Passive-Aggressive Friendship

0:00 Slam poetry. It doesn't care if it's perfect. It's time to slam now here. I go again on my own. Ha, got him. Welcome to the very first solo episode of I Think Therefore I Slam. My name is Andrew Rogerson and welcome to this brand new. Episode format This is something. Very new and something. Very different so as we're both. Feeling our way through the dark let me. Breakdown what these kind of episodes are going to look like. I'm going to perform one of my own original. Spoken word pieces. I'm going to breakdown the background of the piece. Tell some stories, have some laughs, maybe some nostalgia. And then you're going to hear me tell it again. And then and then we wrap up.

0:48 I was encouraged to do this by by some, I guess podcasting mentors that I caught up with over the break. They were saying, hey, could you find a way to bring some of your own work more to the fore? So I decided to take a risk and try something different. So today's poem. Is 1. That I made a fun little video for on the I think therefore I slam Instagram at I think therefore I slam if you're not already following. So I thought I'd I'd kind of expand on the story around it here. It's called in ex ha ha Lily and it goes a little something like this. Crystal knows the streets like the back of her hand me down sneaks, unfit for a queen in exile.

1:32 Shortcuts and wormholes are her bread and butter pudding, salvage from packet mix. She's never learned a recipe, save the one for disaster. Drags you to bars so divey they're practically reefs. Pelts you with story sharp as spearheads. You nod, but inside you weep. Shield your face from the heat of her bridges. Depleted scolds like her father's words. You want her blue, tacked on that maternity ward wall. You want her enshrined on the playground where you met in Grade 4. You want her taxidermied on any night before this one. But she gleams in defiance, regales again, pours herself into another friend's futon.

2:29 Crystal knows you're lying about wanting to catch up with the times, spying on those you thought left behind. Every pity is cancerous pride. OK, so that was in Ex Ha Ha le Le and it's a poem about what I like to call a passive aggressive friendship. Now I'm going to quote JK Rowling here, who I realize is probably not the best person to quote, but just bear with me. This is going somewhere. When JK Rowling talks about how she came up with the idea for Harry Potter, I think she says something along the lines of she was on a train and all of a sudden some of the characters walked into her, her mind fully formed or something.

3:12 And then she went on to to write the first book. That's kind of how I feel about these two fictional characters in the story. You've got Crystal and you've got another unnamed woman friend. I do feel like they kind of just walked into my head one day. This is not autobiographical. This is not based on any kind of friendship that I've had. As much as a friend of mine who I did share this with was convinced it was about them, it's really not. This is about power dynamics in friendships. This is about 1 friend looking at another with pity, you know, and kind of looking down on them and feeling superior and even keeping the friendship alive or keeping it kindled, if you like, as a way of feeling superior.

3:59 And that's reflected in the title, which I'll explain. So index Ha ha, Lily, and apologies to anyone who really likes this type of decor. But if you go to your local Kmart or department store, you'll probably find some kind of cheap and nasty homewares where they've got the words inhale, exhale, but they'll be on like a, a little plank of wood. You know something that you might see when you you walk into someone's entrance hall in their home, right? So you've got inhale going vertical down. So it'll say like in ha Li and then exhale on the right going vertical down. So like X ha Li, right? So you meant to read it vertically. But of course, if you put those two things beside each other and you read like you would normally read something which is left to right, you end up with in X ha ha Li Li. And the reason why I named the poem after that is that I guess I'm being a bit judgy.

4:54 I'm making a judgement about that type of decor and going like, uh, that's a bit tacky. So it's almost like the character here is looking at Crystal and thinking of them as the type of person who might like that type of decor. So it's, it's kind of mean and it's kind of Snooty and it's meant to feel that way. You know, Crystal, I try to, to really express that character as someone who's a bit of a, a hot mess. You know, they're walking around without some, some important and basic life skills, like being able to, to have a wide range of, of things that you can cook, which I realise is, is not something that's super necessary nowadays. But again, this is all through the lens of this other character who's kind of looking down on all these qualities about her, her friends, so to speak.

5:38 You know, you nod, but inside your weep, you shield your face from the heat of her bridges deplete. This character is kind of sick of hearing Crystal's stories and and the relationships that have broken down. And yet they keep them in their life. They keep them in their life because I think they want to keep Crystal in this kind of infantilized state. And that's why I talk about the second character wanting Crystal to be blue tacked to her maternity ward wall, wanting her to be enshrined on the playground where you met in Grade 4 or taxidermy dot any night before this one. I was trying to express that feeling of something set in stone, right? Something made into a statue or stuffed and put on a mantle of wanting to preserve the status quo of maybe who someone used to be or what the friendship maybe used to be like. There's almost a sense of longing as well as that feeling of superiority, I suppose.

6:29 And then I wanted to put in I guess what I call A twist at the end, so I'll just repeat that part. So Crystal knows you're lying about wanting to catch up with the times, spying on those you thought left behind. Every pity is cancerous pride. And that really sums up the theme in terms of Crystal kind of knows what's going on. She's not naive to the fact that this friendship doesn't have an equal playing field. It's got a weird power dynamic where again, this other friend is kind of feeling superior because their friend is such a hot mess and Crystal's onto it. You know, Crystal knows that this is not just any kind of catch up. There is something behind this that is, that is doing something for the other person, and that behind every pity is a cancerous pride, that is, that is causing damage. Now, I said before that this is not an autobiographical poem. You know, this is not based on a particular friendship. But I think that there have been elements of this in some of my friendships as well.

7:30 And I actually don't like that. I don't want to be a passive aggressive friend. I don't want to have differences in power dynamics with my friends. I want to be able to celebrate their wins, whatever is going on in my life. I want to be interested in what, you know, the decisions they make and what they do, even though they may be different from myself and and what I value or what I'm interested in. I don't want to be like this other character looking at Crystal. But I guess once I'd finished this poem, I was able to look back on it and be like, Gee, this is really written from the, you know, the perspective of a character who's a bit of a piece of work. So I hope that in your friendships as well, that they're not passive aggressive, that you're able to have equal power with the people in your relationships and with your friendships and that they don't reflect what's going on here. So once again, I'm going to read it before I sign off. This is in ex ha ha.

8:24 Lily Li Crystal knows the streets like the back of her hand. Me down sneaks. Unfit for a queen in exile. Shortcuts and wormholes are her bread and butter pudding. Salvage from packet mix. She's never learned a recipe, save the one for disaster. Drags you to bars so divey they're practically reefs. Pelts you with stories sharp as spearheads. You nod, but inside you weep. Shield your face from the heat of her bridges. Deplete it. Scolds like her father's words. You want her blue, tacked to that maternity ward wall. You want her enshrined on the playground where you met in Grade 4.

9:14 You want her taxidermied on any night before this one. But she gleams in defiance and regales again, pours herself into another friend's futon. Crystal knows you're lying about wanting to catch up with the times, spying on those you thought left behind. Every pity is cancerous pride. Thank you so much for listening. Like I said, this is a brand new experimental kind of format that I'm doing here. So I'd love to hear what you think and whether you want to hear more. So let me know through the podcast play you're listening to this on or through the I think therefore I slam Instagram at I think therefore I slam.

9:59 I'll see you in the next one. Wait, your big fans? What's that all about?