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.