Part 1: The Student

Bruce Lee wrote poetry and it is beautiful.

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“So…I haven’t read…in 5 and a half years.”

David Berman’s baritone voice drizzled out to the 8th floor auditorium at Columbia College in Chicago, sliding shyly over the beige carpet like a hand falling from a bed to the floor mid-nap. He stood there solemnly apologetic, de-bearded and with a fresh set of stubble in his wrangler jeans: he looked like a scarecrow who wanted to take you out for custard.

“And 45 minutes!” a female voice erupted. Berman was 45 minutes late. The tone of the audience
member was of genuine frustration, not good natured jibing.

The next fifteen seconds were a slow drip of Berman panning his eyes before the crowd in front of him: young, dressed in zombie cosplay (the theme for Printer’s Ball was: “IT’S ALIVE!”), half full of PBR, the other half Schlitz, fresh from smoking pot in the hallways of Columbia College; an odd assortment of fashion magnitude and life inexperience: ironic snapbacks, six figures of student loan debt for art school, shorts pulled belly button high on the girls, twenty somethings dressed like ballerina-princess cat ladies. …more