Home of random thoughts, misguided musings, wicked words and the men who make them.

Friday, March 31, 2006

3-31-06


Hey y’all,

I’ve been busy with school and all, little too busy for IRF’n. I’ve been IRF-reading, though. Elias: I love your posts. I like your writing as much as your drawing and painting.

I’m kinda caught up w/schoolwork for a day or two and thought I’d post some poems. Would anyone be interested in reading excerpts from papers I’m writing for school? I know SOL had mentioned it. I’m studying some interesting stuff and most of my professors are more interested in what I’m thinking than how proper I’m writing. I can’t write in IM speak (lol; btw; bfd) or in mothafuckin’ street slang yo! But I get away with the occasional dangling participle or sentence-starting preposition when it sounds right. It helps give me a voice in my papers and essays. Anyhoo, here’s a poem from 2004. Pre-going back to school, Pre-marriage, pre-home-ownership, still living over on 35th street:

Rainfall in the Baltimore alley I call my home.
The pigeons must be huddled under eaves
The rats under porches and trash
The homeless in shelters or doorways.
The hookers, too, must be under doorways
dirty sweatsuits under raincoats.

I want the rain to wash away our sins
The hatred and the animosity
The broken glass and the cigarette butts
The dead bodies on the TV
in our hearts and minds
on our conscience.
I want the rain to wash away our sins
To form rivers and deliver us from greed
Take away the emptiness we create everyday
and the hurt and pain.
When the sun shines I want to love my neighbor
I want my neighbor to love me.


Here’s another one, two pages earlier in the same notebook, dated 4/25/04:

We move gracelessly thru time
past time
in and around time
about time
Our minds cry
and try to hold on
fumbling and bumbling
for concepts and (with) perspective

Time smiles
static and eternal
infinite patience
Time waits for nothing
-------------------------
(then, under a line not unlike this one)

Enter God

Enter God
for Peace
of mind on Earth


The rest of that notebook is notes.
Notes on homeowners insurance and mortgage rates … we bought our house in May.
Notes on caterers and banquet halls … we got married in August.

Closing costs- $money minus money$
Wedding license- You will need: birth certificate/drivers license/witness.

I actually don’t remember who the witness is. We have pictures of the whole thing if anyone needs proof. Ron signed, we signed, and the witness signed - it was probably SOL, up from the deep, barely clothed in a bathing suit. Half of us soaking wet, none of us capable of writing our names, much less writing them on a line. When we brought the license to the courthouse it looked like it’d been signed by 3rd graders and carried in the saddle bags of a pony express rider across three states in the rain. Eh … did the trick.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Sorceror Series: MPD as lifestyle or The Eternal Champion


We're all in now.
The Nexus of all things. Where the the metaphor becomes the thing. Where you can turn in that direction you never could before and see the facets of yourself, the hero with a thousand faces. The general terms given detail and definition. At the center is the Sorceror. The Constant. The traveler on his sojourner truth. Breaking the boundaries of narrative existence. Rangin across the multilayered narrative. The circles of reality rotate and shift and I stand in all those places out of time but in the story. Blak Fox stands guard over his city. The foundation, the first projection created out of adolescent desires for power. Vigilante urban hero. Dwayne Lyon. The first idealization of the father. The fantasy warrior/cleric. The seeker of knowledge existing in a realm of magic and technology. The servant of an agnostic god. The heart of the team and the healer. Abyss (once known as Darkke) the sensualist. The nemesis. The hip vampire hitman all in black. Turtleneck to overcoat to guns. Addiction, excess and regret. The shadow. Proto Elias Infinity. Khufi(sp) wearing neo-blaxploitation hero for the new milleneum(sp?). The Hope Eternal in its infant form. The first taste of freedom bathing in the first rays of light from redemption and responsibility, but bound to the mad Moon-Goddess and the two fisted hero Chi-Town Johnson. Baptised in the water of love's escape. Elias Infinity, the dredlocked hyper kinetic hero for a new age of exploration and discovery. Always progressing, always learning, ever vigilant. The Now guy. Baptised in the fire of love loss.
Thank you Michael Moorcock, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Grant Morrison, Alice Walker, Octavia Butler. For driving me insane.

Corrupt The Wish

So there's a web board I frequent where they make me take down my pants and spank me. Of course, it's a web board so I have to do the actual spanking while they type things like, "Oh yeah! SOL's been a baaad boy! You like that bad boy? Huh? Do ya'?" And I do like it. I really do. Anyway, that's got nothing to do with the title of this thread. On the web board, there is a long running thread by this very name. The idea is some one makes a wish, the next person to post grants it, but in a way that corrupts it that is ideally interesting or at least funny. Then you make your own wish for some one else to work over. It's a blast and I'll go first.

I wish I had a million dollars.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Sorceror Series: Manhood in the age of Hip hop


I alway think of Hip-hop as my little brother.
I was finishing up grade school by the time Sugarhill Gang could be heard on the radio. I remember Kurtis Blow's "the Brakes". I remember listening to battle albums between Sugarhill Gang and the Treacherous Three. I remember memorizing everyword to every new hip hop song. I remember walkiing to the mall with friends as a teenager and trading up positions as we rapped the words to Roxanne/Roxanne by UTFO. Hip hop has always been one of those cultural experiences where I can say I was there from the beginning. I remember watching Rocky Shelton take three cats in a breakin' battle in the lobby of the gym after a Basketball game by busting a Suicide move at Woodlawn High School. I've watched hip hop evolve. I've watched it grow and get rich. I've watched the artform survive in the face of popularity and commodification by the entertainment industry. And hip hop watched me grow up. But hip hop s my LITTLE brother. So when i watch a culture, the American culture consuming the POP representation of it I am disturbed by how mature men and women idealize and idolize the actions of performers half their age. The media creates a reality wherein the richest and most culturally relevant black men are all under the age of twenty-five. So what does a maturing man look to for manhood. When does entertainment and inspiration become distraction and self-destruction. When do I turn off the television and define my own reality as a man becoming. Hip hop started out in the park, now everybod's trying ta spark. Or hip hop started out in the heart. Like any art once it has a worth to a larger machine it becomes a product. Never confuse the product with reality. Cause I love my little brother, and I dig some of the stuff his kids are doing, my little cousins, but its a business and its a tool and its an escape sometimes. So I walk on. Thinkin' about what I loved, love, will love till I die. But it can't define me to others who don't know me. Cause see hip hop was my little brother.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Check it out

Hey folks, just wanted to point you over to Notes From Beneath the Sea, my blog. I'm going to start putting actual content on there so check it out.

SOL

Thursday, March 16, 2006

I'm watching you


Just liked the way this sketch came out. Did it as a demo for my Drawing and Composition II class. There may be hope for me yet. Except I ain't that thin. Artistic license and all that.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Sorceror Series: God show me the way...


God Show me the way 'cause the devil's try'n to break me down.
- Kanye West Jesus Walks

After a couple years of teaching and finally having a chance at teaching studio courses I realized that I had to create an effective process to facilitate finishing paintings quickly. After a visit from a guest artist I was inspired to mix some approaches to make my work more immediate. I was moving into an area where I thought The Sorceror Series could be used for social commentary. This painting in fact was the first to be titled as part f the sorceror series. So there, I had my INTENT. To find a way to express my reactions to contemporary subjects by interlacing my interest in news media, the art canon, the layered narrative, and my own sense of self absorption.
My process began by collecting newspaper articles and images that caught my eye or connected to things happening in my life. Next I stole a visual structure from Piet Mondrian to tip my hat to a sense of geometric reality and the symbolic use of symbol color. After collaging and doctoring images to coincide with experiences of aging, relationships, art hip-hop, the CIA, and of course the Turtle. Finally I painted in the Sorceror sitting at the base of my greatest fears: being an immoral spirit(Hell) and never maturing(Boy). This painting took me less than a week to complete and is one of the most finished paintings I felt I had done to date. This painting was also the beginning of projecting the future as opposed to being consumed with the past. The confusion that the Sorceror expresses is the disease of always looking back as though you can change the past as opposed to facing the future. Thus the quote from Kanye West's first album.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Do whatever you like ... really, it's fine

Listen, I'm tired of that other thread. The wielding of the titantium beaver. Here's the deal:

Make a wish, or express a sentiment, or observation ... we don't care.

Respond how you like. There are no "rules" here. There is no "one way of doing things". Sheesh.

Consider this Laissez-Faire Corrupt the wish.

I'll start:

I wish Mourning Doves tasted as sweet as their songs are sad.

 
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