Another Artist Moment: Sound

Dissonance...I need dissonance

Chordal beauty

Audible energy

I need new world instrumentation
and suspension that never resolves

I want Earth to move
yea
I need Her to move with me

Related scientifically

Sharing harmonics

Air
Vibration
Sensation
Movement
God.

Existing in a sound
only soundsmiths will decipher

Creating a mode nuveaux

For life be Quasimodo
letting freedom ring thru his bells
Beaten
bleeding beauty
where only ugly can be seen

And we be his blood
And blood be his sound

A kiss from a rose
growing from concrete

Hear the windsong that hugs them both

We be a beat in chaos
sense in the senseless

The timbre in silence

And when evil rears its ugly head
we be the manicured toes washed
white as snow

Hunny, we be fabulous sound and
Immaculate sound

Nostalgic sound
like mom's heartbeat & her whistlin tea kettle
as we were nestled inside of her protruding belly

We be musique de la terre
du monde
des personnes

Musique de tout
yea of everything and of everyone!

We be one in music,
me & Her
From Her core
to Her dirt
to Her skies

From conception to when I dies
I been
and will continue to be
musique de suite

sweet salty spicy music

The spine of bass & beat

Earth-music
until I am called to make
my music heavenly.

Erasing History

Yea I wrote it cuz I thought it
and I thought it cuz I meant it
and I meant it cuz I loved it
and now I've ripped it out of history.
For if a scream resounds with no one to hear,
was there ever a scream at all?
If I slipped and no one saw,
was there ever a fall?
Yea I wrote it cuz I thought it,
or did I even think it at all?

So now I'm ripping out the pages
So I won't get caught.
Feels like I'm 13 again.
Yea I'm ripping out the pages
So I can't get caught.
Hiding from all that I've been.

I thought I ripped out all the pages
but I missed a few.
And a few more are being written everyday.
Flipping through old pages,
I came across two.
I thought those memories had been erased.
But suppression and erasure aren't synonymous
and people's thoughts are like ROM files.
Not only do I remember the sweat, blood & tears,
but I remember the love & the smiles.

I set me a time-bomb many years back,
and the ticking is coming to an end.
I've been running like hell from all that I was
but this explosion will show all that I've been.

And now I'm living out these last few days,
the weeks & maybe even a year.
Yea I'm livin it up for old time's sake
but inside, there's nothing but fear.
Who knows if THIS poem will even last the day,
it may never reach an eye or an ear...

Artist Moment

A Chicago high-rise was on fire yesterday and I truly thought it was his. I felt concern. Months ago I felt hate...sheer unadulterated hate. I wanted him to die painfully knowing it was a punishment for him killing me 1st.

My feelings towards him are so complex. I try to ignore them all but they keep sneaking back into me. I use to love him. I sometimes loved him more than I loved me. I would write him poems and music...you could feel my love even through my harmonies. Sometimes I was afraid, sometimes irritated. But no matter what, I was so sure.

When I spoke to him this summer, I thought back to my middle-school journal that had his name in every other sentence. He was my 1st love. About being with him for his birthday every year (on New Year's Eve). About being in college, scared out of my wits when he'd not write for days because he was fighting in Iraq. Even my emails and IMs pulsated with passion. About laying next to him as he looked into my eyes and spoke of his future son and daughter. We use to fight about what their names would be.

I thought back to his eyes when he came back from Iraq. Something had died in them. I thought it was the war that had killed the warmth in him but I now realize that it was just me. His love died for me. But we kept going until I realized that his lifestyle was lethal. I was trying to be his "down ass chick" and that shit is cool when you're 13 but at 22, I wanted so much more for him. He told me to wait for him, until he got his life aligned. Until the stars aligned.

A year later, when he told me he was in love...with someone else... I cursed the years spent loving him. The music spent loving him. The poems spent loving him. I cursed him and my dreams. And when he told me his new love was with child a part of me committed suicide.

Yea, I'm having an artist moment. I need people to understand the story...the story of he and I. I won't let him make our remembered lightening into mere lightening bugs. I need lyrics, chords, rhythm and silence so complex...so perfect...that it pulls the life out of him whenever he hears it. So perfect that my fans will experience all of it...the love and the pain...again and again whenever it is played.

Now I have to stop being too scared to compose it.

Love's Worth

And as I admire him I ask myself
is it even worth it?
Friendship
Relationship
Warship
Worshiping his mind
and running my fingers thru his African ropes.
Breathing him as I fall asleep
on his brown shoulder
And as I drift into waves of theta
I think of you

I love you deep
Real deep like bottom feeders
cleaning me
on my ocean floor
Like you were my stem
and I your petals
in lifetimes before
Like as deep as loving can be
But he makes me feel so free

Sister, save me from my daydreams
for I am mapping out
the soil in which he and I shall frolic
Running
hand-in-hand
barefoot from east land to the west
Swimming the oceans stilled with peace
Yea sister save me
from thinking he and I were
divinely chosen

How mysterious is our God

Save me
sister
from getting so lost into our dialogue
that he and I become transcendental
Sensuality no longer a necessity
Save me sister
from making him my Earth-Jah
so "I and I" can live harmoniously

Cuz sister,
I love you deep
Real deep like how the simple
describes complexity
Like the notes of a double bass
Like my REM sleep
Deep like the roots of the wawa tree
and strong like its seed
So deep that loving him
would cost a piece of me
Petals can not live sans stem
and the ocean floor must be cleaned
Without REM I could never dream again

And as I admire him
I ask myself
is it even worth it?

Orange Moon: Reflection

"Many nights he was alone
Many, many, many nights
His light was so bright that they turned away
And he stood alone
Every night and every day
Then he turned to me
He saw his reflection in me
And he smiled at me when he turned to me
Then he said to me

How good it is, how good it is
How good it is, how good it is

I'm an Orange Moon
I'm brighter than before
Brighter than ever before
I'm an Orange Moon and I shine so bright
Cause I reflect the light of my sun
I praise the day, he turned my way
And smiled at me
He gets to smile and I get to be orange, that I love to be

How good it is, how good it is"

~Erykah Badu



I don't remember the first time I heard it
But I remember
specifically
admiring the orange glow that seeped through my
bedroom blinds.
Street light glow.
I had started to keep them just slightly open
Slightly
Just enough to feel the tiger stripes on my face.
I stroked my belly,
followed those stripes with curious fingertips
And they kissed my knuckles
The stripes did
They would kiss me...
Street light sensuality.
Those stripes would lock hands with mine
and she would sing to me
Erykah
Yea Erykah would sing to me "How good it is"
And it was.
Yea
Yea, I remember waiting
Waiting on my moon to be orange
But settling for the glow of my street lights
Settling
And thinking to myself "How good it is"
And it was.
You know what I never remember?
Falling asleep
Yea falling
And I usually can't recall my dreams neither.
But I remember waking up
Mhmm waking up and the street lights
My street lights
would be gone.

Chant Down American Babylon

(This is for Bob Marley and Kingston; for Robert O. Self and the Black Panthers; and mostly for the music industry and all those that contribute to its annual $7,000,000,000 income)


Chant down American Babylon
with their contracts of pointed fingers,
headlined with "I WANT YOU!"
Hungry for obsequious Negroes with
addictive personalities,
allergic to the dark
and medicated by virulent limelight.
Tasty.
Squeezed over contracts of alphabet soup.
And you
YES YOU
listen to these sleepers
and now Babylon owns you too.

Chant down American Babylon
with their hush policies on the truth.
If you strive for enlightenment of all who are worthy,
they'll use the strategies of Sun Tzu.
Teachers
thinkers
speakers
they'll erase your lyrics
if you don't swear by their Ingsoc.

Chant down American Babylon
who seeks to steal, kill and destroy
for the sake of entertaining many.
Teaching us queens to use our bodies
and our chicanery
to win over dudes until they chuck us for season 2.
Now listen up carefully because American Babylon wants you
YES YOU.

Chant down American Babylon
with a Gregorian-Igbo stew of drone and pulse.
Entrance all that will come to this million man march
where my people will sign contracts with truth.

Chant down American Babylon
that supplies the vulnerable
with sex, drugs and booze
and then calls over their friends in media
for a dehumanizing photo shoot.
Artists, they're using you.

Chant down American Babylon
and fill their ears with the hope of dark skin--
the most sultry hope there is--
a dark musicianship
part innate and part inherited.
Sing your dark songs of despair
conspiracy
of the inevitable coup d'etats
that will finally bring Babylon down.
Beleaguer Babylon,
for we will not wait for deliverance.

Chant it down children,
Babylon and all its slaves.
Make way for an old message through new prophets
and old prophets appearing from darkness
together
singing in monophonic concordance,
chanting down this American Babylon obstreperously.

Chant down American Babylon
you valiant,
beautiful children of Zion,
you sophisticated,
refined children of harmony.

The Race of Music

Music has no color. It's of a universal struggle. The song of the oppressed is also that of the oppressor; for if the oppressed sing of struggle and of change, they also sing of the oppressor's need for growth.

Music has no color. Music is unity like an upright bass; wood chocolate with cinnamon sprinkles. Ebony bow with cream hair. All singing together, sending waves into God's air.

Music has no color. Black notes on white paper, yellowed with age. Blue notes from a golden sax. Harmonica bends from pink lips darkened by tobacco's kiss.

Can you hear my color in stereo? All my colors? Mocha cafe au lait to your ears. Fried plantain with black seeds. Grease burning but damn, it's sweets.

Music is golden honey and skinned red knees. Music is pastel memories. Music is the whole rainbow as well as the colors you can't see...

the unknown

chiseled
the color of ancestors unknown
and i want you to teach me them.
be my warrior and reveal my tribes
and with learning hands i'll search deeper
tracing bloodlines
i etched in your back with fragile nails.
young warrior
so demanding.
i see the love-thirst in your eyes
skin-thirst
your thirst for sensuality.
i know what you're thinking
when i braid your cashmere,
playfully lingering at your nape,
seemingly thoughtless brush of your ear.
i know what you're thinking young warrior
because i can hear your djembe
beating polyrhythmically with my singing pheromones.
and now we're dancing
pushing & tugging
staring & looking away
ignoring & coming in a little too close,
all just to say one word...
"Yes"

Hip Hop Revival

So for the past year or so I've agreed with the critics that Hip Hop is dead. Listening to my friend John Morrison makes me wanna apologize to all those Hip Hoppers out there keeping the dream alive. Keep reading and teaching, bro! Check out his music!

Haiku #15: Peach Cobbler

I'm American

My tan skin fits this landscape

This soil I have plowed




So this was inspired by the idea of American pie (apple pie) which is a tasty, white woman's pie lol. The history behind peach cobbler is so rich, much like the contents of that mouth-watering dessert. I think it should be known that slaves took the rotten fruit given to them by their slave masters and turned it into gold. Mmmmm...I feel like Pavlov's dog right now... But anyway, I was imagining a landscape portrait of the American family. And I fit there. I denied being American soooo long. Called myself a displaced African. But when you think of our contribution-- technology, labor, culture-- when you think of God's plan for us, you can't deny what's yours. And America is yours. It's mine. It's ours.

Shhh...

Have you ever experienced a silence so thick
it was deafening?
Sitting in Mediterranean dust
and Gothic lighing

Sulking about all that I am not
Tear ducts at capacity

I cry for me


Verbal cruelty spewed through Avon-coated lips
and I wonder will she ever stop to think
Condemnation through hateful eyes won't change me.


I cry for we


and un-attainability
Settling for physicality
when I'd give my all to love you cerebrally
But there's blockage that leads to your cortex
In daylight I escape your room in silence

Crying for fulfilling harmonies

Sensual
Captivating
True


I cry for you


Won't give one more excuse
Stroking your hair,
I simply whisper into your ear
that I didn't know how to love you

I cry for hue too light and waist too thick
I cry for what I miss


Congrats HU Grad!
Here's a recession and there's your raised fist
Manicured and bleached

Nappy queen cries for in-opportunity

Have you ever experienced a silence so thick it was deafening?
When night came
I sat and cried for me

"Nappy"

"Girl yo hair always been nappy!" said a hair client of mine, as I strung in her silky brown weave. Her brother and long time friend of mine was sifting through the thousands of photographs my family keeps in a old milk crate in my kitchen. He had come across the very last class picture taken of me before my first relaxer and proceeded to show his little sister. In the picture I may had been 7 yrs old, and I had long, thick, curly-kinky hair.

As with most American Black girls with long, thick hair and young, overwhelmed moms, I was given a perm before I was old enough to understand the physical and cultural damage the "creamy crack" causes. All I knew was that it was the early 90s and my previously curly hair was now straight and touching the middle of my back.

The mid-90s and of course girls were mean to me because of how I looked; light-skinned and long hair. "Good hair" is what they called it. But even worse, the girls and boys were mean to the girls who didn't look like me: darker skin and shorter, kinkier hair. (Retrospectively, you couldn't win for losing...) I remember being so hurt when kids made fun of my forehead or my light skin tone.

I found myself delighted when people asked me "What you mixed with?" When asked, I would proudly ramble off the varying ethnicities of my ancestors, conveniently leaving out "African." Hell, I didn't know where in Africa my people were from and I didn't care because they didn't care. But I knew what Native American tribe my family was from, and I knew the English city from which my last name originated. I knew my great-grandmother was creole which means she was French and that even though I had met my daddy only once, he was part Asian...Japanese we think.

Typical and superficial, I easily maneuvered through grades and schools, getting off on standing out from the crowd because of my amazing grades and test scores. Smart but stupid. I was too busy chasing boys to acknowledge or cultivate any depth within myself.

Simultaneously, I was taking a liking to a new genre of music. 1997 and Erykah Badu, Rahsaan Patterson and D'Angelo were singing what my life was lacking: consciousness. Though I vibed to the music, it took a couple years for me to align myself with Neo-Soul's essence as oppose to just riding the trend.

Summer 2001 and I went to the All African People's Revolutionary Party's "African Liberation Day." I was 14. I learned about Pan-Africanism and the New Black Panther Party. I was taught Black pride and diasporic unity. I touched African and Caribbean jewelry. I saw flags and I marched for a cause. I witnessed a sea of raised brown fists and lips sucking magnolia bark. I listened to Fred Hampton Jr speak of assassination and rebirth. I rocked to the words and rhythms of Poetree.

I got my very last perm that August.

High school and college proved to be only a few steps above what I was in grammar school. I fought the good fight for all that is African, natural and progressive. I told people to loose themselves from their slavery chains. I spit poetry and sang lyrics about society and systems and despair and hope. All the while, I still needed validation. Like a little girl... While putting to death ideals and words like "nigga" and "good hair" I still relished in my natural hair being not as kinky as other Black folks. And I pressed my hair whenever I was to see my boyfriend (who very much embraced the ideals of Niggerdom).

(I've since learned MY value and the toxicity of the nigga lifestyle to my purpose. I've also learned that loving yourself is not about comparison. It's about embracing uniqueness.)

It took one statement to shake-up my everything and bring to surface the problem that us Black folks can't seem to escape. "Girl yo hair always been nappy!" is what she said as she looked at my kindergarten picture. A dark girl with kinky hair that I braided in a circle for her weave. Her 14 inch, light brown, silky weave.(Her mom has the same weave in HER hair). She was putting MY hair on the same level as someone straight from Africa. Wait, did I really just think that to myself? Why did the word "nappy" hurt me so much when she said it? I mean, I LOVE African hair.

It was the way she said it to me. She was putting an Indian woman's hair in her own head, telling me how she didn't want any of her hair out because she didn't like the texture. It didn't blend. I don't think she could understand why I liked mine. As I finished the last couple tracks in her hair, I matter-of-factly spoke of the beauty of natural hair, whether it be wavy, poofy, curly or yes, napppy.

Her 15 year old mouth responded with a "yea right." But I kept giving her natural hair positive energy. I only hope that energy, that Qi, would somehow penetrate her heart.

New Song

What started out as a plea to God to send me my perfect mate, ended up a love song and plea to send me Himself. I felt God in the new track I made, so the lyrics just took me there subconsciously.

I originally started the song with, “I’m reading old letters, old journal writings. I must have mentioned him a thousand times at least.” And I changed it to “…I must have mentioned Him a thousand times at least.”

Not much else changed, as He was already in my piece, but I made Him the focus. I did change the last line of the bridge from “…kiss my problems away” to “…mend my problems away.” I mean, a kiss is temporary but healing is everlasting.

Even with the shift in focus, one can sense the allegorical nature of this story. I can’t ignore my original prayer and my original longing for companionship. My heart, however, lead me to the understanding that my loneliness was much more deeply rooted than I realized.

I’m an artist—a profession that calls for me to pull from my life and expose myself as much as I can. I can’t wait to share with you my life…I can’t wait to start recording the song!

Where is my soul mate??

i mean, someone who's hot with a lot of tattoos and piercings. Someone artistic but goal oriented who values Black liberation.

and who's not clingy

and not too artsy

yea. and the issue with artists and poets is that they take themselves too damn seriously
lighten the fuck up...geez

I used to feel bad if I didn’t come off as “deep” as someone else. But damnit, a lot of yall ain’t talking about shit anyway.

“What good do your words do if they can’t understand you?” ~Erykah Badu
If you’re tryna reach the masses, use words we can comprehend. And if you’re not, (and at times, I’m not) use whatever words you please!

but that’s neither here nor there…

My perfect partner, where are you???

I'm Sorry For...2009

So I have no time to even think...and my computer is broken. Second semester senior year has eaten up every bit of my energy. Somebody pray for me.

Random thought of the day...

What if the Holy Trinity consisted of the Mother, the Son, and the Holy Ghost??

Would it make you think of God any differently?

Would the wrath and the compassion and the omnipresence actually make more sense??

Would that discount that I've had a father, since I surely don't have one on THIS planet?