Gabrielle, it's right here
Losing anyone you know and have some modicum of feeling for is a trial. Knowing you will lose someone is even harder. Losing Gabrielle Boulianne at some point in the future is the worst.
She's not well, in that way that means you won't be unwell for much longer. Some of you won't know her but you should know that she was so important to this thing we do it's hard to point to where her legacy starts. She gave a lot of poets a leg up in their profession before there was a MySpace, YouTube or Facebook. Gabrielle didn't do it because it made her money. She did it because she loved poets and poetry and the family that Slam created out of nothing, that threw tribes together that didn't know they had kingdoms to build a veritable nation of art.
I'm one of the people who fought with Gabrielle more than we shared a drink over a National Poetry Slam venue's table. I probably fought with her more than most of her friends did (and we know a good friend, you fight with sometimes). I fought with her over all kinds of things, always related to poetry, but it was never because I didn't respect her. It was because we both had an unmatched passion for this thing we do. It's hard to desrcibe how people who both love the same thing so passionately could spend a minute fighting over it, but we found a way.
Yet I was always able to walk up to her at any time, to smile with her, to hug her, to hear a good thing, to fight for her, to figure out a new way to love it all over again. She always wanted the community to win at this more than she wanted to win herself. And that's what kept me coming back to the table with her: I knew she loved it all. The poetry, the parties, the goons, the griping, the culture, the collateral damage...we both loved it all so passionately.
I owe her my first viewing of a Dali painting. My first Pollack too, come to think of it. She had me up to Buffalo for a gig and I did what I do and she did what she did and we sat in her house and talked about you guys like dogs and laughed. She gave me a novel I wanted sorely out of her home. She gave me one of the best chicken-wing-and-pizza dinners I've ever had. I once got lost coming back from a gigyears later in an attempt to find it by sight alone. Compared to many stories other poets could tell, these interactions pale. Compared to many of the relationships in her life, ours was not the most important. But if I, with what I have, know to celebrate her now before it's too late, then those who know her better or longer or have shared more, regardless of how it ever turned out, know that it's never too late to say what should be said.
Gabrielle, I hate losing you but I like knowing you'll get to see this. You are not in the place that others have been who passed our way that we did not get to say goodbye to and know they could hear it for themselves. I like knowing that some of it will make you laugh and some of it will make you cry while you laugh. Know that I wrote this from passion now, not for Slam, but for you. That love is right here, right now, and I have as much of it as you need. You and I know you'll be in no shortage of notes like this, of love like this and more. That is apporpriate for one who had so much to give, who lived like she loved everything.
It's right here.
Love,
Scott
She's not well, in that way that means you won't be unwell for much longer. Some of you won't know her but you should know that she was so important to this thing we do it's hard to point to where her legacy starts. She gave a lot of poets a leg up in their profession before there was a MySpace, YouTube or Facebook. Gabrielle didn't do it because it made her money. She did it because she loved poets and poetry and the family that Slam created out of nothing, that threw tribes together that didn't know they had kingdoms to build a veritable nation of art.
I'm one of the people who fought with Gabrielle more than we shared a drink over a National Poetry Slam venue's table. I probably fought with her more than most of her friends did (and we know a good friend, you fight with sometimes). I fought with her over all kinds of things, always related to poetry, but it was never because I didn't respect her. It was because we both had an unmatched passion for this thing we do. It's hard to desrcibe how people who both love the same thing so passionately could spend a minute fighting over it, but we found a way.
Yet I was always able to walk up to her at any time, to smile with her, to hug her, to hear a good thing, to fight for her, to figure out a new way to love it all over again. She always wanted the community to win at this more than she wanted to win herself. And that's what kept me coming back to the table with her: I knew she loved it all. The poetry, the parties, the goons, the griping, the culture, the collateral damage...we both loved it all so passionately.
I owe her my first viewing of a Dali painting. My first Pollack too, come to think of it. She had me up to Buffalo for a gig and I did what I do and she did what she did and we sat in her house and talked about you guys like dogs and laughed. She gave me a novel I wanted sorely out of her home. She gave me one of the best chicken-wing-and-pizza dinners I've ever had. I once got lost coming back from a gigyears later in an attempt to find it by sight alone. Compared to many stories other poets could tell, these interactions pale. Compared to many of the relationships in her life, ours was not the most important. But if I, with what I have, know to celebrate her now before it's too late, then those who know her better or longer or have shared more, regardless of how it ever turned out, know that it's never too late to say what should be said.
Gabrielle, I hate losing you but I like knowing you'll get to see this. You are not in the place that others have been who passed our way that we did not get to say goodbye to and know they could hear it for themselves. I like knowing that some of it will make you laugh and some of it will make you cry while you laugh. Know that I wrote this from passion now, not for Slam, but for you. That love is right here, right now, and I have as much of it as you need. You and I know you'll be in no shortage of notes like this, of love like this and more. That is apporpriate for one who had so much to give, who lived like she loved everything.
It's right here.
Love,
Scott
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