The Audition

So this poem happened as I was strolling around the French Quarter in New Orleans. It served to remind me that despite all this activity and craziness there are always opportunities to re-ground and re-connect with what really matters. 

Sitting amongst the noise of performers on street corners and visitors over-celebrating was a young man sitting at a tiny table which carried an old-fashioned portable typewriter. The writer in me was immediately drawn to him and he told me he could write me a poem on any topic and I could pay him anything I liked for the outcome. 

Easily, from within I pulled the topic of self-discovery, a topic always close to me but rather abandoned as I spend several weeks touring around the US with a group of friends. We chatted for a while. He found the essence of what I was seeking with his words, delivered with simplicity but great potence. This is what I was given.

The Audition

The stage is set for 

a new audition, the meeting between

me and place

me and the possibility of me

as place draws it out of me

like a rib,

not the sort of self-discovery

we bandy about as kids,

but life has happened

hard and strong and good

and this isn’t about

jettisoning the bad

but finding the true,

not the provenance of the theatre

but true verite –

an audition for myself.

Lecco Morris, New Orleans, April 2019

I hugged him – he said all I felt in those lines of his, it was like he looked into my soul. This is an audition for myself to be myself, to carry that with me and not to be distracted by what happens around me but to keep the purpose in my heart, in my way of living. It’s not about forgetting all that has passed but about finding what there is at the very core of who I am and it seems new places open me to the possibility of another me. Finding a new place can serve me as a catalyst to open to my real self. I feel that place is coming and that me is coming.