James D. Watts Jr.
Tulsa World Scene Reporter
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Matthew McConaughey decided early on to address what he perceived to be the elephant in the Tulsa PAC’s Chapman Music Hall.
The Academy Award-winning actor was in town as part of a five-city tour to launch his latest book, a slim volume of verse titled “Poems & Prayers.” The evening was presented by Magic City Books, and attracted a crowd that filled theater’s more than 2,400 seats.
“So, McConaughey,” he inquired rhetorically as he paced around the theater’s stage Friday night. “Why are you writing poems and prayers? Well, I’ll have you know — I, Matthew McConaughey, am an award-winning poet.”
He took a moment to bask in the applause this revelation engendered, before adding that said award came in 1982, when he entered a school poetry writing contest as a 7th-grader. The day before he had to submit his work, he showed his poem to his mother, who told him, “Not bad. Keep working on it.”
When McConaughey brought his revised poem for his mother’s perusal, she took out a book, opened it to a particular page, and ask her son to read it.
It was from Ann Ashford’s 1977 children’s book, “If I Found a Wistful Unicorn,” and the passage McConaughey’s mother pointed out read, “If all that I would want to do was to sit and talk to you…would you listen?”
“She asked me why I liked it, and I said because it’s beautiful, it’s simple, it’s true,” McConaughey said. “And my mom said, ‘Write that. You like it, you understand it, it means something to you, so it’s yours.’ I said, ‘Do I sign my name to it?’ And she told yes. So I did — and I won the 7th grade poetry contest.”
Apparently that success prompted McConaughey to continue writing his own verses, which he described as being a form of “spiritual therapy.”
“I recently found myself getting a little bit simple,” he said. “I started to find myself objectifying people, doubting their worth without any reason to do so, feeling like life — or more specifically, how we live it — maybe it didn’t really matter as much as I hoped it would. Doubt and cynicism was creeping in on me, and I didn’t like it. First, it scared me. Second — thankfully — it pissed me off.
“And I’m here tonight to sell, evangelize, propagandize and prove something that is necessary in our lives, something that is in short supply these days, something so valuable that we cannot afford to lose it — belief,” McConaughey said. “I’m not only talking about a belief in God, although I’m personally seeking more of that for myself. I’m talking about more belief in ourselves, in each other, in what we care about, in tomorrow.”
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To assist him in this endeavor, McConaughey was accompanied by award-winning country artist and Oolagah native Zach Bryan and five members of Tulsa’s King Cabbage Brass Band, who accompanied McConaughey’s readings with gentle brass chorales.
Bryan also performed two of his own songs, “The Good I’ll Do” and “Heaven on Top,” although he had a couple of lapses in remembering chords and lyrics — a problem he put down to sharing the stage with McConaughey.
Over the course of the two-hour presentation, McConaughey performed more than 15 pieces from “Poems & Prayers,” demonstrating his penchant for gnomic statements, rhyming couplets and a willingness to contort meter, syntax and words themselves to achieve said rhymes.
The subject matter ranged from “Capably Able,” which he recited in a manner akin to Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” and “Streamers in the Halls of Justice,” a tale about a virtual court appearance, to “Greenlights Intermezzo,” something of a belated coda to his first book, the memoir “Greenlights,” and “Soil,” which McConaughey wrote at age 18 during a stay in Australia, a time when he was seriously considering becoming a monk.
Instead, McConaughey returned to the states, and ended up taking a role in an independent film called “Dazed and Confused” being shot in and around Austin, Texas, where the first words he ever uttered on film became his iconic catchphrase, “Alright, alright, alright.”
“And what I thought would be a fun hobby,” he said, “became a career.”
Tulsa is the fourth of five cities on what has been billed as a “book tour revival” to mark the publication of McConaughey’s book. The tour began in Brooklyn, N.Y., then traveled to Nashville before coming to Tulsa. Subsequent stops — all of which feature guest appearances by nationally known musicians — will be Austin and Los Angeles.
How Tulsa came to be a stop on the tour goes back to the publication of “Greenlights,” which came out in the fall of 2000.
Magic City Books co-founder Jeff Martin, who introduced McConaughey Friday night, said that during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the bookstore was having to virtual book events due to restrictions on public gatherings. McConaughey agreed to do such an event for Magic City, and roped in fellow actor and “True Detective” co-star Woody Harrelson to participate.
That event “pretty much saved us,” Martin said, as it generated more book sales than any previous virtual event.
“Matthew said at that time, ‘I hope to get to meet you one day in person,'” Martin said. “And that what’s happening tonight.”
Tickets for the five-city tour went on sale July 30, and were sold out within 48 hours.
james.watts@tulsaworld.com
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James D. Watts Jr.
Tulsa World Scene Reporter
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