Smash Notes
"a Bird Made of Birds" | Sarah Kay
"The universe has already written the poem you were planning on writing," says Sarah Kay, quoting her friend, poet Kaveh Akbar. Performing "A Bird Made of Birds," she shares how and where she finds poetry. (Kay is also the host of TED's podcast "Sincerely, X." Listen on the Luminary podcast app at luminary.link/ted)
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Notes
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A fellow poet named Cobb Ahkbar found an online photo of the anatomical heart of a blue whale that scientists had hung on a hook from the ceiling. That display let them observe that the heart is big enough for a person to stand up fully inside it.
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When Cav A shared the photo, the caption called it another reminder that the universe has already written the poem you were planning on writing. The first response was horror, because inventing new metaphors and discovering beauty that has not been discovered yet still leaves the universe always getting there first.
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Birds called starlings fly in a murmur oration, generally just a big cloud of birds. A quick phone video begins as an amorphous blob, then the birds shift and form the shape of a starling in the sky, so the flock briefly looks like the animal it is made from.
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For the first time, the reminder did not fill the moment with despair. Maybe the job is not to invent something new. Maybe the job is to listen to what the universe is showing, keep yourself open to what it offers, and hold something to the light just for a moment, only for as long as you have it.
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A fig becomes possible when a lady wasp lays her eggs inside a flower, dies, and decomposes into the fruit, leaving evidence of her transformation. The fruit may not be first or ever best, but offering it is the only way to be sure that the life inside the flower was lived at all.
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