This
This is not about making money
Not about selling books
Not about ego or fame
Not about women or children
Old age and sex
This is not about sin or some preacher
Some holy book or how one prays
It is a simple thing
Like tears in the eyes
Like working the last nerve
Like standing when feet are tired
Talking when silence is the desire
Like showing love when hatred is behind the smile
Like feeding the poor when they ask
Like listening to an old woman who is homeless
Like hearing the story of a mad negro and a mad African one after another
Like listening to street children with grills in their mouths tell stories of the spirit world
This is the daily round
This is the work unfinished
To express truth no matter who is around
And knowing truth is a circle coming round and round and round
This is not about the personal or the lover who is lost in traffic
This is not about the teacher but the student who will learn to stand to teach what he is taught
About the comrades who will gather as peers on the corner to save themselves
Not about the black the white the mixed or the mad
It is coming together to realize life is a moment to seize or be lost in eternity.
It is knowing action and reaction
Passing the tone test in the presence of the beast.
It is about getting through the day so one can fight tomorrow.
It is about seeking knowledge above food, rent and pleasure.
Knowledge is the power that turns the universe into a ball
We throw into space and time until it explodes into particles of a new world for all to see and wonder.
--Dr. M
10/2/07
3 comments:
hi,
I have read some of your work at ChickenBones.
From my own experience I have learned that the need to change comes from the inside of the person.
What comes from the outside only resonates when going into encounter with the already awe-ken need to change, otherwise no change does happens.
I think the problem with Africans, why Negro, Black, Afro-American?
Why not African?
Europeans [white] sees themselves as Europeans.
they sees themselves all has the sons and daughters of the Greek Gods.
If not why this fixation with the ancient Greece?
But is that bad?
No, No!
Because that unites them!
Remember how europeans revolted when OTAN bombarded Serbia ?
how many books written about, how many interviews Slobodan Milosevic did, just for his side of the story to be heard.
Do you see the same West media trying to portrait the side story of Mugabe, or of the Iranian president?
Why?
For me is just because they are not Europeans.
What I meant to the above paragraph is:
They have an agenda. after the 2nd WW they got united.
In Africa we are miles from each other, the language, the stigma of inferiority toward the Europeans and of superiority toward each other.
How many blond “blacks“ you see on the mags?
For me the main problem is within us!
No with the racists. There would be always racists,
and even more if we give them reasons to.
C‘mon we live in a superficial world.
People arre not judged for what they honor every day. But by what they ‘look‘, by isolated act.
I do not expect my neighbor to understand me, I try to understand myself.I do not need to hear from a chicken that its a chicken, hell, I know its a chicken.
I think the chains that are holding us back is this burning stigma of inferiority.
If not why, most of us, listen to the same type of music, practices the same sports, talks the same way, walk the same way.
Why we ignore those Africans who tries to go beyond what is supposed to be “Black“.
What is “Black“ should be unknown, it should be the future, it should be the quest, the interrogation mark, not the exclamation mark!
Do you know how many radical Africans musicians and thinkers are around?
[URL=http://www.wesleyan.edu/music/braxton/]Anthony Braxton[/URL]
[URL=http://aacmchicago.org/members/muhal_richard_abrams_bio.html]Muhal Richard Abrams[/URL]
Cecil Taylor
[URL=http://www.hamzaeldin.com/]Hamza El Din[/URL] - rip
[URl=http://www.conduction.us/]Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris[/URL]
[URL=http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/musician/mdixon.html]Bill Dixon[/URL]
[URL=http://music.calarts.edu/~wls/]Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith[/URL]
[URL=http://www.pamelaz.com/]Pamela Z[/URL]
...
not many, has it is used to be.
Believe me most of them are not young.
... and believe me mostly college European boys and girls listen to their art.
Because we still as you wrote in an article on the ChichenBone site, listen to the old same records.
The music of Africans from the America is not static, all art is not static ...
... but we are static, most of us.
There is a big wave of artists [from all over the world] from rock, noise, new folk, electronic, etc... that are influenced greatly by the African American genius, most of them not known by most of Americans, and these musicians are not copying , they are adding to it.
Because we are universal. each one of us - earthlings.
[B]Space is the place![/B]
[B]It is the end of the world, don‘t you know that yet_?[/B]
... but who is listening?
Not an African.
Thanks for your time.
I am learning english the wrong way / just by reading, not trough the grammar.
Sorry for my bad English.
"This", is beautiful.
Baba words flow out of you like beautiful black sand, warm and cleansing.
I read the best of times, for some reason it made me cry... I will think about the images it conjures until I know why.
See you soon.
Ochyming,
Greetings. I find resonance with your comment in many ways. Art I agree is not static, it like most reality does seem however to be cyclical. It builds on itself, references itself, grows away from itself to return to itself. I agree there is much art that does not conform to the making of the myth of the west as storied by Anglo Europeans. This is not the drum on the wind of corporate media that deadens and dumbs it is the underground jungle electric that is the edge of truth being said in art.
Corporate media is the enemy of, "the low down dirty truth," as Marvin is fond of saying, no one wants the truth.
What if the Chicken refuses to see he is a chicken? What if him think self a peacock? What then of the other birds? In the end what if the Shepard is in fact a wolf? What then Ochyming?
And if music, rebel art, the peoples voice, shining out of the mouths of those who wield light to combat the blindness of chickens who think themselves peacocks and sheep's who are willingly lead by wolves, be the source of inspiration, wisdom, and guidance; must it not be new and old at once.
Just as we change while remaining as you observe in truth "Africans", not just because, "they", say but because we say.
We are a paradox I think, staying the same, while ever changing, adapting to stay the same, at the end of the day they say we are all African. Perhaps we just remember best. At the end of the day perhaps we must all again be African or see the end of days.
Something new must come.
Change is the only constant. It be. We be ready of not. It will be.
But what change?
This I think is our arena of action, to nurture, guide, incite the change, wrest the pendulum from the wolves and reactionaries and act. Create. New music.
But music, knowing, and creation are all, I think, cycles. We sample in honor, and to perpetuate, and to re-member what we know.
Its fitting I think that the young Europeans listen with such an appetite. In the end we are in this together no matter how we want to tell the story, we are locked in a common destiny.
Change slip in the house like a thief stealing your young.
Who is listening Ochyming?
The house of the 5 is ever present.
There are those who see the wolves.
There are those who listen to the old music,
There are old musicians who create new music.
There is no such thing as black or white.
We are caught in the chasm of a the affect of a non-thing,
The affect is a "real" thing.
It is a white problem that has created our blackness which in affect has proved problematic in the context of the dominant myth of us (U.S.).
The blackness which screams we are not them is perhaps the light in the tunnel for us all.
I think the "problem" as we have summed it lies somewhere in the space between us and them.
Somewhere in the non-existent liminal of "between", in the silence of a break beat, the shifting of a rhythm, there lies resolution, an exit...
mean while, we create.
The 5
My eyes see farther than my house
This house, that holds the event of my life
runs over, lifts up, been down, seeks light
trembles in the wind
knowing.
This house, where we have walked from the
light, into deep darkness, (no lights), to return
humbled and armored with light in our mouths
stars burning in the windows of our overstanding
we travel at warp now, sowing light, that all should see
This house is not of the eighty-five who sleep in
their beds, vision of bling and life easy, dance over their heads
The houses of the living dead
where propaganda is consumed like bread
The only sign of life, the debts
Yea though they suffer, they know not,
We open windows for them.
This house is not the house of the 10 conquers
bending, breaking, twisting, as they tweak in reinvention
the house of no flag, land, or God,
the house of skull and crossed bones
sucking the morrow from the land and Gods of others
Pandora’s children of clever scientist
who wrap regret in ermine and plunder to forget
the emptiness in the space their God’s once fit.
We sharpen our thoughts into knives for them.
This is the house of the 5
The home of Apes and Lions
Opening windows and sharpening knifes
New myth is breed here
Light is grown in the garden
And there is a place at the table
For those who know.
One,
Word
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