rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

hello all, i just read an article that made my day
talking about bidens political style and how that
is what is causing folk to judge him old while
trump gets a pass bec he does not evolve / change

said biden 'late style' is more solemn
than the glad hander he was before


but it was this concept of 'late style'
that gives me hope, that often artist
take wild style swings as they age out
and often produce some of their best work

In criticism, to speak of a late style is to highlight the way certain artists,
at the end of their careers, enter a new and distinctive phase of creativity.
Sometimes they produce a succession of masterpieces that both fulfill and
transcend the promise of the earlier work: Richard Wagner’s final run of
operas; the three major novels Henry James published at the start of the
20th century; the movies Martin Scorsese is making now. In other cases,
an older artist will revisit familiar themes with a new sense of playfulness
and freedom, like Henri Matisse making cutouts, Shakespeare
bending the rules of genre in “The Winter’s Tale” and “The Tempest”
or Bob Dylan reshuffling the pages of his own songbook.

And then there are those artists who swerve in a more radical,
dissonant direction. “The maturity of the late works,” the German
theorist Theodor Adorno wrote of Ludwig van Beethoven, “does
not resemble the kind one finds in fruit. They are, for the most
part, not round, but furrowed, even ravaged.”

this comes to me just as i am trying one mo time
when this novel i been struggling w/for 30 years now

Well ellen, ive started another draft of rest
I m it seems unable to quit trying

this time I kept the 1^st para
the rest im rewriting from scratch

an old storyteller trying one last time
to make his story come to life

is the thread now

strictly fantasmigal, which was missing before

I wanted to depict a real conjuremans life
before but now that ive done that in the

memoir hopefully I can unleash
mi mythmaginations now

straight up speculative

and if not well all I know
to do is keep trying and if i

don’t win I will die surprised

 

 

The 2024 Memphite Reading

excerpted from The 2024 Memphite Readings, delivered
by Rdocs Traveling Medicine Show at the Temple of Stax
Memphis Tennessee, Feb 27^th, 2024


 
-----------------

welcome all you good peoples to the traveling show,
whatever ails you we will cure it for sure down at the
traveling medicine show -

we have gathered here in the name of grace,
and when my people gather together like this,
in peace and love and harmony, that place
that gathering place, this place, is holyground

welcome to the inaugural memphite readings, an
annual divination for memphis and the world from

the high hoodoos of memphis tennessee, devotees
of queen mother memphis, queen mother soul

during the civil war memphis was called the city of
sanctuary, throughout the delta the slaves heard the
drum proclaim, get to memphis and you free - get to
memphis and you free,

so, settle down dear pilgrim, while we take you on
a journey of discovery, a delta pilgrimage,

settle yourself around the sacred fire, while we
provide the visions wo which the people will perish

come be with us while we enact a healing, a great and glorious
healing, a healing  like no healing has ever been healing

we about to do divinity up in here, we gon do a healing

the memphite readings are designed to assess the coming
year and provide guidance for maximizing its potential, so
what is it that you need to know in order to maximize your
potential this year, what is it you need to know to achieve Fa

we here to tell you this gon be a rough year, the most obvious factor in play
is political, its gon to be a mean political season, expect the right wing

ascendency to come down harder on blackfolk, anyfolk, in this the 2^nd
reconstruction, expect reverses in affirmative action, education, labor, et al.

and that’s if our side win, if the other side wins we anticipate maximum chaos,
whichever way it go storm winds will blow, need to hunker down this year,
make yourself & your family impregnable, prepare yourself for rough water,

these are the trying times, concentrate on the fundaments, pay down that
debt, or operationalize it, those tensions been tearing at the family, air

them out, resolve them, your foundation gon have to
be strong, this will be a year of reverses and you must
be prepared to finesse the hammer - again & again

health: again, there will be reverses this year, a couple
of scares, deal with them in a timely manner, don’t
indulge temptation to avoid the hammer, deal with it,

foundational work, once your foundation strong start building,
not for today, this year gon be defense building for tomorrow

bad habits: toss them, they got to go,
nothing but good strong mojo in

crossroads: our neighborhoods must made places of safety,
security and astounding grace, step by step, inch by inch,
house by house, block by block we must take our cities back -

you see something need doing do it, do not wait for credit or
recompense, do it, playa, you are the rock upon which we stand,
dancing in the eye of the storm – o my god, look at you dance

fortify yourself for the hard times to come - consider an ancestral altar,
a quiet corner, photos and a plant maybe, some family heirlooms and
every year a day when the family stories are told - have them take a
chair, the mothers and grandmothers, grandfathers and great grands,
those who made a way out of no way so you could be here today,

call on them everyday - blow your horn
baba handy, blow that redemption horn

look at the condition of the world today its hard not to despair but
humanity has always met the test, we’ve climbed some difficult
mountains you and I, it is when times are hardest darkest, and

there is no hope that humanity reaches for their greater selves,
that’s when humanity embraces the divinity that resides in us all

this gon be a good year, pilgrim, gon be hardcore but its hardcore
that force you to grow strong , that’s what we need from you this
year, need you to be stronger tomorrow than you were today and

when you feel like you can’t go on, want to lay right down and die,
call on queen mother memphis, call on queen mother soul

& the next time you find yourself in struggle want you to remember
what the old root doctors said, every good by it aint gone, cause
you sick don’t mean you dead and trouble don’t last always

may your days be full of passion,
may your lives be full of grace,

may your work serve many generations,,
may gods blessings be on us all