How I Came to Write "The CellPhone Poems"-- Particularly for KPFA Listeners

You can order your CD of “The CellPhone Poems” by sending $10.00 to Lenore Weiss / 645F Canyon Oaks Drive / Oakland, CA. 94605. She will be sure to respond.

My CD of the CellPhone Poems grew from a spec of annoyance within my consciousness, which started anywhere from five to 10 years ago. This was the time that cellphones were making a transition from the occasional specialty item carried by the dot.com rich to the ubiquitous item it has become today, a rite of passage into adulthood for the young. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Picture me commuting back home to Oakland from my job located in one of the Embarcadero Office buildings. As a young mother, I bounced between BART and AC Transit buses trying to cut the commute time down to a bare minimum. You know the drill: it’s 5 o’clock, you’ve worked all day, you’re tired, and you have to pick up the kids from childcare and go home and cook dinner-- as if public transportation weren’t enough of a challenge with its ongoing delays, crowds, purchase of tickets, and the occasional fight breaking out in an adjoining seat. Cellphones began to add yet another level of stress. Who the bling bling needed them?

Well, it seemed like a lot of people did. Everywhere I went, people had them. It was bad enough that my own day had been stressful, but suddenly I had to listen to someone else’s problems. Then there were calls to a girlfriend, or to the ticket agent for an upcoming concert, restaurant reservations, and all the business that decent people, I thought, should keep to themselves. Suddenly, the whole world was spilling out in places that had been normally reserved for relative quiet, reading a newspaper or a library book during commute time. It got worse. There were updates about a cancer diagnosis, a mental breakdown, and lovers splitting up with each other in real time while one of them waited in line at the bank.

For a long time, I attempted to turn a deaf ear. Of course, it was hopeless. Part of this had to do with my coming to terms with my new role. Now I was invited to serve as a witness to people’s lives, to take sides with feuding lovers, or to approve about food choices made in the supermarket aisle.

Somewhere in the quiet of my own home, I had an ah-ha (!) moment. I realized that I was living in a new age whereby the definitions between public and private space had dramatically shifted, and the previous boundaries regarding what was allowed in those spaces, no longer held sway. Thus, was born the CellPhone Poems. I approached a composer friend of mine, Paul Kirk, to work with me on the project.

After completing that work, I now realize that the world has been thrust into our laps in a way that it never was before. I feel that we have a decision to make regarding how we handle that responsibility. Do we resist listening, or do we choose to participate?

Currently, I have been invited by Destiny Arts Center in Oakland, a school that teaches young people hip-hop dancing, martial arts, and leadership skills, to work with a group of young people to develop their own cellphone poems. And so it continues…

You can order your CD of “The CellPhone Poems” by sending $10.00 to Lenore Weiss / 645F Canyon Oaks Drive / Oakland, CA. 94605. She will be sure to respond.