rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

hanging in there, the fine art of obsession

WEDNESDAY

just listened to the two pieces
technically im getting thru it but
it aint got no soul, soon come
the day when i can get up there

and trance them out

 

WEDNESDAY

finally listened to it, its not bad
i see what i should have done
diff, which is the point, so . . .

just received copies of brer rabbit
looking good, CD in back, still not
really out yet but im looking forward
to promotion

finished rebuild of rest for the weary
going thru now and try to make this skeleton actually fit tge text now
most of the kept passages have to be repurposed, i went from about

350 pages to about 180 now and will still lose about a third of that
but after this phase all i will have left is working manuscript, then i
got to beef it out w/char riffs, which is not my strong point and the

fear is that i will have a bunch of empty words, which is not acceptable
but its kinda amazing, basically have rewritten this novel in a way i have
not in like 15 years and it feels like its working but who the hell knows

im just glad to be rebuilding instead of tearing down
tearing down is hard on the soul, the harder you work

the further away you are

im gone, got pages need clocking
got music need making

giving myself a week, 20 pages a day
cause this just the making it coherent
draft, then i got to really settle in and
make it good, that will take a month

one hopes,, whih will give me july as clean up month
but most likelty it will take 2 cause i wont be able to
barrel thru, text will have to work that time

then a poetry draft or two and i will
have a good text, we will see

(dream on art, im going to have

all my love

 

 

SUNDAY,

have still not listened to my invocation
i fear i will be disappointed but i got to
go ahead and put it on youtube et al
i will listen to it eventually

feels good not having any more gigs
till lisbon 1st week july but i see im
going to have to work it just as hard
cause i have to be better than i was
friday, im smooth in practice but i get
nervous and it comes off shakey

i got to work on the smoothness
everyday

this is the new outline, feels good putting
the novel back together even if the segments
are weak:

basically how im structuring all these apperently
nonlinear flash beats is im doing them in sequences
i extract a thread and fix it as a sequence so i can
see the arc and i have multiple sequences for
chars and for plot threads, then when its minimally
viable i weave it back into the text

i use clusters because my craft could not handle
the chaos of my previous attempt, flash paras
that jumped nonlinear all over the story didnt
give the reader enuf grip on chars or story
before i whiplashed them w/another jump

also working my destinic clusters now, my
future speculatives, its been a challenge

i had hoped to finish rebuild this weekend but
the destitnic cluster ate it up, i want this done
by next weekend, roughly making the segments
line up, many of them still prototext. . .

im gone, i got pages need clocking, of
making even 1 book there is no end

1          IV1   invocation
2          MS1 mystery seq 1, dead hoodoos
3          PV1  protovision 1 and text
4          AN1 intro angel 1
5          MS2 finds blind mary dead
6          HG1 gathering of hand 1
7          HC1 historical cluster 1
8          WA1 response by walkabout 1
9          AN2  angel 2
10         GB1 genetta.brother/mother
11         WA2 walkabout sequence 2
12         VS1 vision sequence 1
13         HC2 historical cluster 2
14         MS2  mystery sequence2
15         AN3  angel revelation 3
16         QM1 queenmother cluster 1
17         HC3 historical cluster 3
18         BC1  bklyn cluster, grave/genetta
19         SC2  identifies/reveal stackolee 2
20         CR1 crossroads realities 1
21         DC1 destinic cluster 1
22         CR2 crossroads realities 2:
23         WA3 walkabout 3:
24         CK2  comp of okillens, p&c
25         AF1 angel & frankie:
26         EG damn bottle tree:

 

 

FRIDAY

in a good space, ready for this invocation gig
and when preparing for gigs i get better

and finished new outline for novel

the material is still weak but i want the real text
so ima spend the weekend making manuscript

reflect the new outline, im kinda excited, its
premature but idea of having good text moves
me and being moved is what gets you to the zone

and im tired of my text being a mess of chaos
i can start putting it back together now, so i will

so far i been dancing on both my obsessions
serious production and getting better on mbira

my cup runneth over

all my love

 

 

THURSDAY

(email to patrick)

So im not the only one picking
up a new axe late in the game

ive come to understand I will never be great
before I was a writer with musical accompaniment

Now I think of myself as a musician, big diff
and I compare myself to folk I like and I can

Hear the diff between just starting and a
Lifetime of commitment and I have determined
I don't have to be what I would like to be

I just have to be good enuf to accompany myself
and I have gotten passable enuf to get out there
And take my licks which is the only way you get

Your performance chops, fumbling thru

Doing the invocation for the black graduates ceremony on campus tomorrow
it moves me when they acknowledge the spiritual component of what I do

Ive done it for them kinda regular but this time ima sit down and play my array
And I been working an invocation using my array that's going to be prime time

and im going to actually sing what I would have chanted before, its going to
bloiw them away, man, and ima fumble it but I got a sound nobody else got

And that's whats going to carry me thru

Ive reached point now where I can sit
down and just express emotion

Im taping everything and putting it on youtube
I know they will embarrass me at some point
but im thinking promotion, im thinking gigs

I got to be bold w/it and believe the magic
that happens on stage will carry me

Thanks again for opening this door

 

 

THURSDAY

i fear they have the votes, if they don't i will rejoice, if they do, the senate will change it, not necessarily kill it, we see what depending on repub moderates gave us, 8 billion over 5 years and what happens after 5 years, trump is re-elected and the fig leaf no longer necessary,

so I'm furiously pondering, where is the longtime, where is
the strategic finesse that extracts power from the hammer -

if it all goes south as it appears (this move will set up many more for them) all i can see is things get so bad (folk dying in their beds) that we finally set up for single payer but thats a price i don't want to pay, all our strategic options are weak, defensive, hopefully we can penalize them 2018 but they've repeatedly done immoral without electoral penalty, indeed been rewarded for it, hopefully this one is too blatant, we got to do some serious counterspinning - i tell you 2018 can't come quick enuf for the old rootdoctor

I'm just not sure just yet how to finesse this move, i thought this little
initiative had died, guess i got between now and the vote to figure it
out, apparently bullshit never dies, it just transforms itself

gave a presentation to nana's class, it went exceptionally well, i wove the writer who would be great w/excerpts from good loving and the sparse mbira

work was perfection once i calmed down

 

 

i got to go, so much work to do

 
so little life left to give

 

all my love

 

 

 

arf

 

 

 

SUNDAY

hassan minhaj nailed it, the 'not see steve bannon' was cute
but it was the trust is stronger than truth i found provocative,
and a couple of his beats on minorities made my heart full, spec
when he said when are faced w/the dilemma, do i restrain myself
and go along, or do i speak truth to the people

 

 

SATURDAY

it was an unmitigated disaster, i got nervous
my hands started trembling, the only way i
could play was with loose strokes, which
discombulated me so i forgot my text and

fumbled thru, folk congratulated me after
but i blew it, did my prophetic thing, will

continue to do it till i perfect it

all my plans to emote it
i barely carried it

bernie stepped up, carried me
it was a disaster but no more

than expected, folk
loved the mbira

more woodshed rick
more woodshed more

all my love

rdoc

 

 

FRIDAY

im in a very strange space, i been dancing on the razors edge
for about a month now and my brain is starting to get tired, im
missing steps and my feet are getting cut up, ima have to jump
off the edge for a minute or two, im tired, im weary to the bone

weary to the fucking bone

(okay rick, you got that out, now get back to work . . .)

 

 

THURSDAY

still wading thru, inch by inch, para by para
still doing raw texts on my sequences, working
the babajohn sequence now, a couple of scenes
capturing the babajohn in fiction, i love it . . .

the mbira, im not loving, ive hit a plateau again
im hitting and hitting but not getting measurably better
i sound good when im hitting but when i listen on the

tape its hours and hours of me searching for notes
got a gig tomorrow and im not ready, i sound good

sometimes, sometimes i dont, all in the space of
the same piece but ima go ahead and do it cause
its the only way to actually get performance chops

get out there and fumble thru

doing 2 new pieces for july, a mlk piece
for vancouver, started on it this week

and a lullaby for sofia for parkers new baby
told him ima do a blessing for her, welcoming
her into the world and he said do one that
puts her to sleep and i think, lullaby, the

mbira will be perfect for that, i think about
golden slumbers by beetles, i just then

realize its a lullaby, and summertime and i
think lullaby, help these suffering parents

i start working it: basic lyric is:

sleep little baby, sleep little sofia
your mama loves you, your daddy does too
our gift to the world, this world our gift to you
sleep little baby, the world will wait on you

sleep little baby, so brand new, sleep
rest your soul, little baby, so much to do
our gift to the world our gift to you
rest little baby just sleep

or something along those lines
ima leave it loose and riff it

speaking of performance thats my boy
sekou sundiata - grandmaster of the game

the key will be to be minimalist, dont search
for new stuff, find a beat and stay on it

the other key will be to make my fumbling thru part of the act
hello all, this is my new axe, i dont know what im doing but im

here to do it, then emote on them, so today just
practice emoting over my two go to chords

my real concern is lisbon and vancouver in july
im gone, determined to get thru babajohn sequence

today, mother sequence too if i can, problem
is both of them cut close to the bone, this

whole draft cutting a little close to the bone, i tell
my students you have to write from the heart

if a draft dont cost you its not worth
writing - this must be a good draft

best i get back on it, if i dont get
my morning grind in i spend the

rest of the day spinning my wheels

dont nothing else get done
till the work does

all my love

rdoc

 

 

 

WEDNESDAY



the array report, hanging in there, putting the hours in
i seem to have plateaued, i kinda got the hang of it
just got to get smooth, which means hours and hours

told parker ima do a blessing for sofia
he said a lullaby so she sleeps more and

im like thats what parents always ask for
golden slumbers by the beatles is my model

okay back to whats really bugging me, that novel
im dug in, the mbira is cosing me hours but im holding on
averaging 3 hours sleep a night, bonnie objects but what
am i to do, i nap, thats what

so current production schedule
have extracted whats useful from old text and abandoned whats not
the bulk of the novel has been abandoned, whats left doesnt really

fit its purpose, so i am in process of repurposing the fragments
left after the extraction, which enatail using the paras and lines
as te seeds of scenes that do what i need them to do

thats where i am now, i have pulled out various sequences and
making them arc at which point i will put back in novel

right now im working on a babajohn sequence
then i got to do the mother sequence, which will be painful
wrote it visiting my mother in hosp after her 2nd stroke
when it was clear she wasnt coming back from this one
(bedridden for next 7 years past doctors prognosis)

and then the biggie, my future scenario sequence
for which i am doing research

okay what kind of scheduling here, i was hoping
to be done by end of april, thats not working

so end of may, finish repurposing, maybe another week
at which point i will have a skeleton weave

then i will need to flesh out those bones
with good character/plot texture

then put them back in the text, say end of may
it will be diff to maintain all those balls in air
temptation is to put them back in text quicker
but then you dont get to polish the arcs

so this will give me an incoherent draft by end of may
then maybe june to get a real draft, more likely june/july

and then a polished up draft july/aug
which leave me playing catchup schoolhouse sept
cause aug should be new class prep but such
is life, you choose your priorities dont you

i gotta go, schedule calls for repurposed babajohn sequence
and do the mother if you can, if the babajohn is done this morning

have to schedule when i will do paperwork (taxes)
and when i will do mbira (at least an hour)

otherwise i will spend whole day struggling w/the page
and feel good about it too, but life makes its demands

got a local performmance, 10/15 minutes in a local lineup
but i think im ready to try the mbira, a practice run before

lisbon, you can practice and practice but at some point
you have to take it before the congregation and fumble
thru until you get good at it, prime time

im so gone, i got so much work to do

have not heard from ellen about my book
everyonce in awhile i think about it then
put it out my head like i tell my students to do
you concentrate on the next project

between novel and mbira who got time to sweat it

all my love

rdoc

 

 

performance notes #2; 2nd week, learning the array

FRIDAY ADDENDUM

mbira when i should have been writing this morning
did my first straight thru performance piece, good lick

 

 

 

FRIDAY

god help me i dont believe im doing this
i got to get this novel done and obsession

is the only thing that will do it but everyday
im giving sometHing to that mbira, apparently

i want to make music, really really

i keep trying to walk away, ive hit a trough, im not
developing in leaps now, its just a grind now

and its frustrating, i sound good to myself when
im throwing down but when i listen all i can hear
is all those misnotes, that grinding lack of grace

but im finally figuring out how to make it sound bluesy
been listening to a lot of blues piano, also note that

looking at youtube videos shows me fingering licks
but who got time for all this, i do apparently, i got

so many songs i want to steal their licks, i think the
first one will be freedom by golden gospel singers

a call and response doing the response/chorus/choir with mbira
if i pull this off, no, let me rephrase that, whatever i come up with

will work in my promiseland performance to perfection
so i am able to justify taking time to do this, once i get
the hang of it will be able to do it w/all the freedom songs

im gone, i got more to say but i got pages need clocking
but let me say this right quick, heard from bill wesley, one of folk
invented the array, responding to earlier post about fewer notes

said playing sparsely and w/restraint is the way to go, that with the
chordal multitude available its like you have unlimited power at your
fingertips but the power of restraint allows you to modulate it

and the whole bit about enhancing power thru the power of restraint
speaks to my hoodoo mystic thing and my understanding of mojo

and how i intend to use this instrument as
a magical device trancing my congregations
sparse and meditative is my goal

a confession: i bought a coke, when i get to rehearsing
oh freedom today ima be drinking jack and coke and
partaking perhaps of the sacred sacraments of jah

with oh freedom ima be channeling the blues, gospel
and the struggle, win or lose ima enjoy the ride

i know whats gon happen, ima come up w/something that
roughly sounds like it and after much frustration ima say

okay i will take that, i can work w/this

then ima refine that until its just as good
but its gon be mine, my version, my vision

my way - and in the process my mbira range will
have increased, i will have learned new tricks

i have dealt w/diversionary obsessions before
when i picked up the bluesharp, when i picked
up the kalimba, various kalimba technology leaps

like this one

in each case i have bemoaned the diversion
from getting my work done but in each case

looking back its been time well spent
that has enhanced my literary experience

and traveled me all over the world touching
crowds of follk on a level beyond language
my congregations in the house of flowers
bottomline is i really really want to make music

and this instrument will help me do it
im willing to pay my dues for that

after performance folk suggest it to me all
the time, you should do this professionally

and i have to remind them i am a writer not a musician,
i got chops but when it come to stage vs the page

the page will always win, no contest

stage is just part of my literary skill set as a pracitioner of
the afroam oral tradition but my heart belongs to the page

keep that in mind arthur over the summer
calibrate these 2 obsessions strategically

so then the reward for a good days work
will be hours of bad mbria play, such is life

no work no mbira, thats the rule

there was a storm last night, lightning bolts & thunder rolls,
my kind of weather, reminding me, i am still stormbringer

one of my names/powers in the days of my sorcerous youth, i
dont share that w/folk, sounds too much like xmen i guess and
sometimes i myself forget, but last night power was coursing thru

& today i am intoxicated w/power, best i go use some of it, best i go
clock me some pages, so this evening i can make me some music

i hear oh freedom calling me  -  all my love

rdoc

performance notes, learning to play the array

always slow down

use fewer notes, im tempted to use a lot of notes cause i got so many
but basically find one of the many traditional kalimbas in there and use

it and gradually add more chords to it, mulitple single kalimbas in there

i want to use the whole keyboard eventually, i want to use that range
i am very conscious of finding out its strengths and its weaknesses

compensating for the weaknesses and using the strengths

that bell sound sometimes sounds asian, sometimes sounds like a xylophone
i want a blues sound out of it, which means use of those lower registers

and that slowed beat, consciously work the lower registers to get stronger at them
they have a very unique sound you get with your thumb (of course)

tape practice sessions, listen for the seeds, those fleeting moments when i do something
beautiful and i try to get it again and fail but listening to it on the tape i can try over

and over till i find it

the big thing is to train my fingers so when i hear it in my head my fingers know where to go
and even at rest im making music not noise, when im just resting my fingers on the board its

wonderful music, listening to it now im hearing some beautiful moments and its only been a week

also during this approved obsessional, teach myself how to use pro tools
and set up a home recording studio basically, i have equipment ive accumulated

over the years just never invested the time, this would be perfect, as i get these
7 pieces together put them on youtube, find a filmmaker to work with

work out 1 geas, 2 trouble, 3 goodloving, 4 witer, 5 promiseland,
i need background for these 5 beats, make it 7, good hoodoo #

practice doing any of these on beats i do

for a performance abandon preconcepts, just sit there and find beats
and when you find one try to perfect it, be meditative at all times
always try to be smoother, more cosmic, more meditative

remember to work the murmurs

faintly stroke for that graceful dancing sound, the chord
coordination im not sure of, i have no musical theory

but it appears that the left hand favors F A while
right goes up two octaves to around F A
(fitting F A is go to chord, spells Fa/fate)

that pattern seems to hold whatever key combo im playing, the other
pattern is both hands right up on each other, something overlapping

always slow down, its more meditative when i slow down

when i find a beat i play it, then i slow it down and slow it down some more
and then the misnotes are more obvious but that's what i want to learn

the slow meditative trancework

right hand much weaker than the left so i practice w/it more so
i use it to play melodies by itself and just use it more, lean on it more

it means for weaker practice runs but when i get loose its willing to do more
before it was basically just sitting there unless i consciously forced it to participate

amazing, i got a diff level of music out of it over last couple of days
trying to get it ready for the point of contact gig but didn't make the cut

but i got better with it, enuf to be obsessed with getting better and ive allowed
myelf to become obsessed, hours of playing a day, having to force myself to

stop playing and im going to share obligatory novel obsession because i
want this skill and it has taken my performance chops to another level

for some reason with it i actually sing and i sing pretty well, when its just
me im okay but something happens when i get on stage and with this im

feeling a level of presentation ive not felt before,
im actually singing and sounding good

right now what im doing is i find beats and i play them repeatedly trying to
program them and trying to perfect them and just see what i can do with them

then i start trying one of my 7 performances on them so what im getting is
fragments with fragments, hours and hours of tape w/moments of grace
today, after i do my work ima go thru them all and pull out the moments
worth listening to, werhere there are seeds of something interesting to find

i got to go,, im supposed to do novel all morning

patrick said keeping it in tune is easy, rarely goes out he says
but im working this bad boy hard, its going to go out, problem is

its so complicated with its 100 tines that keeping it really tuned is
going to be an amazing task taking days but ima make sure its finely
tuned before all performances  so when you get a moment do a tuning
chart, the keys are on the tine sequences so it should be easier

ive learned over the years that keeping a kalimba tuned means everything
if its tuned well all you got to do is touch it and it will make music

i got to go, mormings are for novel, i got to be ruthless about that

i am in an obsession mode with the mbira, i will accept that though
i want to let the novel be my only obsession for next few months

obsessions by nature don't like to share

but its so impo to me to learn how to really play this mbira before i die
or am otherwise fully disabled, i so want ot make this thing sing
and raise my griotic game to make it worthy of the hoodoo book of flowers

and my next phase

i got to go

all my love

in the zone, clocking pages

FRIDAY


gig last night went well, did for the writer who would be great
and nailed it if i do say so myself, which means i got most of

my  critical lines in w/o major flubs, did my best to have enuf
chops on array mbira but it just was not ready for primetime
not for a 10 minute gig, next gig is on the 28th, we will see

got a groove going on rest for the weary, just got so god awful
much work to do, damn near started from scratch 2/3rd of novel

a couple of trump points and im gone:

so trump figured if 59 tomahawks got him some praise
the mother of all bombs would be good for more accolades

trump getting applause for the tomahawks means he will
reach for the kill switch more often like a kid w/a new toy thta kills
they were like lets do the mother of all bombs next, see who salute

the eclipse of bannon Im iffy, bannon is responsible for much of
trumps overt awfulness so having hm leave means trump wont be so
blatant about it anymore, but that just means he will learn to camouflage
his awful like a good republican does, bannon would have been good
for 2018 but the damage to Americas vulnerable  is such that ima
have to judge his eclipse one for the home team

im out

 

 

 

SUNDAY 4/9

so i dont gnerally remember my dreams
every once in a while i wil but i remember

bj ashanti once telling me he did poems off his dreams
so as part of my going thru old manuscripts i found a
passage that i went to put into my hoodoo tales notes
to be a story one day and i thought i should keep track
of my dreams as potential stories so i woke up this
morning because this dreams snatched me out of sleep:

---------------------

I was with two women, a beggar came up to us aggressively
And I went into defense mode, not today brother, but something
Made me decide to give him a dollar and so I reached into my
Pocket and he pleased started talking thanks my brother stuff and
reached out his hand for some dap which i reluctantly returned

cause i dont mind giving but i dont want to touch while im
giving but when we tried to dap our ghostly hands went right
Thru each other and we were all astounded, but when i held
out the dollar he was able to snatch it right up and we were

Again astounded, then when we went to dap goodby, expecting
The ghostly pass thru again, this time it was a solid dap which
Again astounded all 4 of us and me and the brother backed off

pointing at each other like you da man you da man and it
was like we shared humanity instead of just ships passing

--------------------   

now generally i would get to interpreting this for you, clearly the
great mojo has decided i am in need of some empathy training but i
think this thread will be more powerful if i let you do the interpreting

(i probably shoulda left that ahared humanity
line off, pure wrap up, but i like it, so be it. . .)

SATURDAY

amazing, damn near a new novel
3rd instead of 1st, new sensibility

willingness to start over on impo passages
whatever it appears to be working, i seem to

be coming up w/good text (notice how i
fearfully qualify it) in the zone and clocking

pages, well more like clocking paragraphs
moving slow but moving steady and leaving

good manuscript in my wake, still raw and rough
but its not embarrassing me yet - thats huge

the judgment comes when it gets cold
but so far it feels viable, im gone, its just

6 am and ive already done a good days work

im in the zone, when the work is effortless, when the
bummer is when you simply must sleep, must eat, or
watch mindless tv to let your mind rest - when all you

really want to do is clock pages, 12, 15, 18 hours a day
i live for the zone, in the zone anything is possible

all my love

rdoc