Live via: Denver, CO (layover, baby, layover!)

I'm not quite sure when iLL-Literacy started tossing around the terms "Big Day" and "Small Day." It couldn't have been too long ago, but still early enough into the group's first breaths. Somewhere between the Chardonnay glasses toasted in Le Tourville at our first gig in Paris, and last summer when Ruby and I religiously packed a bowl and flipped on Fade to Black. It's true, even poets get stars in their eyes sometimes.

We call them the Small Days. When the world and all the aspirations it has to offer seem but a stanza away. Amidst the content silence in the car after a show we just rocked the shit out of, Ruby pipes, "Small Day, guys!" Nico cosigns, "Small Day fasho!" Dahlak tosses his head back against the seat, eyes and mouth in a closed smile. The rental darts across the random highway of the random state we happen to be in.

Then there are the Big Days. When we feel like specks in the mammoth continuum of...of existence. The days in between the glory that far too often go for long stretches. When the bookings aren't rolling in as quickly as they should, and it seems like everybody and their mama is trying to make it as a spoken word artist. Big Days often end in small freak-out sessions in the car, parked in the dark on an Oakland corner, questions and affirmations tossed back and forth between tired voices. Or when no one's picking up their phone or answering their IMs, a deep sigh coupled with "Fuck it, I wasn't a poet today," before switching off the lights.

Big Day/Small Day is a double-edged syndrome. It was birthed as an encouragement piece. Small Day is the name we decided to give to the times when we looked at our feet and saw that we were on the right path, a reminder to be content with the present moment. But of course, the opposite soon followed in conception, often hurling us into a dualistic view of the progress in our lives, categorizing the experience of our journey into tightly-compacted 24 hour slots that predict either timeless happiness or the ache of a broken dream.

Of course, a whole lot of people in this world are victims of the Big Day/Small Day phenomenon, perhaps not in the same terms. The level-headed call it the want for stability in life. The more brutally honest acknowledge it as the thirst for fame, fortune, convenience. Legacy.

And so we had our show at Virginia Tech on Wednesday. And like how it took me a week after the incident to process exactly how I felt about going there, it's taken me a week to grasp the implications of our presence there. With Dahlak in the Netherlands, the remaining three of us found ourselves in constant insecure conversation leading all the way up to the moments before curtain call.

"Eek. Nervous," Ruby whispered from behind the red curtain. A theater with a 500-person capacity, and up until the shooting earlier this month, everyone expected every seat to be filled. What remained was 75 of the most open, positive, enthusiastic audience members we could have asked for. We opted for an uplifting set, causing some of us to unfold new material prematurely, but in the end it was absolutely beautiful. Nico was instrumental in coming up with our introduction, our carefully-crafted greeting before nestling into the sensitive student community.

One thing I love about doing shows where one of us is missing is that we reaffirm how vital that missing person is to the collective. Coming up with our setlist, we scramble through our catalog of poems, often noting how easily the gaps and awkward transitions would have been trivial had all of us been present. But despite the sensitive atmosphere, missing one member, and the exhaustion of squeezing into a compact rental halfway across Virginia, our shows at Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia were absolutely amazing. Our break in DC was soooOoooo necessary. And I simply cannot describe how much it filled my heart when Khalifa and Carlos, organizers at UVA from the Black and Asian American communities--communities that had not worked together for as long as anyone on campus could remember, assured us that their joint iLL-Literacy show penned the beginning of a new chapter for student solidarity. Hell yes I have a right to be idealistic about it.

So in the end, I guess the whole Big Day/Small Day isn't as cut-and-dry as fame or flop. Certainly, Virginia Tech's student auditorium is no Madison Square Garden. But sometimes you don't have to feel big in order for the world to feel small, accessible. Just some faithful fans, willing to push forward, and open to involve you in their healing.



And now, pictures of us gittin' down in DC.