new reads

walked into my borders bookstore in Charlotte, only to find it's going out of business. Yellow, red, and black signs - 20% to 40% off - nudged me into buying things. After prodding and poking into books for hours, i picked up this month's copy of  Arise Magazine, the VIBE- with the Amber Rose  cover, and lord of the flies. happy with my picks.

I highly recommend this mag

look what i learned in hip hop school mama!

my final assessment for hip hop allows me to be creative. thumbs up.

cracking knuckles. time to loosen those creative juices too readily squelched by the heat of academic writing, looming deadlines, tricky conversations, imminent grades, tuition bills and liquid summer-time temptations...

As a framework for this endeavor, I am using David Kirkland's essay, "For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When Social Networking Was Enuf." This text struck chords on keys in my soul by allowing a voice to emerge I always knew but never knew. by saying its okay to write yourself into and onto everyday landscapes. by allowing me to sift through this thing called "bein a woman &  bein colored." by giving me the push to grow my own pheminism. to explore myself and others in multi-modal contexts.

The entries below are my reflections on my hip hop course both explicitly and indirectly. I've reflected on ways the course lends itself to fueling conversations around justice in classrooms,

I've put myself out there to define my own organic pheminism through poetry

I've inked my story

and considered the language of the oppressed at it relates to classrooms

I've daydreamed about my place in hip hop as a female

I've poked my nose in student poetry/rap

and I've thought about ways in which memory impacts identity- through hip hop...

my reflections are still sparse, skeleton-like in nature, but honest.

I've learned that I've learned a lot and processing that is in its first stages, but well underway.

call Me My Name

Bodies can render personal identities visible   

                   -Kirkland

"...you probably want to put it the other way so other people can read it," he says.

i think for a moment.            nope. i stand on the black and white checkered floor of the Ace of Spades Tattoo shop amid my certainties and uncertainties. My right arm outstretched and open. it's ready for the momentary rush of needles set to inscribe the name I've scribbled on a blank piece of paper- a name I've always known. always called myself. 

And as I stand in this strange room, I'm pulled back to memories.  

                        station wagon rides through Rancocas on the way to elementary school. 

 hearing my mom impart disconnected pieces of a life I can only access through the voices of others. she answers my period punctuated questions- she in the front, me in the back. 

                     "did i have a twin." 

                       no. 

                    "Did i have a brother. sisters."

                      if you did, she says, we would have adopted them too.

The questions trail as I begin to fill on the information. Even as a little girl I learn to take these pieces in moderation, mindful of how it leaves me breathless, often too contemplative.

"your name was Rosa." she adds without a question to prompt. "Rosa" hangs in the air... It doesn't quite roll off tongues in any pretty-type fashion. rather it flops off. belly flops into my little girl mind. I can remember sitting in the back of the station wagon, silently shifting and sifting this word in my head, trying to mark it as my own.  imagining this other life, this world connected to this name. Feeling like Harold with his purple crayon, I sketch narratives to tuck away for myself - to lock up in the safe spaces of little girl imaginations. only ready to come out and play when heads hit pillows before bedtime.

I pay my 100 dollars, tip included, and indulge in my fresh ink. Rosa. in my cursory script. my story, rendered visible. 

horizontal across the inside of the forearm. facing me, for me. and she's all mine. 

already feeling closer to my own skin, I'm 

loving this literature ink. 

I'm ready to see the discourses it engenders for myself and for others. 

i'm feeling greedy and good. 

Brave New Voices: A Look at the Evolution of Hip Hop

In my hip hop class, I asked my professor a question he eventually had me answer on my own. I asked him in many more words:  if hip hop is a platform for voice, where's mine?
drake gave me footing for my answer. hip hop, just like any other art, any culture, subsists on its ability to adapt and evolve. . . evolution is predicated in many ways on authenticity- which needs to arrive organically.





Thank Me Later: Hip-Hop During The Drake Era (short documentary) from Alexander Allen on Vimeo.

Drake just wasn't afraid to be him...





shouts to HipHop Since1987

Midnight Poetry Snacks

Up late night reading, feeding my addiction to learn.




Poem at Twenty-Six

it is midnight
no magical bewitching
 hour for me...
                    -Sonia Sanchez

a weak soul once told me she wanted to be wanted.
a fragile little girl once cried me she couldn't find her mama
a baby child once walked a thousand miles in my shoes.

The Buried Life

My mind is dreaming, dreamy, and faraway today. I'm not trying to fight any battles or do the right thing, I just want to Be. . . The freedom of writing and imagination are my allies. This entry will be scattered; it will not be a linear narrative. 

When you first start writing...you're scared to death that if you don't get that sentence right that minute it's never going to show up again. And it isn't. But it doesn't matter-another one will, and it'll probably be better. And I don't mind writing badly for a couple of days because I know I can fix it- and fix it again and again and again, and it will be better... Morrison

 Thanks Mama, I needed that.

it was between this and Carl Thomas's Summer Rain- im feelin like Brasil today

 

I've been fantasizing about and romanticizing the nomadic life.There's something magical about rootlessness. I live vicariously through this video as I sit with my second coffee of the day, sprawled magazines, and scholarly journal photocopies. final paper sits on another tab, awaiting to be tended.

I found this dope store today and promised myself after I get at least 3 pages of this paper done I can shop- it's called elementality- i'm diggin the aesthetics and the one-of-kindness of it. All of their stuff is made by the artist, for the people.

Elementality  http://www.elementalityonline.com/home.html

i mostly love the tattoo placement here- a kiss: simple and clean.
if i weren't a chicken, i'd do it.

I just might snag these necklaces. I love their delicacy and assumed strength.

purdy.


















They are also looking for artists to contribute to the mix... throwin it out there.


k ciao

Been Readin' 5/19

--I found all these drafts i'd written and never hit publish, some of them are unfinished, but I'm clicking publish post today.  
this one was dated 5/19
Been reading all types of new material. Poking my nose in genres I've never even heard before and buying books just because the author's names sound dope. It's an experiment in trying new things, I guess. I've made my system formulaic.

So, this new book I bought is one in surrealism. I've been dabbling a bit in  dream psychology-not to say this is a new phenomenon, i've always been fascinated by dreams- and I am intrigued by the natural story lines that occur to us every night. My dreams are beyond vivid.


Can't seem to get any silence; a sound I'd say whose power is acutely underestimated.

Sat Her Day rambles

im already pissed because the elements aren't right.

wanted to sit outside- no outlets

wanted to sit in the leather chairs- all taken

wanted to bring in my cup of coffee- can't bring in outside drinks. dumbass monoply.

 eff it; lebron can still hit the jumper with his eyes closed and no shoes, so imma ball with the elements against me. 

I'm in Borders Bookstore today. i'd rather rummage through books than do this damn work. Beloved, Incidents, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Finding Fish, and The Color of Water sit in a spiral tower at the corner of my tiny table.trying to connect the prompt to what I actually want to say about these books. i'm trying articulate how memory works in each. i'd like to just choose one and go to town on it- really analyze it as its own entity- but i have to use 3. sometimes too many books, for such a short paper es no bueno. i think i want to say something about how memory is our way of keeping things alive- duh, i know, but in its simple premise there's tons.

                                time is not a linear concept; things don't ever die. memory is proof of this, or rather our tuperware container to keep things fresh, to keep them alive, edible. but, it's up to the container, the transmitter of memory to make it work, not the actual site you're remembering. Morrison echo: "it is not an effort to find out the way it really was- that is research. The point is to dwell on the way it appeared and why it appeared in that particular way" the onus is on the reader of that memory to, in many ways, "re-member" it. we shift and sort memories constantly, consciously and unconsciously. we don't exist in isolation. I'm still workin it out obviously. 

we see this in every text we've read: Beloved is the ephemeral and tangible manifestation of this notion- nothing is dead. Nana Peazant in Daughters screams this to Eli's cry-baby ass: "the dead ain't dead; i'm tryna learn ya!" or something like that. memory and sites of memory work to complicate our propensity toward linear time sequencing. we see the keys to our first house, we remember. we smell the cologne of our first crush, we remember. we hear the macarena, and whether we like it or not, we are pulled back into another time- even though our conceptual sense of reality is rooted in forward motion. we are constantly negotiating notions of past, present, and future because of memory. Memory suggests that nothing is ever dead and that time does not move forward. or something like that. im rambling. . .

john Mayer in my speakers today: slow dancin in a burning room. the sound is filling in all capacities. i'm a fan of sitting in the moments of songs, squeezing every drop of it into cups. I drink it, then repeat. 2:37 is where I always like to replay. 

it's the height of the argument- so fuckin mean, so real: "go cry about it, why don't you."  But, he makes it so beautiful. strummin that guitar so methodically, so gently. i appreciate mayer's artistic encapsulation of this type of argument. haven't we all had it? argg

It's a slow type day- the hours fold into each other and the sun never quite alludes to the hour because shadows are hidden, probably still sleeping in. 

Last night I went to what I call my hood spot. All black, except for the DJ- a white boy who gets crunker than anybody in the place, bumpin exactly the music he wants to play. that's the kind of DJ i would be. just bumpin my musack and gettin payyed.

the sea of books downstairs is calling my name- it's a whisper call, but i'm going to indulge it. I want to find a book on einstein's theory of relatvity and time to poke at this notion for my paper. 

heeya goes nothin.

summer time free writes

im in the mood to free write and the blank cursor is calling my god damn name. rick ross in the head phones- my muse lately. something about his voice, something about his stories, his images, his illusions. his beard, his belly- ha. yacht club. he makes me want to go to miami- sip margs and coronas. white bikini.

tuck sand in my toes and let the wind fly it out. stand in the water, with a bikini bottom wedgie that looks and feels just perfect-like. locs curly heavy in my eyes, still dry, but my suit is wet from wading, from letting the ocean water talk love to a smooth, browned body.
im horny, but no sex necessary, just let the breeze do me.

that felt right.

don’t feel like academic writing today, just feel like righting.




had to add this- it's better with the vidya

bar fly afternoons

it's been a bit of a minute.
not quite sure where this one's going. read against your own will.

The Market Place in asheville is a good spot to sit and contemplate. yet another gem.

underneath the voice of sam cooke peeling through speakers, conversations circulate.
a man- the color of bright pink sand says Jimi hendrix's sound is dynamic, pulsating with a social commentary in the chords of his guitar. and i'm listening, loving it- trying to keep my eyes steady and stoic as a fly on the wall, but I'm caught. we exchange smiles that hang on the edge of words, but smiles is all.

i sip a jalisco: tequila, chilli powder, syrup, and some other shit. it's pretty wonderful. a beer next to my tequila awaits me. everyone has been talking about this greenman esb and i'm ready to talk about it too. i'll sip it with the critical lens if a certified beer snob.

the woman next to him, his wife-friend, listens halfway. seems she doesn't know much about jimi and neither do i; although, i rock my purple haze t-shirt like jay rocks his che. I sit back and learn.

the ending to drake and swizz beats's fancy is in one ear bud almost falling out of my ear- the best part. I wish it were the instrumental. sometimes rap ruins a good track, as does the radio. just as talking during sex can ruin the mood. although, i do love his whisper to the ladies: go cinderella...


i've yet to find a person to speak to me the way music does and I don't think i ever will. don't really think it's meant to be that way.

the clouds are indecisive with the rain. it putters and pouts; it's the rain that constantly paints new jersey days. in decoded jay says we all may be walking different paths, but the same skies hover, the same streets give road to our feet, the same graffiti paints our backdrop. the setting can be a tricky constant.

in class, we did a fishbowl activity that loosed this very idea from my skin (thanks sonia). two students sat in the middle of a circle as the rest of the class watched them read a text- the text being photos. and that's the thing about objectives and what students will be able to learn. it's not always the intent of the teacher. it's not always about the author's intent. I watched classmates read photos of little black boys in the arms of white men; david Beckham spread eagle on Egyptian cotton; black boys with bruised and battered faces; the world gripped by two hands.

and i listened to how they read a text. the same text that projected in front of me? is jay right? were we seeing the same graffiti splashed wall? I saw how we bring our personal experiences, our memories, our worlds, our own texts to a reading. which, in many ways we already know. i saw how the interpretation of a text is often more important than the text itself. one's reading of a text reveals deeper insight into the reader and how his perceptions are connected to larger realms of seeing and perceiving.  watching it manifest in very real ways in class was scary and exciting. perceptions and identity are inherently linked.

                  (added) i was provokingly intrigued by those loud things unsaid. although we can't always articulate or even dare to put words in mouths, i watched  a silent space emerge-a discourse on the things which we do not speak- at least in mixed company and sure as hell not in a fishbowl. but i learned. willful forgetting is often predicated on social and political implications of silence. we dare not say we think the black man with the battered face deserved it because he is a gang member- or do we? we dare not say the little black boy in the arms of the white firefighter is rescuing  a subaltern identity. we dare not say david beckham is sexy if we are a man- or do we dare? doesn't that pronounce a sense of security in our masculinity as it stands? can't killa cam wear pink and get that pussy? (edging besides the point I know).  regardless, something held the silences. something presumed among the group. or was it? i felt it in our laughter and in our furtive glances at one another.

the silence in that activity enlightened me. we fold tape over our own mouths, but i would argue something hands us this tape. something makes us want to shut it  up- don't be heard, don't voice, don't stir. and the tape goes over mouths outside fishbowls and classroom walls. we attempt to do something Zelizer calls "willfully forgetting." but this word "forget" needs tending. i can't rest there, but I need to- for now. 


*now that i've edited this, this last piece doesn't seem to fit- mmm...o well).
when we watched brown sugar, our professor told us to look beyond the love story, but sometimes it is about the love story. sometimes it's okay to look there and see it.  sometimes it is a little mushy... a little murky.

because I feel like sid. and i am in love with this thing called hip hop. ricky ross now in the headphones.

pandemonium.

When I start writing a poem, I don't think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.
-Gwendolyn Brooks


I wish I could have met Brooks.