Today’s episode is guest hosted by Myka Kielbon.

Transcript

I’m Myka Kielbon and this is The Slowdown.

When the pandemic kept everyone isolated, my roommate Madison ardently followed a Pitchfork series chronicling every song ever to hit the Billboard Top 100. We filled our days with video games, movies, and Wikipedia pages. I started watching old episodes of The Monkees sitcom. And we watched the movie Head, their response to the success of the Beatles’ feature films. It’s a can of cinematic worms, but I loved it. I still love it.

In the opening scene of Head, a bridge is being dedicated, a ribbon cut, an official mumbling in a megaphone. Then come The Monkees, running from their rabid fans. They run right off the bridge, and the pseudo-psychedelic, Carole King dreamscape of “Porpoise Song” starts up. Shots play of obviously fake stunt dummies flying through the air. Their bodies hit the water. The Monkees start canoodling with mermaids. “Wait!” I pointed at the T.V. “We know that bridge!”

It was the Gerald Desmond bridge, which links San Pedro to Terminal Island, suspended high above LA Harbor. Just before we were constrained to our apartments, my friend Stevie had driven Madison and me over that bridge to eat ceviche at Ports O’ Call. I had curled my body into the truck’s jump seats, windows down the sea air blasting through my hair. That bridge was my bridge. That life was my life.

Today’s poem holds its epiphanies close. It lives in that space which grows from wholehearted obsession, specificity, and the knowledge that the act of returning is the kind of love that keeps us going.

Letter to a Young Poet
by Megan Fernandes

If you haven't  taken the  Amtrak in Florida,  you haven't  lived.   At 2:00 a.m.,  seven 
months into  the  pandemic,  I'm  looking  up  where  Seamus Heaney  died.  It  was 
Blackrock Clinic  overlooking  the  bay and  I wonder,  sometimes,  what is my thing 
with  the  Irish,  but  if the  white  kids  can go  to  India  for an  epiphany,  maybe it's 
fine that I go to Ireland.  Don't read  Melanie Klein in a crisis.  She's depressing and 
there  are  alternatives.  Like  Winnicott  or  a  lobotomy.   Flow  is  best  understood 
through  Islamic  mysticism  or  Lil  Wayne  spitting  without  a   rhyme  book,   post-
2003.  To want  the  same things  as  you age  is not always  a  failure  of growth.  A 
good city  will not  parent  you.  Every  poet  has a  love affair with a bridge.  Mine is 
the Manhattan  and she's  a  middle child.  Or the Sea Link  in  Mumbai, her galactic 
tentacles  whipping  the  starless sky.  When  I say bridge,  what I mean is goddess. 
People  need  your ideas  more  than  your  showmanship.  L.A.  is  ruining  some of 
you.  All analysis  is revisionist.  Yellow  wildflowers  are it.  It's better  to be illegible, 
sometimes.  Then they can't  govern you.  It takes time to build an ethics.  Go slow. 
Wellness  is  a myth  and shame  transforms  no  one.  You  can  walk  off  most  any-
thing.  Everyone  should  watch anime after a heartbreak.  Sleep upward in a forest 
so  the  animal  sees your gaze.  I  think  about that  missing plane  sometimes  and 
what it means to go unrecovered. Pay attention to what disgusts you. Some of the 
most interesting people have no legacy.  Remember that green is your color and in 
doubt,  read Brooks.  In  the end,  your role  is  to attend  to  the things  you like and 
ask for  more  of it:  Bridges.  Ideas.  Destabilization.  Yellow  tansy.  Cities.  The wild 
sea.  And  in the  absence  of recovery,  some ritual.  In the absence of love?  Ritual. 
Understand that ritual is a kind of patience, an awaiting and waiting. Keep waiting, 
kitten. You will be surprised what you can come back from. 

“Letter to a Young Poet” by Megan Fernandes from I DO EVERYTHING I'M TOLD © 2023 Megan Fernandes. Used by permission of Tin House.