Clubhouse stories journalists never share

I write this because everything I see written about Clubhouse by the media is an inaccurate misrepresentation. The celebrities are a distraction. Let me share some experiences because these are stories the tech and media journalists will not share with you. I share this because journalists are just as superficial as the celebrities they exclusively reference when writing about Clubhouse.

This past Monday morning in a room on Clubhouse:

The room is half Nigerian and half Ghanaian. They ask me how I look so young. I am the only Asian in the room. I tell them it is genetic or possibly my diet of rice and green tea. They say rice is a commonality but green tea is not. This group of the African diaspora was spread across the UK, America and Canada. There is much I do not know about Africa but I am learning by listening. Before I leave - they ask me what day I was born on. I tell them. Two of the men in the room were born on Wednesday and insist that I must have been as well. I am asked to check. I do not know what day of the week I was born on. I look through a calendar app and discover it was Tuesday. The speakers in the room give me a Ghanaian name. Kwabena Kenneth.

Two weeks ago in a room full of seven strangers:

Someone asks, “What do you want to talk about next?”

I answer, “anyone want to read some poems?”

“Yeah!”

“Sure!”

“Why not?”

I am asked to read first since I selected the poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock” by T. S. Eliot. Someone says, “give it a try” when I state that I don’t know how to read the intro (it’s not in English). Apparently, the introduction is from Dante’s Inferno.

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

I listen to a language I do not understand of a poem I thought I knew. I read next.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

I’ve never read this poem out loud. I don’t stop, I read the next brief stanza.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The poem is long.

We read seven poems completely. In a room of seven strangers.

Last week, I discussed with a small group our relationships with parents and siblings. No networking was done. No famous people were involved. There was no audience.

I read excepts from Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem in a room of ten with no listeners. This line in particular stands out.

When I first went to San Francisco in that cold late spring of 1967 I did not even know what I wanted to find out, and so I just stayed around awhile, and made a few friends.