R.K. Russell: They/Them by Danez Smith (Extended Version)

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Micah Keelbon (0:30)

Hey, it's Slowdown producer Micah. We've been chatting with some of the most multifaceted literature lovers we know about the poems that have helped them slow down in this, well, multifaceted time.

Our belief is that poetry is important in all of our lives, for the actors, the musicians, the journalists, the athletes. We're bringing you reflections and poems from some very special friends of the show. Enjoy.

R.K. Russell (1:05)

I'm RK. Russell, and this is The Slowdown.

This morning, the biggest surprise was the silence. Living in Los Angeles, often you get used to the noise, you get used to the helicopters, the traffic, the people, maybe your own internal monologue if you're me.

But this morning at 5 a.m., it was so quiet. There were no cars, really, on the streets. I didn't play music, which I normally do. I'm obsessed with music. And my mind wasn't racing, which was nice. And there was just something very unexpected, but welcomed about the silence. I think when there is silence and moment to really be present in my body, I'm more aware of it. I'm going through an injury right now, and I could feel it throbbing, but also like loosening up as I was taking those first steps. I also, playing football, have a tired of injuries, so my shoulder also loosening up, my bicep also warming up, feeling myself kind of wake, both mentally and physically. In terms of my relationship with my mind and my body, it's often my mind pushing myself physically, that just comes from the world of athletics. And in the morning, especially this morning, when your mind is still kind of lulled and asleep, it allows your body to take the lead. So you're doing things that feel good. You're stretching a little more, you're taking your time instead of the mind kind of communicating. We need to be at the gym by 5.30. We need to be on the treadmill at this time. We need to be, we need to be, we need to be. You finally get to listen to what your body needs, or just let it do what it needs. And it's actually a much more peaceful way to ease into your day. My body's most natural state or feeling is dance, which is crazy because I'm also like this very large man. Lifting and things, it feels good to be stronger. And even in playing football, it feels good to dedicate your life to something and practice something and it works. But there's something about music that when it comes on, my body just moves and it's uninhibited, it's raw, it doesn't care. I'm not overthinking it. I'm not a professional change dancer, especially with my relationship in sports and athletics. It's forcing your body to do things it's not really used to doing or that aren't comfortable. Or when you play a contact sport, you're moving another person's body against its will, and there's this push and pull. But dance is just, yeah, it just is. I often think of the difference between creation and curation, and a lot of masculinity and manhood in my experience is a lot of curation. It's a lot of people telling you what you can be, who you can't be, how you should move, talk, act, how you shouldn't move, talk, and act. I'm in my 30s now, but when I was 26, I came to the crossroads of like, okay, how much of this did I pick up from somewhere else? And it's going against my natural thoughts, intonation, body, on how much of this comes from me, or at least is a more natural or genuine relationship to me. And not saying everything that you curate is bad, a lot of the times that's how we learn and grow. We reference and curate and imitate. But to really take stock of those things and to hold on to the things that feel like they align, not just with who you are now, but with who you want to be, and removing some of those other things, especially if they're holding you back or making you feel shame or some type of limiting feeling. For me, a lot of my life was about sacrifice to get to a greater goal or outcome, whether that was waking up early, working out, going to practice, staying after practice, to be a better football player, to make it to the NFL, to provide for my family, or whether it was in relation to my family, being the man that didn't have to be told to do certain things, but just did them, taking out the trash, paying bills, making sure that everyone's protected and feels good. It was always rooted in identity. My identity as a football player, my identity as a son or a brother or a teammate. When you start to want to live authentically as yourself, there is also sacrifices that must be made. A lot of those sacrifices are rooted in your relationships, how people view you, how people want you to give to them and love them and care for them. That's hard because you want to love and care for a lot of these people, but to be your authentic self, you have to sacrifice some of how that shows up. There's also this discipline and authenticity that is unlike anything else. It's rooted in a lot of deconstruction, learning and forgiving and having mercy with yourself as you go through different phases of life, different phases of self. What feels authentic to you one day, might not feel that way the next day. Only in your relationship with self is that okay. You can't show up as a brother one day and then show up the next day. Actually, I don't want to be your brother. I don't want to do these things. I don't want to love, care and protect for you. But with yourself, you can kind of shift and change, but there's a thought that changes a scary thing. And I think we view fear a lot of the time as a warning of something negative. When fear is actually most of the time, a thought boundary lesson or motor survival that comes from somewhere else. Whether it's experience, whether it's a lesson that you heard, whether it's observation that you had of someone else. So you need to find where the fear is coming from, and then see if it is aligned with who you are authentically or where you want to go. And then you push past it. Fear doesn't mean something is automatically negative. It just means that you have an experience, observation or lesson that's bringing up some emotions for you. That's why I give myself grace because I wouldn't even have the same understanding or appreciation for poetry if I didn't also have quote unquote bad poetry or unedited poetry or raw poetry, Instagram poetry, especially in the age of technology. We think that these things dilute something. And I don't think it's true. I think if anything, it just gives us deeper appreciation for these things. It broadens it, it makes it connect to more people. Writing outside of just being therapeutic, outside of being a way to communicate, it is to me pure possibility as well as a honest, raw, vulnerable depiction of grief, of loss, of love. Every emotion you can think of and even those you can't. But when you read a line, a paragraph, a sentence, you feel so visually what it's trying to convey. And as a writer, in really claiming that, regardless of what type of background you have, what type of education you have, what form of writing you do, to be a writer is to be someone who creates possibility, who sees possibility, who also grieves lost possibility. You exist in the multitude of possibility, which in itself is hope. Especially nowadays, we live in very dark times, and sometimes writing about those dark times allow people to know they're not alone. Writing out of those dark times allows people to understand that there has been light before this, and there will be light after, and I think those things are so, so important. Oftentimes, we see writing as the reflection of society, when really writing is where we bend society, it's where we bend the rules, it's where we bend even the preconceived outcomes we've been sold online or through media or just even our own homes. There is a gateway that happens every time you put words on a page, and that is not only possibility and hope, that is the true essence of what it means to be human. Society is not shaping what we write, what we write is shaping society.