FRIDAY
schoolhouse got me, meetings, students, classprep - im back in the world
got to do my longhand, my redpen and my poetry draft catch as catch can, still got
that sept 20 deadline, cutting in the afterburners, got to do it all
THURSDAY
i havent looked at my numbers, i suspect the narrow production focus these days is not selling well
i kinda dont care, i got to trust if this what im coming up with its what the literary gods require of me
got to hope this will eventually be a good product (book), a lot of the insights and techs i try here end up in novel or my narrative stylee i should say, so thats a good point, but i further assume this record of my process will one
day be of interest to scholars and such - one can only dream - but all that depends on me clocking pages
so, without further ado, i need some longhand rick and i need it today - sept 20th, tick tock tick tock
was looking at abbey lincoln magicman where she calls she calls hoodoos 'the high lord and the master' and it cause me to recall where i got my own little boastclaim to be a hoodoo lord of the delta,
i got that from bluesman by julio finn where he makes claims that hoodoos are lords of the delta
that spoke to me, i translated that as ima hoodoo lord of the delta,
this boastclaim is also part of the afroam oral tradition as in hootchie cootchie manboasts and the mikeboasts of rappers,
it is also a tennessee tall tale trope as evidenced in the claims of flatboat rivermen and folkheros like davy crocket, in the john henry folk opera by cannonball adderly john henry claim to put a bend in the river so the steamboat blow, raise the sun up in the morning so the rooster can crow,
my claim to be a hoodoo lord of the delta is mackology, playboast cause it to be
more socially acceptable but dont you for one moment think i dont believe it
establishing myself in the world as a bonafide hoodooman has been a delicate process - i explore
it in my novels and works but that dont necessarily establish you in the world as a practitioner
other problem is that i dont do folkmagic or consultations, which is the definitive hoodoo mode for most folk
my original training was folkmagic and consultations and i will do the occasional consultation but its not my thing
folkmagic bores me and i call myself doing tribal consultation, more into healing cultures than individuals
dont do that slaverytime hoodoo and the hoodooworld dont acknowledge you a true practitioner,
but i dont want to be just acknowledged in the hoodoo world, i want to be acknowledged in the realworld as a powerful hoodooman
but hoodoo is considered folkmagic there too, its not considered a refined spiritual/magical system
i had to redefine hoodoo for both worlds
so i had two constituencies had to be convinced, the hoodooworld and everybody else
1st thing i had to do was redefine what it meant to be a hoodooman, i had to establish ground for me to stand on
i monitored the hoodoo lists and made selective commentary that was generally dismissed
buy hey im not there to argue, im just making sure my position is in the historical record
and seeing who agree with me
i identified folk who came from that same highhoodoo perspective i do, folk who looked at
hoodoo as cultural custodianship, basically hoodoo as medicine man or woman, shaman
witchdoctors if you will, as my diving goal was and is to tend to the spiritual health of the black race,
to save the blackrace if you will, by working its soul, its spirit, its culture, it was a black thing for me
and the folk i identified and asked to join the hoodoo way were all black,
i caught some flack for that, still trying to work that tribal/universal tension out
my take on hoodoo is very much a minority position, im dismissed as
a theorist, which is a pejorative in hoodoo practice,
also got flack for my disdain of folk magic from the hoodoo way folk but at
least they interested in dialogue based on cultural custodianship and high magic,
tried to springboard that into a hoodoo secret society but thats none of your business
so i had those two dialogues going, inside hoodoo and out, also a dialogue trying
to establish hoodoo as the prophetic tradition of the atr family but lets not open that door
the prophetic tradition is the one that has a special dispensation to forge new paths as needed
thats the role i want to play in hoodoo, thats the role i want hoodoo to play in the world
trying to establish myself in the realworld as a contemporary hoodooman was made easier because there is a tradition of
literary hoodoos in african american literature, folk like chestnutt, zora neale and ishmael - who see art as an act of magic
this basically became a process of publicly identifying myself as a hoodoo, using my magic
name, rickydoc, in forums like this one and on facebook and other googleable venues
and again, redefining what folk expected from a contemporary hoodooman, highmagic instead
of folk - cause i aint gon step down, im only gon step up, you see what im saying
used to be only other hoodoos and spiritual practitioners knew me as rickydoc, now pretty much everybody
does, some even know me as rickydoc trickmaster, which is even deeper into my magical self
when you first start doing magic you keep your magicname to yourself because it represent the magical
you and its very susceptible to ridicule, folk laugh at you ad it will destroy your power, to this day it
embarrass me to expose my magical self but my power is not threatened
and its just part of the cost i have to pay to be in the game
okay, where am i going with this, whereever it is i call myself going i got to go, i got longhand to do
let me say that my ongoing definition of myself as a contemporary hoodoo is a calculated process
then ima try to use that (and my work) to set myself up as a returning culture hero, whenever blackfolk
or all humanity, in need of guidance, i want them to be able to find it in my vision
of human destiny, giving them whatever they need at that particular moment in their evolution
(thats where the returning part come in)
leading them always to their ever greater selves
thats what i want, thats all, then i will be satisfied
then i can rest
im gone, its 10 oclock already and i aint done no longhand
rdoc
WEDNESDAY 2:19 pm
new outline done, ready to longhand - who the man rick, you the man
read thru the text, some mending needed, 4 or 5 passages need realwork
but nothing i cant handle - so, take a deep breath rick, longhand that endgame - do the mending, do a redpen and a poetry draft, and its a done deal
i can do this, sept 20th here i come, whimpering every step of the way
all my love - rdoc
WEDNESDAY
have not done a lick of work in 3 maybe 4 days, dont know why, maybe because im doing slush work (outline and orphan passages) maybe because of schoolhouse trauma, maybe just burnt out
might be my internal computer just working out my endgame kinks, whatever the reason is its over
i dont accept more than 3 or 4 days downtime, i do not play writers block, this mean i got to go to the trenches
4th floor of the bird library, find a cubicle and sit till i get this slushwork done, no distractions like food, bed
computer, tv or household chores and the 4th floor is where they keep the fiction, im surrounded by the works
of others, i figure if all these idiots did it surely i can too, this little dryspell got to be broke today
i told my agent i would send her the manuscript on the 20th, she will be back from vacation then
and i love deadlines, dont you - ima give her what i got
remind me in case i falter when time come to deliver
2nd big meeting of semester, im late already, traveling spirit do your duty
somebody cover me, im going in
all my love
rdoc
TUESDAY
ive really lost track of realworld time, that meeting is today, not yesterday, i was the only one there yesterday
new voice got some serious poetry going on, some serious style, found this on jamesross fb
SATURDAY (thats cute, i wrote saturday but its actually d day monday, wishful thinking i guess)
thats it, i surrender - 2 more hours before 1st meeting of semester, 8:30am, and im buried in narrative chaos
going thru notes document now, seeing if any of my orphan (previously discarded) passages should be moved to final text
redoing outline because i no longer know whats in the novel, ive made so many changes dancing thru it im lost
last 10 pages still rough, but basically going thru whole novel now revising to reflect new endgame
and i would like a holistic sense of novel in my head when i longhand these last 10 pages
i would say this is prelude to poetry draft but im not sure it is, i got about one more week legit and
one week i can squeeze, cause 1st class a fake class, im professor flowers, who are you, this what we gon do
then the next 3 class im going to have to spend catching up and doing prelim i should be doing now
and probably still wont have a moneydraft - trip coming back to realworld, i been in my otherwordly daze for
months now , where novelworld more real to me than realworld, now i got to straighten up and fly right
two more weeks of stonewalling the realworld and its back to being a civilian
ohwell, all i can do is try, im sending my travelling spirit to this 8:30 meeting, yours truly moving into 5th gear
SUNDAY
got the endgame roughout done but rough it is and i got to move it straight from 1st
gear to 4th -i believe ima have to go to the mattress - the dreaded longhand
FRIDAY
last 10 pages and im tripping hard, making fundamental changes and every page i
change here require me to revise 5 to 10 pages thruout the text
im just stacking bricks on the wall now, no cement no aesthetics no grace
im revising what i got into roughly what i need,
emphasis on rough, ie raw manuscript, the curse of the literary life,
so when i finish this ima have to redpen this whole section before
i can do my poetry draft of the whole novel, so what is that, another week at least
god in heaven you need to give me some slack
okay, sorry god, i didnt mean to whimper on you like that, so another week of full
court press w/schoolhouse breathing on my neck, i can do this
other folk got lives much harder than this, i can do this, ima writer born
whatever i got to do to make this happen, ima do this
all my love
rdoc
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