Spoken Word Artist Daniel Allen Vaughn

by Tanya Cromartie-Twaddle

I heard this on a cold March night at a hot open mic… some of us spend a great deal of time… perhaps too much time… communicating this way… :)

(the following is from the spoken word artist Daniel Allen Vaughn)

Emotions from Emoticons: Sentiments on Email

In this day and age of electronic communication, we sometimes lose the essence of personal contact.

We sometimes lose the essential emotions one gets from one-on-one, face-to-face conversations.

Emotions are at times confusing, with the use of italicized, (parenthesized) smiley faces or frowns with colon or semi-colon eyes, or the typed HAHAHA!

Bolded exclamation! and question marks? in text pages or emails often do not convey the sentiments we truly intend to have our words to reflect.

As a creative soul, I try to read written communication in the same fashion that I look upon visual art. I attempt to place myself into the perspective of the artist, at least from the standpoint of my understanding of the artist. Or the understanding of the artist that I walk away from the artwork with. And even in that, I sometimes walk away from art with more questions than answers. Instrumental music offers the same challenge.

It is kind of like listening to the instrumental improvisational work of John Coltrane.

Listening to Coltrane’s Giant Steps, I feel as if I understand his mood. At the same time, I listen to his Ascension and think I understand, but would like to ask more questions.

And in between Giant Steps and Ascension there is a vast area of grayness that written communication, especially email, has fallen into, a gray void of misunderstanding.

And as an artist, I strive to always understand.

And, probably to my own undoing, I try to read emails in the voice of the writer in hopes that I can attempt to hear and feel what he or she at times is desperately trying to communicate.

In hopes that we have communication in it’s truest and purest form.
So that I can respond correctly to their emotions.

Just this week, I had a great email exchange that started out in friendly conversation, but drifted to a point of despair. A situation where one email from this new found friend came in the form of “Things are not good today, I am going through something…”

In the attempt to read it, to hear her voice in it , I first read it in sadness, then in anger, and finally in a melancholy voice of destitution.

In written words, she cast an array of emotions upon me that placed me into a situation of wanting to know more, needing to know more, needing to understand. I needed to know if she had written what I had read. And shortly in the midst of three emails, our exchange went from “How’s your day” to “What motivates you as a poet” to “I am going through something:(…”

With hesitance, she explained how she was concerned with how her mother treated her younger brother and sister, who were not of the age of leaving home. She talked about how she sees the exact issues in their childhood that she experienced in hers. She took me into a situation that was the underlying hindrance from all other conversations we could possibly have.

In the process of toggling between her email and my work, I came to the awareness that I did one for a living and the other for my soul to stay alive. My intellect wanted to understand, but my soul desperately needed to help. In my encouraging I learned that the life she attempted to save her siblings from, she had not yet fully overcome herself. She still experienced the pain of her childhood as an adult, which seemed more detrimental to her now than it did then! Watching her brother and sister go through the pressures and depression seemed to rekindle segments of her adolescence of not feeling a maternal love.

A maternal love she desperately wants for her brother and sister to experience and enjoy.

A maternal love she so desperately needs right now!

Daniel Allen Vaughn
Copyright March 12, 2003

And all of this via email:)Dan is a Host, Poet, Spoken Word Artist, Writer, and a member of Milwaukee’s 2002 National Slam Team. And author of the book and CD “I Dream”.

For more on this artist visit www.poeticsentiments.com.

Riverwest Currents - Volume 2 - Issue 4 - April 2003