What can I say? I just like a playful sub-title!
And, by now, I am sure you know my articles do not provide answers to the bold claim of the main title. And obscenity isn’t really a topic I intend to write on. It is the ‘scene’ part more than the ‘ob’ that is of interest to me.
Since starting to share my poetry, and writing in general, all of a sudden, after never having been part of something people referred to as ‘a scene’ I found myself in the ‘poetry scene’.
I have listened to a lot of the Elis James and John Robins podcast. Elis has a penchant for ironically calling things like biscuits or soft play centres ‘the biscuit scene’ or the ‘soft play centre scene’, which always makes me smile.
Always.
If anything, I am in the ‘smile at the word “scene” ’ scene.
When I first started going to open mics I wouldn’t have known it was a scene or that people called it a scene. I was just glad to be seen (and heard) for my 4 minutes and shuffle back to my seat having chatted to a few people and being inspired/moved/entertained by others who were brave enough to share their 4(or more) minutes of words.
I’d only started to find my feet and new friends before March 2020.
I definitely didn’t feel part of a scene and I don’t think I was in the same conversations as people using that phrase yet.
And then came lockdown(s).
It’s hard to be seen when you are specifically told to stay at home to save lives and protect the NHS.
< pause for reflection that saving lives and protecting the NHS should be a permanent policy>
Like so many others, I put more stuff online than I had ever done before. By stuff I mean poems. Online was a way to attempt to remain connected or find new connections in those ‘strange times’.
I tried to stay in touch with people I hoped to see again after ‘all this was over’. I also connected new people, in a sort of ripple effect of connections that I looked forward to seeing after ‘all this was over’.
As the world opened up again I started to go back to the open mics I had missed or had found online. More evenings emerged and I’d add more events to my list of events to check out. The community was glad to be back and re-establishing itself. And then, at some point in 2022, when I was at an event, I was introduced as someone on ‘the poetry scene’ to another poet. And whilst I didn’t do my wry smile, it did make me pause and think ‘am I? I guess I am?’.
I felt part of something. And it wasn’t a feeling I was used to. I felt welcomed and part of a community. Or part of a small part of a community.
The dictionary definitions of the word ‘scene’ includes :
the place where some action or event occurs
Or
an area or sphere of activity, current interest
But as it is a word I struggle to take too seriously, I am reluctant to place too much importance on the concept of a scene.
And when I look at the dictionary definitions I come back to the the ‘sphere of activity’ part. The common interest. That is the part that is for all who want it to make it theirs. And that is the beauty of a scene. It exists before the places to share it. It exists without the events. The events and places are part of the scene, but they are not the scene on their own.
Being seen can be part of the scene. It is not the the whole scene. Trying to be seen by the whole scene seems an impossible task that would soon suck the joy out of what you loved about the activity that drew you into the scene.
People you have and may never meet are part of the scene. And people may like different parts of the scene to you and vice versa.
The scene is not one thing and there in lies it’s beauty.
And …..
SCENE.
How to be seen
that's why it's so obscene to make a scene, but so beautiful to convene a scene.