frank rich is my boy, first thing i read sunday times, or last, the moneyquote is a comment on obamas uncertain trumpet:
When wolves of Murdoch’s ingenuity and the Kochs’ stealth have been at the door of our democracy in the past, Democrats have fought back fiercely. Franklin Roosevelt’s triumphant 1936 re-election campaign pummeled the Liberty League as a Republican ally eager to “squeeze the worker dry in his old age and cast him like an orange rind into the refuse pail.” When John Kennedy’s patriotism was assailed by Birchers calling for impeachment, he gave a major speech denouncing their “crusades of suspicion.”
And Obama? So far, sadly, this question answers itself.
SUNDAY
once again im behind the curve, tendency still under pressure to fall back on longhand but instead im major caught up now keyboard dancing, had threads need mending all
over the text, just dancing now, trying to get rough approximation of mending down so that i can just be redpenning on the road next week, wont be able to do what im doing
now once im on the road, and i need to finish this phase if any chance of sept 20th deadline - have put schoolhouse off till i cant do it no longer, got to start classprep, there is nothing quite
so soul killing as being in front of a class unprepared, basically today is my last day of freedom what doesnt get done today gets put in the catch as catch can category -
speaking of which, me, b, bob and deb went to see karen sovoca
yesterday, who got time but i love me some karen and pete, think them being locally based is a blessing and take every chance i get to see them perform, them on stage together is different experience from
their cds w/full bands and they were really on last night, karens voice did moves i havent heard before and so did petes guitar - ima file that one under inspiration, ima file that under fortitude
i got to go, got a honors diner this evening, dept picnic ima miss, if it aint obligatory i aint there, schoolhouse killing me, but i do like getting paid and if you must work for a living i cant imagine doing anything else - im gone,
i got to get this phase done, not a chance in hell but whatever i can get is what i
get, its come to that, always does
SATURDAY
"You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body." ~ C. S. Lewis - wish i had said that, i probably will soon as i can figure out how to revise it so it sounds original
okay, today is the day glen beck tries to highjack the civilrights movement - this is not as suprising as it seems at 1st glance, the rightwing been doing this
for years now, with claims of reverse racism and all kinds of persecution by evil progressives glen beck is merely the most shameless when it comes to anti reality based community rhetoric:
according to beck and the tea party: "We are the people of the civil rights movement. We are the ones that
must stand for civil and equal rights, justice, equal justice. Not
special justice, not social justice. We are the inheritors and
protectors of the civil rights movement. They are perverting it.”
im just too thru, this shamless attempt by beck and teaparty to highjack the civil rights movement is a challenge to those of us who did march with martin, who intimately know the struggles martin went thru
in his evolution as a seeker of justice, it is a challenge to those of us who still care, will we allow beck and the teaparty to further corrupt martins vision, or will it inspire us to step up our game
FRIDAY
let me get this straight now, beck is having a rally on the anniversary of i have a dream he say he reclaiming the civil rights movement - excuse me, you what?
him and sarah palin and the tea party express, this already irony personified, or something else but the next thing i hear is that one of the king family is participating and im thinking oh my god
now what are they doing, so i google it and apparently its aveda king, a rightwing kook of the 1st order and its like just how low can the king family go - i think that hurts more than becks foolishness
this will be interesting moment, might even be a crossroads moment
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
trying to get enuf space to get to the delta for a minute before school starts
some quick commentary and im gone:
- target under fire for a political contribution to rightwing that it thought would remain secret pb debacles might be the strongest defense against new supreme court rules on donations
but most likely they will just figure out how to keep it secret
- apparently 20% of americans think obama is a muslim, which will make demonizing his support for mosque resonant
- international donors not stepping up for pakistan flood, difficult to reach out to folk waiting for a chance to bite the hand that feeds them
this is an example of the call to be greater than we we, greater than human nature incline us to be
- obama to double private contractors in iraq after troops leave, is that what he calls drawing down, more blackwater or whatever its called these days, and how much does that cost
- dr laura say she quitting so she can get her 1st amendment rights back - spare me w/followship numbering in the millions she got more 1st amendment rights than i ever had
- wyclef has been ruled ineligible for president of haiti run, which was self evident but obviously he thought an exepception would be made, that sense of entitlement would have been problematic anyway
a celebrity president with a questionable record thinking the rules dont apply to him if he serious about it let him move to haiti and build a track record of real service
okay, enuf commentary, i got to get back to work
all my love
rdoc
WEDNESDAY 4:54 am
hello world, been up all night, basically clocking pages (w/a lot of downtime) still moving forward, turtle slow, but progress is progress, im not complaining
was reading about iraq in nytimes this morning and one of the iraqi politicos was lamenting the state of play - he said of iraqi politicians
'“They put the immediate above the important and tactical issues above
strategic matters.”
and im thinking dont we all
so busy fending off incoming fire we dont have space for the longgame, for the strategics
like wouldbe writers that cant never make time to write
that aint living, thats just surviving
thats a no can do
rdoc
TUESDAY
so, over on facebook this guy justin friended me and dropped off some prizes apparently he does a jazz show and did an interview of queen mother lincoln
days before she died, its not only an interview but music, commentary, theater, poetry et al
also he had this one on his page, abbey doing the man of magic and where are the african gods she call the magicman the high lord, which is a riff on my ima hoodoo lord of the delta bit
she say where are the african gods and she ask the same questions that led me to the indigenous african american spiritual/magical tradition
cause me to be a literary practitioner of the high hoodoo
in the line of zora neale and ishmael, a tradition of which i am inordinately proud
my indian graphic novel just got back from printer, they are sending me copies, cant wait to see it
i will let you know when its available in the states
between mlk novel and abbeys magic i just might be out of the funk
rdoc
MONDAY
man i got the blues, still struggling w/endgame 40, but i had done so much work on text that i printed out manuscript so i would have a clean copy, yeah right, i glance thru it and
immediately i see holes and problems, jesus, you work and you work and you still got trash - so far the problems are relatively easy fixes but this mean the work still doesnt pass the cringe test
okay if i got to keep working i got to keep working - the biggest problem is all the folk waiting to see this novel, just yesterday i had to endure a lecture from a well meaning colleague about
the danger of overwriting,
everybodys advice to me these days - just let it go, arthur, just let it go - like im being arbitrary, or playing with myself or something, im really tired of that advice, in all its variants
its meant well, only the folk still believe in me give it, everybody else has given up on me
i might just let the feedback squad see it, just to get them off my back it will be embarrass me to show a novel before its time, though some of
the new ren folk like rod have seen it in much worse condition - probably show it to folk, its the external pressure cracking me, the literary world having writ me off
nobody wants this novel done more than me, but its got to be all it can be
i remember my friends used to call my first novel the phantom , that one took 13 years, so ima slow writer, god help me im slow
well i had planned to do a poetry rewrite anyway so hopefully that one will fix all problems this one is going god awful slow, i will be lucky to be done by the end of the week
obviously the answer here is do not read that manuscript until i finish the endgame 40 problem is fixing endgame 40 often counterfeits earlier passages, nothing i cant
fix - so far - im gone,
i know this social media thing will eventually play to my benefit but right now it just feels like another burden, specially when i got the blues
instead of howling like i do when im on
right now its just another external pressure on me to close down my novel prematurely - just that many more folk i might have to stonewall
it goes w/o saying that the rest of life is in a crises mode, life been on minimum maintenance for almost 4 months now, everything falling apart on me, what a ptiy if after all this sacrifice
i still dont have a moneydraft - ok rick, buck up, get back to work
its been inch by inch and passage by passage, every day total defeat looms
a hole i cannot fix in a timely manner
if i fail in this task it will destroy me, it will cause me to doubt myself, to doubt my life
i will not accept defeat
im tired to the bone and i got the blues
im twisting in the wind
rdoc
SATURDAY 2:10 am
wow, abbey lincoln has graduated, not only was she a keeper of the faith but she was one of babajohns pollitical companeras
which makes her part of my family line
gonna miss her, she was a guardian of the temple
i think ima stick to commentary for awhile, feel like im exposing too much of my game
im so deep into my novel now you getting a lot of spillage
moving right along on redpen, got a coherent endgame now, thats a relief,
moving slower than hoped, big surprise that, still sometime next week be thru
then a week or so of redpen, any longer and i will be squeezing that 1st week of schoolhouse which is what generally happens - so lets say 2 weeks of redpen likely and unfortunately
i got no complaints, ive had a damn good woodshed, got a lot of work done, may have a moneydraft - life is good
okay, quick commentary
why would that blackwoman complaining about white husband call dr laura in the firstplace apology for codework use of nigger not sincere, raised her profile in chosen constituency
"Dr. Laura's later half apologized for her use of the N-Word,
expressing regret for "losing the point I was trying to make." However,
Schlessinger made her point all too clearly, touching on all the major
talking points of the new racism: the real problem is that African
Americans are over-sensitive; knowing whether or not it is okay to use
the N-Word is "very confusing"; and African Americans should stop
complaining because the President, for whom they mindlessly voted is
African American."
got to agree with her on the youngfolk using nigger like they do, i dont care how you spell it
was reading obama might be moving to center to position himself for post nov 2010 - aint much more center left, or right as the case may be, get it? center right? - forgive me, moving right along
support of the ground zero mosque a bold move, a move he is now calibrating under fire
iran say woman sentenced to stoning for adultery has confessed to murder now ie justifying her death sentence - we in the twilight zone now
pakistan president needs to go home and help flooded folk, or at least look like he trying, mess around and pakistan will be a failed nucluer state - losing pakistan should more of a concern than afghanistan
recently posted following on a multi culti hoodoo listserve, a thread discussing hoodoo authenticity and race, hoodoo innovation and the role of folk magic in a folk tradition,
all issues i have struggled with
as part of my effort to drag hoodoo into the 21st century, o wouldbe prophet of the hoodoo way,
basically what im trying to do is found a way,
a universalized african american way, based on an illuminated manifestation of the hoodoo tradition, trying to do this on the side, while i strive most primarily to be a great novelist
but it works out because thats what i write about, so my prophetic efforts in the real world are like research for literary authenticity, i can write about a wouldbe hoodoo prophet with authority because ive walked the path, its complicated, its fa
its all babajohn killens fault, he the one taught me to be a literary visionary, a practitioner of the longgame
-------------------
hello all
coming in late to the question of hoodoo authenticity folk magic and high
some of you know my position on this matter but the dialogue offers me an op to make some points
1st that in terms of the living hoodoo tradition, what most of yall practicing about 100 years out of date, damn near slaverytime hoodoo
that folk magic thing was okay when the culture was a folk culture
but afroam culture is no longer folk, trying to keep it written in stone like that is bogus, this the 21st century,
there is a level of hoodoo thats very much tied to the living evolving culture thats way beyond that folk magic mode -
spells hells and blackcat bones
the cutting edge of hoodoo doing high magic these days, playing with reality, shaping generations, enhancing the human condition
aspiring to the prophetic
i assume this a minority position here, im just making some observations
one is that hoodoo always been an eclectic system shaped to the practitioner - what hyatt called any method any time
it tend to synthesize other traditions, african, newage, you name it
as to the specific question of who can innovate, who can take the tradition to new ground
i been trained in a hoodoo intimately tied to afroam culture hoodoo as cultural custodianship, taking care of your community,
your tribe, in my case the african american culture, community and destiny
but the one world reality challenge that and we tribal voices trying to universalize our game
its a struggle
i would define community now as whatever you consider your community to be - with understanding that strongest of all is humanity
so ima say anybody can innovate
if they understand the cutting edge
im thinking anybody on any level can innovate
but if you thinking about really moving the tradition taking it to higher ground
you gon have to find the cutting edge
so say rickydoc trickmaster in the name of the conqueror
---------------
ps: clocking pages, wrestling w/the word
FRIDAY
just got a little bold on facebook, posted
"this is my legacy for all the generations, when you need me you call me i will come, i am rickydoc"
which is part and parcel of my mythwork to set myself up w/future generations as a returning culture hero
i know, its kinda bodacious of me which is why i dont generally tell people so baldly
hopefully folk will not quite take me seriously, thats been the case so far thats been my security, my strategic positioning depends on
folk not quite taking me seriously till after im gone
so why did i do it, who knows, felt like the right
thing to do, so ima live with it, ive come to respect my sense of timing and poetic camouflage
but i dont like to let my true self show like that, it embarrass me
no good can come of it, positive responses, negative responses, no response, whatever it is will embarrass me
i tend to expose more of myself here than i do there, i think because i dont get that constant feedback here i tend to treat this as a more private venue, which is kinda ironic when you think about it
my commitment here is to be real with you/and future generations if not what is the point of this blog, the investiture of time and op cost
the temptation is to remove the fb post before anybody replies, but i got to have the conviction of my macaroni - words of power are what make me who i am
what can i do, got to run my game, ima high hoodoo, i play the longgame, shaping generations is what i do
these are messages im strategically sending to future generations, seeds of future realities, if my works i consider seeds, my mythwork and my institutionalization, thats preparation of the ground
and i have to kind of sense when the moment is right to embed some mythwork
most of my commentary is designed to position myself as a voice of authority a voice of strategic and spiritual guidance, a voice that can be trusted,
and build up enuf credibility to get away w/true words of power every once in awhile then i draw back and just be normal for awhile before i raise the curtain again
of course all this is in the novel (and the hoodoo book of flowers) - part of the challenge of this novel is that it serves too many gods, too many agendas
which brings me back to another of babajohns precepts - the more important that you have to say the more obligated you are to say it well
i need a work of art so great that it subordinates the power of my vision in a work of aesthetic wonder
something that lives, breathes and speaks to generation upon generation unto eternity some writers fear the ambition itself is a killer of true art, this may be so but i
have been called to do this, it is my fa - win or lose it is my fa to try, the challenge is to make my particular passions work on the page - same as any other writer
im gone, all the mack in the world just that if i dont clock
pages to back it up
in the name of the conqueror
rickydoc trickmaster
wouldbe prophet of the hoodoo way
THURSDAY 10:50 pm
redpenning my endgame 40, moving right along
8 pg a day give me a monday closure, 2 weeks for poetry draft, put it down for a couple of weeks to let it get cold and dive into schoolhouse,
2 weeks later read it cold, hope it reads right, ie minor revision - done deal
THURSDAY morning
ducking burnout and wading thru the narrative mud clocking hours instead of pages - restructuring text
its amazing how effective putting the hours in is - the process itself is frustrating because it takes so many hours to do so little, but but little by little you knock the piece into shape - and after x amount of hours/days/weeks/months/years you start seeing benefit
let me see if i can give you some quick commentary -
naomi cambell coming off very badly in the blood diamomds thing - major point loss
read somewhere obama should recruit hillary for vice in 2012 - interesting idea but i dont thnk will happen
apparently callaloo does some literary conference in ethiopia every couple of years - got to crash that party
the southern sudan supposed to be voting on independence soon - got to keep a spotlight on it
hostilities and casualties rising in darfur - who cares, aint no spotlight on it
okay thats it, thats all i got time for right now, maybe after my 1st 3 hour shift i will do some more, maybe put some links on them, but for right now i got to wrestle with the page
i am so tired i will be sitting here at the sacred desk call myself working and suddenly my eyes will pop open and i realize i have been sitting there sleeping, hands still on the keyboard - i got two options, work harder or
shut down shop for awhile and shut down shop dont get it - there is no rest for the driven
all my love
rdoc
WEDNESDAY
clocking pages, had to backtrack 40 to fix 8, but this will make endgame coherent, then got to put a poetry draft on whole thing and i believe i will be able to send it off,
hoping to finish this phase by end of the weak, need about 10 pages a day, its reading decent, i might make my deadline, but the rollercoaster suspense is killing me
monday, ima make it, tuesday, no way, wednesday, i got a chance, thursday, not a chance in hell
i cant take it, surely there is a middleground between elation and despair but if it is i havent found it
i keep saying 3 weeks, best wake up and smell the ink, rick, more like 2 now, i got to throwdown
i kinda suspect that there is no way in hell ima make my deadline, o i will have a draft, but i suspect i will need to do another rewrite, ive just done too much raw manuscript for it to be polished, o ima keep on trying but i suspect im dead in the water - that aint gon stop me from trying, never did never will
remember that old joke - i dont expect a miracle, i depend on them - well that aint no joke
the problem is having to stonewall folk if it come to that, specially at the job, they been real patient w/me, gave me tenure in spite of fact that im still working on this novel and continue to do so maybe 5 years after i got tenure, im embarrassed
but i remember what babajohn used to tell us, in the 13 years i was in his workshop, some things he told us over and over so often they are embedded in my literary soul
he used to say dont ever let external considerations push you into putting your work out prematurely,
i can hear him sayng it, that future generations will only have your work, they wont care that you were feeling pressured by finances, the industry, ego or tenure, all they will have is the work, make sure its the best you can give them
remember rick, you were going to pass this mess out to my feedback squad 2 months ago wouldnt i be embarrassed now if folk had read that draft
if i have to continue stonewalling folk i will do so in the name of babajohn killens
another one of my literary gods
nanawkame remind me regarding my passion for representing, the role that vietnam played in that, what we called blackinazation, its cause of vietnam in the middle of blackpower et al
that i consider myself to this day a warrior, more strategos than footsoldier maybe but a warrior nevertheless
war and warriorhood not very pc these days, but im gon live and die a warrior,
brotherme brotherblood brotherblack till i die
in the name of the conqueror
rdoc
MONDAY
okay, these last 8 pages are killing me, once i start breaking them down in context i realize i just threw all my narrative leftovers in the pot, got a sense now of what has to be done but it will require fixing a lot of holes
basically this is going to be a new rewrite, got to be done in the next 3 weeks, when do i get to rest, lord felt like that last post here was a little talky, im pulling back, got to struggle w/this page - hang in there
STILL SUNDAY
bear with me dear regulators, im trying to work something out,
so i got this spot in rest for the weary, a local jook where poetry readings are held every wednesday and this is where highjohn does his performance poetry/storytelling thing, his prophecy thing, this where he interacts w/the gods, and the literary world as audience/metaphor,
recently thought to have some of my dead buddies like sekou and safiya hitting there, show it as being a place where literary spirits, including ancestral, gather - where those contending to be cultural voices do their thing and contend for influence, was liking the magical realism aspect of that
so, today i been riffing about bayou the graphic novel, my nephew james had asked me to send him some graphic novels and i sent bayou, which put it on my mind, finished reading it before i sent it and it was mind blowing to an old delta mythworker such as myself, most interesting is its reworking brer rabbit myths, as i try to do in rest for the weary, with brer rabbit as character in novel, wondering about the peculiarities of human folk
bayou a deep work and beautifully done, a delta riff on brer rabbit, alice in wonderland and delta mythology, disturbing and touching too
so anyway i see while searching for links where the writer of bayou, jeremy love, say he trying to reclaim uncle remus. and im thinking wow. as am i. RFTW main character a storyteller and in researching afroam storytelling its hard to get past uncle george (his real name) and the body of work he left behind, except that its in context of joel chandler harris attempt to romanticize slavery and the old south
so i feel like we got to save baba george from that context, as apparently does jeremy love
baba george part of my literary pantheon (just thought, can i get gullah jack into the hole in the wall) baba george one of my aforementioned gods of literature.
in posting on fb i called him the 1st afroam literary mack, but then i think about it and i realize i cant back that up, not with wheatley and delaney et al, and charles chestnutt im thinking,
cover drawing of uncle julius a direct take on contemporary drawings of uncle remus and who can miss brer rabbit, and im thinking i want to get in to that literary dialogue in RFTW, how can i work that in - smoothly
so anyway, to cut a long riff short, im thinking have baba george and charles chesnut show up in the hole in the wall, which would reinforce this magical real concept of the hole in the wall as a gathering ground of afroam literary spirits and cultural voices or something along this line,
i put a lot of material in my notes just now but then im thinking that as im doing this dance, i need to work these new insights into novel immediately as part of the process
or should i let them simmer before i work them in
but then what im doing becomes research more than woodshed, woodshed is actively and narratively engaged, plus that i just dont want to stop, whatever im coming up with ima immediately start working into the text
because thats basically what im doing now, working the threads that lead to a satisfying endgame and complexitize the text, or something, i just dont know, im so twisted now i dont know whats what
im getting all these ideas and concepts cascading down on me, hopefully all leading to a satisfying endgame and a more complex work
but right now all it feels like im doing is tearing my text apart
a very anxiety prone process
im assuming what will come out on the other end will be my work of wonder
ima jst leap on off this cliff and see what happen
generally i work this kind of stuff out in notes document, but this blog is a ravening beast always hungry for wordage so i figured i would work it out here, but i cant give it but so much time, then it becomes avoidance
talking about it instead of doing it, that dont work
im gone
i got hellhounds tracking me
(which by the way play a heavy role in bayou, a hound w/the rank of colonel name jubilation, which by the way is the name of my protagonist - jubilation t. highjohn - ima tell you, that bayou spoke to me)
im out, im all the way gone
rdoc
SUNDAY
buffalo soldier we just got to agree to disagree on obama
i think you hard on him, man, different tools for different jobs and he about as suitable as we gon get for the role that he playing
that dont mean i dont challenge him when i think hes wandered too far afield, but i dont think you and some other blackfolk giving him nowhere near enough slack
there is an unquestioned benefit of having him over not having him, you seem to forget what the alternatives were, or will be in 2012,
think president palin an it puts this matter into a startling clarity
ishmael reed did a piece on facebook about it this week, which i still think you should join, i know you want to horde your time but there is a dialogue there you should be part of, and its like everything else, you got to be disciplined about how you use the instrument, same same obama
different instruments for different jobs - obama couldnt do what i do, i couldnt do what he do, but a whole race of folk you gon have many roads leading to timbuktu, everybody aint gon do it like me and you
i try to be flexible when it come to instruments of struggle, just cause they dont take the same route i take is not reason for me to take them down - get too righteous and we end up with the crab barrell effect, just like folk tried to take down martin and malcom in their day, all our leaders experience that, but now we realize they were both playing their roles - and i think one day you will regret being so hard on obama, man
there are some folk i think work against the cause that i consider enemies but obama not one of them
nature of his game require that he dont come racial,- this is a dynamic for all of us in the struggle who have gone professional and in the 'postracial' 21st century we have to be more flexible about the black agenda and a little more sophisticated about how we run it
obama is a player and thats what we need for the moment
ive done some reflection about representing as an ethnic writer in the postracial reality
which we both know is not postracial but has merely evolved into another dynamic
and a literary world that values black writers who have been either neutralized or actively compromised (see push) but me and you we children of the 60s of
the civilrights movement and black power and what we called in vietnam - blackinization
could no more not represent as voices of the culture than we could not breath we were taught that the power of art is an instrument to be used to empower
and illuminate the culture, to save our tattered generations - this attitude is considered passe in literary circles today
but i have come to understand as an artist its about manifesting what move you, making your particular passion work on the page, and representing is what move me,
i just have to struggle to make sure i do it in a crafty manner, make true art thats every writers challenge
the understanding these days from the literary gatekeepers is that you cant represent and be crafty too but what i love about ishmael, toni, john edgar, gayle jones et al, is they prove the lie of that
you just have to figure out how to make your particular passions work for you on the page
well, obviously ive wandered far afield from your initial post about obama and west, obviously i got a lot to say about representing in the 'post racial' reality,
but i dont have time to work this right now, im no longer wading thru narrative mud, im sinking in narrative quicksand - i got to make my endgame shine, i got to struggle with the page this morning
well, closing down social media didnt last very long did it, so im an addictive personality, what else is new - cant be a novelist if you not an addictive personality,
playthell benjamin recently laid into cornell west for his recent attack on barack, i agree with playthell on this one, west is a moralizer trying to preach to barack, a politician in the arena, cant help but think some
of this is wests towering ego trying to get some facetime, he needs to go sit in the corner with his boy smiley
still trying to figure out how to work these last 8 pages
i think what ima have to do is fix the threads within the novel that lead to these last 8 pages which probably means going ahead and starting my redpen with endgame intensity in mind
which means breaking my work periods in half, half pondering those 8 pages, half dancing
this is one of those phases where you got to do more thinking than writing
thats frustrating, when you not clocking progress
you know what im looking forward to, all the creative energy thats going to be freed up once i fini this novel im just drooling over the thought of after 10 years of hard focus, working on something else,
to be more explicit my holybook
the hoodoo book of flowers: the great black book of generations
my process reporting on that should be more engaging, reflections on the process of creating a hoodoo holybook should be less insular than that of a fiction project
kinda looking forward to that aspect actually
was thinking the other day about being an ethic writer in the post racial reality, how thats changed
think ill start another post for those reflections, it deserves one all its very own
okay rick, take a deep breath, last lap, lets do it
rdoc
FRIDAY 10:52 pm
i am down to my last 8 pages or so and im dead in the water, these pages have to do so much,
they have to be riveting reading, they have to answer questions the book has developed and do it so an aesthetically pleasing manner while at the sametime opening up speculative vistas that will embed themselves in the readers soul, or something like that,
im not quite sure how to go about working this phase
the good news is that i have about 3 weeks to make it happen, i think ima try to close down the social media aspect of this push, my already narrow focus is about to get more so - i think what ima try to do is pull
out the redpen and look those pages over and over in context of the rest of the novel, and dance all about providing that context, its been so long since i have closed down a novel im kinda lost here, but its a good
space to be in, hopefully next time you hear from me it will be to report done deal - all my love
FRIDAY 1:38 pm - 4 days cushion, and only one weak spot i got to mend, might spend next couple of days dancing
FRIDAY 10:32 am: after telling everybody i cant afford to dance ive spent the whole morning dancing i guess im using up that days cushion, curses be, all that talk about being loved by the gods cause me
to reflect on the role that the gods playing in this story of wouldbe prophets and i had to work the insights into text - had to - i give up trying to stay on top of the process, im just along for the ride
FRIDAY early in the morning
so, wyclef jean running for president of haiti, this will be very interesting, everybody know wyclef got issues - be that as it may i hope he wins, i hope he rises to the occasion, status quo aint working, im willing to throw the dice
UPDATE ON WYCLEF JEAN, THE MORE CLARITY I GET THE MORE I DOUBT, HES GOT MORE ISSUES THAN I REALIZED, APPEAR TO BE A JUST ANOTHER TRICK BEING PLAYED ON THE PEOPLE, A HUSTLER DOING HIS THING
got a full days cushion, who the man rick, you the man, keep kicking it like im kicking it and i will have time for a redpen of 2nd half, then all i will need is a poetry draft which i can do in about a week, ie i just might
make my deadline after all - who the man rick, you the man - though i have to say moving into closure
i dont know that im altogether happy with this novel - you have this wondrously magical work of art in mind and you struggle and you struggle and all you come up with is this awkward shambling pedestrian work totally lacking in the magic you dreamed of
and you have to say okay, thats it, thats what i got - all you can do is hope that other folk get a glimpse
of what you were trying to do, that they are somehow tricked into thinking its a work of wonder - you know its not
you haunted by the vision of what it could have been, another 10 years and i coulda made this bad boy sing (relax dear regulators, im just playing w/your heads, it wouldnt take more than 2)
im so focused on the micro level now, word and sentence level, that ive lost track of the big picture i keep getting ideas and for awhile i was what ima call dancing (big picturing) too but now that im about 30 pages from
closure its so microscopic step by step focus that i cant step away and take some perspective, that will
stop me dead in my tracks, now im just forging, i feel like after 10 years of creative obsession surely by now
you got the vision enuf in your head that you can trust the gods of literature to guide you thru this phase
if not what is the point - if the gods of literature dont love you, dont care for you in your times of need
what pray tell is the point
all my love
rdoc
THURSDAY 1:31pm
ok, i got cushion and the day still young - needless to say ima go for another page or two, maybe do a little structural work - at this point its all gravy, this where i like to be, one step ahead of the game
THURSDAY
no cushion yesterday, that mean starting today 4 pages in the hole, big sigh - i need some cushion. lord being caught up does not alleviate anxiety - then one stumble will leave you behind and stumbles are
inevitable, if you got cushion then when you stumble that just puts you back where you supposed to be
you still in the game
was asked recently about the digital/print divide - i responded 21st century a writer got to work with both hands, that online work im giving away, my contribution to the dialogue
i save my best stuff for the page -
i live to make books, it distress me ive made so few but thats life, if i can get rest for the weary and my holybook done i will die satisfied i done my best
(ah hell, whatever happens, i will die satisfied i done my best, what else can you do)
now once the book exists, once its published, once its a book, i dont really much care what they do with it - i know i should but i dont, not really
dont get me wrong, i do like control, copyright, awards & making money but thats not my criteria of success
cultural influence is my criteria of literary success - so i try to work w/both hands, 21st century a writer got to work w/both hands
by control i mean the distribution, promotion and interpretation of your books, this is part of the cultural influence process so i try to keep a hand in as part of my strategic posture, help shape those initial takes on your legacy
but i accept as the price of doing business, of being in the dialogue of my times, that anything that goes online, anything that goes digital, its likely to be 'sampled' - anything that goes online, in my literary heart im
giving it away - all my love
rdoc
WEDNESDAY 11:42 am
once i got my obligatories done all the wolves at the door start howling, i got to take care of business maybe after the days errands i can clock some cushion, in the meantime, in the name of buffalo soldier
i realized his last couple of posts were riffing off the persuasions, figured i would put it up, for the kiddies
WEDNESDAY 9:09 am
only 9 oclock and i got a full days work done, 4 more pages and i get a full days cushion if i can knock off 8 i will be neck deep in the gravy - focus rick, stay focused
WEDNESDAY 8:01am
so, started working and had to backtrack, my little 2 page cushion disappeared - and so on it goes
WEDNESDAY 6:33 am
the key to a throwdown is put the hours in, dont judge, dont assess, just work - painstakingly work each paragraph each sentence - move forward, step by step, inch by inch, word by word, just put the
hours in, just sit there at the sacred desk, wading thru the narrative mud -
for 50 pages in 3 weeks my count is 4 pages a day, i had a good day yesterday (6) which starts this morning w/a 2 page cushion, that mean i need 2 minimal but 4+ would be good, i can always use more cushion - lets do it rick
TUESDAY
well dear regulators im back in the saddle, took a week off it seems, guess i needed it back in the saddle mean im working now, today, but one day does not a woodshed make
it will be the rest of the week tell the tale, but im feeling rested, feel like im ready to roll done some serious thinking about the piece, feel like i got a good grasp on my endgame
just anxious about how much authority i bring to the narrative steps of getting there whatever, last 50 pages, word by word, sentence by sentence, just forge thru
time to separate the writers from the dilettantes, i remember
a buddy of mine once said about literary dues, he say if this was
easy everybody would go down the street and get some
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