Curse of the Early Adopter

You know what early adopters suffer through, right? I’m the guy who suffered through the horrible handwriting recognition of the Newton; who learned how to program the VCR without the helpful menus; who figured out how to network Macs before the network setup assistant.

It goes for performance, too. I was reminded of this during a recent evening event at the Escape Coffee House which was featuring something called "Artist’s Exegesis" which was put together by my friend Chryshelle, a photographer and spoken-word poet. It was billed as a spoken word event with many poets and a couple of bands.

We walked in to a poet that I really did not enjoy. He was reading a long, meandering piece involving Star Wars icons and the liberal use of swear words and scatology that made the audience titter on occasion.

He was followed by David Hart, who had a much more confident, polished, and developed delivery. Still, he admitted early on that he was rushed and unprepared–and still delivered powerful, evocative pieces. I was especially enamored of his rhythmic breathing and oratorical delivery. I would have loved to have seen him on a night when he was "on".

Then Chryshelle delivered a short piece just before the band started–and that was the joy. It was a short piece about New Orleans, and it was concise, direct, hard-hitting, powerfully delivered…in short, a piece that had been polished and worked over and beautifully delivered.

So you see, for an art such as spoken word poetry, if you’re an early adopter, you have to deal with a lot of…well, let’s be charitable and call it "rough"…stuff before you get the gems.

But the gems are oh, so worth it.