Sollal Fouilland

Down the south of the island, directly up next to the station, down the next street, is an old nameless building. Up a decrepit service elevator, down a dark and dank corridor, is a room of color and of love.

Yesterday, as the darkness was settling on this nightless city of ours, seven correspondents got together to read and to share. Confessions sometimes, jokes often, stories surely, poems maybe, art absolutely: letters to the ones who have left. The exes that defined our relationships. The lost icons of the waste management department. The student complaining about his grade as he's moving out of yours. The right breast gone to an early cancer. The best friend lost to the dim lights at the hospital. And the little person who wanted a piggyback ride during your freestyle rap in a club in LKF back in '97.

Seven souls baring themselves, sharing their anger, their laughter, their sadness, their gratefulness, the things they learned through all those years living.

Dear ___ is the love child of Slavica, the second of the family, a reading event of poetry and spoken word. The name comes from the concept, or maybe the other way around, letters usually starting with "Dear...", addressed to whoever you want. The format invites itself to share what is personal. As you are starting a letter with "dear," it implies a sense of proximity and intimacy. Whether or not that was the intended purpose, the result is there: we get emotional stories of various degrees of seriousness, but nonetheless very true to the person standing up there and sharing their thought.

As the room's energy waxes and wanes to the rhythms of the cries and laughter of the public and presenters, we get to learn about seven very unique people and the message that they have for those who will actually never listen or read this letter that is addressed to them. A letter to one specific person, shared to a whole room but not to them. Really surprising exercise: living contradiction that the one concerned will not be the one who gets to hear it.

You look around the room, this industrial building floor, colored lights hung up, a pile of concrete blocks in a corner, a microphone much too light, a lot of eyes staring, hanging on every word of the performer. You realize that the letters are not really for the Lost anymore, the ones that will not get to read them. These letters are for the ones here, for the ones that can still learn, the ones that can appreciate what was there and what is no more.

As the room empties out, accolades, laughter, promises of future plans, you leave a room where we've just been an hour talking about lost things, things that will never come back. You cannot help but feel a little bit more full. As you exit that room of color and lights, down a dark and damp corridor, you take a little bit of it with you.

Event: dear ___ Venue: Current Plans