39: Natalie Patterson on Telling the Truth and a Love Language Project

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:02] NP: Then he was like, “And next up, Natalie.” I was like, “I messed up. I made a mistake.” I cry and die in that moment. I go up there and I have my paper in my hands and I attempt to read my poem. What happened with my body is first of all, as if this was – this body did not belong to me. I felt utterly betrayed, because I have never – I was shaking in places I didn't know you could shake, okay? My knees were shaking in directions, knees don't go in. I could not catch my breath. In the middle of the poem I was like, “I don't even know why I wrote this poem. These are too many words. Who cares about this? I just had abandoned the passion that I had when I was furiously writing this poem. I no longer was attached to. Did not care about. Thought it was the dumbest poem in the world. Then, suddenly was questioning my existence like, “Why did I think I should read this on stage?”

[00:01:01] LW: You're having this whole other dialogue, while you're having an outer body experience.

[00:01:05] NP: Meanwhile, I’m like, “Two minutes. Blah, blah, blah, whatever.” I'm begging the universe to just open up a hole in the floor at this point, because I'm like, “Oh, my God. I have so much more on this paper to go. I finish and I teleport back to my seat, because I cannot even tell you how I got back to my seat.

[00:01:31] LW: ‘When we're talking about diversity, it's not a box to check. It is a reality that should be deeply felt and held and valued by all of us.’ That was an Ava DuVernay quote that was featured on the side of a vegan cafe in Los Angeles by the A Love Language Project, which was co-founded by today's guest, a spoken word artist and educator named Natalie Patterson.

My name is Light Watkins, and I am the host of At The End Of The Tunnel. Funny enough, I happened to be at that cafe with Ava DuVernay, who's a friend, and we saw that quote of hers painted on the side of the cafe and we took a photo in front of it, not knowing that Natalie, who's also a friend of mine, was one of the creators of that mural. When I found all of that out during our interview, it was a really nice, small world moment for me.

Natalie and I crossed paths for the first time at one of my Shine events back in, I believe it was 2017, where she opened the show with a spoken word piece about dating. Here's a short clip from that performance.

[CLIP]

[00:02:38] NP: Whoa. That went different than I thought it was going to go. I was late, because I went to the museum of ice cream. Anybody, have you gone – I know. I'm sorry. It's LA. We have a lot of things to do in one day. It's my friend's birthday and she wanted to go and I was like, “Yeah, the sprinkles, right?” That's what I thought. I got there and the sprinkles are plastic. The whole sprinkle tub is plastic. Imagine my disappointment.

Anyway, I was worried, because I'm in a white dress. I was like, “Is it going to melt? I didn't know what was going to happen.” I'll start here. Oh, do you know about poems? Do you know how to react to poems? It's different than TV. I know, you like watching Netflix, it is awesome and nothing but poems. I need you to be with me. If you make no noise, on the way home I’m going to be like, “Did they die, or they didn’t hear me, or what?” Feel free if you got it. “Yes, girl. I knew I want to hear it.” If you’ve a “Mm-hmm. That’s right,” I want that too. If you’re just like a low hum, “I feel you, bro.” Whatever. Do you is what I’m trying to say.

Since we're laughing, I'll start with my dating poem. I'm super single. Just if anyone is like, “This girl is amazing.” I really am, so what's up? It’s summer and let's have a great summer. You know what I’m saying? Okay. I'm kidding, but I'm serious also.

Typically, after meeting someone they ask, “So, what do you do?” To which I respond, “Well, I'm an artist, a poet expressing on page and stage and in classrooms. I teach and create, curate and develop. I run a non-profit and serve on a board in my high school alumni association.” Typically, after I say all of that, they respond with. “Wow, that's awesome.” Which is quickly followed with, “So, why are you single?” As if single and unlovable are the same thing. I'm single, fact.

I have dreams and not about other people, but about solutions and motivating the masses. I dream about traveling to places I didn't know existed, about becoming a woman who was unstoppable. I found that to a larger degree than I'm willing to sacrifice – relationships are about sacrifice. Or about commitment and who did what and all of that. Well honey, that takes time. Time I could be spending falling in love with life, learning another language, volunteering my time, sleeping.

I mean, I really, really like to sleep. Thing is when you share a bed, you have to share covers and body temperatures. Well, they aren't always the same. I like the room crisping and they might like it cold. Am I supposed to shiver for the rest of my life? I mean, who's really worth shivering for? Okay, and I'm honest. Not COVID. I try to be direct and straightforward. I hate small talk, love deep, meaningful conversation. I like sex a lot. I feel differently than most men seem to expect me to. I won't cry over your orgasm, or rely on you to make me cum. I’m a self-starter, a lone wolf. I don't require a lot of time, but the time we spend, there's got to be quality that has standards; high ones.

I think I'm a pretty dope woman and worth being thoughtful about. I like dates that make me write poems when I get home. I want to be thrilled and safe. My body is not an invitation to be taken advantage of. Oh, but I'm fat, which apparently means I'm undeserving and should settle for whoever likes me. I like muscles on my men. I like courage on my women. I beauty and think I am deserving of waking up next to it. Settling ain’t something I'm going to be doing. I can appreciate people without needing to own them.

Yeah, I am single. There is no absence of love in my life. Stop. Stop coming at me like I’m a thing to be pitied, like someone who is missing out. I am deeply, madly and passionately in love with my life.

I'm still amazed that I get to say things and they matter. I’ve been doing this for almost 15 years and I'm still like, “Damn. Ya’ll were listening? It sounds cool.” I like to keep it old school and I make collections of my work when I'm moved to. If you're interested in that, you can go to my website, natalieispoetry.com. I have some with me. This is a way, anybody feel weird about your body sometimes? Right? Sometimes it's like an evolving thing. Some days, it's just like, “Is that where you're at?” You're like, “I envisioned us differently.” Here's to those days.

Are you guys like, extended laughing at my jokes? I'm low-key halfway in love with the whole room. Just maybe in the back, we'll set up an arrangement for summer. When I'm feeling disconnected from a crowd of people, I'm standing in front of. When they are staring at me, but nothing about the interaction feels the love, or understanding, not fun, or joy, I ask them to repeat after me. I am beautiful. Some, well some are more reluctant than others. I am beautiful should be a given, should be a place we begin from, a foundation we are born into, but some messages get delivered like a post from a stranger, always having a bad day, but a body, you see, a body should not beg for acceptance.

We walk around in these bodies, these protective suits for our tender souls. We walk around looking like tattered, undelivered apology, knows my flesh is exactly as I needed to be to keep my spirit intact, shining, but I've been roaming the streets thinking I've understood the concept of beauty as it relates to me, thinking I'm beautiful if only I were a little less, or more thinking if only I weighed less, the shallow fools who want to know me. I've been hiding behind clothes, trying to camouflage when myself and comfortable is all I've ever wanted to be, but sometimes, sometimes comfortable is as lasting as the love I lost long ago, she said.

Well, she said, you have a beautiful body. I could not comprehend the words. You see, it was the first time in my entire life I had ever heard these words placed together and directed. Even when I'm confused, I take the ideas and break them into smaller pieces, make them tiny enough to fit my world, until you have a beautiful body. You, meaning me, Natalie Patterson, daughter of Joe Frank and Lynn, meaning Midwest American black girl with skin and eyes light enough to confuse her own time, meaning my own kind, they don't always recognize me.9 You have a beautiful body.

Have implies ownership. Meaning, I own a single thing. Meaning, something is offering meaning. I didn't own it, so I don't know the value of it. My abuse, or take it for granted, you have a beautiful body. A, meaning one, meaning a single thing, one irreplaceable things that does indeed die. You have a beautiful body. Beautiful. Meaning pleasing, or desirable, meaning appealing and desirable. I didn't know that always been pretty with us. But if you only attached, I've never been just beautiful. Stated as fact, you have a beautiful body. Body, meaning physical structure, a place the spirit is held in and I have never held even my lovers long enough to be good at it. You have a beautiful body.

I will repeat these words until I’m no longer reluctant, until you are giving, and until they are no longer foreign in my mouth, I will repeat these words; I have a beautiful body. I have a beautiful body. Yes, this is a beautiful body, until ownership becomes the privilege, until the skin becomes a perfect home, weathered and worn over time, time. A perfect home, whose walls I know well, whose staircase and old floors creek my favorite song. I have my own favorite song. I'm just now learning all the words to. I want to sing you. I want to sing you until the song sticks. I have a beautiful body. Period.

[END OF CLIP]

[00:11:59] LW: As you can hear, Natalie had quite the command of the crowd. She was charming and funny and deep, and everybody loved her. It's not surprising that she has a fascinating backstory as well. I found that the people who are willing to get up and be vulnerable in front of a crowd of complete strangers usually come from a pretty interesting background. Natalie was no exception. She's from Indiana. Her mom relocated to Pasadena after it was discovered that her dad had a drug problem. Her mom was not into the whole spoken word thing at first. Natalie insisted, and she cut this really interesting deal with her mom, where she structured a poetry writing regimen that I think you're going to be fascinated to hear about.

Natalie ended up being a part of the LA Slam poetry team. She was featured on Def Poetry All Stars. Once she found herself performing on a regular basis, her trajectory started veering in the direction of education, which is where she discovered that she's actually pretty talented at teaching spoken work to children.

She started several non-projects in the process, including A Love Language Project, which I mentioned earlier. Needless to say, we had a fascinating conversation about family dynamics, the art of spoken word, the difference in memorizing your spoken word and reading it from a sheet of paper, what it takes to start your own open mic and how you effectively teach poetry to incarcerated youth.

If you're ready, let's dive into my conversation with Miss Natalie Patterson.

[CONVERSATION WITH NATALIE]

[00:13:32] LW: Natalie, thanks so much for coming on to the podcast. So wonderful to have you here. It's been a few years, I think, since we saw each other in person. That was at one of those Shine events, where you actually performed one of your pieces live, which blew the crowd away. Actually, looked at it again today. It was so funny and engaging. I'm really excited to unpack your story and introduce you to the At The End Of The Tunnel audience.

[00:14:01] NP: Thanks for having me. That's actually one of my favorite performances. I look at that and use that as reference a lot. I still laugh every single time. I'm like, I was on that day.

[00:14:11] LW: Wow. What was different about that day, compared to other performances?

[00:14:16] NP: I think, I just was really – I was really extraordinarily happy that day. I was just in a good moment. I just didn't have any time to be worried. I just had to be myself, because I'm coming from something else, so I have to just show up and be mid-flight. Something about not being apologetic. The opening, like I messed up the microphone and it hits my mouth. I just laughed and kept going. It was like, “Well, anyway.” Yeah, I just was willing. I think that that usually makes the difference.

[00:14:49] LW: Yeah, you're running late. You're coming from the Museum of Ice Cream. Was that a true story?

[00:14:53] NP: That's a true story. You thought I was lying on stage?

[00:14:57] LW: I didn't know if it was a bit. A lot of people, you have your things. You’re like, oh, yes. You always say.

[00:15:03] NP: If I have a bit, it's actually true and it's just funny also. No, I was coming from the Museum of Ice Cream. It was a total bust. I was mad that I had spent $60 on that experience. I was like, “Well, I can either be mad, or I can move on. I still got to show up for the show.” It was lovely. Thank you for having me.

[00:15:22] LW: Awesome. Well, I decided I was going to play a clip of that at the beginning of this podcast, just to give people a little taste of your wonderfulness and how much you had the crowd riled up and everything. Yeah, that was a fun night. All right. What I want to do in this conversation is I want to start by going back to Kokomo, Indiana.

[00:15:50] NP: Lord.

[00:15:52] LW: You were possibly conceived, but definitely born in Kokomo.

[00:15:56] NP: Yeah. I probably was conceived in Kokomo. That's awkward to think about. You know what's funny about that is I just wrote a poem that's even more awkward than that, wondering if my mother had an orgasm when I was created. I mean, not awkward at all.

[00:16:12] LW: What's that one called?

[00:16:13] NP: I don't even know if it has a name yet. I think it’s called Become, actually.

[00:16:18] LW: Become. Oh, my God. I love that.

[00:16:22] NP: Anyway, that’s for another day. Or maybe today. Who knows?

[00:16:25] LW: What were the circumstances that you were born into?

[00:16:28] NP: My mother and father were married and had been married for several years. They knew each other since high school and they were high school sweethearts. My mother was 35. I was her third child. Before me, she had lost a baby and basically, all the doctors and everyone told her like, “You're never going to be able to have another child.” My mother was like, “No, I'm having a child.” She was very excited and anticipating my arrival. I was actually the first child of my father who has many children. Before me, I was the first child he actually saw me born. There are stories about that all.

[00:17:11] LW: Your mom and your siblings didn't stay in Kokomo for very long.

[00:17:16] NP: No. We stayed in Kokomo until I was four. My father got caught up in the 80s crack era of a high school friend of his being like, “Ooh, there's some new drugs,” and they had only ever smoked weed. A bunch of people start taking crack, thinking it's just the new cool thing, not realizing that it would completely derail their lives. It did derail my dad's life for 20 years. My parents split up. My mom was like, there's no way my daughter and my children are going to be raised in this environment. We were all really little. My mom was like, “I can't take any risk,” and moved us to California. We've been here ever since.

[00:17:58] LW: You were old enough to remember some of that, right? Four-years-old. I imagine, you have some memory of some of the drama that unfolded.

[00:18:06] NP: Not really drama. My parents didn't really have any drama. It was more that my dad still went to work every day, like he was totally functioning and also doing crack, which sounds wild.

[00:18:19] LW: He was a functional crackhead.

[00:18:20] NP: Really, knowing what we know about crack now, that sounds very wild to think. At the time, he maintained a full-time job. He was still doing most of the things that he was responsible for doing, but his behavior was getting erratic and my mom knew, “This is not sustainable. My children are too young.” She talks about an instance of her coming home and my dad was responsible for picking me up from my grandmother's house and bringing me home after he got off work, but he would bring his friends around the house also.

My mom comes in to this scene of all these grown men hanging out and drinking beer and whatever, with this little tiny girl child. There was just this moment where she was like, “Yeah, this isn't going to work, because the stakes are too high and the possibility for something going wrong here is really high.” This is not a thing.

[00:19:18] LW: Was it a Dear John situation, where you guys escaped in the middle of the night? Or was it a little bit more civil?

[00:19:24] NP: He went to work one day, and my mom packed up the entire house and drove to California. Left him a note that said, “I'm gone.” That was not the first conversation that they had about things needing to change. From what I understand now, I've spoken to both of them about it, because my memory of that is not obviously the same as the reality of what was happening for them. I didn't learn a lot of the truth, until I was much older and old enough to be like, “So what the hell happened?” There's some missing pieces here. Yeah. Essentially, she escaped and made a life for herself in Los Angeles.

[00:20:06] LW: Why Los Angeles?

[00:20:08] NP: My older brother and sister’s father was here. They were here. They were already going to school here. My mom had strategically planned and kept to them, they would spend summers with their dad. They just didn't come back to Indiana for the fall. My dad didn't really realize, because he was doing drugs and whatever. He wasn't really realizing like, “Oh, the pattern has broken.” My mom just had them enrolled in school here. We made our way here to try to figure out what the next part of our lives would look like, but at least doing it together.

[00:20:45] LW: How would you say that affected you, being away from your father?

[00:20:48] NP: Oh, my God. It had humongous – Also, it's not just the being away. It's that there was secrecy up until the time I was probably 15, or 14, when I really was like, had a very direct conversation with my mom and was on the hunt for my father. I was like, he's somewhere. I need to talk to him. You're not reliable. I don't know what the story is. I need the whole story. I think it had a tremendous impact on the way I process so much and the way I navigate life.

I spent a lot of time with my dad. He was the dad who combed your hair and rubbed your back and fixed your breakfast. He was that dad. By no means am I attempting to paint him as some horrible person, like addiction happens. Oftentimes, to really incredible people. There was just a lot that I didn't know. When we left my dad, I didn't know that that's what we were doing. My mom told me that we were coming to visit my older brother and sister. That's what I assumed we were doing. I didn't know we'd be doing that forever.

[00:21:50] LW: You were like, “Okay, so it's time to go back now. It’s been a couple weeks.”

[00:21:54] NP: I was like, “This is fun, but what’s happening here?”

[00:21:57] LW: Were you allowed to call him and talk to him?

[00:22:01] NP: Kind of. Of course, because their relationship was strained, she was trying to figure that out. I imagine there was a period where they tried to reconcile. My dad came to California and I have a very vivid memory of my mom saying, we were going to the bank or something. When we got there, I saw my dad. I was like, “That's my dad.” I don't know how much time has passed. I imagine maybe six months or something. I realized that that's my dad, and so I'm so excited. Then they do this custody handoff. No one tells me, but I'm excited to be with my dad.

We ended up going to this apartment that he was staying at. I just remember being there and this moment of sheer panic sets in, of where am I? Yeah, this is my dad, but what? Nah. I just remember this panic of me trying to remember my phone number, because I was like, “I need to call my mom. She needs to come get me.” My dad had gone out to get ice, or I don't know, something. I was like, in this time that he's away, I need to call for help. I was trying to furiously remember my phone number. I was in this panic. I don't remember what came of that, but I just remember this feeling of not wanting to embarrass him, but knowing that I didn't want to be there, and that no one had asked me if I would be okay doing whatever. It was just adults doing a thing with a kid, but no one explaining. I was always the kid and still am the person that context really matters to me.

[00:23:41] LW: You were four or five at the time.

[00:23:43] NP: Yeah. I was probably five. It was, like, “Nah, y'all doing the most right now.” I did not enjoy that experience at all.

[00:23:51] LW: Was that the moment where you detached from missing your dad, so much that you wanted to still live around him?

[00:24:00] NP: No. I don't think it was about detaching. It was just like, I was a kid and I couldn't contextualize what was happening. I was under my mom's care. It was just, wherever my mom went, that's where I was. They ended up not getting back together. My dad went back to Indiana. I just was with my mom and distracted. The only time that I would really think about, “Hmm, something is not right about this,” was when I saw my other friend's dads. I was like, “Wait, their dad is always around. Huh, that's weird.”

My mom is not the person who discloses. She's very, very private. She thinks that there are things that are her business and not for anyone else to know, even if you're included in the business. She just wasn't forthcoming about that stuff. I just was trying to figure out what was going on and being reminded when it's Father's Day and at school, they're like, “Make a Father's Day card.” I'm like, “Where is my dad? Things are curious. This is a curious case.”
It didn't make me stop missing him. I just was more preoccupied with what even happened. Something happened for me, where I felt my equilibrium was off and my trust for my intuition was a little bit wonky, because I was like, “How did I not know we were leaving my dad? How did I missed that something serious was happening?” I think that that's the sensitivity that I carry in my life, where I'm like, “What's happening here?” Is always the question that I'm asking. I'm always looking at the dynamics and going, what's happening for each person? How can this be a whole and healthy situation for everyone, informs all of my work, honestly.

[00:25:42] LW: There's also a directness to your work, where you just go right to the bullseye of the situation.

[00:25:48] NP: I'm not at all covert. I'm like, so let's name a thing and we can deal with it. I'm totally the person, I can deal with anything. If we're living in reality and honesty about it, I can figure out a solution. I can figure out how to be okay with it. I'm just not cool with deception. I don't think it's a necessary component of life.

[00:26:09] LW: I don't know how you feel about reincarnation and these kinds of concepts. If a soul was going to incarnate on the planet Earth, and they wanted to express as a spoken word artist and have that directness and that transparency and that ability to call things out, I can't imagine a more perfect situation for them to organize, you know what I mean?

[00:26:32] NP: Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of things align around my existence, so I wouldn't be surprised. On the other side like, okay, so we need to tell the truth. Who's the right person? They're like, not that and then here I am.

[00:26:59] LW: When you think back to five-year-old, Natalie, what was your favorite toy or activity as a child?

[00:27:06] NP: When I think about my childhood, there wasn't a lot of fun, because I was always around adults. My mom was a single mom, who was busting her ass all the time. I was living a very adult existence. My mom worked in a law firm. I spent my evenings and afternoons sitting under her desk, doing homework in a law firm, from the time I was six. I wasn't outside playing with my friends, necessarily.

I think when there was fun, I loved being in water. I loved swimming. I loved running, until I got boobs. That was a real Debbie Downer for me. I was really interested in people. From very young, I was always interested in people. I wanted to know what they were doing and why they were doing it and how they were doing it. I think more important than toys, were people to me.

[00:27:57] LW: People watching, or going up to strangers and starting conversations and that kind of thing?

[00:28:02] NP: Observing behavior and interactions and the nuance and the silence between things. Proximity was really interesting to me. That there were some people who would walk down the street and they would be touching the person that they were with. Or some people, there'd be a lot of distance between them, but they were still together, or their kid was walking behind them and they never look back.

[00:28:25] LW: Would you make up stories about giving context to those images?

[00:28:29] NP: Yeah. I mean, I was always like, “I wonder if they like each other. Maybe they don't like each other. Maybe they don't even know each other.” I vividly remember thinking as a kid, that people getting married was traumatizing, which I'm not going to say I don't still also think, but I thought that you didn't know the person. I thought that you just were in a ceremony and in a moment, then he takes the veil off and he's surprised and you're like, “Surprise.” Then you guys have to kiss. I thought, how mortifying to kiss this stranger in front of people. This is awful and awkward.

Also, because I perceived that a lot of people were kissing in a really awkward way. I was like, they must not know each other. Why would you do this? Then people are watching. This is ridiculous. I was like, yeah, I don't think marriage, I don't think people should do that. That's a weird thing. I remember that from very early on. I was like, “I don't think this is right.”

[00:29:23] LW: When you were a pre-teen, how are you thinking about your life? When you got older, did you have ideas like, “I'm going to not – never get married, or I'm going to work as a lawyer”? Or what was your idea about big Natalie?

[00:29:36] NP: I was so ready to be an adult. I was like, I need to be older so people can listen to me, because I have answers. I don't know why other people don't have them, but I have them. If somebody will just listen, I can fix this. Was a lot of what was happening for me in my teenage years, junior high. I really struggled with effective communication and I'm really grateful for the mentors and teachers that I had that got me involved with conflict mediation and peer counseling and things like that, where I could learn how to use language, I could learn how to problem solve. Once I learned those things, that shifted me where I mean, I had a conversation with my mom and I was like, “I'm think I'm a world leader and no one will listen to me, because I'm young and I'm a girl. How do I make them listen to me? Do I have to be older? Or what do I need to do? Because this is not right.” Was one of the conversations I remember having in probably 9th or 10th grade. That was the person I was. I was like, I'm a leader.

[00:30:39] LW: You're also at South Pasadena High School, which I don't know much about South Pasadena, but I can imagine there are a lot of black people in South Pasadena. What was that conversation like, both in your head and in your home around the fact that you're black, and whatever that means in this society?

[00:30:59] NP: We always had the like, “You're black. You can't do the things white people do. You need to behave in a certain way. You need to always be better and prepared.” That conversation was from birth. By the time I was in junior high in high school, I knew that I was privileged, because my mom could make it happen, such that I was in a good school. Education was always really important to her and to my family. That was just like, “You're going to college. You're going to be as smart as you can possibly be. We're going to try to make that happen.”

South Pas was just part of that, of that kids that go to South Pas, go to college, and they go to good colleges, and they're well prepared. Socioeconomically, they're pretty wealthy. It was the path. My mom was creating a hack and being like, “Yeah, I'm a single mom and I can't afford all of these things, but I'm going to get you into this school and you're going to do your best.” I think, the brilliance and the downfall of South Pas is that when you're a South Pas kid, you're taken care of and you're in a bubble.

I was taken care of, but I still was black. I wasn't taken care of like the white kids were, but I was taken care of better than all of my other black friends who didn't go to South Pas. I went to college and I could take the SATs. I was safe. Anything I wanted to do, I could do. I ran for class president. I could do all of the things. I could go on class trips and I could – Whatever there was to do, it was available to me. I had all the materials. I had great teachers, but I'm also a light-skinned black person. I recognize that my darker skinned classmates were not treated like I was.

I would always make a point to be an advocate and to talk about injustices that I was witnessing, and I was routinely in my principal's office asking her, why is this person being treated this way? Or I don't think this is fair. Because I knew I could say things that they couldn't say and things that the white kids didn't know to say. I would create allies with my white friends and be like, “This is messed up and we got to do a thing.” Then they'd be like, “Okay, what do we got to do?” I was always that person, like being a bridge and trying to rally people around, how to be more just and how to find equity in a situation. Sometimes that took and sometimes they were like, “Okay, black girl. We've had enough.” Then I'd be like, “Well, there's more coming, though. Good luck with that.”

[00:33:22] LW: Was Raquel black? Talk about that moment when you witnessed her saying her poetry in 10th grade.

[00:33:29] NP: Okay, so her name is Raquel. It was Quail at the time. She has a different –

[00:33:33] LW: Raquel.

[00:33:35] NP: She's married now. She was my Hawaiian home girl, which there were no other Hawaiian kids in our school. She was beautiful and interesting. Spent her summers in Hawaii. She was already magical. Then on top of it, we had to write a poem and the teachers put us in groups. They put us in the groups and we all were like, we don't know how to write a poem. She just bust out the most magnificent, little ditty I've ever heard. I was sitting there looking at her like, “So you’re magic.” That's what that is. Got it.

It was like, in that moment that I was like – and no moment before then had I even given a shit about poetry. It was in that exact moment that I was like, “I need to know how to do that. That's a thing.”

[00:34:24] LW: You had been journaling your whole life.

[00:34:26] NP: I had always been journaling, but that didn't occur to me that that was poetry. I was just talking to myself on paper. No one had said that that was a thing, that you could do that and people would listen. I was doing that, because I felt no one was listening. When I saw her do it and we were in a group and then she read it back, we all were like – the hairs on our neck were standing up and we were like, how did you do this? Everyone else was like, “Whew, great. She did it for us.” I was going, “How did you just do that? What magic happened? Because I need it.”

[00:35:03] LW: Was her poem, did it have a level of honesty that was just engaging? Or what was it about it that really impressed you?

[00:35:11] NP: I think it was just that she just did it and it was effortless. She was connected enough to her creativity to A, not be shy to do it. You think about a high school classroom and you have to do a group project. No one's excited to do that. Everyone is like, “Who's going to go first?” She just sat down and fluidly wrote this beautiful poem. While we all were like, “What's the poem prompt? What do we have to –” We couldn't even get it together and she had written this magnificent actual poem. I cannot for the life of me, remember a single word in that poem. I don't remember the topic. I just remember that I was like, “Oh, this is what brilliance is. This is what magic is. This is what being fully aligned is.” It changed the energy of our group, because she could just do it and we were like, “Whoa.” It was what beauty is to me.

[00:36:18] LW: When you were planning to go to Cal State, LA, did you have aspirations of being a spoken word poet, or what was your thinking?

[00:36:27] NP: I didn’t even have aspirations to go to college. I just had to go.

[00:36:31] LW: Because your mom told you you had to go?

[00:36:33] NP: Because she told me I had to go. I was like, “Where do I go?” I talked to my counselor and she was like, “Just go here. It's local. It's good. It's fine.” I was like, “Fine.” I started college two weeks after I graduated high school. Yeah. No, I was just going, because you had to go and was like, hopefully, there's something interesting here. I was really into sociology. I was like, “Oh, this is interesting. I didn't know this existed. What is this? Interesting.”

In my head, I was like, I'll either be a lawyer and be a really serious person, who wears stilettos and a pencil skirt. I was like, “Okay, so I could do that.” I also was like, psychology, I thought was really interesting to me, until I took my first psychology course. I was like, “Oh, a soft science. Yeah, I'm not good at that. We're going to do something else.”

My professor also was an ass. I was like, this is not going to be for me. I also was then introduced to poetry as I know it. That same year, a guy asked me out on a date and took me to the Poetry Lounge. I was sitting on a beanbag. It completely changed my entire life. This man who smelled like car parts. We were late, and so so we had to sit on stage on the beanbags, because it's a 100-seat theater, 300 people jammed in. People are on the stage and in the chair. Just everywhere.

I was wearing a skirt, because I thought I was going on a date. I was wearing a skirt, because I thought at 18 or 19, that was what you were supposed to wear on a date. Then we were sitting on the stage, so I was awkward the entire time, because I was like, “I don't need people to see my hoohaa. I was just enamored by the fact that 300 people would listen to people talk for four hours. I was just in that moment. I'm just going to keep coming every single week, until I figure out what's happening here.

[00:38:34] LW: Anything happened with the car parts guy, or was that a one and done?

[00:38:38] NP: No, no. That was over. That was over. He Dracula kissed me at the end of the night. I just was, “Yeah, we're not in the same sphere.” No.

[00:38:49] LW: He did his part as the angel that introduced you to the Poetry Lounge.

[00:38:53] NP: Blessings to the man. I can't even remember his name, but blessings. My best friend and I still talk about him to this day, because it was him and BlackPlanet that really set me on the path for a career in poetry.

[00:39:08] LW: BlackPlanet, that was the dating – the online –

[00:39:11] NP: Look, it was for black people and it was where we went to be in the DMs before they were DMs.

[00:39:19] LW: Right. The Poetry Lounge is that place on Fairfax, right? Just north of Melrose, or something like that?

[00:39:25] NP: Yup.

[00:39:27] LW: It's by the football field. I remember, I used to live over there. I never knew about the Poetry Lounge, but I know, during a week night and now I'm remembering this, Tuesday or Thursday night, it'd be packed. All these black people filing out and hanging out. I was like, “What is going on? Is there a nightclub, or what's going on?” Now I know, because I interviewed IN-Q not that long ago, and he had his whole turned out moment at the Poetry Lounge as well. I think that was around the same time.

[00:39:56] NP: Yeah. We grew up in the Poetry Lounge together.

[00:40:00] LW: Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool. You went back the next week. Did you bring something to read?

[00:40:06] NP: No. I didn't read probably for three or five months. I would just go every single week and listen, because I was trying to figure out number one, who are the power players? Who runs this?

[00:40:20] LW: What's the politics of this place?

[00:40:22] NP: What’s going on? That's what I was trying to understand first. Is this a place I don't want to put what I wrote down? Is this a place I want it to even be? Then I was trying to figure out, who are the power players? Where are the women? Is this a club? Is this just a one-off? Do none of these people know each other? I was trying to orient.

Then, once I figured out what was going on, I was like, “Okay, I'm going to read a poem.” Now, keep in mind, every single day, I was writing poems. From the day I went to the Poetry Lounge, I was like, what I'm writing, these are poems. Now I need more and better.

[00:40:59] LW: What themes did you notice when those first few months, where you're just observing? What themes are getting the biggest response?

[00:41:05] NP: Oh, I don't know. I mean, I think just like people – either people are talking about love, or dating, or super, super personal stuff. You can see that someone was going through something and they wrote a poem about their dad dying, or finding out they have cancer, or something like that was getting the most. Also, it’s an open mic. There's also people who are like, “My turtle walked me through.” You’re like, “What?” This is like American Idol audition week.

[00:41:34] LW: What were you writing about in those first few months?

[00:41:37] NP: I literally was writing about myself and the universe and trying to figure out what is this life thing? Are we all doing the same thing? Have we done it before? What is reincarnation? What are ancestors? How does all this work together? I was trying to figure out. I was really, really burdened with what's going on here and what are we all here to do and how do you know if you're doing it? I was trying to write myself into answers. I was trying to unpack. In many ways, so much of my writing is me talking to my higher self, me talking to God, me processing a thing that I don't really know how to process, or a thing that I'm – I don't have another place to process it. Sometimes I have language for something, but no ears to hear it, and so, I can always write about it.

[00:42:27] LW: Talk about the first time you went up.

[00:42:31] NP: First time I went on stage. I don't know even what poem I had.

[00:42:36] LW: You get to sign up, I'm assuming. You get there. You get there at a certain time.

[00:42:38] NP: First of all, it’s [inaudible 00:42:39] people in this space. At that time, the guys, it's four founders, who ended up being great friends of mine. The way that they did things, I felt was not right, okay. I should just say that from the beginning. They would take a piece of paper, and they would write one through 20 down the side of the paper and then drop it on the floor. You would essentially have to –

[00:43:01] LW: Like wolves.

[00:43:03] NP: Yeah, like wolves, or like crabs in a barrel, would have to fight to get your name on one of those slots. If you didn't, then you just have to try to sign up in the second half. I signed up and the first week I signed up, he didn't call my name. I was like, “Whew!” I was elated. I think, I signed up maybe two or three weeks, but my name was number 15 or 16. I was like, “He probably won't get to me.” Because he had seen me and by he, I'm talking about Shihan Van Clief, a poet. He bumped me up in the list, because he had seen that I had signed up a couple of times. He was really trying to get to me. Well, I didn't know that he was going to do that. When I was reading names, I was like, “I'm never really going to go.”

[00:43:46] LW: You weren’t ready.

[00:43:48] NP: I could just be relaxed. Then he was like, “And next up, Natalie.” I was like, “I messed up. I made a mistake.” I cry and die in that moment. I go up there, and I have my paper in my hand and I attempt to read my poem. What happened with my body is first of all, as if this was – this body did not belong to me. I felt utterly betrayed. I was shaking in places I didn't know you could shake, okay? My knees were shaking in directions, knees don't go in. I could not catch my breath. In the middle of the poem, I was like, “I don't even know why I wrote this poem. These are too many words. Who cares about this?”

I just had abandoned the passion that I had when I was furiously writing this poem. I no longer was attached to it. Did not care about. Thought it was the dumbest poem in the world. Then suddenly, was questioning my existence. Why did I think I should read this on stage?

[00:44:47] LW: You're having this whole other dialogue while you're having an outer body experience.

[00:44:52] NP: Meanwhile, I was like, “Two minutes. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever.” I'm begging the universe to just open up a hole in the floor at this point, because I'm like, “Oh, my God. I have so much more on this paper to go.” I finish and I teleport back to my seat, because I cannot even tell you how I got back to my seat. I sit down. I believe that I had a friend with me, because I never went alone at that time. I looked over and I said, “Did they clap?” She goes, “What do you mean? Of course, they clapped.” She's like, “You didn't hear them?” Probably for the first year of performing, I had no recollection of what happened after I read the poem. Just none.

[00:45:35] LW: What about during the poem? Because I know, when you did your thing at the Shine, you made a disclaimer at the very beginning like, “I want you guys to give me feedback. Anything you want to say. If you feel something, yell it out. Blah, blah, blah.” That wasn't a part of your show.

[00:45:49] NP: Well, that was not –

[00:45:50] LW: In that first year.

[00:45:51] NP: It’s really lovely that you thought those were jokes. Those were just occurrences. They were not, bless everybody's heart, that was in that audience and clap for me, because I mean, I was going through it in those performances. No, I have no recollection of anything.

[00:46:09] LW: What are you learning about yourself as a spoken word artist in that first year, from just going up on stage and having that experience?

[00:46:17] NP: Well, first of all, I was not calling myself anything at that point. In fact, I remember asking my friend, Jamil, who was the DJ at the Poetry Lounge at the time. I remember asking him, “How do I know and I can call myself a poet?” He said, “Do you have to tell a tree it's a tree?” He was giving me all the parables. I was like, “Yes, I'm not here for that. If you could just give me a direct answer, because I don't know what that means. I'm sitting in my insecurity.” That's cute. If you could just say yes, you're a poet, or no, that'd be helpful. He wouldn't do that for me. He was like, “This is your process. Figure it out.”

I think I was learning about myself that I was learning about all the places that I held insecurity. I was learning about what discipline looked like. When you really want something, when you really have a passion and you feel called to do something. What does it require to be great? Then, how do you define great? Is my great the same as everybody else's who stepped on the stage? I was really learning about what is artistry? Does everyone have it? Does everyone who's on stage trying to be an artist? Or are they just trying to share? Are they performing? What are they doing? What do I want to be doing? I was really in many ways, defining myself as a human and making choices. While my other friends were in college, I was in college learning how to be a human in the world of poetry.

[00:47:45] LW: Who were some of the other poets there in that first – in those early days that you looked at and you thought to yourself, “Gosh, they make it so effortless. I'm so inspired by.” Every time they get up on stage, they just kill every single time.

[00:47:59] NP: I mean, there were so many people. There was a poet who I believe, lives in Hawaii now. Bridget Gray, who was just – first of all, she's 6-feet tall. It was already your thing, right? She just had so much power. She could make the room vibrate. She could make every person in that room fall in love with her, male, female or otherwise. You wanted to know her. You were interested in who she was. No matter what poem she said, you needed to know more about her. I was like, “Okay, that's power. I'm trying to see what that's about.”

Of course, I was raised by so many men in that community, like Sekou the Misfit, IN-Q, Omari Hardwick, who's gone on to be an actor. Shihan, Jamil, Poetry. There were so many guys who were doing things, but there were very few women in that community. Thea Monyee was one of the poets that I really respected. Rachel Kahn, Rachel McKibbens, who lives in New York now. These incredibly powerful women who really changed the space, because the space was really gendered at the time. I'm not there anymore, so I don't know what it looks like now. It was very gendered. It was very like, either showing up as alpha male, super masculine, or being a nerd person, or being super powerful woman. There was really nothing else.

I always felt like, I'm a blend. I can kick it with the dudes, but I'm also hell a woman. Where's the space between, is what I was always trying to figure out and trying to carve out for myself of I want to sit somewhere between both of these things. That's what I was really trying to teach myself is how do I occupy that space not only on stage, but anywhere I am? That everywhere becomes a space that is my own. I think being on stage there, but also around the country really, really taught me that.

[00:50:14] LW: You ended up withdrawing yourself from college after a year. I know you joined the LA slam team. Talk a little bit about that process.

[00:50:23] NP: I started college two weeks after graduating high school. I just jumped into school and I was like, “Okay, let me just do this as fast as possible.” After my first year, in the summer, I had had a professor, who I really connected with. She was really cool to me. I was like, she gets me. She sees what I'm trying to do. She's being supportive. She told me towards the end of my first year to come and see her and she wanted to check in. I did and she asked how the school year had gone. I was like, “It's cool. I'm taking these classes and blah, blah, whatever.” Then she's like, “Okay, so what are you really excited about?” I started talking about poetry. I completely lit up. She says to me, “I probably could get fired for telling you this, but there's nothing we have here that's going to do that for you. You found your thing, and so you need to study that the way you would study in school.” I was like, “Done deal.”

I called my mother to tell her that I was leaving school for a year, because I thought if I said a year, that would like, “Okay, is this going to work?” My pitch was, I'm 19. If I'm doing something stupid, this is the time in my life to do it. I want to take a year off. I have no responsibilities. I'm not screwing anything up. Yes, you might hold some disappointment, but this is the time to do that. I want to take a year off and explore poetry.

The deal was that if nothing happens in a year through poetry, then I would go back to school without hesitation. My mother does feel like, “If I would have known that you wanted to be poor, I wouldn't have worked so hard to keep you in the best schools.” I was like, “Okay. Chill out.” Then that made me ferocious in terms of trying to attain success. I was writing poems every single night. My mom would wake up and first thing in the morning, I'd be like, “Here, want to hear this poem I wrote?” Because I was like, she needs to see that I'm doing something. Every morning, she'd be like, “You wrote this overnight?” I was like, “Yeah, I did. Because I'm awesome. Have a little faith.”

Of course, I was working out the awesome part, but I was trying, you know what I mean? I would just do that every single night. That led into me having a mentor named Babu, who was a really brilliant poet. He was mentoring me and basically said, “Slam, which is competitive poetry is different than spoken word. It is a competition. Anytime you hear language and slam, that means people are competing.” He was like, “That will be really good for you. It'll help you develop your chops and get you really comfortable on stage.” He started coaching me and he was like, “Let's go for the LA slam team and see if you can make it.” I did.

[00:53:07] LW: Is this a paid mentorship? Or is he just doing you a favor? Or did he like you? What was the dynamic there?

[00:53:14] NP: He thought I was hot and talented. That, if we really keep it on this. He was just like, “You’re new and cute, and also talented.” 

[00:53:23] LW: He's trying to holler at you, basically.

[00:53:24] NP: He was low-key trying to holler and also, trying to give me whatever wisdom he had.

[00:53:30] LW: What was your writing process like? Because doing it every night, obviously, you developed some process. How would you get the inspiration? Would you read a note from your journal and that would trigger something? Or would you watch television or meditate? What would you do to get that spark of an idea?

[00:53:47] NP: I literally have always been the same. I don't have anything that needs to inspire me. Life is inspiring. I just pay attention to what's happening around me. I always am filled with questions, things that I'm wondering about. I just would make time to write. I've always been a person who liked to write at night. I stay up really, really late. Sometimes I go to bed at 7 a.m. 

[00:54:08] LW: Drinking your black tea.

[00:54:10] NP: Drinking black tea, although I'm not drinking caffeine right now. Devastating. Yes, I'm a lover of black tea. Yeah, I would just stay up and write. It wasn't anything that needed to spark me. There was so much that I was curious about that I would just make space to explore it.

[00:54:25] LW: How did you know an idea was worthy of exploration?

[00:54:30] NP: Because I can feel it. I feel words. I always have been that way. I know when something's important or special. I can always see a spark in something. Typically, I can see it before other people can, which is a double-edged sword. Oftentimes, people are like, “That's not a thing.” Then I'm like, “Just wait for it. It'll be a thing.” Then it's the thing, then I'm like, hate to be the person that said I told you so, but I told you so. Yeah. I mean, I can just always feel when something's important. I can always feel when the poem is done. I just free write. I don't like structure, and so I just write until I'm finished.
[00:55:04] LW: Is there a certain length that you will then go back and edit a poem down to, so it’s like, I don't know if at the Poetry Lounge, you only had a three, four-minute window, so it has to be within that timeframe?

[00:55:17] NP: Yeah. I mean, I got conditioned to write in three to four minutes spurts. Some of my beginning pieces were much longer than that, and so I would have to edit them down to three minutes. At that point, I was developing what editing looked like and what that meant, because I was just writing.

Then when I started slamming, it was like, okay, so now you have to make sure that this is under three minutes. Now like, oh, how do you edit things that you think are important out? I just developed the like, I know what three minutes feels after 10 years of being on stage and having to be mindful of that. My writing just naturally falls within that now. It was a struggle for maybe two weeks. Then it was like, this is just the format.

[00:55:59] LW: Beautiful. Babu had done the whole Obi Wan Kenobi thing, preparing you for the slam competitions. You were part of a team. I'm assuming, that's the time in your career, if you want to call it that, where you decided, “Hey, I'm going to read my poetry from a page, or from a phone or whatever,” as opposed to memorizing it. Can you talk about that decision-making process?

[00:56:24] NP: That actually didn’t happen then. I started slamming, and I ended up actually being on a team with Babu and Jamil from the Poetry Lounge, the DJ and Bridget Gray. Mesmerizing humans. I actually ended up being on a team with them. I was like, this is a thing. This is a thing. I've done a thing here. I slammed. Everything was memorized at that point. Then I developed a partnership with this woman, Molly, and we went on tour. We did a college tour. We did six months on the East Coast, doing a different college every day. Then in the daytime, we would go to a local high schools and just be like, “Hey, we're performing at Wake Forest. Can we do poems for your kids?” The teachers would be like, “Please. Do anything with them.”

It was through all of that touring and memorizing that I had this moment on stage. I was at a college. Before we performed, someone came in and told a girl that her father had died. That's what we walked into. I physically saw this person walk in, tell this girl. I saw her fall on the ground. Then they handed us microphones and were like, “Okay, do your poems now.” I was like, “Her dad just died. I don't have shit to say right now. There's no poems for this. It's be quiet time.” We were being paid, and so we had to do an hour set.

As we're doing the poem, there was a TV in the back of the room. That was on PET. I had been sexually assaulted when I was 19, and so I had a poem in my set that was about that. Really relived that night in those moments. While doing this poem, I realized that I'm watching TV in the back of the room. Full on engaged in this TV program, while retelling the story of my date rape. It was in that moment that I was like, something has to change, because I'm on autopilot. I should never be so disconnected from my lived experience, that I can be watching TV, while talking about one of the most triggering moments of my life.

It really was in that moment that it was an undoing. I stopped doing poetry when we came off tour. For probably six months, I didn't do – I didn't read any poems. I would go to the lounge and just listen. Then after that, it was relearning poetry and really choosing. I made a conscious choice that I was going to read my poems, that that was the only way for me to be present. As present as I wanted to be, as authentic as I wanted to be, was not to rehearse, but to come to the work present every single time.

I couldn't find another way to be able to do that. That felt the same to me. I think there's something really beautiful about imperfections and about human moments. It's why when I hit my mouth on the microphone at the Shine, I thought it was funny, because it's human. I'm a human, so let's laugh because it was funny, as opposed to me being perfect and polished. I think there's something beautiful about that, but there's also something really isolating about the necessity to be perfect all the time.

Also, doesn't create space for other people to admire something real. I think about the Kardashians and all the things that we see on social media all the time. Now we're in a space where people are craving things that are real. There's a long-time people love to fake shit. Now when you have nothing else, you have nothing to entertain you, when you've watched everything on Netflix. The thing you actually want is someone who gives a shit about you and someone who knows you for real, who you don't have to put makeup on for, someone who even in your cross-face sees your brilliance and your beauty. I think as an artist, that's really what I aspire to do is to not put on a show, but to share a moment.

[01:00:12] LW: What did you notice about how the crowd engaged with you when you made that very intentional choice, after having gone to 200 colleges and six [inaudible 01:00:21], you’ve now gone up thousands of times? How was your relationship with the audience at that point?

[01:00:27] NP: It was honest. There was no wall. There was no veil. It was me and these people, this community. There was more reverence for the moment. It was more tender. I got something out of it, too. I remember feeling very used when I was doing college shows, and doing shows every single day. I was like, these people don't even know me. They don't appreciate anything. I'm giving them my stories. They feel good and then they go home. Then I go back to my hotel room and I order room service and I wake up the next day and I get on a flight and I go to another city. It was empty and meaningless. I was like, “What am I away from my family and away from all my friends for six months? For this? For money?” Then I'm going to come home and have nothing to come home to? Who cares?

I was in a relationship and was missing my partner every single day. I was like, I don't even know what's happening in their life. I'm out here doing something that doesn't actually matter to me. For money? Nah.

[01:01:26] LW: Do you feel you had developed your voice by that time?

[01:01:29] NP: Yeah. I felt my voice was coming in. I think it's definitely matured over time. For sure, I still stand by those poems, for sure.

[01:01:36] LW: Were you still writing as prolifically a poem day at that point? Or did you have crowd favorites that you would sometimes go to and you knew it was going to get some reaction?

[01:01:46] NP: Yeah. I mean, then it was like, if you're – It also depended on if it was I'm at an open mic, versus if I'm at a professional gig, where they're paying me to be awesome. That's probably not the day to test out some work. I was learning those professional things of okay, so now I'm getting paid to do the show. What does that mean? In corporate settings, what does that mean? Can I curse in corporate settings? Or is that something I want to do to make it spicy? I was learning to make those kinds of choices. I wasn't writing every single day for sure at that point. Touring totally killed the desire to write. That was part of taking a six months off was just to decompress and then make choices again.

[01:02:32] LW: At this point, what do career options look like as a spoken word poet? I mean, is this something – because I know you ended up going into teaching and I want to talk about that. I'm just curious, what you envision for yourself, say 10 years down the line of being so excited about this new thing, this relatively new thing in your life?

[01:02:51] NP: Yeah. I mean, at that point, I'm in my early 20s. The avenues at that point were to go on Def Poetry and –

[01:02:58] LW: Which you did.

[01:03:00] NP: - to go on tour. I didn't go on Def Poetry. [Inaudible 01:03:02] reached out to me and asked me to do a show with he and Debbie Allen. I was a part of the Def Poetry All-Star so, but I wasn't on the actual television show. I was asked to submit tapes for several years. What I realized was, you didn't get anything out of that. They paid you $600, then they made a million dollars off of you, then you went home. There were a lot of people that were on Def Poetry that we'd never heard of again, after being on that show.

Because I was close with Shihan, who was who was the West Coast rep for the show, I just realized that there wasn't that much that came out of that. This was before social media. You couldn't leverage it really. It was like, you were on TV and people saw it. Then they'd look up your YouTube and they would be in their college dorm and write your poem out. That was the extent of really what could happen. There were some people who went on to tour and could really level up, but there weren't that many people that were doing that. There’s probably, maybe 1% or 2% of the poets that I knew that were actually making a living off of poetry.

I was thinking about why that was true, because there was no infrastructure within the community that poetry was seen as a stepchild of the entertainment business, but people always pulled poets into things, but there was no equity in it. I was really business-minded in that way. I was thinking about, okay, how can we evolve the Poetry Lounge at that point? I had been there for several years, and in many ways, was a stakeholder and really had the ear of the guys and the listening of the guys and was helping out in doing stuff.

I was thinking about infrastructure. I was like, we need to make classes so poets can be better. How do they grow if there's nowhere to teach them? That doesn't make sense. We have this community of seasoned poets, but they're not sharing any of their wisdom. That doesn't make sense to me. I was like, okay, after I came back from tour, I was sitting there and I was listening, and I was listening. I was just really disgusted with the dishonesty that like, what was so transformative for me was going into space and feeling like, people were telling the truth. They were telling what was really happening for them. I felt seen and heard. That was why I started going there. That's what drew me to poetry.

With the introduction of Def Poetry and being able to be pseudo famous, it watered it down. With slam, it watered it down. Now people were just, they're trying to essentially jerk off on stage. I was really disgusted with that. I created an integrity and vulnerability workshop. I was like, let's just see what happens if people take this. I offered it. The class filled up immediately. I was like, okay, so there are people that want to do more and do better. Okay, cool.

Then I realized, I was really good at teaching. I was like, “Oh, okay. This is interesting.” I was like, “Well, maybe I can teach what I love. Maybe I can do poetry and teach.” Because I was like, “I don't want to be a traditional teacher. I don't rules like that. I'm not going to all the meetings.” Maybe there's something about the space between and I've always been a bridge person. I'm like, “Oh, this is the space between.” This is what happens after the Poetry Lounge, to get people prepared to go back to the Poetry Lounge. They take a class. Great. Okay, cool.

Then, I got the offer to be funded to develop another program for high school kids. The whole time I was on tour, those six months, we would take over high schools. I knew there was a magic there. I love seeing kids come alive. Teachers would email a six month later and be like, “If you guys are ever back on the East Coast, please come back. Our kids are still talking about you. You did more for our students in that one day than we've been able to do in an entire school year.”

[01:06:53] LW: What was it about you that you feel made you a great teacher?

[01:06:57] NP: That I was willing to see people where they were, and invite them into something more. I can make a person curious about a thing.

[01:07:06] LW: Did you have any exercises that – your go-to exercises for that thing?

[01:07:11] NP: I mean, really, first of all, I would always share poems with kids before I asked them to do anything. I would always share a really vulnerable poem, so that they would know who I was. Then I would say, “I'm not here to make you do anything. I just want to invite you to learn about poetry in a way that your teacher is not going to teach you.” Poetry for me is different than what's in those books. I would just be honest. I didn't care about Shakespeare. I didn't care about none of them poems we ever read in high school. I didn't like any of them. I thought they were boring and dumb. I was leveling with them of yeah, what they're going to offer you, probably not that dope.

I know a guy from Brooklyn, who has a fly poem. Want to hear it? Here it is. Then they're like, “Wait. This is poetry?” I'm like, “Yeah. What do you want to say? Because I want to listen. I don't know who else wants to listen to you, but I want to listen. What's up?” Then they tell me everything, because I was just being honest. I'm genuinely interested. What do you have to say?

[01:08:10] LW: You found that that also translated over to incarcerated youth as well.

[01:08:15] NP: Yeah. I mean, it's the same mechanism. I mean, part of why I love teaching kids who are incarcerated, is because all the systems have given up on them, including maybe their parents. I mean this system is exhausting. It is challenging to still be a parent, if your child is incarcerated. I want to go in and say, “I don't care what you did, or what they say you did. I don't care and I never even want to know. I don't care. It's not relevant. What I want to know is who do you want to be. What I want to know is how you got here. Do you understand what happened? Can you rewrite your own story?” That's what I want to know. Nobody else is listening to you. They're all telling you who you are. I want to actually know who you are. I want to know who you want to become.

Teaching them things about the school to prison pipeline, right? They don't know about this. They don't know about trauma. They don't know these things that they are being impacted by. In many ways, it's me trying to give them the hacks that maybe nobody else will give them, so that they can navigate out. That if I only have this time with them, I want to give them everything that nobody else wouldn't give them. That's why I’m teaching incarcerated kids, because they're just kids.

[01:09:33] LW: Have any of your kids gone on to become noteworthy, or famous in the poetry space?

[01:09:39] NP: I mean, I have kids from who went to high schools that I taught, who totally do poetry and went on to use slam and slam in college and all kinds of different things, or kids that I taught [inaudible 01:09:51] LA. Things like that. My incarcerated kids, I’m talking so easily that they either are still in the system, or are still rebuilding their lives. We'll know in the next three to five years, but I still maintain relationships with some of them, for sure.

[01:10:08] LW: Let's talk a little bit about your experience with starting the Siren Collective, which was your monthly open mic poetry.

[01:10:16] NP: I started the Siren Collective with Mayda Del Valle, Mollie Engelhart, two women who were in poetry at that time. Mayda was one of the youngest people to ever win the national slam champion title; this incredible Puerto Rican fly girl from South side Chicago. We really were sick of how patriarchy was showing up in poetry and felt like we wanted to put poetry where it deserves to be, which was in an art space.

We rented this art gallery in North Hollywood and would hold open mics and slams once a month, and would pay people to slam. We really wanted to teach people that what they were doing was worth money, not to just be getting a cup of coffee and a doughnut afterwards. That's not payment. That's cute, but it's not money. We did that for a year trying to also take poetry put of just the Poetry Lounge. A lot of the poetry venues at that point were closing. The Poetry Lounge has been around for over 20 years, and so it's the staple and the way things happen in Los Angeles, in terms of young poetry, but we just thought there was another way that it could be done and we wanted to play with that, and so we did.

[01:11:32] LW: It lasted for a year. Then what happened after that?

[01:11:35] NP: It was really just said, we all were busy. Mayda and I, both were full time poets. We were traveling all the time. Schedules were conflicting and it just got complicated to do together and maintain it in that way. It was the fairest, most honest thing to do was to navigate out of that. It was a great opportunity for us and a great learning lesson for each of us. It wasn't anything that we were trying to do forever. My goal was never to run a poetry event.

[01:12:06] LW: Was it a situation where one person was doing more work, then people started getting a little bit like, “Well, you're not really showing up. I'm going to take some time off.” Or was it that thing happening?

[01:12:16] NP: I mean, it was just a bit of conflicting schedules. There was no pettiness. Mollie and I were in town, Mayda wasn't. She was far more successful than both of us at that time. She was always traveling. She was trying to manage traveling and being a partner to this organization that we were trying to develop. Mollie and I always had a strained relationship. There was just a lot happening. It was just like, this is not going to – we're not going to be able to manage this thing, unless we are able to build a bigger community around it and that wasn't happening fast enough for our needs. We still all had the Poetry Lounge, that we were still going to every week. It was like, yeah, we have this thing, but it's not mandatory that we have it. It was really to offer the community alternatives.

[01:13:03] LW: What advice would you give to someone who wanted to do what you guys did?

[01:13:08] NP: Well, it ain't for the faint of heart. You're laughing, because you know. Any live production is blood, sweat, and tears. If you don't have a heart for it, you burn out really quickly. You also learn who your friends are and learn what your community is. Through the Poetry Lounge, but also through that, I really learned that I need a community of people around me, who are committed to participating fully.

I want people on my squad who are like, “What do we need to do? Let's make it happen.” I don't want people who are just clapping on the sidelines. That doesn't validate me at all. That's an audience. I don't need that. I need people who are like, “That's brilliant. What do you need?” If that's really your goal, I think asking yourself why is it a necessary thing? Or is an ego thing is really important to ask yourself. Then who does it serve and how can you level up that service? What's your larger commitment? Because there's a lot of great things that are happening, but there's a larger commitment. It's just about money.

Frankly, we have enough shit. We don't need more, because I do something that has heart and that matters. I think really, anything that has a pay it forward vibe to it is important. If it doesn't, I don't know why you're doing that.

[01:14:27] LW: We're having this conversation in 2021. We're still in semi-lockdown and all of that. How has that changed the poetry scene?

[01:14:37] NP: To be honest, I'm not really a part of the poetry community anymore. I'm way more social justice, mental health poetry. I live in those intersections. I know that majority of the poetry venues that are still in existence have all gone to digital, and having a weekly Instagram Live thing, or a Zoom poetry thing.

[01:15:00] LW: What about you though? How are you expressing, mostly Instagram and Twitter?

[01:15:04] NP: I'm on Twitter, but I don't like be on Twitter. I have an account, but the last post is probably two years ago being like, “I love you, Chrissy Teigen.” I exist on – Instagram is my main hub of where I'm posting things, but I'm not heavy on social media anymore. It has a very clear purpose. I'm not interested in social media. I'm interested in real human connection. If we can use these tools, because they're tools, to connect in a meaningful way, I'm with it. A lot of what happens on social media is just silly. I'm not super present on social media. I did a thing with Esther Burrell and we shared it on social media, but that wasn't the purpose. It was just an outcome. That's the way that I use social media and the way that I'm showing up with that work.

[01:16:00] LW: What activism, social justice project are you currently excited about and working on?

[01:16:06] NP: Over 2020, Allison Kunath, a muralist and I started A love Language Project, which was a response to George Floyd’s murder, and us being in our 30s, and we've done a lot of protests and been frontline. Now it's at least from my perspective, it's time to be more strategic in our efforts. Allison and I, Allison is a 6-foot tall, white woman. We came together to create posters and protests murals in cities where black voices are not. We took to the streets of Venice and Santa Monica and these wealthy neighborhoods and took voices, like Bell Hooks and Ava DuVernay and James Baldwin, and put really poignant quotes in those places as a catalyst to have conversation.

Some of my work also, but really thinking about, how can we level up the conversations that we're having? How can we make these connections more meaningful? How can we, even in a passive way, be challenging communities. For me, the work is not always yelling. In fact, very often, it's not the yelling, but finding ways to meaningfully connect and have conversations that are hard, because that's where the real work is. How to do that in a smart way, but also in an artistic way, and so, super passionate about that, and the next incarnation of how we can continue to do that.

One of the artists who was working on that project, and I, Jane, we started a project, where we are essentially making certificates and awards for life moments that there are no awards for. Oftentimes, if you stop dating a toxic human and you choose yourself, there's no award for that. There really should be. Or when you quit the job that you know you hated anyway, and you bet on yourself. There should be an award for that. We started making certificates that are available for people to purchase, to hang on our walls. What if we celebrated ourselves and celebrated our own community?

The first one we did was celebrating that we survived 2020, because that is incredible, actually. In terms of the historical perspective on that, it may take a while for us to recognize how big a feat that was. There were many people who did not survive, for a multitude of reasons, but we all did. That is absolutely worthy of celebration.

[01:18:39] LW: I saw that you have a pretty fire merch store there with all kinds of – I saw one, the fuck you texts that I didn't send, or something like that.

[01:18:48] NP: Yeah. I did a chat book called text messages and love letters never sent. Then I have another chat book called fuck it.

[01:18:55] LW: Did you guys do an Ava DuVernay quote at a vegan restaurant in Silver Lake, or no, Los Piles or something like that?

[01:19:02] NP: It was actually Jane and Katie and I. Ava is my longtime girl crush, and I love her a lot and really respect her. When I was putting together these quotes, I was like, who are the people that inspire me, who I want to put their words bigger? It's wonderful to see an Ava quote in a magazine. I want that shit on the biggest billboard, I can buy.

This restaurant actually reached out to us and they were like, “We'd love to have a quote.” They're queer-owned. They're vegan. They're all the things. I was like, “I'm down.” I was like, “What would be the best quote for this space?” I picked Ava, knowing that her space is not that far from there in Frogtown. It's just an ode and a love letter in many ways and a sign of respect to her.

[01:19:53] LW: Usually, when people are young, their idea of success is on make a lot of money and get famous and whatever. Then as they have life experience and they find their passion and their purpose, obviously that changes. I'm just curious, how are you thinking about success these days?

[01:20:08] NP: Success has been and probably always will be for me, about living in a way such that you have no regrets. Making peace with things. Also, happiness is really how I define success and quality of life. If I can't laugh and play and be in love, then none of this shit is worth it to me. It doesn't matter how much money I have. If I'm too busy to be in love, that's not for me. That's with everything. There's nothing more important than quality of life and being able to wake up on a day and it be sunny when you didn't expect it to be, and going, “Let’s go to the beach and just being able to do that.”

I intentionally don't schedule my life so far out when people are like, “Can we booked you for 2025?” I'm like, “No, because I don't know who I'm going to be then and I don't know that I want to do whatever I'm doing with you.” I always want the freedom to be playful and fun and laugh and eat ice cream on rainy days. That's really, really important to me, and really the definition of success.

[01:21:19] LW: Is your dad still around? If so, what's your relationship with him these days?

[01:21:23] NP: My dad is still living. He is not around me. We reconnected when I was 15 and spent a couple of years getting to know each other and had some really wonderful times. I said all the things I needed to say. He said all the things he needed to say, and all the things that I really deeply needed to hear. We reconciled and spent a lot of time together. What I recognized was that my father is really wonderful at a distance. We don't share the same values, in terms of the people that I want really close to me.

I really deeply appreciate all his contributions. He's not a person that we don't vibe day-to-day. He's a great person to talk to on the phone. He's a riot, and he'll give you all the wisdom, but he doesn't hold space in the way that I want my father to hold me. We have given it a really good effort. We keep a little distance.

[01:22:26] LW: Well, I definitely was not expecting to go into so much detail about your parentage in the beginning of this conversation, but it definitely shed a lot of light into your journey. Just thinking about you as a young person and having this affinity for people watching, it makes a lot of sense, seeing how your life played out, because to do what you've been able to do so effectively and with so much heart, requires a level of introspection, and observation that a lot of people just don't have.

I consider myself to be a very observant person. What you realize when you get older is that most people just aren't that way. Most people just take most things for granted. They don't really go beyond the surface of what makes somebody tick. It's not surprising to see that you have become – poetry is Natalie and all that that entails. I'm really pleasantly surprised to hear everything that has come up in this conversation. I just got the spark of inspiration to reach out to you, because you left a resonance when I – I didn't know you from Eve, when I first crossed paths with you.

I don't know. I think Allison or somebody else on the team knew about your work. They said, “Oh, she'd be great.” I was just trying to delegate as much as I could at that moment in time, because there's so – throwing those events was so overwhelming for me. I just remember being blown away. I never saw you again in person. We had a couple of exchanges in email and that thing afterward. You definitely left an impression and I have a feeling you do that with everywhere you go.

[01:24:12] NP: What is the impression? What was left?

[01:24:15] LW: No. You are one of the most transparent people I've ever encountered. The way you spoke about it was so effortless. It makes other people open up and become more transparent when they're around you. You talked a lot about your poem that night was about dating and there was some body image stuff in there. I just thought, that was so refreshing to hear, somebody get up there and talk about.

[01:24:43] NP: I never want to waste people's time. I think, moments should be worth it. We should walk away from each other going like, “Yeah, I got something from that and they got something from that and we feel good about that.” If we can't do that, I don't know what we're doing. Whether it's with my work or my presence, or how I show up on a Zoom call, that really is the intention is let this be a memory. Because I'm trying to live with no regrets. I don't want to be like, “Oh, I wish I didn't do that thing.” I need to get something out of it. I need to have a story to tell. In my early years, I was always like, if nothing else, I'm in it for the story. I would go in, what's the story I'm going to tell about this moment? I think that makes monotonous and mundane things more interesting when we can live that way.

[01:25:33] LW: I acknowledge you for showing up so boldly and bravely. You're an inspiration to me and many, many others. Thank you very much for joining this conversation.

[END OF EPISODE]

[01:25:44] LW: Thank you for listening to my conversation with Natalie Patterson. You definitely want to follow her on social media. She posts some very inspiring content. You can find Natalie at Natalie is Poetry across all platforms. Her website is natalieispoetry.com. She's got a pretty extensive YouTube presence as well. If you just search her name, Natalie Patterson. I'll put the links to her non-profit, A Love Language Project in the show notes. If you resonated with Natalie’s story, and you're like, “Man, everybody needs to hear this podcast,” but you haven't left a review yet, you can help a lot more people discover these conversations by taking literally 10 seconds to rate the podcast.

All you do is look down at your screen, click where it says At The End Of The Tunnel, which is in purple. If you're not listening to this on Apple Podcast app, you want to look for a button that says ‘Listen on Apple Podcast.’ Click that button. Then once you get onto the podcast feed, scroll down past all of the previous episodes to where it says, ‘Ratings and Reviews.’ All you're going to do is tap the star on the far right, and boom, you've left a review. It's that easy.

Thank you to those of you who took the time to do that. It really means a lot to me. You can find the show notes and a transcript of my interview with Natalie at lightwatkins.com/tunnel. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for my daily dose of inspiration emai., I have a weekly email that I send out every Tuesday as well. Both are relatively short, inspirational, motivational messages that I've been sending out for years now.

There's also a book coming out soon, called Knowing Where to Look: A 108 Daily Doses of Inspiration. It's my third book. I'll be talking more about that as we count down to the May 2021 launch day.

Thanks again for listening to this podcast and for sharing it with your friends and your followers. I will see you back here next week with another amazing story from the end of the tunnel. In the meantime, keep trusting your intuition, keep following your heart, keep taking those leaps of faith and I'll send you much peace and love in the process.

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