SUN ADDEDEDENDUM
in the past i would get hung up on readership #s
doing rootsblog mostly for scholars of future
but i would like a little reassurance my words have value
i realize now tho that beyond the scholars of future
its written for me, changes my relationship with it
a lot of what im reading is slush, hopefully it will
be stronger going forward but its fed 3, 4 major
projects and im only on feb 2008, interesting . . .
SUN ADDENDUM: counterpoint
in my memoir im doing these flah fic beats and
each one has a title and the titles are good, beats in
themselves, for instance the pat moody beat i
entitled that one 'the deep dark unfaceable'
cause that what stick with me, what i want to stick
with you, i got to go, im on feb 2008 and got to
get to july, no mas rootsblog
all my love
of making many books
part of reason im moving so slow is because these old 'public journal' beats
are so provocative, ive literarally started 2 oe 3 books based on passages in
this last week or soo of reading, or found major material for books in mind rather
its put all kinds of things on mmy mind and all mmy meta projects have evolved
but god help me im averaging 3 to 6 months a day, 3 months basic but that will
mean 4 days per year x 12 years almost 2 months, that will not fly, i must have 6
mos a day which gets this drudgery phase done by end of month, i can live w/that
i can live with that
bonnie say is 6 months a day possible, i said no, she said consider
a more reasonable schedule then and i said reasonable dont get no
novel done, reasonable people do not become artists, you give yourself
inhuman deadlines, yoou fall short but still you got further than a
normal person could, excuse me, a reasonable person would
obsession is what i do, sometime
iit works, sometime it dont
SUN 9/13 the deep dark unfaceable

this is a beat from Feb 2008, i see i had in mind to play with
the graphics on my beats, abandonnned it i recall cause it
added minutes per post but i willl consider using it again
didnt have disc minutes then, certainly dont have them now
but i do like playing w/spatial narrative
--------------------
didnt do a lick of work yesterday, and morning almost gone still nothing
once i realized im in my endgame i believe it scared me - just flat out scared me,
its like okay, when i finish this one i should have a real novel (2008, 12 YEARS AGO, SAD)
after all these years im almost afraid to have no more excuses
so im sitting here at the SACRED DESK about to face the beast one more again
got to go into longhand now, word by word got to move these last 50 pages to higher ground
when you need good rich critical narrative, longhand seems to work best
some primal connection w/the hand the mind and the pen, and the slower
pace gives your mind TIME TO PLAY W/THE WORDS as you create them
got some good commentary for you but wont be able
to focus until i see if i get a good days work in
if you hear from me this evening you will know im good to go - clocking pages
IF YOU DONT, MEAN IM STILL RUNNING SCARED
pray for me
WAS JUST THINKING ABOUT SOMETHING ONE OF MY COLLEAGUES PAT MOODY ONCE PUT ON MY MIND, I WAS DOING A CLASS FOR ONE OF HER PROJECT ADVANCE SEMINARS AND SAID MY WORK IS FEEL GOOD WORK AND FEEL GOOD DONT GET NO RESPECT IN LITERATURE AND SHE SAID ALMOST ANGRILY I DONT REMEMBER THE EXACT WORDS BUT BASICALLY THAT LITERATURE WAS SUPPOSE TO EXPLORE THE DEEP DARK UNFACEABLE IN THE HUMAN CONDITION AND IT WAS LIKE A REVELATION TO ME - IM STILL WHO I AM, STILL A DELTA SOULDOCTOR AND THIS NOVEL STILL GON BE A HEALING SPELL BUT to GET THERE I GOT TO GO DEEP . .
FRIDAY ALREADY? TELLING MY OWN

so i got all these projects in play
the book of wisdom is all these wisdom stories from round
the world that ive rewritten but what i really want to do is
write my own - so i was reading a book about aesop and it was saying
many of the tales attributed to him were just greek sayings to which
stories were attached over the years and one of the tensions with
taking stories from many cultures is wo cultural context you lose
something sometime, they should be universal beats but then there
is that inexplicable note so i think i should take sayings all bllackfolk /
americans know and put stories on them, was listening to a reggae song
'the journey of a 1000 miles' and everybody know the payoff is
'begins with one step' which is also a creative mantra, that passage
that book, just start it, trust that one day you will finish it
if you make it exist - right now r i g h t n o w
so on that principle i did a rough immediately:
so what about a pilgrim that needs absolutely needs to take an impossible journey and the babajohn does something that makes him or her get up and go outdoors and s/he will say what was that, and the babajohn will say, the 1st step
okay, 2nd take, opened it up a little
and degenderized it
what about the babajpohn the proprietor of the inn of lost souls, the hole in the wall, the inn at the crossroads, the pilgrim comes, talks about this impossible journey that must be ventured, but i cannot, the pilgrim cries, no one could, and the babajohn agrees, it is impossible, you may stay here as long as you like, but the babajohn gradually turns the temperature of the Inn up until it is fearfully hot and the traveler prepares to leave, why this sudden graciousless the pilgrim cries, what do you call this, the 1st step, say the babajohn, which way you will go i do not know, but you cannot stay here, demoja,
okay, its rough and raw, i will fix it, make it sing
the next one i wiill do is 'know thyself'
maybe using a crossroads decision . . .? ? ?
also an intro tone came to me while on the porch today, maybe the voice of the text
it wiill be a storyteller talking about telling stories, i turned 70 last month
and its tripping me out cause of the covid and all, feeling mortal feeling fey
this reflective elder voice might work:
once i was a man of power, a master griot, once i could command the stage, stridiing it like a caged lion, tail a twitch, mane inflamed, i recall the time i leaped off the stage in full roar, landed on the back of a chair in the front row, it tilted over and i lept to the next row, that chair tilted and i rode it to the ground, still shaking my long tailed rattle, now the only thing ima do with a chair on my stage is sit on it
be safe
SUN 9/6 12:41 AM a new world is born

"its like im standing there and im macking and its an epic mack and i got to keep macking and
weaving that magic mack until every thing around me is transformed and a new world is born"
---------------------
okay, so im slogging thru old rootsblog, still in 2005, crawling along cause its so provocative
for instance this one line talking about some REST scene i was struggling with, so now ima
do a fllash story, some storyteller trying to tell a new world / reality into existence
ima stop everything and do a rough draft of it right now, rough and raw and wont be
viable for some 7 or 9 drafts but the 1st step is raw text, in fact lets see what we can do:
the storyteller is ancient, does not look like he has a good story left in him, the lines
of his face as deeply cratered as the forests of wagadu, the villagers are expectant
it has been awhile since he told his last tale and tongues have been wagging
but they all cease when he begins talking because in amazement they hear a voice
that is frail yet still commanding and as he tells his tale it begins to grow in power until
it has riveted them, a gathering of the tribes at the foot of jebal barkal,the elders
of kush have spoken he said, calling on the long march of the 1stborn, you who must
be scattered to the 4 corners of the earth and tempered thru the holy hell of
slavery to a star flung destiny, the long march of the firstborn has begun and
there,, he points at the stars in the sky, is where it ends, and so begins his
tale, strange and otherworldly, faint and halting, but the more he speaks the more
it becomes real to them, the more solid he becomes (have him be faint at
beginning, he has to tell the tale to substantiate or something?) and
suddenly they see it, the march of the generations, a star faring folk leaping
at the sun - and something something along this line, this is the core, i will fix
it in the subsequent drafts, 1st step is always to make it exist, get it out of
your head and on paper, once it exist you can make it sing . . . .
i once thought writers were diff from other folk, special
i know now what makes it diff is we wriye shit down
other folk their useful thoughts float off into the air
------------------
WED 9/3 11:35

hello world, been interesting giong thru old posts
seeing whats stood the test of time, most of the
overt political is dated and the personal, which i
try to avoid, still good - aint like i dont know thhis
babajohn used to hammer it, politiics cant carry
a story, want to preach write an essay
somethiing to keep in mind as i go forward
have slowed to a drag cause so evocative
and only up to 2005, got 15 years to go
want rootsblog 2020 to be in part a covid journal
chronicling the times / the moment
maybe try to give info that will be useful to folk
right now im living the covid life
minimalist social interactions
(bonnie has a pod, i do not)
i feel like im in a zombie apocalypse
hiiding out in my cave and only leaving
to forage for food while avoiding the
maskless undead
but following covid protocol:
handwashing, distancing, etc
staying informed, engaging
policy and social behavior patterns
is just shortgame, survival
all of us doing individually
what the collective must
the longgame is to turn a hammer
of this magnitude into cultural strength
makiing good health a cultural trope
then we will have turned the trick
otherwiise its just a tragedy
photo: mi mbira getting charged on
the grave of mi mentor - babajohn
killens: the great griot master of brklyn
all my love
MON 9/1 11:35

hello world, i think im back
big transitions, sent novel off and for 1st time
in 20 years of hardgrind proud of it
retired after 20 odd years in academe and
loving it, all i do is write read and vegetate
knee still fucked and need to kick up pt again
finally after much anxiety got my medicare
a, b, and d right, big relief
handling lockdown welll, beibg productive, will
be on covid lockdown untill there is a vaccine
if trump is re elected will just kiss my ass goodby
part of reason ive withdrawn is got this condition essential tremors
where hands tremble so bad its an effort to type write or brush my
teeth and part of reason i retired is if i dont have but X pages left in
me they gon be my pages, not my students so im going to be very
minimmalist here
working on a memmoir, real one instead of a manifesto
using flah fic tech, part of 'research' been going thru old
rootsblog posts and realizing how valuable its been to
me trying to account for the evolution of my cosmology
and how many concepts i worked out 1st here
so ima resurrect it
publiahed the hoodoo book of flowers myself
got tired of industry trying to make it something else
now working on the hoiodoo book of wisdom and i
can let this one be the feel good spiritwork i wish
the HBOF is but it had too much work to do
thinking of it as part of a trilogy
the hoodoobook of wisdom
the hoodoo book of grace
the hoodoo book of divinity
turned 70 back in july
feeling mortal cause of the plague (and 70)
maybe 70 year olds shouldnt start trilogies
we will see how that goes
tired of this two finger typing
all my love
Recent Comments