me, fear death

abandonment

the loss of love,

and should I falter

would not judge.

Because they are merely grateful

for words that distract

from their own subversive thoughts,

welling helplessly up

in everyone's ancient amygdala.

So I imagine them naked

while feeling myself.

There are those who lead fearless lives.

But can anything matter

if there is no consequence?

And anyway, who wants to die young

instead of fight, freeze, run?

The intensity

of the reckless heart

electric mind

inexhaustible muscle.

And after fear

the glorious peace

having overcome.

I read an article about stage fright (http://nyr.kr/1MIigEO), and there was the usual statistic about the fear of public speaking: which is apparently near the top of everyone's list. I think this is because we're such intensely social creatures, and that fear of public speaking is really fear of public failure; which, in turn, is so intimately connected to feelings about judgement, shame, social stigma, and exclusion.

I reflect on my past, and often feel that I've led a life ruled by fear. Things like social anxiety, fear of change. Yet, paradoxically, public performance is easy for me. Public speaking, that is. Perhaps because language is the one thing about which I'm totally confident. If I had to get up on stage and sing instead of pontificate and speechify, I imagine the self-consciousness and fear of failure would be just as overwhelming as they are for everyone else.

There are universal fears, and idiosyncratic ones. And cultural ones, as well: the Victorians apparently shared a common fear of being buried alive; and there were lots of amusing contraptions invented so a wrongly diagnosed "corpse" could signal the surface from underground. Naturally, I couldn't resist shoe-horning that one into the poem! Along with more usual fears, like electrocution, heights, drowning, poverty.

And then there are the more powerful -- if less articulated -- fears, like loneliness, loss of love, and abandonment. There is a reason I repeated this variation on a theme 3 times. Just look back to the first paragraph: it's because the most universal basis of fear is one's status and acceptance in a social group; be it romantic couple, family, or tribe.

The description of the audience's state of mind -- ...grateful/ for words that distract/ from their own subversive thoughts -- raises another provocative idea: is art merely a distraction from our shared fear of death? A talisman, desperately held up to posterity?

There are people who don't experience fear. I don't mean people with great physical bravery; I mean people who actually have a congenital short-circuit in their brain, and are immune to the fight-or-flight response. (Which, as the poem says, is probably more accurately called fight, flight, or freeze.) Needless to say, they don't live long! Not to mention the pleasure of fear: we all know of adrenaline junkies, addicted to the intense neurochemical high. And then there is the character-building challenge of overcoming fear -- or, in this case, overcoming performance anxiety with a little cognitive re-framing. And finally finding yourself free of fear? Exhilarating!

(A final aside. The phrase a sensitive man is a winking homage to the late Canadian poet Al Purdy, his parody of himself as the proletariat beer hall poet. Here it is (or at least the version of At The Quinte Hotel I found on the ever reliable internet):

At The Quinte Hotel 
I am drinking 
I am drinking yellow flowers 
in underground sunlight 
and you can see that I am a sensitive man 
and I notice that the bartender is a sensitive man 
so I tell him the beer he draws 
is half fart and half horse piss 
and all wonderful yellow flowers 
But the bartender is not quite 
so sensitive as I supposed he was 
the way he looks at me now 
and does not appreciate my exquisite analogy 
Over in one corner two guys 
are quietly making love 
in the brief prelude to infinity 
Opposite them a peculiar fight 
enables the drinkers to lay aside 
their comic books and watch with interest 
while I watch with interest 
a wiry little man slugs another guy 
then tracks him bleeding into the toliet 
and slugs him to the floor again 
with ugly red flowers on the tile 
three minutes later he roosters over 
to the table where his drunk friend sits 
with another friend and slugs both 
of em ass-over-electric-kettle 
so I have to walk around 
on my way for a piss 
Now I am a sensitive man 
so I say to him mildly as hell 
"You shouldn'ta knocked over that good beer 
with them beautiful flowers in it" 
So he says "Come on" 
So I Come On 
like a rabbit with weak kidneys I guess 
like a yellow streak charging 
on flower power I suppose 
& knock the shit outa him & sit on him 
(he is just a little guy) 
and say reprovingly 
"Violence will get you nowhere this time chum 
Now you take me 
I am a sensitive man 
and would you believe I write poems?" 
But I could see the doubt in his upside down face 
in fact in all the faces 
"What kind of poems?" 
"Flower poems" 
"So tell us a poem" 
I got off the little guy but reluctantly 
for he was comfortable 
and told them this poem 
They crowded around me with tears 
in their eyes and wrung my hands feelingly 
for my pockets for 
it was a heart-warming moment for literature 
and moved bt the demonstrable effect 
of great Art and the brotherhood of people I remarked 
"-the poem oughta be worth some beer" 
It was a mistake in terminology 
for silence came 
and it was brought home to me in the tavern 
that poems will not realy buy beer or flowers 
or a goddam thing 
and I was sad 
for I am a sensitive man 
- From his book "Poems For All The Annettes" )