DarkMatter performs intimate poetry session

Alok Vaid-Menon blew into the microphone. The two poets combined an intoxicating rustle with a subtle whistle through the loop station. They added layer after layer of subtle sounds that became water crashing on shore. The audience remained silent in awe as they created a painting with their lips. They lifted their hand from the loop station and proclaimed the refrain.

“Where do all the sad girls go?” they said.

Vaid-Menon continued with the poem dedicated to sad people. They remarked that sad people shouldn’t fear their sadness, and instead embrace it.

Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian, a trans-South Asian performance duo called DarkMatter, performed their poetry and prose in Doheny with Visions and Voices Thursday night. They covered the topics pertaining to the LGBT community, racism, discrimination and human inquiry that the poets face in their everyday lives.

Before the event began, snippets of Teletubbies, The Magic School Bus and Bollywood movies illuminated the screen behind the stage while EDM music blasted from the speakers. This set the mood for a night of witty, metaphorical and controversial performances.

Vaid-Menon and Balasubramanian walked on stage and began with a poem describing their views on the world. They described their experiences and thoughts about violence of queer trans of color and gender norms while also commenting on the stereotypes portrayed in mainstream gay rights activism. Vaid-Menon and Balasubramanian spoke as one voice, each of them responding immediately after the other, creating a single coherent thought.

They were in sync, and when the poem ended, their entities separated as they casually spoke to the audience about what was on their mind. Vaid-Menon’s thoughts were witty and impactful while Balasubramanian’s thoughts were thought-provoking and contemplative.

Balasubramanian described the science fiction book they recently read. It brought up ideas of sight and how, as an activist, they should look at the world around them. They ended their train of thought by remarking people should surround themselves with people who inspire them.

Vaid-Menon recalled their time in Melbourne, Australia where they encountered homophobia taking public transportation. They fell on a “rugby jock,” as Vaid-Menon described him, apologized and stood back up. The man punched them despite the apology. They remembered how trans people get attacked like this, and worse, everyday just for existing. Anyone could kill them at any moment, so they remain silent.

Vaid-Menon remembered being told:

“I’m okay with gay people, but you’re just too much.”

They used this discrimination to introduce their first poem. They had it dedicated to a girl named Aubrey, a transgender woman who committed suicide by jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge. Aubrey left a suicide noted that contained a single sentence that inspired their poem:

“What is the point of living if I’m going to be killed anyway.”

The poem brought attention to LGBT suicides. Vaid-Menon understood that LGBT youth suicides were discussed in society, but no one advocates to prevent suicides of LGBT adults. They talked about how the ideology of “It Gets Better” is false. People tell trans youth that it will be okay in the future when they are surrounded by maturity, but Vaid-Menon found this to be a lie. Transgenders literally wear their identity, and discrimination persists through the establishment of social norms in society.

“I am in pain not because of the accident, but because of the norm,” Vaid-Manon said in the poem. “She is dead not because of the accident, but because of the norm.”

The tone switched when the duo performed a poem about how they are obsessed and “turned-on” by white people despite their annoyance with white privilege. They continued with more serio-comic poems, tackling issues about immigration, Black Lives Matter, sexuality and individuality through the lenses of Harry Potter and Nursery Rhymes.

Afterwards, Vaid-Menon brought the audience in with hypnotic performances fabricated by the use of a loop station. They brought up topics about the validity of being trans, reminding the audience that they own their body.

At the end of Vaid-Menon’s last poem, Balasubramanian introduced their commentary on art and the universe. They talked about Schrödinger’s Cat, a theory about the outcome of placing a cat in a confined space with a radioactive source and a poison. They talked about how there are infinite amount of outcomes and each outcome occurs in different universes. In one universe the cat dies and in another the cat lives.

Balasubramanian related this idea to art. Artists create things with their imagination, but they believe that instead of their ideas originating from nothing, it actually originates from a different universe. This introduced their poetry and prose that pondered these ideas.

At the end of the performance, the audience was enlightened of the infinite universes and the troubling and discriminative universe we live in. By speaking about these issue, DarkMatter initiated the conversation about the world around us, and allowed the audience to question social norms. More importantly, they showed support for the minorities in the community which they represented.

“Recognize that your identity, your life, your struggle, your desire are not just valid, they are incredibly wonderful,” Vaid-Menon said.