I don't care what they say

Verses

"Corn-Planter"
(author and date unknown---from Voices of WAH'KON-TAH*, ed. Robert K. Dodge and Joseph B. McCullough, 1985)

I plant corn four years:
ravens steal it;
rain drowns it;
August burns it;
locusts ravage leaves.

I stand in a circle and throw seed.
Old men laugh because they know the wind
will carry the seed to my neighbor.

I stand in a circle on planted seed.
Moles burrow through the earth
and harvest my crop.

I throw seed to the wind
and wind drops it on the desert.

The eighth year I spend planting corn;
I tend my fields all season.
After September's harvest I take it to the market.
The people of my village are too poor to buy it.

The ninth spring I make chicken-feather headresses,
plastic tom-toms and beaded belts.
I grow rich,
buy an old Ford,
drive to Chicago,
and get drunk
on Welfare checks.


*Wah'Kon-Tah is the "Great Mystery,"the sum total of all things, the conception of an impersonal, spiritual and life-giving power. The Dakotas believe that there are two kinds of songs: songs made by people, and songs that come in visions throught the spirits of Wah'Kon-Tah. It is from the voices of Wah'Kon-Tah that people gain spiritual power and wisdom.
There are many other names among the various Indian peoples--Wa-konda, Wakan-tanka, Nesaru, Manito--that signify the same meaning as Wah'Kon-Tah.

EMOTIONS ARE FACTS

KICKIN' IT...JUNTOS

soul men (ramble then notes)

I used to think it was foolish to paint the town GENDER, to say "men do this as men" and "women do this as women." When I would catch myself constructing in that way (breaking down past break-ups), I'd stop, apologize, renege a little. Gender-ideas are so distended with advertising garbage, fun-house mirrors, false distance. "Traditional gender roles" seems a phrase of the Christian Coalition and the status quo quo quo, the kind of commercials for soap and beer that I sometimes find insulting, Jennifer Aniston vehicles, bullshit reasons for disallowing gay marriage. But Lo--there is a masculine and there is a feminine--essentially, naturally and culturally too---so many forms/informations. One can only guess-at gender identity; one can only gesture-toward notions of whole GENDER. But both pursuits are worthwhile, however faulty. These days, I think to be "gender blind" in personal and cultural matters is kind of ridiculous.
When I listen to R&B hitz of ayer y hoy sung by menfolk, I feel particularly addressed by menfolk (as with the Trey Songz tracks I wrote about the other week). But the genre with it's love-subjects and tender pace allows for menfolk who can traverse women's worlds, who have some of the feminine in them (as we have some of the masculine in us). It's a non-science. In a surface way, I can be quite harsh with unsexing-here (too tight pants, indifference to sports, hysteria, an inability to fix things, a certain criticality...). But in a soul way, I need a man to know how to try to understand me. This morning, Al Green's "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart" (1972) blew mi mente in that vein, as a relaying of my own experience by a man, "from me to you and you to me."
Al Green's lawyer in Memphis once told my Papa that Al was the only client who addressed him as "baby." A&P LOVES men who can pull off casually calling other men "baby!" And this quality--masculinity that is unruffled by/occasionally incorporates a feminine timber of affection and emotion--courses through Al and his catalogue. Like, masculinity that allows soul-level-femininity (or really, soul-level equality between men and women, all people...) is ultimately, most- masculine. It's a matter of artfully balancing sameness and difference. I like a man to do things that I can't do; I like to do things that a man can't do. But I also like/need the Venn diagram, the human universals, connectors. Al Green is such a MAN that his sometime preening and vulnerability serves to heighten his HUmaness, not assail his unassailable manhood---right? In "How Do You Mend...",
a devotional guitar and organ, Sinatra/Disney strings, a spare, mournful drum that is not dance but a memory of dance.
He could be a throaty woman!
"I was never told"----an innocent?
"The sorrow"---like Our Lady Of_____!?
...string tremor, like weather, about weather (Memphis love in Memphis storms on Memphis porches)--"I can still feel the breeze."
An admission, "and mine is!"
A question, a cry for aid...
"No one told us"----partnership
"How can you mend?"
We mend--mending
Only a woman can do 'the mending'?
Green is some kind of priest athlete, within and without the music when he sounds 'on his knees' (CHURCH)
(SEXXX)

(There will be both women and men making art every year!)

blood diamond

According to a Lorain Police Department report, an officer working the North Ridgeville High School prom was approached by school administrators who had received several complaints about the "highly intoxicated" Halter. When told of these complaints, Halter replied, "This is my fucking prom, this is bullshit."

Halter, her speech slurred, denied drinking alcohol and cursed out the school's principal and assistant principal. "You are fucking bitches, this is my prom, I'm not drunk," said Halter. After refusing to take a Breathalyzer test, Halter attempted to swing a chair at cops, and then began "smacking her forehead into the chair handle causing her nose to bleed."

While being handcuffed, Halter "began kicking, screaming, spitting and thrashing about." As she was walked out of DeLuca's catering hall, Halter--screaming obscenities--"let her legs go limp," so officers had to carry the teen to a patrol car. That is when Halter "cleared her throat and spit a bloody ball of spit" at Officer Kyle Gelenius, whose name tag was ripped from his uniform by Halter during the confrontation.

Seated in the back of the cruiser, Halter "continued to spit blood on the windows, the divider, and the roof," and kicked the vehicle's window. For her prom night meltdown, Halter was booked into the Lorain County jail and charged with assaulting a cop, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, and underage drinking.

hellurrrr

"I'M KEEPING IT IN MY CRYSTALS!"

boats and folks

Two songs occurring upfront of my playlist are sort of teen suicide jams, but also shakes at the (this new, almost here) Great Revival.
First, B.o.B.'s "I'll Be in the Sky." Second, Lil' Wayne's "Drop the World" (featuring Eminem). Both, not so coincidentally, were featured in last week's episode of The Hills, gusts of Goth confetti (humid, I know) from this genius swan song season, which is so much about the crisis before and around religious conversions, the angst of the faith-seeker, the tin of the faithless OMG!

B.o.B. (Atlanta rapper Bobby Ray) is new (to me to me). His current singles are yes and no ("Nothin' On You" was on heavy rotation for a minute and then I got bored), but this one, presumably the next single, is so fresh--discoursing The Lord in Pop and also air travel. En general, I dig how he's doing this 90s (there it go) nerd-boy, vaguely jazzed Yankee hip hop, but with Southern accents and stories, ways of telling stories. And isn't that why God is in the lyric? The Eastern Seaboard is such a den of clever doubt and cynicism. Up here, men consumed with trying to be hard almost never take it to CHURCH*. En Sur, Tradition holds for everybody; "roots" matter as much as (and often more than) the self-reliant quest (though this track incorporates doses of both). You know? Anyhow, the chorus:

I was a man with no name,
Now I'm attributing mo' fame,
But all of this ain't gonna matter when I die and say goodbye,
So long, sianara, I'll have to catch you tomorra' baby
Cause baby-- I'll be in the sky

I'll be there
Ooh all right
I'll be in the sky
I'll be there
Ooh all right
I'll be in the sky

As ever, I've listened to it dozens of times, and still it emits this funny, addictive emotional smoke (vapor? The Vapors?) about success and airplanes and artists leaving and living alone and my fears and non-fears, the wicked powerful non-fear of dying (teen suicide mania), my grandmother, belief in G-d, but hubris too...

...I've been skeptical of this Wayne record with it's electric guitar noises and electric guitar face, but "Drop the World" is soo smart. It's full of that masculine angst that I'm non-thrilled by, "fuck all y'all!!!!!!" and stuff. But it comes off more like the glam-crazies than the punk-angries. My first thought about Wayne's chorus---

So I pick the World up
And I’ma drop it on your fuckin’ head.
Bitch, I’ma pick the World up
And I’ma drop it on your fuckin’ head
And I could die now--Rebirth motherfucker!
Hop up in my spaceship and leave Earth, motherfucker
I’m gone
Motherfucker, I’m gone.

---was a flashing memory of that scene in The BBC I, Claudius when Claudius realizes that Caligula is mad, running about calling himself Apollo (or somebody) and being as debauched and daring and violent and costumed as a god, or an imagined god. In song, Wayne has long described/inhabited this brand of madness, an imagined me-godhead to great effect. This passage also touches on Wayne's newness; he's a "Baby" and a disciple (symbolic son) of Baby. He is not wise; he is ALIVE, vibrant, burning, fast, engaged, ALL BODY, no victim of CYCLES, a victor of CYCLES ("Rebirth motherfucker!"), and foolish, brave. I don't know; the song makes me smile. And Em (who I love more when he's being less furious, but sobeit) has one fantastic line of Jesus-hubris (or something), "This world is my Easter egg/Yeah, prepare to die."


*I'm kind of wrong here, or duh there are exceptions---"You're Nobody Till Somebody Kills You" and I guess Nas pretended to be Jesus, but I've never really paid attention to him and now that he won't pony up child support for Kelis I think he's SUCH a chump and never will. Also, I don't know what to say about California. I know L.A. is considered a piece of the Bible Belt (it's mega-churches and COGIC congregations are astounding). And I'm so down with their New Age ideas (like those incorporated into Christian Evangelism by The Hills' Spencer and Heidi Pratt!).....