I Want Poetry To Be "Hot Mass"

WEll, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I went to my first dance club experience last night, all on the lonesome, got there like two hours early and live tweeted the whole thing. Hot Mass, downtown off 11th and Penn, above a Bail Bonds storefront. One of those clubs where there's no sign for the front entrance just a bouncer. Everyone was really friendly though. "Hot Mass" is like "heterosexuals night" for the club, the place is above a bathhouse (Club Pittsburgh) and so it's, you know, an extension between one community to another.
The event was sort of fun, not great, not even that exciting as I had imagined: the space is about as big as a modest dining room, and there's some bathrooms and like, glory-hole confessionals off to the right and a guy with a bucket of ice and some drink mixers. Things heated up about two and a half hours in but the DJ just kept playing four-to-the-floor beats where he would like give three or four extra bars before each drop so you couldn't predict it or anything. I was kind of just doing a shuffle thing all night, I got a beer from some guy who brought in a backpack, drinks were only $1.

Do I want Poetry to be "Hot Mass?" What would that even look like? Dancing as opposed to poetry. Maybe.

Ferinstance, I can't be so easily deluded by the idea of a more perfect scene. Whoever was on the floor was on the floor and that was it. There was some astringently beautiful people, of course, but there were a bunch of other folx who were willing to dance with me. I felt that welcoming vibe even there, which was important because I couldn't convince any of my "friends" to come. And yes,

There was that sense that we were all taking part of something, that could possibly have been greater or elevated our lives to some different place, or, rather, that we were willing to dance in a place for an hour or two. I didn't see anything that particularly shocked me. There's a sense of this being someone's hobby, and the DJ being someone's tentative job, a sharing of resources culminating in what, a space of some kind, an activity, a community.

Here's some questions going forward for the blog,  and for the poetry scene in pittsburgh as I understand it.

1) Is it viable? Is the kind of life that I've been predicting, have predicated most of my oestensible interest in poetry, is that there? Can I make it happen?

2) What does poetry do in the context of other people? How is it useful, how can it be at least loosely understood so that we can do things with it.

3) Where should I be, if not here? What should I be doing?

I went to Hot Mass because I bought a particularly good fit shirt that was purple and I thought looked fresh. For the first time I felt I had the time money and opportunity to attend a club, to have that kind of experience. I had a fresh haircut too, and I think I got along with the crowd pretty well, even stag. It just didn't end up being all that of an important or interesting experience; the real hard and spiritual part even was before it, convincing myself to do it, all that interior psychological stuff, seeing the opportunity and deciding to take it. -- poetryburgh@gmail.com