rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

cast your vision young hoodoo, as far as you can see: divinations 2014

WED, JAN 8

well dear regulators, im cutting out pretty much everything written during last 3 weeks or
so that i been struggling with woodshed productivity, even i find it tedious to wade thru

once again you have been privy to process, me struggling w/my
demons, but all we will leave for the record is pristine product

latest is that ive woven HAINT into REST and so far its got potential, scary potential because
im taking a butcher knife to my text but at the same time its exciting because its forcing

me to look at it with new eyes -  what happened is 1) my hoodoo det novel was still literary, still my
voice, just felt like it was part of REST, and 2) i still want to be one of the great novelists of all time

thats all i ever wanted to be, and its all still on REST, my wouldbe masterpiece, to do that, i dont
care about making money, never did, i make a living, im satisfied, i just want to be a great novelist

so this just means one more chance to make that novel the best that it can be
ive woven the two texts and now im working out the glitches

got about 5 days before schoolhouse takes me under, so im in a state of quiet
desperation, clocking pages now that its do or die, earlier i was coasting, why is

it always thus - on that note i got to go

will extract most of what ive done here lately and leave fragments that seem to have signficance
and value, which probably wont make sense cause they fragments but such is life

then again it will reflect the flash essentialism im looking for in this draft of REST
the trick to generating words of power is ruthlessly cutting the inessential

keep that in mind rick, this draft of REST

and everything

 

 

MONDAY

i hear baba john watusi branch, poet and founder of the afrikan poetry theatre in queens, has passed on
feel like legends falling on every hand, dont know if i should be please or not, that they all budies of mine

 

 

SATURDAY

 

be nice to get some respect for my work in my lifetime but at
this point i dont expect any breaks, other writers get breaks

i do not, my concern is that this reflects a lack of craft but i prefer to
think that the gods of literature love me too much to give me breaks

they want to keep me hungry, make sure i dont coast in this my artistic prime

problem is all my projects megaprojects, requiring an investment of decades or so
but in each case im the one chose the hard road, no sense whining when it

come time to pay the freight

 

 

FRIDAY THE 27

going to combine them, REST & HAINT, folk telling me stick w/HAINT but REST is my heart
all along i knew REST was off the reservation, plan was to make it so strong it could not be denied

3 years of denial mean i got to recalibrate, ima have to step out of my comfort zone, ima have to be bold

still got the old draft if this one doesnt work,

finished unesco vol 1, decided to get this restructured REST
manuscript done before schoolhouse so i put HBOF down

once again im under water,

words come at a premium these days, the key when you do produce words is
to produce words of value, for anybody aspiring to literary longgame

im giving them a road map

 

 

THURS

so me and miriam decosta willis was engaged in a dialogue on facebook, ima stash it here
she was talking about the death of one of her mentors, said she was of his line, i replied:

if he was an inspiration to you then i consider myself of his line as i do myself of yours

to which she replied: Arthur, although I never taught you, your words of tribute and encouragement through the years have meant so much to me, and your work has certainly been an inspiration to me."

to which i reply: "you have been a mentor and model of the committed black intellectual to my generation of memphis black artists and intellectuals, it was because of you that we realized that being committed race men and women was still an option as we started reaping the rewards of the civil rights movement, hopefully we have passed on what you and your generation passed on to us,"

to which gregory siggers added: 'amen"

and miriam replied:  Arthur, both of us stand on the shoulders of writer and race man John Killens, and I always remember what he said about the need for long distance runners. Maxine, A. W., Jesse, Russ, Lorene, Ben, and so many other Memphians were truly long distance runners. I don't count myself among them, because I switched fields and became the preserver/recorder of the Movement, but, as I told Russ, humorously, I intend to be the Last (Wo)Man Standing (smile)."

to which i reply: "but thats exactly the reason you became so impo to us, because you were the model of how you could be a committed intellectual, an armchair revolutionary, a term i use w/the greatest of respect, that you didn't have to be just an activist, or a soldier, to be committed, that long distance running included thinking too, (& chronicling, understanding the power of being the one who tells the story/shapes destiny) babajohn taught us to be visionaries and you were our first model, for my memphis generation, of how it was done, and how to sustain it over the period of our lives, how to be long distance runners - you need to go ahead and do that memoir, you owe us that"

ima leave it there, i think i made my point, finished reading vol 2, transposing notes now, focus  . . .

 

 

XMAS WED

cast your vision young hoodoo, as far as you can see, determine the
challenges the tribe will face, prepare the tribal soul to meet them 

                                                        de geas of rickydoc: 3rd movement

   

okay rick, lets do an end of the year throw
a divination if you please

decided ima work it out here over the next week or so
you dear regulators once again get to see the process

asuming dear regulators that you are there and
not merely a figment of my desperation

first the toss: (to be done later)

what will be the structure be

two options: geographic and subject

geographic: or should I say demographic
african american cullture
america
africa
the world

issue based would be what

global politics
human rights
quality of life
conflict resolution
human destiny

okay, looks like a good hoodoo 9 (all projects
structure in 9s, a solid hoodoo number)

destiny has to be a component of them all
its all about destiny with me

so lets do them all (o hell i need to get personals in there somewhere
but that means something has to go to keep my hoodoo 9 , . . .)

i got to find my destiny string and repair it (its in disrepair)

then i have to throw, but right now i need to focus - unesco, 100 pages to go . .

later for this . . .

 

 

i dont care what reality says, in my heart i still believe

XMAS WED

amiri doing better, yusef passed on, o life & death & all things between, take
a minute to count your blessings, may the coming year be good to you

may the coming year be good to us all

 

 

TUESDAY EVENING

my understanding is that baba amiri is in intensive care, beth israel, newark,
everybody pulling for him, amiri been a strong elder, still showing the way

 

 

TUESDAY MORNING

hello world

im all twisted up, im not quite sure what shape im in
lets see if i can break it down: get some order up in here:

halfway thru woodshed and feeling underwater, need to recalibrate woodshed productivity planning

case of the missing haint: the fight to keep my detective novel from going literary has
been abandoned, i just couldnt write straight if my world depended on it

hell its the same thing happened with rest for the weary:, i triy to write conventional and it comes out stylee, i give up, - what i have learned is that 1st person appeals to me

considering consolidating the two of them, HAINT and RFTW, because same themes and
this 1st person would give WEARY a driving thread that many of the responses say it lacks

what with that metanarrative of mine sprawling all over creation

the hoodoo book of flowers: totally buried in this unesco history of africa research
read it, mark it, transpose notes, turn notes into text, drudgework, strictly drudge

phases like this when we seperate the writers from the wannabes

da hoodoo tales, my shorts based on my dreams, had a good one last night, wrote it out this morning thats the key, you get an idea you have to get it on paper immediately, otherwise it will just float away,

but if you start it  then eventually you will get around to working on it  -  

i tell my students all the time, the difference between writers and civilians is that writers write it down

rootwork.com:  the other thing on my mind is what to do with rootwork.com
snatched it up in the early days of the internet but everthing ive tried to do w/it

has floundered from lack of time to invest, i think ima try doing online version of  hoodoo book of flowers
concern is anything i put on the internet im basically giving it away, the cost of engagement

with the cultural dialogues of my times -  but i dont want to give the hoodoo book of flowers
away (thats my retirement fund) so it will be a truncated version, damn near marketing

on that note rick let me leave you w/this nyt article on books and the bottomline

fact that my novel hasnt sold just makes me more desperate to get my work done, to show the world and all the haters - im rickydoc flowers and im one of the greatest novelists ever, (well at least a good one)

in my heart i still believe, i dont care what reality says, im my heart i still believe
in the payoff passage from that article: many in the comments found article sophomoric, but this the reason
i get up every day, struggling with the page and wrestling w/my demons, trying to create words that matter:

"The point is truth and beauty, without which our lives will lack grace and meaning and our civilization will be spiritually hollowed out and the historical bottom line will be that future epochs will remember us as a coarse and philistine people who squandered our bottomlessly rich cultural inheritance for short-term and meaningless financial advantage."

im out, may the coming year be good to you

may the coming year be good to us all

R&R and slogging thru the narrative mud: regulated rest as part of good discipline

SUNDAY

got my groove on, clocking pages, god i

love being free, wake up in the morning one

thing on my mind, how many pages can i

clock today - how hard can i live my dream

 

 

SATURDAY REDUX

so let me layout this high hoodoo gamemove for you, how i go about conjurating a new persona, a new mask
did this when i defined myself a writer, when i define myself as a hoodooman as cultural custodian

first you do the research, you work out the logics, its got to make sense, to you & the thinking population
then you start using it in your Works and in Online forums, you start identifying

yourself as whatever it is you trying to program, its in this earliest stage that its most embarassing
because basically its a lie far as reality concerned, folk amused by you, laughing at you, dissing you

even worse, dont even notice

you buked bused and you scorned - but you keep at it, systematically acting out the role as you
see it, you keep producing product and gradually folk/reality start identifying you w/the role

pulled it off a couple of times, identifying myself publicly as a hoodooman been a twisty process
but there folk now consider me the premier hoodooman of my age, folk that listen when i speak

i got a chance to redefine what it mean to be a hoodooman

most resistant been traditional hoodoos, if it aint folk knowledge it aint real far as they concenred, but
thats cool, its just part of the process - you keep conducting yourself as if you were in truth what

you aspire to be and then one day you are -  the high hoodoo - its how i got to be a writer, a hoodooman,
how i been working the prophetic, of which this high hoodoo claim just a variant thereof

reason all this coming out on rootsblog now because im working it hard in this hoodoo det novel im doing

jonathon conquer is the high hoodoo of memphis - well, not really, he the public high hoodoo, the true high
is a hidden hoodoo, (thats me - o im rolling, might be wading thru the mud but i still got some moves)

and you know me, metawork rick, life leaking into the work, work leaking into life, game on

embarass me to be out here sellling wolf tickets, again, novel not being sold make me feel less
authenticated, macking hard one thing but you got to authenticate it w/product

o listen to you roll rick, i often use this blog to work the kinks out of my narrative stylee, and  i love when
the mackeroni flow,  apparently part of whats made my novel hard to sell (more likely just a failure of craft)

it come to me sometime just how much of my trueself i expose on this blog, i got to trust my creative
instinct and trust that im suppose to be doing this, i get good feedback from it,, the world has in

some very meagre sense embraced it, ima keep doing it, i just think out load on the keyboard is all
dont have time for anything more structured because you know how it is just dont have time not a lick

speaking of which i got to go, im about 3 pages short a good day on my novel

also believe ima finish vol 2 of the unesco history of africa today (yeah, right) start working those
notes into raw text for 1st movement: the hoodoo book of flowers (8 movements to go, god help
me, rick, at this rate i will never be done/free, got to find another gear, rick, find another gear)

give that a week maybe, while maintaing missing haints text and
working out lessonplans for my forms course next semester -

literary hoodoo: myth magic and magical realism in the longform

so many balls in the air - tick tock
ground shifting under my feet - tock

got to roll, got to go

rdoc - tick tock

 

 

SATURDAY

hello world, so i decide to send that proposal to a couple of hoodoo forums
traditional hoodoo, mostly folk magic folk, got a twisted relationship with them

im always pissing them off because of my dismissive attitude toward folk magic
i try to come respectful but im defensive bec i know they gon reject my counsel

so my tone is too often fuck you first but if you want to run the prophet game you got to
accept rejection by your chosen audiences while you try to get reality to respond to your will

reality is a tough wall to butt your head against but thats what the high hoodoo do

thats what they pay me for

all my love

rdoc

------------------------       

hello all, its me, rickydoc, I been lowprofiling like I generally do, don't generally join in the dialogues here because we have different interests but at the same time “dialoguing” with the folk magic folk is part of my game to bring hoodoo into the 21^st century and position myself as the High Hoodoo of afroam culture.  My understanding of conjuration is you conduct yourself as you aspire to be and you are.  I will define with my life and Works just what it is a hoodoo prophet do.  Also trying to position hoodoo as the prophetic tradition of the Afrospiritual world - and that of the World Spirit.  The power position.  With a dispensation to break the rules and forge new ways.  The do as I say and your generations will thrive position.  Accordingly I have to establish “dialogues” positioning hoodoo as I see it with 7 audiences - The World Spirit Traditions, the general public and academe, the Afrospiritual traditions, African American Culture and Traditional Hoodoos - the folk magicians, that's you.  My fellow High Hoodoos tell me not to concern myself with you.  Educating them is not our job they tell me.  Actually I think it is.  So here I am.  Not trying to convince you of anything, do not care if you buy into this, its shaping future generations that float my boat, with or without you the game is on, just keeping you informed about whats happening on the cutting edge.  Occasionally I will bring a little High Game your way. Consider it training.

 okay okay, i edited out some of that preemptive fuck you at the end, lets try that again:

Not trying to convince you of anything, it kinda embarrass me to come at you so lacking in humility but its what the game require, got to be real w/you - just keeping you informed about whats happening on the cutting edge.  Occasionally I will bring a little High Game your way. Consider it training.

better, no? i considered taking out that consider it training line but ima leave that in - it is what it is
trying to introduce them to the longgame, trying to forge them into true force

im out

 

 

 

FRIDAY

i know this gon be a shock to you but the old boy aint done a lick of work
since schoolhouse shut down about a week ago, im not sweating it though

bes like that sometime, schoolhouse shut down and i do too, a week is decent
R&R (rest and relaxation what they called in in Nam, a week out-of-country)

but i started working again this morning so im feeling real
i been just reading and resting and figting off a cold but

im feeling like a real man again, ima get some work done
these days old boy need his naps and sometime a nap take a week or so

also got to start preparing for that application push, i think ima do one of those

advice to young writers applying for the mfa

lets see, that you give it your best shot is self explanatory
spend a year or so brinigng that work up to speed because its
all in the work, 20 pages or so decides who makes the cut
not only that but when you forcemarching thru 600 odd applications

any old reason to call it a pass and its done, make sure you got work that
catches the eye and holds it,

dont do funny fonts and dont cramp the work up in 10 point 1/2 inch margins so you can get more words in
whoever told anybody that making your work harder to read was in your favor

i will have to do this later, i got to do at least 6 pages a day novel before i can focus on anything else
ive done about 2 today, been kinda rough because ive picked all the low hanging fruit, ive written all

the scenes i kinda saw immediately that the book needs, now i got to fill in the blanks w/raw narrative
inspiration took me the first couple of miles, now its bullheaded cussedness, slogging thru the

narrative mud

i got to go, i will work this post out later

something else ive decided, ima revise my novel this summer
assuming its still on the market, ima compromise, ima make it

narratively more readable, and ima consider some 1st person passages
in this hoodoo detective book, i see 1st person comes easy to me

ima consider that, but for right now, got to focus, got to go

all my love

rdoc

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