And The Beat Goes: OHM

I recently came across a stash of songs that had provided the soundtrack to my early years in San Francisco, when I was young enough to own and wear body glitter and wave away thoughts of wrinkle cream and a 401K. I hit "play" on said stash and took a stroll down memory lane...

Before the tech bubble burst back in '01, back in those golden days of overinflated salaries, batshit crazy ventures, and the frenetic pace of MTWThF dot.com parties, I relished the city-wide buzz that enveloped the city - even the crack-strewn back alleys of 6th and Mission - and the free-flowing cosmopolitans that sustained it. Everyone had exultant dreams of millionairhood.

But the spoken word scene was really my scene, and nary a free cocktail was to be found. I was friends with (poor) poets who waxed eloquently on just about every topic under the sun in a way I had never heard or seen poetry delivered, and it blew my mind, and I've never entirely recovered.

Once a week Club Amnesia in the Mission District hosted renowned spoken word artists from all over the country, and then cleared the floor for open mic. The latter portion of the night had varied results. Some nights the amateurs seemed to be possessed, like the sun had embedded itself in their mouths and they just spoke and gesticulated light. And then there were the ones who were bad. This was when people got up to get a beer or a refill.

I was tasked with checking I.D.s at the door and making sure no one got out of hand. Of course being the size of a flower I did not work the security circuit alone. I didn't get paid, I did it as a favor. I may have gotten free beer, but I don't remember. I did it because it was my church.

Club Amnesia, on a school night, with crack dealers and moneyed hipsters and everyone in between passing by, and sometimes through the front door, was a place where people let their guards down, their hair down, and wove words together in a way a fusion chef breaks apart culinary paradigms and inventively melds seemingly disparate food groups.

Club Amnesia, on a school night, with Generation X's version of beat poets clutching worn sheets of paper, but mostly delivering their odes by memory, was a place where beer in hand, and heart on sleeve, we all participated in a collective "Ohm".

But don't take my word for it, take Saul's.

"through meditation I program my heart
to beat breakbeats and hum basslines on exhalation...
I burn seven day candles that melt
into twelve inch circles on my mantle
and spin funk like myrrh...
the beat goes on, the beat goes on, the beat goes 'ohm'"

Ohm - Saul Williams