rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

a gathering of high hoodoos

in dialogue and ritual performance

Rickdydocs Traveling Medicine Show.  Hello all.  Call myself promoting my hoodoo symposium on March 23^rd in Kilian Room of the SU Hall of Languages (panel 2pm) and the Community Folk Art Center (ritual performance 430pm) by contexting it for you. 

Hope to intrigue you.  Stimulate your cosmological curiosities.

First thing is the distinction Im making between folk and high hoodoo, folk and high magic.  Usually when people hear hoodoo they thinking folkmagic hoodoo,spirits, spells & blackcat bones, but the cutting edge has long since moved into highmagic, cultural custodianship and initiatory illumination, making real into the world that which was not.  Guide and Guardian.

Historically, hoodoo been one of a family of afrospiritual practices in the Americas, Santeria, Vodou, Candomble, et al.  Mostly they fusions between African religions and Catholicism, and, contrary to sensationalist mediage, they religious systems, with dogmas, rituals, priests, and congregations, whilst hoodoo is a magical/mystical system, individual practitioners - sorcerors, shamans, medicinefolk & wouldbe prophets of the hoodoo way.

Accordingly, the practitioners on this panel, ibeshe, katrina omogun, mama whodun, papa joe, snake 2G, wanganegresse, are an eclectic bunch, each with their own brand of practice, what Hyatt in 'Hoodoo, Conjuration, Witchcraft, Rootwork" referring to the hoodoo propensity to ignore the rules of magic, called “anymethod, anytime.”

But the one thing I believe I can safely say, is that we are all high magicians who consider hoodoo not only a system of individual guidance but one of cultural custodianship, an afrospiritual instrument of empowerment, healing and redemption.  Ibayo.

Basic premise is that if a culture is weak it's because its indigenous spiritual traditions are weak.  My generation of hoodoo trying to empower and illuminate hoodoo and afrospiritual practice, universalize it as one of the worlds great systems of evolutionary guidance, one that provides a viable spiritual template for human evolution and the ongoing enhancement of the human condition - one future generations of humanity can live by.  We trying to forge an African American Way.  A Better Way.

Magic as ideological orchestration. 
(or vice versa if you so inclined)

So.  March 23^rd.  Longgame.  Defining a universalized, illuminated hoodoo compatible with the 21^st century mind and sensibility; presentations and ritual performances designed to generate academic interest and engage strategic audiences (and generate material for literary, cinematic, academic and afrospiritual products, of course, I mean you know, really)  Longgame.  Ideological orchestration and aspiration to the prophetic.

Buncha high magicians doing what we do - making real into the world that which was not, playing with reality & the limitless power of the human mind & spirit, shaping generations.  Reaching for the godhead.  Conjurating.

The hoodoo ritual performance troupe, well that's me trying to take my act prime time.  Be the public face of the Hoodoo Way like Marley and reggae represented Rasta to the world.  (Not on that level maybe but you get the idea, anything possible, right . . .)  With folk Ive always wanted to Work with.  We will define hoodoo ritual in the doing.  Making it up as we go long.  Gon be seminal, gon be a happening, just might be historical. Claiming the high ground.  Hoodoo ground.  Yall come on out, now.  Be part of my hoodoo happening.  Hope to see you in the place.  All my love.  Rdoc.

 

annual mfa app advice

hello world

bibi needs to go home, this is not the 1st time he has played political games

trying to cripple obama w/his rightwing repub buddies, just because obama wont go to war w/iran until
very last option- bib and the neocon repubs want to push america into war w/iran - so bibi has

decided to throw his lot in with hawkish repubs who wouldnt know governing responsiblity
if it bit them, folk he thinks he can roll because they do know how to pander

well maybe its time to abandon bipartisan support of israel, what have we gotten
for it, israel refuses to free the palestinians from damn near biblical slavery

im talking settlments making facts on the ground
im talking about indefinite 2nd class citizenship

its a very intractable & unsustainable status quo

i understand their existentialist anxieties in this matter
but im not willing to fight arbitrary wars at their bidding

they want to be autonomous actors, i feel them on that
perhaps its time israel learned to fight its own wars

somebody should tell bibi that we here in the us are adults
we dont need a bibi-sitter

rdoc

 

 

 

hello world

just finished the first stage of the apps, we will make final selection sometime this week
let me do my annual advice to the applicants bit

its always so traumatic doing this process, we get 600+ applicants, we choose 6
we have to tell a lot of good writers no, often writers better prepared than we were then

that last 50 or so they are all good, it gets very subjective at that point
is this somebody i would like to work with, that im willing to fight for

okay, this first phase, the winnowing: things not to do

do not do fancy fonts, do not cramp 10 point so as to get that extra page or so
do not do anything that makes your work harder to read, when you are plowing

thru 100s of manuscripts you are looking for any reason to reject some out of hand
small hard to read font is high on that list, as are small margins, printing front to back

anything that ever so marginally makes the work harder to read works against you
also do not fudge the page count, we used to let folk send 30, then 25, now its 20

there is a reason, when you reading 600+ that extra 5 pages wears you down
what you have to keep in mind is that we are looking for a reason to put you in the reject pile

you do better to send a piece that is both a good story and has narrative authority
if its not reading well the odds are that we wont get thru it to note how well the story turns out

you really want to display narrative authority from that 1st para on
then you have to maintain it, the stories that make the cut are the

ones that i am unable to put down, the ones that dont let me go
dont get too fancy, too experimental, you want to go for depth and sincerity

too experimental and you really got to hit the right reader, anything too stylstics
you got ot make sure if you going systlic that you have the authority thing happening

lets see, what else, o, a couple of times i read their writers statement and ive had
folk rave about the possiblity of working w/dana spiotta or george saunders and im

like well thats not very smart, i have to make an effort to read them fairly because
my immediate response is fuck you too

you have a third of chance of being judged by one of the faculty you did not name
if you arent going to name all 3 best not name anybody

of course the inverse is when somebody says they want to work w/me
and im all disappointed if they are not a contender - such is life

i guess thats about it, no sense in making this all wordy, what i will say is if
you are not chosen cant take it personal, at some point it becomes

very subjective, very arbitrary, we have to say no to folk we would love to claim
but we can only choose 6, the big struggle is trying to choose last 6 from top 20 or so

contenders in last rounds are all showboats

i guess thats it, bracing for this supreme court ruling on obamacare
if they take all those subsidies away it will be a crime but then again

they are payoffs to the insurance companies mostly, we blew our singlepay
chance when the dems were in power but no sense crying about the way of things

isis just keeps getting more and more transgressive, they are like out of some bgrade thriller
some space opera villians, we get used to one level of atrocity they up that stakes

i can only hope they are disgusting moderate muslims, or should i say, normal muslims
and discrediting their jihadi ideology, i can only hope human nature will rebel against this one

i have been consumed with putting on this hoodoo symposium
dont know if its been worth it or not, depends on how well it comes off

but i have been playing my kalimba everyday and im kinda getting good w/it
i just wish this wasnt the first hit for my hoodoo performance troupe

we are inevitably going ot blow it but generally the congregation doesnt realize it
ohwell, im gone - im just talking now for the helluv it, empty wordage

like i aint got things to do