mar 4, 4:18 am (1 of 305 at 10 pt)
did nof read the last segment
i have started the nnxt draft
lets go for 10 a day, starting
tomorrow, i gotta do paperwork
MAR 3, 11:10 DONE DEAL 255 PGS
but i got to go over the last 50 pages
will be done with that this evening
dont get bogged down rick, dont try
to make it right, just make it coherent
mar 3, 8:14 am (pg 250 of 258)
said i was gon take a break, kept writiing
on llast segmennt, last lap but was sitting
ehre asleep at the keyboard or rather in
some kind of suspended animation then
woke up and like this aint working rick
go get that tea, stretch your legs
mar 3, 7:41 am (pg 246 of 259)
was about to go take that break and caught myself
what am i saying, fuck a break, finish the phase
then you collapse, when the job is done
when your brain gets tired you get drifty
you still working but nothing getting done
you just going thru the motions, ima get up
stretch my legs, go get me some fresh assam
golden tip, come back to the sacred desk, partake
of some good god ganja and drive on thru
then i will allow myself to collapse
mar 3, 7:33 am (pg 246 of 259)
this is basically a done deal
i will be thru w./this in an hour or so
but ima take a break, my brain is tired
and ima have to hiit it again, likke the
last one its still chaotic, endgame
got to be strong, and my standards
have deteriorated, what i accept now
i would not have accepted earlier but
the closer i get to the finish line the
more ruthless i am about getting there
this draft will be trash, about 40% slush
next draft will cut the slush, it wiill be a real draft
nlot a good draft but a real draft, lets say march
the next draft will be a good one
and the next one even better
likely that will be a monney draft
lets say april maybe may
unless of course i hear good from the
industry in which case i put this down
mar 2 11:39 pm(pg 225 of 265)
i was like how could that be, i loost ground
been working hard and then i remembered
i went over the prophecy segment again, ok
was reading where some politicians saying just
give the 2 dose peoople one dose and use the extra
and im lijke you have lost your mind if you think im
giving up mmy 2nd dose, fauci told them no good
you want to see a real insurrection
you just try to take my 2nd dose
feb 28 11:34 (pg 221 of 277)
good thing im ahead of the game, will need to
go over the last 50 pages or so, personalize
the rhetoric, whn i tried to interview ekpe he
kept trying to run his base rhetoric on me, same
things he tells the kids when he performs and i
had to keep cutting in trying to get past the mask
the prophecy section does the same thing
much too much of arthurs rhetoric, got to
ground it in life incident triggers,
personalize it
shouldnt take more than one
3 hour morning session
okay rick quit talking about it
lets do this
feb 28 1:56 pm (215 OF 283)
good numbers but its clear ima have to hit this section
again, its too rhetorical, beats need to be grounded in
life incidents and if i cant ground them extract them
take a break, eat breakfast, come on back riick, i aint
no where near collapsing, take a break, pace yourself
feb 28 6:53 am (196 of 286 and im like what happened)
3 days and only 4 pages and i think its cause i had
to fiil in those holes cause i still been fiendng the page
and then the prophecy section was pure chaos
50 pages i had to redo by hand at 9 pt singel
12 point more than doubles the pagecount
out of curiosity just checked 12 double, im on
624 out of 788 pages, not bad, cut 200 pgs so far
this book aiint gon be more than 400 pages
ima have to be ruthless
so look like i lost some forward mmotion, a rough
partch, it happens, should be back in the groove,
we will see
received 2nd royalty check from amazon for HBOF
$610, the 1st one was like 50 dollars, progress
im burnt out, my mind is fried, Im
just spinning my wheels, im gone
all my love
rdoc
FEB 25 11:29 PM (192 OF 292)
got amiri here cause of two beats in memoir
that made my heart so full because i only now
in remembering them realize how much amiri
believed in me
one time a black arts conference at cornel
im in auduience cause i hadnt been invited
and afterwards all the panelists were going
to this big dinner and amiri saw me leaving
and said where yoou going i said wasnt invited
and he said come and at the door he said
arthur is with me
other tiime when heartbreak and cocaine
broke me, sent me fleeing to california to
try to rebuid, amiri came out to doo a reading
and again,.he say arthur whart you doing here
i had him sign a postter and he wrote:
to arthur flowers
we passed the baton on to you
dont drop dat m.f.
i still have the poster, 30 years now
and the writing is fading and so am
i but i still got the baton in my hand
knees bad, limping and
llame but still game
two beats left, how can two beats be 100 pgs
(8) propehcy and (9) fa, must be a lot of slush,
havent the faintest idea how such
esoteric fare is going to work, just
do it rick, let the material guide me
showtime . . . .
Feb 24 12:02 am (178 od 191)
wading thru the narrative mud,
2 pgs a day and happy to get that
FEB 24 3:35 (176 OF 191)
2 pages, it is what it is, had to do a lot of
hole filling today, i ahd nothing about beijing
and that was a rich experience, whatever
a good days work i got 2 pages, it is what it is
still some hours, you can do better . . .
feb 23, 10:41 pm (174 of 290)
picking up speed cause i got process now
and everyday i refine process so im clocking
more pages by cutting out unnec steps, ima
take a break and hit it again, ive made up for
lost gorund, time to get ahead of the game
feb 23, 7:45 am (158 of 296) so far
didnt get a lot of work done yesterday
heard from ellen, she asked for two chasnges
askjed me to take out the new intro, didnt work
for her, its gone, and asked me to do title for
first temporal dislocation and i told her i would
and didnt, just didnt work for me so she is sending
it off and asked me to do like a cover letter to editors
I don’t know what they call it, for when she sends
iit out, last time I did this was 2011, and ellen never
likes what I send, she wants exciting back cover
copy whereas I soberly try to explain what ive done
told her she can cut and shape as necessary
------------
REST FOR THE WEARY is a meditation on prophecy told through the story of Jubilation T. Conquer, a hoodoo sorcerer who gets called to the prophetic while living in a riverside community in old Memphis. A local hoodoo elder known as a Finder of Lost Things, when somebody starts killing his hoodoo colleagues he becomes a hoodoo detective leading to a confrontation at the crossroads with Staggerlee, his best friend and fellow Vietnam Vet. Both the Conqueror and Staggerlee are afroam folklorics, as are many other characters in RFTW. This confrontation at the crossroads represents the conflict between afrospiritual and gangsta impulses in afroam culture. The historical thread attempts to tell a history of Black Memphis, mostly through monologual narratives serving as literary slave narratives. This is told primarily through the story of two escaped slaves who come to Memphis during the Civil War searching for a daughter sold away during slavery. This telling incorporates significant moments in Black Memphis history including contraband camps, the Fort Pillow Massacre, the Riots of 1866 and the Yellow Fever epidemics. The daughter becomes Queen Mother Memphis, a local hoodoo elder some 150 odd years old. She and Angel, her QM-in-training, think Jubilation has a role to play but he is resisting the prophetic call because of trauma in his past. The charismatic power that enables the prophetic he has come to equate with taking souls and he has sworn off enforcing his will on civilians, which comes easily to him, much too easy. He has a complicated relationship w/Angel, maybe real, maybe just another confabulation by a weary conjuror who has perhaps played one reality game too many. Through an increasingly fragmented nonlinear fusion of past, present, future and mythical narrations RFTW attempts to encompass the visionary field of prophetic eternity in the moment / text. The afrofuturistic scenes speculate on human destiny as a star faring folk as part of his prophetic visions. These visions become narrative when he is sitting on a driftwood throne caught up in the roots of a riverside bottletree, working on a wouldbe afroam holybook he no longer believes in. The narrative style aspires to be an afroam talking text, oral, a griotic epic, The Long March of the Firstborn, told through an African American literary language that also aspires to be a sacred language, an attempt to explore the concept of novel as magical text that transforms the reader / world as it is read. The novel as holybook.
Feb 22 8:21 am (153 of 299)
alright below 300, getting more ruthless about
extraction, i hate to pull anything out, but i got to
move forward and dont have years to ditz around
ellen says novel good to go
out to industry, pray for me
my timing has been off, blackworks
been best sellers and im out the loop
but maybe it will work in my favor now
i guess thats it, let me go see if i
need to shovel snow before simon
does it for the 70 year old next door
which is cool that he looks out for me
but i cant let that debt build up
save it for when i need it
be safe
arf
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