The Spoken Word of Christien Storm is featured on
Epic Records' Home Alive: The Art of Self-Defense.

Christien Storm:
Here's my pain, look at it...
by J. Kim

Performance is the Siamese twin of spoken word. Attempts to separate the two, i.e. simply reading the work of Henry Rollins, kills both. The spoken word artists intertwines words and delivery so tightly that to examine one without the other always misses the essence.

Likewise, one cannot separate spoken word artist Cristien Storm from Home Alive, which she co-founded. Her performances vocalize the theories, observations, catalysts, goals and frustrations of Home Alive, while also verbalizing the range of emotions she, and the people whose lives she has touched, have experienced. In return, she contributes her talents to the organization, by writing and producing public service announcements.

When performing, Storm slices her midsection in half and dares the audience to inspects its contents. She can rage in your face, or pull back and let those who dare ponder the words. Even in conversation, Storm's animation surfaces. She leans back, leans forward, clenches her first, widens her eyes, inflects her voice, changes her octave, all without aritifice.

"I have thought about how could I make this more accessible," said Storm on a rainy January Sunday afternoon over coffee. "People have always said to me, ‘That’s great, but could you just tone it down next time,’ and it’s just not possible. It’s angry, but it is accessible. I am not setting it up like ‘As a woman, you will never experience my pain,’ I’m saying, ‘Here’s my pain man, look at it’."

Using mimicked dialects and other sonic tricks, she has sprayed her vocal graffiti for 10 years now. Not a moment of that has been subtle.

She has made people squirm, with lines such as "Face down and faceless she spreads her legs for the final stretch. He crams a football up her cunt for that final score, jacking of to the crowds for cheering just for him. She knows the score, if his team wins, its rape, if his team loses it’s a beating. Time for a commercial break. She already broke."

Neutrality after a Storm performance does not exist.

"I’m hitting a nerve," said Storm. She once opened for Green Apple Quick Step, backed by a full drum kit. "It was really loud ranting and angry; the audience was just screaming," said Storm. "One man was screaming, ‘I’m going to kill you!’ and I was thinking ‘Ha ha, I can be louder than you,' but I was also scared thinking, ‘Okay I’m not walking to my car alone tonight.'

"But when I go into the women’s bathroom and the little comments I get from women thanking me for what I said, that makes up for it. People remember the angry part, what they remember is a reference to a gun.

"We will all change minds at different levels and at different times. I can think of teachers saying things to me at 18 and 10 years later it comes back to me and I think, ‘Now I know’. I believe a lot of the stuff I’m doing is that little seed. It might not ever come back to me, I don’t want to take credit for that. But there have been enough things that have come back to me to reaffirm what I’m doing."

Otherwise, Storm would hang it up. She began spoken word while living in Santa Cruz (she attended the University of California at Santa Cruz).

Unsatisfied with writing, she migrated towards poetry readings. When a poetry reading drew poorly, she encouraged the poets to take it to the street, where they tried to engage passers by. Having pondered spoken word for some time, that encouraged her to create and perform in a different way.

A conversation, a phrase, or a rhythm will spark her creative process, much of which occurs, for better or for worse, while driving. Two catalysts will prompt her.

"Either a have a show or a deadline and I am forced to work on a something or something will fester I will have a chunk of time to work on it. With my hectic life, it has to be in spurts."

Unlike the musician who records over tracks, or splices pieces together electronically, Storm edits her work primarily in her head, working out words and rhythm simultaneously.

Stylistically, she has drawn from several sources for inspiration. The obvious, Lydia Lunch, Storm has performed with and has interviewed. "She’s an assassin, I love watching her deal with hecklers," said Storm.

Lunch narrated a self-defense video for Home Alive. Like the co-dependent respiratory system, Home Alive is Storm’s heart, spoken word her lungs.

Admiring Lynch’s work across mediums like photography, film, and of course, music, Storm has worked with a band, and has plans to incorporate video and other visuals into her performance. Using samples of people engaged in kick boxing for a piece about sexual assault, she has used loops as backgrounds to some of her pieces.

Yet the power of language surpasses any other draw. Attending numerous conferences on human rights, social service organizations and other events, she closely observes public speakers, fascinated by what specifically makes them an engaging presence.

One speaker, at a Northwest Coalition event particularly stuck with her.

"Without seeming to try he articulated every word, but it had a very casual conversational feel," said Storm. "It was impressive."

Appreciating a talented story-teller, Storm listens to rap for the way it incorporates speaking into music. Yet, she will forever be a punk.

In high school, she listened to Crass, got beat up and food thrown at her for not shaving her legs, and has lived to tell about it via a performance piece.

"The piercings made sense. The holes in my body seemed sensical. The alcohol made sense. The wicked black boots and spikes made a sharp-edged sense...Other things do not. You’re walking down a sanitary street with freshly laundered people sparkling from whitening toothpaste, static-free dryer sheets and facial scrub...I can’t stand the sanitized quiet. It soaks through to the bone, diluting rage."

In that piece, Storm describes how punk rock saved her life. It enabled her to connect to and unite with the universal - the collective anger of others.

Through her spoken word, she continues those same connections. At times, she weighs in heavily on the personal side, as in "Finger Walking" wherein the protagonist comes home drunk and disassociative, then pukes, masturbates and passes out, in that order.

Anger and self-loathing does not dominate the scope of her personal material. In "Girl" she explores the notion of lover as savior, "What I want it to take off my clothes slip out of my body image hang ups and climb into your social womb...I want my mouth sewn shut so when you lick my tears I can’t explain how much I love you."

Making the connections between the personal and the universal encompasses Storm’s creative process.

"Having survived violence myself I think the process of how you create happiness after surviving is so hard and worth sharing," said Storm.

"Ways of surviving - they are all universal. The process of making those connections, that is the backbone of what I do."

Denying the existence of a universal man or a universal woman, and the one right answer, philosophy, and mind set for either, Storm advocates people working with the tools around them. In Home Alive, she advocates doing whatever you can to stay alive.

While at UC Santa Cruz, women accused her of selling out feminism the first time she shaved her legs. Yet, 10 years later, she has dedicated five years of her life teaching women and occasionally how to fight back and not be a victim of sexual assault, domestic violence and other crimes against humanity.

"I’m in it for the long haul," said Storm.

People have challenged her decisions. When Home Alive taught an anti-racist group, they considered what they would do if a racist group came to them for self-defense classes. Unwilling to draw lines, Storm justified her pro sentiment in that the classes teach ways of de-escalating violence, which doesn’t train people who to gang beat a homosexual. When she first taught a self-defense class just for men, similar challenges arose.

"There was a huge concern, people wanting to know how I would prepare," said Storm. "The discussions about domestic violence and assault were so strikingly similar (to those women have)."

"In the teaching of self-defense, all the things you’ve been told, lock your doors for example, they all blame the person," said Storm. "There’s an entire interaction going on with another person, but they say, ‘Oh well, you shouldn’t have been drinking.’ We are learning to speak about it as a continuum. My responsibility is to take care of myself, but that’s not a guarantee. It’s having the confidence that if something comes up you can deal with it. We have changed the language and it’s such a huge difference.

"When they are interviewing guys in prison, they always ask what women can do to not be a victim. But they have never focused on the guys, asking why did you do this?"

To learn such things, she has learned to not just fume and rage when engaged in debate.

"Now I know when to say, ‘That’s very interesting, how did you come to that point of view,’ because if you give respect, you get it back," said Storm

She has also learned to balance her schedule to prevent total exhaustion. Home Alive has finally attained financial stability so that she and others can earn a salary, albeit a nonprofit salary, instead of volunteering 50 hours per week while working full-time elsewhere.

Recognizing spoken word may never make her financially wealthy, or that maybe

someday she could walk in Lunch’s boots, she would accept consequences one way or another. She has learned to appreciate the circle of people in her life that help keep her afloat when the "angry woman" patronizing criticism bites a chunk from her self-esteem.Then she can turn that comment around in her next performance, which serve as her release.

She marvels in a sense, that the vision she shared five years ago has come to not only fruition but also sustainability. Reflecting upon the 10 years of spoken word, eight of which spent in Seattle, she smiles the satisfaction known to those who have busted their ass, starved, compromised, hurt, bled, spit and been spat on.

Her satisfaction and happiness do not exclude room for anger and urgency, because issues such as Taliban’s war on women in Afghanistan infuriate any rational being. So she continues to create and perform, with a show scheduled March 18, and at least one performance slated for the summer at the Eleventh Hour Poetry Festival.

Email J. Kim

Also by J. Kim:

Kathleen Hanna Punches Back!

"I’d rather be scared and fight back than be some dick’s maid, babe or wife," says the former Bikini Kill front, in this interview by J. Kim

Vanessa Veselka: Thought is Not Passe

The songwriter, guitarist, and Bell front talks about her upcoming solo album with J. Kim

Concerts For Cause

Duffy Bishop, Kim Virant, Vanessa Veselka, Katya Chorover, Jill Cunningham, Rhonda Pelikan, and spoken word artist Cristien Storm all perform in a benefit for victims of domestic violence, by J. Kim

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