There she was, standing alone in the lobby with patrons slowly passing her, walking in through the narrow set of doors leading to the concert hall. She saw them as anachronisms, long-gone actors from some German Expressionist film, their movements languid and unapologetic. It was here, she said, she started to panic.
A year after her initial panic attack, creative writing senior Lauren Boyan said she recognized the feeling, but that this time it was different.
She didn’t try to stop herself, Boyan said. She allowed herself to experience the nerve-wracking abundance of over-stimulation, while tightly grasping reality in the form of her lover’s hand. She said “intoxicating” would be the only word to express what she was feeling.
It seemed as if Boyan’s thoughts were a separate entity all together, swirling around her like some spectral vision.
It was there in that lobby that Boyan’s voice was born — the very nectar that gave her writing its life. It was there that the perfect pairing of style with inspiration was conceived, defining her as a writer, poet and everything in between.
“This event resonates in me when I write,” Boyan said. “I try to create a saturated experience, which leans into uncomfortable and self-conscious, but with humor as a coping skill.”
While she primarily wrote humorous pieces in the past, it was this experience of panic that allowed Boyan to develop into an writer. She describes the scene in the lobby that night as the point when her fears were immortalized.
“[It’s] how I learned to stop worrying and love the chaos [of the] moment,” she said.
Boyan will have the opportunity to share her revelations with others this Sunday at Café Passe’s Trans and Queer Poetry Night at 6 p.m. She is one of several readers set to read selections of their works for an audience gathered to support local writers, as well and trans* and queer folk.
With the pen as her weapon and humor as her trusty sidekick, she delves into the deeper issues that plague anyone who dares to evaluate their own existence.
“I am always trying to get at the unknowable, and striving for comfort in the disorientation I always seem to find in the end,” Boyan said.
She aims to channel those hard and thoughtful examinations of life into something she can share with others.
“The main piece I’ll be doing is an experimental essay about orienting myself in hysteria, being a femme queer being driven mad by my womb,” Boyan said.
Boyan strives to mix up genre and convention in her writing, while at the same time keeping a dash of traditional flavorings. She admits that while she doesn’t exactly reject the commonplace ins and outs of the world around her, she finds a certain pleasure in blurring traditional lines.
“The act of sharing writing through a reading allows trans and queer artists in our community to have a space to be heard as well as seen,” Boyan said. “The night is labeled ‘poetry,’ though it is more of a celebration of trans* and queer uses of language.”
