Over the past few months I’ve been attending the monthly event that Ajana helps organize and promote “Where Hip Hop Meets Poetry” hosted at the Water Street Cafe in DUMBO. Its become my guaranteed good time at the start of the month, sort of a three hour hip hop poetry extravaganza that brings out a wide array of talent; the highlights of which have been a hand full of fantastic soul singers, a hip hop band (with a violin!), a few emcees that actually make you want to hit up the myspace address they yell after every performance (”Yo Check Me OUT at…”), and a above all a bunch of beautiful and talented poets.
The highlight of last night’s show was catching my baby cousin Greg Martin perform (he’s usually so busy on his music hustle that I have to schedule time to chat with him on gmail). Let me be frank, my cousin is surprisingly talented in a ‘damnit thank you for stealing all the talent and charm in the family’ kind of way. Whats more is he isn’t just talented because I love him like…well…like family, he’s got that certain mass appeal that will take him places. My favorite part of seeing him perform is watching the audience reaction, people actually getting as excited as I am about what he’s doing on stage. Enough repping the fam, here’s a gmartin track:
I thought this related to that passage very nicely.
Human beings have a tendency to ‘live in their heads’. This phrase covers several facts. First, men have a tendency to overtheorize. Some things are ruined by too much thinking on them, things which are essentially matters of experience. What is more, almost anything can be the source of immediate experience, and so almost anything is vulnerable to ruination by too much theorizing. The second fact is this, such theorizing usually presents itself phenomenologically as internal verbalization, and the internal verbalization often insinuates itself between ourselves and the thing experienced. This is how the thinking interrupts experience and how it leaves us with only our verbalizations. This leads to the third fact: when our theoretical internal verbalization is interposed between ourselves and external things, the object of our awareness becomes ourselves. It is we who are doing the theorizing, and to be aware of the theoretical verbalizing is to be aware of ourselves. This state of mind is undesirable, for it is a commonplace that our happiest moments come when we are not conscious of ourselves, and that most forms of consciousness of self are baneful. It is hard to say why this is so; perhaps the resources of a self are much more limited than the resources of the world, so only an object-directed consciousness can satisfy the human appetite for variety.
Michael E. Levin.
I find myself lost sometimes in my own thoughts that I forget what I’m experiencing. At times its necessary, I think, for survival. But at other times I feel as if I miss the important parts things, that I can be too caught up in my little internal dialogue.
This of course brings me back to theorizing about overly solipsistic ways of thinking, and whether or not people can ever really escape them.
Occasionally I get words stuck in my head, like the hook of a song you can’t quite remember but can’t quite forget. Even though I’m sure they’re not original, not my own thoughts they can be applied so beautifully to that particular moment that it loops over and over.
Consider me the Kanye of writing.
Today I wandered over to Union Square after work. While I was sitting there amidst the hustle and bustle it struck me, everything was moving in time with the rhythm of this symphony of light. The words bore a certain cinematic quality. Sitting solitary and decelerating, while all of life seems to quicken around you, the people become blurs, the cars simply streaks of light, the lights in the buildings seemed to all come one and flicker as people sleep or leave or whatever else they might be doing in the darkness…That all flashed into my head in the instant they crossed my mind but I realized that exactly it…
It was all the people. Everyone around me seemed to be involved in some type of city dance. They were the light, the energy the driving force. They were flickering and flashing objects. Some were bulbs nearly burnt out on life, shining like a nova before it becomes a black hole. Some were dim and weak and barely aglow, their eyes sad and safe. Some sparkled like the christmas lights that shimmer all colorful and changing with their own rhythm. It was all there, all inside all of us. All in everyone prepared for fighting or fucking or loving or dancing or singing or stuffing our faces till we couldn’t breathe. All in everyone who had come to New York wanting more and lived in New York taking more, reaching for more, grasping for more. All in everyone who’d been driven mad by the city and seemed to go on and off with their own accord, like haunted lights. Lights of ghost. Some unforeseen force compelling and driving them forward with unimaginable energy. (Oh, the stamina of insanity.) It was all there in the loudness and the rudeness and the loveliness and the loneliness and the beauty. All reaching out, those symphonies of light. Drawing outsiders to us with our radiance. Sirens against the angry storm that is our City. Calling as loud as we could.
When I wander about my place in the city, when I find myself at Union Square just before dusk, in those moments when the air finally cools and the sun is no longer hot against my skin. Just before the lights on all the buildings start to become lit, sitting arm to arm with strangers while the frantic energy of the city in heat swells around me…I feel alive.
I’ve been reading a large amount of Rilke lately, which happens in phases. I pick it up and find myself so completely in grossed with his words its easy to spend hours lying in bed reading each poem two or three times. I always want to share it…maybe beneath a Sycamore tree in prospect park one spring:
I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.
I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother’s face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm
I remember I was in High School when the Baz Luhrmann video came about Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen. It was one of those weird cheesy things thats great because of its truthfulness and its mass appeal. I watched the video again last night and it still brings a smile to my face (and a few memories). I’m sure almost everyone has seen it at one time or another but I’m reposting the original ‘97 article on which the video was based:
Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young
Mary Schmich
June 1, 1997 Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out, some world-weary pundit eager to pontificate on life to young people who’d rather be Rollerblading. Most of us, alas, will never be invited to sow our words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns, but there’s no reason we can’t entertain ourselves by composing a Guide to Life for Graduates.I encourage anyone over 26 to try this and thank you for indulging my attempt.
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ‘97:
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.Do one thing every day that scares you.
Sing.
Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.
Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.
Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.
Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.
“Simplicity in conduct, in beliefs, and in environment brings an individual very close to the truth of reality. Individuals who practice simplicity cannot be used because they already have everything they need; they cannot be lied to because a lie merely reveals to them another aspect of reality. An attraction to simplicity is essentially an attraction to freedom - the highest expression of personal power. We are taught to think of freedom as something one has, but it is really the absence of things that brings freedom to the individual and meaning into life. To let go of things - unnecessary desires, superfluous possessions - is to have them. Lao Tzu believed that an individual life contains the whole universe, but when individuals develop fixations about certain parts of life they become narrow and shallow and uncentered. Fixations and desires create a crisis within the mind. As individuals let go of desires, feelings of freedom, security, independence, and power increase accordingly.” - R.L. Wing
I’ve been a quite the errant blogger these past couple of weeks. I blame summer, birthdays, beaches, bbqs, stoops and rooftops. Trying this week to get back to a more regular schedule.
Until then…
I went to see Wall*E last week, which I thought was excellent and magical…not to mention a bit of a tear jerker. I fell a little more in love with the movie when they played Louis Armstrong’s version of La Vie En Rose. A perfect incarnation of one of my favorite standards.
“At day’s end, what honest effort do you look back upon?
Did you express one thought that was not in defense?
Did you look at your self from another person’s perspective?
Did you understand the why behind another person’s actions?
Did you laugh at your self?
Did you remember you will die?
How long till you experience one night utterly alone, where silence absorbs every hope, and boils you down to zero?
How long till you remember these questions every day, then end them?” - Shawn Nevins
The Exchange.005 | JORGE! A few tracks picked for a variety of reasons: some for the obvious, some for the memories, and some simply because we thought he’d enjoy.
Today while waiting the two hours and forty minutes to pick up my defective iphone, I had the great pleasure to read my second favorite gift from cover to cover The Diving Bell and The Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby. I’m sure by now everyone has heard of the excellent movie chronicling the former editor of French Elle’s biographic account, following his massive stroke which left him paralyzed with “locked-in syndrome.” Able to communicate only by blinking his left eye, Bauby dictated the short book not too long before his death.
The movie and the book are both amazing. Its one of the few instances I’d recommend both in whatever order. While the movie embellishes the stories told in his book, adding and subtracting characters for whatever reason and deals much more in the hopeless portion of his struggle than the book for cinematic purposes, it makes up for it by being visually stunning. Everything was enriched by the so-beautiful-it-breaks-your-heart cinematography, the perfect handling of the flash backs, the way the movie seemed to be paced perfectly ebbing and flowing like the ocean.
The book on the other hand is just simply amazing. Bauby uses his words to inspire hope, despair, the power of imagination. So much so that twenty pages in I was blinking back tears. You can see the lavish meals and the wonderful trips. You dream each dream and live each memory with him. You can feel the pain at not being able to ruffle his son’s hair. All of this told with wit, humor and aplomb. All never ceasing to be amazing, not simply because of the means with which the story was told but because of it’s sheer power and magnitude. I didn’t want to stop reading it and once I finished I wanted to pick it up and read it again and again. I found myself pouring over passages lest I missed the subtle meaning of each line.
I receive remarkable letters. They are opened for me, unfolded, and spread out before my eyes in a daily ritual that gives the arrival of mail the character of a hushed and holy ceremony. I carefully read each letter myself. Some of them are serious in tone, discussing the meaning of life invoking the supremacy of the soul, the mystery of every existence. And by curious reversal, the people who focus most closely on these fundamental questions tend to be people I had known only superficially. Their small talk had masked hidden depths. Had I been blind and deaf, or does it take the harsh light of disaster to show a person’s true nature?
Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passages of time: rose picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep. Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more deeply than all the rest. A couple of lines or eight pages, a Middle Eastern stamp or a suburban postmark…I hoard all these letters like treasure. One day I hope to fasten them end to end in a half mile streamer, to float in the wind like a banner raised to the glory of friendship.
It will keep the vultures at bay.
* * *
From the Chapter: Twenty to One
(my favorite passage I chose because in the movie the imagery of the iceberg breaking away with the narration behind brought tears to my eyes)
The memory of that event has only just come back to me, now doubly painful: regret for a vanished past and, above all, remorse for lost opportunities. Mirthra-Grandchamp is the women were unable to love, the chances we failed to seize, the moments of happiness we allowed to drift away. Today it seems to me that my whole life was nothing but a string of those small near misses: a race whose result we know beforehand but fail to bet on the winner.
**heading to the at&t store in the morning to replace what I believe is simply a defective sim card.
Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out, some world-weary pundit eager to pontificate on life to young people who’d rather be Rollerblading. Most of us, alas, will never be invited to sow our words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns, but there’s no reason we can’t entertain ourselves by composing a Guide to Life for Graduates.I encourage anyone over 26 to try this and thank you for indulging my attempt.