the skattered brain: Strange Light is so Right...

Ooops he did it again. The king of poetic sex appeal, cathartic reveal and squeal is back at it again with yet another ingenious foray into the land of don't fence me in...and being the uber fan that I am, I had to speak on what I know of this project and share its undeniable coolness with you.

Strange Light is narrative in the form of not only poetic verse, but dance and music taking its title from an "epic" piece Brown was commissioned to write by the Noord Nederlandse Dans collective, a contemporary dance company in the Netherlands.
The 14-member troupe took Brown's "theatrical texts," set them to music and dance, and then performed the resulting piece in Europe and Canada. Brown was thrilled by the result. On his website, brownpoetry.com, he calls the piece "a cosmic love story and an autobiographical gut-search" that's "clarified in the light of a new-found personal vulnerability."

When a person dies, he believes, it is because poetry has left the body. It follows, then, that the very essence of life "is poetry vibrating within the body." "Strange Light" tells the story of one such poetry-powered person — "a man with strange light and tiny blisses."

I mean damn, tell me this shit isn't magical?

Brown vows that this will be his last poetic work, opting to move closer to family and focus on a new medium, playwriting. As promising as this sounds, after I've read his final work cover to cover and mused about it for several weeks following; after I've removed it from my bedside table and put it on the shelf to accompany his other works, I will , and this is the God-honest-truth, shed at least one tear knowing there may be no other volumes to share company beside: Born in the Year of the Butterfly Knife, I love You is Back, and Scandalabra.

Brown remarked recently,"I really feel a change happening in America in regards to people feeling empowered to put on their unique and fun art shows, including poetry, especially poetry."

I hope you know that has a lot to do with champions of expression who do so with as much undeniable originality, vibrato and aplomb as you do sir.

Brown's advice to aspiring poets, shared on his website, was simply this: "pour passion into your craft, work hard, and let the words take you to impossible heights — and beyond. If you write poetry, imagine it beyond the page, beyond the stage, and then bust your butt to make it happen... You can do it."

Yes we can!