Unexpected Hiatus

Dear Readers,

I have taken an unexpected hiatus and thanks to your love and support as well as some well overdue changes in my life, I have returned.

Expect some beautiful gifts really soon!

-R

Abbey Lincoln becomes an Ancestor

"When everything is finished in a world, the people go to look for what the artists leave. It's the only thing that we have really in this world -- is an ability to express ourselves and say, "I was here."

Jazz Legend, activist, beauty, and icon Abbey Lincoln passed on yesterday.

I am deeply saddened by her loss despite not knowing her personally. My sadness is because of what she represents to me. Beauty, sophistication, boldness, genius, resilience. And her sound! Wow! What a sound! A sound that resonates within our collective consciousness as she called us back to our Source.

While beautiful in her own right, she lent her spirit to inspiring us to fight the ugliness of racism and Jim Crow during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

When she called for Bleek to practice his trumpet in Spike Lee's Mo Betta Blues, she reminded me of my own mother whose shrill voice was always full of good intention and tired from sacrifices.

Who will carry on her work? Who will keep pushing the boundaries of this art that has our history in it?

If we are happy with what we are producing as a people now? What will we be leaving behind?

Ashe' Abbey Lincoln

Resolution: A Love Supreme Pt. Deux

No truly good thing comes without its hardships and challenges. Love is no different. We have been infected with the idea that it will come in a neat and pretty package stamped with a Hallmark crown. Love doesn't always look like an upper middle class Pandora, with a white picket fence, 2 1/2 kids, and a dog.

For me, love was present in Taste the Tropics ice cream after getting As, staying up to watch boxing with my Pop, and action figures from Red's Toy Store.

It was also in getting whooped from time to time. It was in the yelling after disappointing my parents for one reason or another. It wasn't all toys and ice cream.

And some of us know that all too well.

Yet for one reason or another, many of us are lost from love. Perhaps it was a hug that was shunned, a best friend who moved far away, or longing for the embrace of an absent parent. One could argue that the essence of love is found in family. Our families serve as our earliest teachers. We learn to love them because we depended on them to carry, clothe, and clean us. We trusted them with every fiber of ourselves. We grew and had growing pains.

For some of us, the pain was significant enough to negatively shape our perspectives on love well into our adult lives.

We often confuse love with fantasy - projecting our infatuations with our minds' creations onto others. We continuously expect them to be who they are not and do what they may have never been created to do.

It is a tough pill to swallow, but I believe that within every problem is a secret desire to be resolved.

The love we seek externally, must first be found inside. We have to reconcile with our past in order to see clearly into the future. Love won't be found in the bottom of a bottle or in expensive clothes, but it is found in forgiveness. Not just of others - but of ourselves.

Love is an endless dance of forgiveness, and most of us have two left feet. But I'm confident we'll get better at it...one step at a time and one step closer to A Love Supreme.

A Love Supreme - Learning from the Elders

Acknowledgement - A Love Supreme

There has been a flood of conversation about black people and our apparent ineptness in romantic relationships and marriage. There are countless articles, books, plays by cross dressers, movies by cross dressers, news specials, blogs and radio shows about the same. A cacophony of single ladies is usually featured around a self described expert on black love and relationships. Despite all the cross-country book tours, photoshopped e-harmony photos, and revolutionary but gangsta man-bashing, none of it has seemed to solve the problem.

Meanwhile a whole bunch of people are making money off of our collective misery.

Nope. Don’t look at me. I don’t have an answer either. All I do know is that all of these so-called conversations are devoid of love.

None of it feels right. The talk is full of bitterness, anxiety, bizarre expectations, materialism and superficial status chasing.

Let’s be honest here.

Are we chasing after love – or something else?

Far too many of us have never bore witness to love in our own families, let alone in our individual lives, so how can we chase after something that we wouldn’t even recognize?

I rarely get personal in my pieces, but if what I experience in my life qualifies as love, then it is a beautiful messy thing. It’s a drink that releases inhibitions and makes you warm on the inside. Drink too much, or too quickly and you suddenly find yourself on your ass and sick to your stomach. The whole world spins around you while you pour out your insides vowing to never do this again.

But of course you will.

Over time you learn your tolerance and find out what you enjoy most. Can we get it now? Can we accept that it’s okay to sip the love potion? Will we understand that it all starts out with acknowledgement?

To borrow a theme from James Cameron’s Avatar, we have to see each other. A Love Supreme is found in our acceptance of ourselves and others for who we are at our core rather than the adornments that have more to do with flesh than spirit.

I see you. I see the hurt. I see the need for companionship. I see the desire for trust. I see you wanting to be swept off of your feet that have grown calloused and indifferent. I see you wanting to be trusted. I see you wanting to be understood and accepted. I see you hoping to someday be given the benefit of the doubt. I see you wanting someone to be on your team for once. I see you wanting to be selfishly and reciprocally in love. I see you wanting to give love to someone who is willing to receive it. I see all of you.

And I'm sure there are others that see that too. But I also see that love requires vulnerability and hope. It requires acknowledging that none of us are without scars. None of us are without memories we sometimes say we would rather forget. Certainly, I am no different. Love can be bittersweet - but to experience it with others must make it all the more worthwhile.

Thank you John Coltrane. Ashe’

The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro

July Fourth has always had many meanings for me. It evokes memories of barbecues, reggae music, firecrackers and sparklers, and family. It conjures up memories of being on my father's shoulders at the African Street Festival, (now the International African Arts Festival) and seeing beautiful black folks selling their wares to the sound of jembe drums.

The red, white, and blue flags were entirely alien to my experience. I didn't connect July 4th to celebrating a nation that endorsed the Gulf War. I didn't see myself smiling with the cherry cheeked children in front of Macy's. Young as I was, I knew intuitively that we were not celebrating the same things.

I reflect on all these experiences today and ask Frederick Douglass' question again. What is the meaning of July 4th to the Negro?

Does it mean something different now that we have an African American president? Is the holiday somehow more meaningful in what some call a "post-racial" America?

Interesting that we are at war in the Gulf again...and the Gulf of Mexico.

International African Arts Festival

International African Arts Festival

July 2nd - July 5th.

Commodore Barry Park, Brooklyn, NY

www.iaafestival.org

Arts, Music, Performances, Clothing, Food, Unique handmade jewelry and beautiful black folks from throughout the diaspora.

Inspired. Writing soon. Promise.

Malcolm & Coltrane on A Love Supreme from Souls Survivor on Vimeo.

Kerry James Marshall: One True Thing

Kerry James Marshall: One True Thing, Meditations on Black Aesthetics

For many African American artists, defining a black aesthetic has meant a long and painful attempt to find a place within a dominant white culture, a culture whose ideology and assumptions appear to be so pervasive as to seem invisible at times. In his masterful travelling exhibition, ‘One True Thing: Meditations on Black Aesthetics’ Kerry James Marshall has elucidated what Western culture has efficiently negated or appropriated: an African American sensibility capable of addressing universal themes.

_Polly Ulrich
http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/kerry_james_marshall/

L'Aesthétique: Looking Inward

The application of knowledge is wisdom.

At times, I trick myself into believing that growth and becoming wise can happen instantaneously. Or, that my desire to achieve "success" will force me to develop at a faster rate than what is natural for me.

My environment and my experiences have given me a sense of urgency that while beneficial at certain points in my life, has also caused a great deal of anxiety and stress. I always wished there was some wand I could wave or have magic words to say that would change the way I felt.

Last night, there was.

They were magic words in the sense that they were perfectly timed and unlocked a room in my mind. "You'll make mistakes and that is ok. You're human. You're young."

Previously, I had spent so much time analyzing and feeling mournful over missed opportunities that I could not see the ones in front of me or harness my own energy and potential.

No more.

Today I quote Emerson.

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

In 2010, I want to make meaning in whatever small ways I can and let things come as they may. I need to start having fun my way.

The List

Photography - I'll use my new cameras* to do some special projects including but not limited to: A Family Photo Album and a Brooklyn Tribute

Props to one of my inspirations Jamel Shabazz.



Writing - A chapbook perhaps? I used to be a poet *shrug

Collaborative Projects.

I think black folks are beautiful, and I want all of us to think so too.










I don't have all the answers about how to get there just yet, but I'm okay with that.

How will you contribute to the Black Aesthetic in the new millennium?



Peace!

In the Stories we tell children Pt. deux

We are at the beginning of a new decade. The old one was full of so much joy and growth yet marred by so much destruction and death.

I attempted to ring in my New Year on a grand note, only to have the moments of anticipation climax into the sad realization someone had absconded with my bottle of Nectar Imperial! Though upset, I eventually got over it (days later) and poured myself into my work and my students. My work can be quite consuming at times, and like most American jobs, those who do the most work receive the least pay. Discontent with quite a few things in my life, it seemed like I started 2010 with my shoes on the wrong feet.

Then there were earthquakes.

As the ground shifted in Haiti, and men, women, and children struggled in vain to escape the buildings collapsing around them, there was another earthquake in the States. Its aftershock could be felt around the world, as sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity erupted from the mouths of the visible.

A "reporter" stood to continuously ask a man about the destruction and horror he experienced as he held his dead child in his arms.

Somewhere on the steps of a Grand Central Station escalator was a remark about how Haitians will come to the US as the Mexicans have.

Evangelist Pat Robertson said that the earthquake was God's way of punishing the Haitians for making a pact with the devil.

Silly me, I thought the Haitians had a revolution to remove the devils! (CJ)

All of these things reminded me why I do the work that I do and how grateful I should be for the opportunity to teach.

Ignorance is not bliss. It is evil, and more often than not its seed is planted in childhood. What is most hurtful about the comments and behaviors I've witnessed is that they are repeated and believed by my own.

The idea that a loving God would punish an already suffering and impoverished population because of the practice of Vodun is absurd. The fact that there are black people in the United States who think this is even more absurd when just a few days ago you made a meal of black eyed peas, collard greens, and pork without thinking about why.

The African experience with religion has always been syncretic. Vodun is no exception. Of course, I don't expect everyone to understand this, when they may have used "Haitian" or "African" as a disparaging term. I don't expect America to give up their obsession with voyeurism when it comes to black people and poverty. Watching the despair on a 42 inch flat screen is as close as many want to get.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Our generation has witnessed many defining moments. What will we tell our children? That we stood idly by with our blackberries in our condos while children die of thirst? Will you still stand in your church recalling your refusal to help other human beings because you believed in some hollywood invention? Or will you stand up for what is right?

Its a new decade. Make your meaning clear.

-N

http://www.supportunicef.org/site/pp.asp?c=9fLEJSOALpE&b=1023561

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34835478/ns/world_news-haiti_earthquake/