on the nature of literary honors & a praisesong for achebe

 so, the afroam studies dept ask me to speak at an achebe memorial
i did this piece called a praisesong for achebe, and blew it of course

forgot my best lines and had ot fall back on old familiar riffs far too often
but they dont know i was half assing it, they just think thats the level of my game

and dont realize just how much better my game is when its on:

so the way i learn a performance i dont know, specially thsee one shot deals, i tape myself practicing it
and then play it over and over on my car tape while i drive around and let it embed itself in my head

ima see if i can put a rehearsal piece here,

strictly audio, started to work w/visuals and make it what ive been calling video poetry but
i dont have time for all that video editing and then i thought, if im going to do that i might as

well work on something more central to my vision, decided to do a videopoem

of de geas of rickdyoc,

which is like my visionary thing, i only do it when im coming out of my prophet of the hoodoo way thing
ie not on my usual college circuit readings but when im deep down in the black belt and call myself exhorting

if ima do a videowork its going to be de geas of rickydoc, this is the piece i did friday
though the actual performance was diff, i forgot stuff, i added stuff, its always different

be patient, starts raggedy but it gets good, also takes a minute to load, i got to work
out the kinks of uploading from your computer:

ok: not working; worked a few minutes ago, will put this audio link up till i figure out
how to put this video clip in: dont have time now, novelwork to do: a luta continua

Praisesong For Achebe
 Link: Praisesong for Achebe

click twice on pic 

 

 

 

 

THURS 3/27

hello world

old boy been off the grid, been catchup on every front, one of the things been on my plate im doing now
reading adam levins instructions, take a lot for me to forge thru 1000+ works and the fact that he

gives me play in it, a 6 foot odd 300 pound hoodooman on a cane, has worked against me reading it
everytime i see my name i flinch, its kinda deep the play he gave me, im very moved by it but still . . . .

i recall when he asked me, do you mind me using your name, i said sure, and went on bout my business
then when it came out folk told me you in it arthur, i shrugged it off, i figured it was just the use of my name

then his bookparty down in brooklyn, introduced myself to his sister, arthur flowers, she
said, o youre flowers - i looked perplexed - she say you need to read the book

after a few variants on this theme, i sat down to read it, 20 pages in or so, flowers, the 300 pound
hoodooman, who is his spiritual father, or rather, spiritual daddy, as he is referred to in the text

i put it down, couldnt go any further, said adam, why he got to be 300 pounds, adam say hes 6 odd feet,
hes bigger than life, i said ok, i can live with that, but still couldnt read about it, so i assigned it in this course

and supposed to be discussing it today, so now getting thru it is obligatory, im scan reading, you read the
1st sentence of a para, then you kinda scan the whole para, anything you pick up of interest you read

otherwise you skip to next para, and everytime i see flowers i read and not read, if you can feel that
i read the passage, but  its a skim that doesnt commit to what im reading, and the flowers passages

are relatively extensive, your classic wisdom character as inteperted by adam levin, it feels like an honor
of immeasurable magnitude and i cant handle it, & i cant read his hoodoo pronouncements, if i start parsing them

i will be caught up in it, and adams attempt to capture my narrative dialect is kinda amusing
he shoulda let me wrote those passages - its a helluva work and i will read it for real this summer

i told him i said vengeance will be mine, and i

gave him play in rest for the weary, tried to convey what it meant to me to get play of that magnitude

i love being a literary man, i just love it

i wish i had made that clear at that gathering of the cohorts, i had written out this house breaking presentation, then i decided to low profile it and let the students have the evening, but im sorry

i didnt say all i had to say, about the sacred calling that literature can be, about literary immortality and such

thats what i love about getting play in the instructions, contributes to the legacy

literary immortality aint no easy road

its my own work im betting on but i will take all the help i can get

like tenn earnie ford say - one fist is iron, the other is steel
if the right one dont get you, the left one will

all my love

rdoc