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02/11/2004 Entry: "I've been Outed (no Not like that)"

I've been Outed (no not like that). Someone else who shall remained named. Here he is exposed my stage name. There is a story behind it. I didn't even choose it. It was given to me in Miami. I started reading in this place called "Faatland", it was run out of a club on Washinton ave on South Beach. It was the Brain child of a friend of mine named Dj Snowhite. She had previously run the night out of the Marlin Hotel (home of an Island Records studio where U2 recorded a few of their albums). When the managment asked for a larger cut of the door Snowhite moved Faatland to Club Zaanzibar on Washington ave. Thats when I started going. We had a lot of mutual friends and Faatland was an unofficial meeting place for all of us. I would hang out there drinking and listening to Snowhite spin. But Faatland was not just a music night, there was also an open mic. She had started this open mic back at the Marlin and it had really become the main focus of the night. The night would be a mix of poets and Mcs all listening to eachother and the chill underground hip hop vibes that Snowhite would play before and after the open mic. I was not a poet. I was a spectator, a listener and sometimes a heckler, but not a poet. However, there were a lot of blank napkins in this bar, and a few floating pens (probably for hooking up and such). So one night in 1998 after an exceedinly fucked up rhyme about women or guns, ( I can't remember now, I only remember it made me upset) I took to scratching some lines on a napkin. I turned to the host, L Boogie, who was a friend of mine and said "let me go up tonight". He looked at the open mic list which was always full and said, "sure I'll put you up after th next person." I had a few drinks in me so I wasn't scared, also I've never really been afraid of addressing people, and I was still mad about the fucked up rhyme (really all the fucked up rhymes and poems I heard about shit they didn't know about or didn't treat seriously.) So I was eager. I went up there with my three scribbled napkins and spoke(preached really). It was about the fucked up nature of Hip Hop, the coming mellenium and righteousness (of couse). I had used some metaphors and similies, but it wasn't good. What it did have however, like many first poems, was passion and belief. I guess because of that I got some positive response after I got off the stage. That was it. Give an opinionated, paranoid, conspiracy theorist, with childhood identity issues an opportunity to air his shit out and you might not be able to shut him up. I didn't go up the following week, but did the week after, and then every week until Faatland shut down in Septemebr of 1999. I moved back to New York the following month. But many months before that, I started to find that there were people who liked my poetry and said it was good. Miami had a very small poetry community. I'm talking like a handfull tops. There were a lot of MCs, but not many poets(not making a judgement call only one of self Identification). Anyway I had always put my name down as Eddie garcia on the list. L Boogie says to me one night "Are you sure you wanna stick with Eddie. You don't have a nickname or stagename or somethin." (Everyone elses names were like "g-grip", "red" "imajistic" or "mushroom" No joke) I was working 6 Pm to 2 am then at the postal mail sorting Facility, only taking one day off a week to go to Faatland, so I told him "Man I have no time to be thinking of rhyme names, I sleep all day now. I'm practically nocturnal." He said " Ok Nocturnal." So from that day on I was introduced as Nocturnal. I took to the name, even published my first chapbook under that name. It was somehow appropriate to the life I was living and the Miami nightlife I was entwined in. I was nocturnal then always out always closing out the clubs.

When I moved back to New York, I realized that I wanted to use my real name instead. This was a return to who I was in NY, the person I had left in New York when I was sixteen. I used my real name the first time I read in NY. Not Eddie but Edward. Its very funny for me to think back to those times in Miami. Faatland was so very Important to me, a hint of what Acentos and the poetry community would mean to me in the future. Today I went to Acentos. Probably the one place that still gives me a feeling of home, a feeling of friendship and welcome. The one place I go to be a spectator, a listener, a heckler and a poet. It also happens to be on Tuesdays just as Faatland used to be.

Today's song of the day is "Miami" by U2. Click above.