U, Black Maybe (a choreopoem)


U, Black Maybe: Another Look at Global Positioning, and the Hopes of a Radical Overthrow



Suggested Readings and Viewings


Raul Zurita: Interview teleconference via skype (this maybe archived on www.hemispericinstitute.com)

Diamela Eltit: E. Luminata

Common Sense: Finding Forever (especially the trak U, Black Maybe)

George Schuyler: Black No More

Cheryl I. Harris: Critical Race Theory, The Key Writings That Formed the Movement, (especially the article by Harris titled "Whiteness and Property"

Josephine Baker: Princess Tam Tam (the film)

Jill Scott: The Real Thing (especially How It Make You Feel)

Amiri Baraka: In Town

Agosto Boal: Games for Actors and Non-Actor (play the construction of power game)

Nelly Ricard: Margins and Institutions




1 out of 40. this must be a project. "but we are all academics, we are all intellectuals". I must be clear like water, like purified air. I am stuck in a nightmare. You have a tongue that speaks for the universe? ask her and she will speak her own skin. "well in my analysis, in my opinion, in my estimation". Remove your language from my body, it is not your domain, it is not your space, your territory to ejaculate on/in, leave fulfilled, and spent.




This must be film where the end is improvised is acted out real time is scriptless. "only history will finish this action". but this, I can not burn away without casting myself in effigy. This bruise here to the cheek, or the strips of loose forearm flesh does not reveal an absence in this world. This world expects a silence my silence my death is their welcomed peace. then they will use my blood as tobasco and celebrate their good deed of ridding this world of all the blackness that insistent stench resilient stench they fight against.




This must be a project. Somebody is dissertating me at this moment. "oh well you know why her butt is so big, her thighs so wide, her hair so knotty"? the wheels in the cage go round and round. This must be an experiment to see when and how I will break down, break away, break out, break lose, break free.




Someone is monitoring my stillness and marveling. Someone is monitoring my smile and marveling. Someone is tracing my steps through the machine. "this is unbelievable. has she lost all will to fight?" "we have won, let's retreat, let's vacate".




Little darkie Josephine sitting in the corner

Little darkie Josephine sitting on the stoop

Little darkie Josephine sitting in the corner

Little darkie Josephine don't know what to do.




Is what they want to wash away blackness like dandruff from their scalps? This must be an experiment to see how far I can bend over bend back loosen like elastic before I….




What I am talking about is real simple. What I am saying is a theory of blood and bone and legacy. This is not an existential dilemma. Ask the women swirling in my head. Ask the women I call mama sista. This is not for play-play. What I am talking about here is a heaviness at the base of neck and real hollowness in my throat where my words get trapped. There is nowhere to hide away from this shit. There is no way not to be a warrior. Is there?


I'm talking about the constant slap across the face. And this world's urge (in our bodies) towards whiteness. Just go on and be white. Just go on and be white? The price, my death. The price, my bones. The price, my tomorrow. Fuck you.




Am I the metaphor? I must be, and this here must be some sort of quack-science poemetical experiment.




How many pills

How many pills

How many pills

How many pills

How many pills

I gotta swallow to go numb




No but really do these __________ really expect my silence forever? They must be doing market research so see how long they got to fuck wit me before I flip this thing. They must think they got time. They say,




Look how fragile

And the hair almost don't need no lye

And the tone the questioning inflection always is almost there

And look they so disoriented they don't know where home is

And see they don't even want to talk about that place or that story they made up



This must be a dream. But my limbs are numb. And street washing is on heavy rotation in my rapid eye movement. There is no sleep really. Just a stillness like running on a tread mill. Just a …


They can't think we ain't got nothing to say. They can't think we all wanna be like them.




What is the cost of blackness? What is the cost of blackness? What is the cost of blackness? What is the cost of blackness? What is the cost of blackness? What is the cost of blackness? What is the cost of blackness? What is the cost of blackness? What is the cost of blackness? What is the cost of blackness? What is the cost of blackness? What is the cost of blackness?



"Can't come around
They gon' wanna bring you down
No one knows just what's inside
Doing dope and doing time
Why they messing with your mind
Black maybe..."

Through Blood, Across the Scream:

Constructing a Body (Meta)Narrative Under Dictatorship





Suggested Readings and Viewings

E. Luminata by Diamela Eltit

Margins and Institutions by Nelly Richard

Repasos Curated by the Hemispheric Institute at NYU: http://www.hemisphericinstitute.org/cuaderno/repasos/index.html

If you are interested in either the book or the articles I read let me know. I am willing to share and or email what I can.

Peace,

Ebony (loving her own skin) Golden

A poem for diamela eltit's wounds


Look closely as the blood lets

As the rips sing a truth

A trauma a voyage




Look closely as the body becomes mist

Escapes it skin entertains dry veins


Look (first the arms like white angels)

At me (like a fleshy mary)

Then (like a dam unleashed)




A river of blood running home

Barefoot




What do you see the torture of this life

The noose stitched by my own hands more




What do you see my crow eyes squawking

Scratching a hymn into corporeal tapestry

Through Blood, Across the Scream:

Constructing a Body (Meta)Narrative Under Dictatorship




How can embodied meta-narratives critique artistic space in the aftermath dictatorship? What are the signs, symbols, inscriptions, markings, glyphs that transmit this genre-less space of violence and terror, trauma? How can the body pull itself from the margins to the center to redefine and recreate language under and outside of an oppressive regime? What are the practices? What are the actions? Where are the breaks, rips, fissures, ruptures, eruptions, gaps? What can the body reveal that an alien language can not? What can the body atone that the voice can not? How can the body reveal what language reaches for, but is cut from, a language that is high-jacked by the state for the purposes of (re)institutionalizing the body? What are the poetics of disillusion, disorientation? How is the body phonemic, phonetic, and whole language without words?




The idea of the "real" resounds throughout "Margins and Institutions". It seems that a dialectical tension exists between the body and language which conflates and complicates notions of the "real" as explored by Nell Richards. Davila and Foss offer that in the wake of the coup, language is left in a state of "intelligibility" which inspires artists to circumvent and rewire language in order "to seek alternative ways to recover the meaning of that history which had been replaced by the Grand History of the Victors". But where does this recovery begin?


I pose, alongside Richards, that language as an embodied practice, is an action that first must be articulated in the body. In the experiences of the body. In the "reality" of the body. Early in "Ellipsis and Metaphor" Richards shares, "The political and administrative control of expression through restriction imposed on language and its socio-cultural structures, was simply an expedient by which the regime could keep the production of meaning under surveillance". Which is to say that language, and I maintain a language that articulates a political platform or ideology of the oppressed or marginalized, serves as a marker by which the government oversees a particular group's movements and ideas. Clearly, in an oppressive society, language catalogs the discontent of the masses, and possibly serves as a vehicle by which the masses galvanize power to overthrow the state.




But language in the hands of the oppressor grafts a violent text on the bodies of Chilean people forced into silence by the state. Interestingly, Richards explicates the violence of language in the sphere of the art scene as a means of highlighting the academic appropriation born out of a quasi-multi-cultural aesthetic which displaces the political and social relevance of historically and culturally specific art. However, just as language is originally conjured in the body, we must consider the revolutionary implications of an artistic critique that is conjured by the artist who creates it. As artists create their works, we should consider the critical ideologies that are integral to their production. The language which describes, which analyzes this process should begin in the textured nuances that extend past the body during the artistic process.




Perhaps, we can speak about this process of body and creation in terms of birth. The creative process could be seen as the nine-month period from conception to birth, and the new-born serves as the referent, the metaphor if you will. Richards describes metaphor as a tool of deception. She writes, "Metaphor is one such privileged device, which prolongs the communicative process thanks to zones of opacity it sets up in the recognition of references; it increases the buoyancy of meaning so that it remains erratic and thus eludes the restricted reading imposed on it by censorship". While this quote unsettles my aforementioned birth metaphor, it reveals how metaphor muddies the spaces of cognition for those engaging with an artistic project, as spectators. So what the body knows and chooses to act out could totally destabilize popular notions of the "real" or "reality". Incorporating metaphor into artistic practice, I imagine, is like casting in intricate network of connective tissue out to multiple layers of society simultaneously.




But these ideas of the project, the critique, and the metaphor speak again to the referent, the thing we as spectators see and judge, analyze, attempt to make sense of. But this is a different language, different from the language that is glyphed onto the body like a burn, a scar. What language is produced when the body is both the creator and the referent for artistic projects?




The body is away of historicizing artistic projects. The body is elemental, it is the organic stuff, the background story; as well as the workshop, the gallery, the exhibit. The body reaches across temporal-spatial frontiers to speak an experience unique to its corporal existence. The markings, the scars, the burns, tell the individual traumatic narratives that words ache to find. Perhaps, each person needs her own language, because universal language may not actualize one's own project, it is utterly useless.




So I am left with thinking about how the body constructs a meta-narrative, a radical discourse, which reaches past itself into society's fibrous spaces to reverberate revolutionary ideologies, both individual and communal. What are performances of a "body rhetoric" doing as practiced by Eltit or Leppe? I am interested in thinking about how this self-inflicted trauma reintroduces violence back into the society. I am also interested in thinking about how these visual narratives become etched into the psyches of spectators. We should consider the short and long term effects, the social implications. It is important to consider how sacrifice, scarification, burning as a means of constructing a narrative impact the community. I am also interested in thinking about the role of pain in rewiring language. What can a scream or a slice do that a stanza or a manifesto can not?

Litany for Survival

Amiri Baraka's

working my rainbows (essays about performance studies)




CARRIE MAE WEEMS Untitled Outtake from The Kitchen Table Series 1990
silver gelatin print
edition of 5
28 1/4 x 28 1/4 inches

So sistas and brothas, you may have figured out now that one of the major tenets of peformance studies is that performance happens everywhere and is not just confined to theater spaces. Cars perform, organs (kidney, liver and such) perform, nature performs, technology performs, so on and so forth. Objects perform, art pieces perform, etc. Above you find a photo created by the brilliant Carrie Mae Weems. Anna Deveare Smith calls Weems a visionary. I am amazed (but not really) by how Weems captures time, emotion, tension, and narrative in this photograph. This photo moves, like cinema, like water, like relationships.

How is this photo performing? What is it doing? What motion is created in stillness? Is stillness a figment of our imagination? Can emotion stand quiet motionless? Should it? Where is the breath in this photo? How do the bodies house the breath? Release it?

The bodies in this photo perform: guilt, disappointment, blackness, womaness, shame, fear, confusion...I have always been drawn to hands how the hands flail in delight, protect from too bright sunlight, welcome a lover, feed, birth, create, cleanse, break apart. here the girl's hands communicate feelings of fear, regret, timidness. The mother's hands communicate authority, power, strength, tiredness.

The bible in all of its complicated and layered symbology could possibly stand in for father/husband figure seemingly absent in the picture. what does the presence of the bible say about black men, black community when objects take the place of people?

we could talk about light, the grain/texture of the photo, the shadow behind the little girl, how the scene resembles an interrogation room, why weems chose black in white instead of color, how the eyes speak or mute narrative, the fact that the glass of possibly liquor, possible cola (who knows) is the closest item to the audience/spectator and what that means to the overall composition of the work.

Interestingly, I want to take a moment to share a poem not about any of those ideas directly (or maybe in tandem with) the kitchen table.

1.

here, my knotty hair becomes a slick black street

2.

here, i learn this little light of mine here,

3.

two times two becomes four for the first time for me

4.

here, i want to lean over and taste the sun of yellow walls here,

5.

i am taught how to stir gravy with an arm akimbo, a cock-eyed knee, and an ear holding somebody's gossip

6.

here, was the first time i "made" my books with aunt shellie

7.

here

8.

here

9.

here, we sing a poem through greasy fingers and sideways grins

10.

here,

i learn about strawberries and how not to be called a ho

11.

here,

we celebrate my first period with play-coffee and cheese grits

12.

here,

i say i'm grown everywhere else but here

fluid and focused~~~a poem about welcomed blood


cycling around the full moon- august 28, 2007



there is a tickle behind flesh and vein

there is a twinge deep in the rounded darkness

there is a swoosh of beginning and the welcomed release

there is indeed a release

there is a trickle a gush a remaining spirit

a pinch an opening and cool ice cream from chisled infinite fingers

and warm palms on the back of knees and an extra kiss when he expects a cramp

there are many extra kisses

there is a warm bath a scalp cooled by florida water

and coconut oil all over everything

From: Creative Writing @ A&T

Re: The North Carolina A&T State University Lyceum Series Presents

Date: August 30, 2007

For more information contact: Dr. Anjail Rashida Ahmad, Director, Creative Writing @ A&T Telephone: (336) 334-7771, ext. 2370; Email:arahmad@ncat.edu

For Immediate Release:
The North Carolina A&T State University Lyceum Series and the Creative Writing Program in English Presents:

"Sankofa: Secure Your Future~Culturally Engage Your Past."

Featuring: Righteous AIM Spoken Word Performance Troupe

Amaris Howard – Out of Hampton – Aggie Grad ‘04
Poet/Freedom Fighter/Activist

D. Noble Out of G’boro, formerly of The Collective
Poet/Essayist/Activist

Ebony Golden – Out of New York by way of Durham & Houston and DC
Poet/Dancer/Choreographer

3 of America’s hottest, most committed, award winning spoken word poets working on college campuses today. They’ve been featured on Def Jam, Nubian News, For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide…and have toured in DC, Atlanta, Houston & Phoenix.

Their mission is Dedicated to uplifting and empowering individuals and communities through creative expression, social change, and the divine spirit through the arts.

Wednesday, September 19, 7:00 pm, NC A&T Harrison Auditorium ()Corner of Nocho & Bluford Streets. Doors open at 6:30 pm

(Also performing: The Donfolie Dancers & NC A&T Spoken Word Troupe: Poetic Insurgents)

Righteous AIM will conduct several interdisciplinary workshops Tuesday, September 18) with A&T faculty and students. These will be interactive experiences in which participants will explore different examples of self-expression as illustrated by certain genres of the black literary canon. For instance, Claude Brown’s Man Child and the Promise Land and Malcolm X’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X will be discussed as precursors of the hip-hop movement and other contemporary modules for exploring ideas of Black womanhood and the Black male sensibility as expressed toward Black women.

working my rainbows (performance studies essay)

Unpacking the Crawl or Another Look at Global Positioning

By maneuvering through Manhattan in a kinesthetic position of lowness, Pope.L poignantly engages with ideas of mobility, space, agency, and identity which grow out of repeated experiences of state violence. In doing so, Pope.L’s crawls provide a lens through which viewers experience a performance of lack which contextualizes and complicates the ontological dilemma of black masculinity. His crawls ask viewers to intimately engage with the muck and the mess flung as everyday trauma against the bodies of black men. In a way, this performance of lack demands that participants revel in lowness, or at least imagine such a position, as if a ton of bricks were strapped to her back.

But what does Pope.L want to stir and agitate in the bodies of the co-participants who view and perform his project on lowness and lack? As Pope.L crawls and crawls one can not refrain from thinking about how long his crawls will persist before the subjugated body revolts against the prescribed position in society. Why doesn’t Pope.L finally just stand up as an assertion of visibility, verticality, and mobility? Why isn’t there a point of self-actualization in this performance piece when Pope.L creatively re-imagines the future positioning of the black male body on the rough and uneven terrain he crawls over?

These questions are concerned with action and agency denied to black men. Literally the curb-high view the crawl inhibits what the crawler can see ahead of him. Maybe Pope.L wants us to consider the dismal possibilities for the future of black men who can not see a block down the street, in this prostrate position. It is possible he wants us to think about how this quasi-blindness is inextricably linked to black men’s possibility for future self-efficacy. In essence, Pope.L wants us to imagine the historical and current context of embodied immobility that black men experienced in the past as well as here and now.

Lepecki tells us, “Pope.L tackles the question of presence by positing as its condition of possibility the stumble of being and not being never fully belonging to itself,” (93). Pope.L’s crawls are a choreopolitcal statement aimed at activating the community in hopes to unearth collective responses to this physical and societal problem. He reminds his audience of the important role the community performs in shifting the paradigm that makes the position of lowness a daily reality for black men. Did any of the crawl participants reach down to offer Pope.L help off the ground? Did anyone on the street speak up or speak out or help the brother off the ground?

One could assume that this crawl is symbolic of the subjugated positions of other oppressed people in society. Moreover, the crawls remind us of the tendency towards numbness and immobility in the face of repeated trauma. Pope.L’s crawls provide the visual by which communities can remember or experience the space of lack; however, he does not ask us what we are going to do to change this reality. One could only hope that by experiencing this global positioning participants and performers creatively work to dismantle the infrastructure that makes this dance possible.

working my rainbows

working my rainbows (another performance studies essay)


I am still entering this field, the following meditation is another essay that represents my introduction to performance studies.

peace,

e



Fire Breath: asha bandale's

the subtle art of breathing

As a "performative" Healing Text


for Dr. Betty A. Sims & her daughter


one day

one day

i'm gonna be more than a survivor

i'm gonna be a celebrant inside myself


a party girl in my own soul

i'll take myself out to fancy restaurants

bring me roses


and afterwards

i'll make love to myself


and in the heat of passion

call out my own name

asha asha


-from asha bandale's

the subtle art of breathing




asha bandele's poem, the subtle art of breathing, examines the intersecting performances of violence and healing as experienced by Africana women. The poem unfolds around a single, archetypal, persona who questions her healing journey in the face of sexual assault, domestic violence, and substance abuse. Written as free verse, asha bandale utilizes a healing poetics Audre Lorde conjures in Need: a Chorale for Black Women's Voices, to offer a stereoscopic exploration of breath and poetry as "performative" healing for Africana women.

~~~

Sunday mornings find me prostrate, on my back, with a lavender-scented pillow blanketing my eyes. As remnants of myrrh incense tickle my nose, my yoga instructor urges me to lengthen the space between inhales and exhales. She invites me to consider what healing manifests through deep, conscious breathing. I hear her, almost distant, as if under water saying, "imagine your Kundalini life-force warming your whole body, now breathe."

~~~

Readers enter asha's poem as the speaker indulges in daily soap operas, which she heavily criticizes because of her "politically conscious" appearance. Nevertheless, the speaker's soap opera addiction symbolizes the exploration of the characters "staged" experience with violence and the space and time needed to deconstruct such experiences. The character's relationship with soap operas represents her attempt, not unlike the women in my family, to find respite while solving the problems of "…the fictionalized chaos/ of somebody else's life…" asha writes,

"but this is not a poem about soap operas

it's just that i cannot find another way to begin--"


To begin what, the troubleshooting process of solving the really real chaos this character experiences? The process of turning the gaze inward to mine, with mindfulness, tools like breath, as creative and personal ways to jump-start the spirit and move the body towards healing? It is possible the character cannot find a way to envision her life without the physiological effects of contemporary and historical violence(s). What is more, the character might not realize, in the face of consistent trauma, the metaphysical and physical rewards of actualized healing through breath; the subtle art addresses a myriad of possibilities.

~~~

Where does breath hide in the face of violence? My yoga instructor teaches that we choose to hold in our muscles, tissues, and joints stories of our individual and collective trauma. She instructs us to use breath and asana to release traumatic and violent episodes from our connective tissues. She does not encourage us to ignore these body narratives but instead to recognize their significance in our past and their relevance to our futures.

~~~

As such, the persona asha evokes in the subtle art assesses how instances with, "the various sundry crises/ in [her] life" enliven and enrich subsequent experiences with pain and healing. asha explores this struggle in the following lines,

"there are people who have

accused me of refusing joy


and blanketing the sun

but then there are people who

know as i know

even as we laugh

we cannot ignore


the wincing in our eyes…"

The aforementioned lines illumine the difficult journey the speaker, along with Africana women, travels in pursuit of healing from historical and contemporary violence. The speaker asserts notion that violence/trauma and joy cannot live in the same venue. This excerpt also addresses a broader audience who may believe the speaker is behaving in a manner that supports "victimhood" and she is solely responsible for correcting her "wincing" experiences.

~~~

One Sunday I practiced Kemetic breath in addition to my regular yoga asana. Kemetic breath insists the body create new patterns of storing and releasing air. I covered one nostril at a time, inhaled and exhaled, taking care to alternate nostrils. At first, the practice caused dizziness, and disorientation, but soon I welcomed this new and creative approach to "down-loading" energy from the universe. In the poem, asha presences her bond, all be it through instances of violence and healing, with the speaker.

~~~

She continues,

"…I know this space of mourning

is not mine to occupy


but i cannot leave

since your life reads like


the details of my life

which is why i must know


how come you are dead

but i am alive


yet we both were young black female

and fighting histories of drugs

violence separation loss…"


These lines invite the speaker and the audience to consider themselves as more than repositories for violence and trauma. asha reminds her audience that in the wake of trauma and subsequent internalized violence due to the intersection of race, class, gender and the patriarchal structures that support such culture, they are more than a collage of "violent marriages, newports, and suicide attempts." These lines move the persona and the audience to recontextualize instances of violence and encourage the persona, as well as the audience, to re-imagine life as a kaleidoscopic journey that entails boundless and beautiful interactions with the "self" and moreover, support consistent engagement with breath and healing.

the subtle art of breathing's theme centers around diverse approaches to healing. In the first fives pages of text, images and metaphors belabor and resist breath, which signify one aspect of actualizing the healing process, the state of anxiety, confusion or apprehension about how to transition from the place of victim to the place of victor. For example,

"…in anchorage today

a 30 year old black woman

was found in her apartment

dead of an overdose.."


and


"…there is no space to be second best

or needy


in a country trying to swallow up the earth

from the inside out


they incinerate their own children here



i have seen them scraping their own


8 year olds into garbage bags or compactors…"


These excerpts utilize kinesthetic, tactile imagery to invoke the audience's understanding, viscerally and visually, about relationships with "self" in the presence of pain. It is almost impossible to read these lines without some hesitation of breath. However, the poet does not leave her audience or the poem's speaker to sit with these globes of pain and remembered traumas left undigested.

~~~

Fire breath. My teacher occasionally begins our Sunday-morning asana with a series of fire breaths that warm the body before sun and moon salutations. I particularly enjoy fire breath. Filling my lungs with breath and stretching my arms to their fullest extent, then forcefully bringing them down and releasing every bit of stagnant energy from my lungs. It's like a steam bath for every cell of my body. Usually, as I practice fire breaths, I think of any trauma or pain I have chosen to let reside in my body as I pull my elbows along side my ribs and force my lungs clean. I visualize releasing those traumas and watching them evaporate into thin air.

~~~

As the poem concludes, asha's choice of diction and imagery encourages the healing effects of fire breath. The final stanzas offer images of self-love, dance, and passion that fill the space formerly shared with meditations on and interactions with violence. In these lines, asha exercises mantra like repetition that delivers the persona of "falling in love" with herself and the beauty and complexity there in. Asha writes,


"…this a poem that wants to warn

breathing is a difficult and subtle art

this is a poem to say simply i understand

after three attempts i understand, girl, i do

but this is also a poem willing to assert itself and

say i'm glad, even proud, that i'm a survivor…"


These lines erase the speaker's idea that she is alone in her experiences with violence or healing. Now the speaker recognizes as trauma and violence pepper her life experiences so do creative options for healing illuminate her path.

asha bandale's poem is a performative healing text that elucidates the violence, fear, shame, and confusion that make many Africana women impervious to healing accoutrement required to live effulgent lives. The poem delivers intimate monologue, critical and imagistic analysis of personal and community trauma; and of key import, highlights a journeying process that languages, through voice and movement, self-love as a model for healing. The speaker reveals, "then i'm gonna up and marry myself/ does that sound crazy?" The speaker asks this question because she now understands she must be intensely in love with herself and to the outside world this maybe seen as insanity. Possibly the speaker now believes the superficial education American culture indoctrinates its citizens to believe is love is really an institution acted out on the bodies of Africana women as a means of perpetuating historical and contemporary structures of violence and more over, a world in which women cannot voice, move and journey toward healing. This text recontextualizes recognizable traditional symbols of love (i. e. the institution of marriage, "sensual dancing", and passionate lovemaking") as symbols of healing and intimacy that empower, enrich and connote an intensely intimate relationship with "self". Ultimately when asha writes, "…i'll make love to myself/ and in the heat of passion/ call out my own name…" she challenges her readers to invite breath as model for continued healing and renewal in the face violence.

i dare not call this your anniversary (for new orleans)



for the city that rests at the bottom of a wellworn boot

for the city that was home before shreveport

for the city that swallows sunshine and sings out sunshine

for the city that taught me to "wobble" and "catch a wall"

for the city that made me reappreciate my southnern songified speech

for the city that is a welcomed hurricane

for the city that gave me a "westbank boo"

for the city that is my favorite phase of the moon

for the city that crawls into your skin like sweat

for the city that makes me wish i grew up second lining

for the city that makes me dance with an umbrella everytime i can

for the city that is a distant home my tongue and fingertips remember

i dare not call this your anniversary i call this a time to reflect on you new orleans i call this a time to think about how you created this world i call this a time to lift your name in song in poem in dance in prayer

cause you are indeed a holy place new orleans a portal where many ancestors entered this realm you are indeed a holy place and no amount of water or ignorance or the invisibility of your children can wash away your legacy

i dare not call this your anniversary cause i have celebrated with your daughters and have whispered to my departed relatives on the shores of your rivers and lakes

if you happen to catch me new orleans on some corner in the french quarter with the hem of my skirt between two fingers know i am dancing for you new orleans and every coin i catch is in your honor

if you happen to catch me new orleans cookin a gumbo outside in the 9th ward know i am feeding your babies new orleans bowl by bowl serving you up like fresh air

i dare not call this your anniversary cause i know how you party how you mourn and how you sit silent and wait for new day to shine

high)ku~~~a blog about my peru trip

"I Am Wary of Need That Tastes Like Destruction": The Politics of Visibility in Afro-Peruvian Performance and Culture



Audre Lorde reminds us in her poem "Need: A Chorale for Black Women's Voices" of the danger associated with unhealthy, violent relationships and the need for love and connection. I should note, that Lorde's chorale piece was in response to a series of violent acts, specifically murders, against black women. If anyone is interested in reading the piece shoot me a message and I will email it to you. rde is an important entrance to this conversation on the politics of visibility in afro-peruvian performance and culture becuase her work helps us think about sustained performances of oppression and how such performances effect the actualization of individual agency and the politics of this actualization.

These issues have been heavy rotation for the past few weeks. I have been engaging in workshops, lecutres, performances that leave me asking quite plainly where are the black people? I see our artistic practices, which is a type of visibility. I see African features on the bodies of people who do not identify as afro-peruana. I see representations of traditional African religions and spiritual practices, but I don't see many black people. So this is of course a serious problem.

In my conversations, I am learning about the intense and intricately woven history of black people in Peru. Of course there is a legacy of slavery, but I is different from the practices of slavery in the United States. Of course there is a marginilazation of of african people, as most of us live on the outskirts of the large cities, mainly Lima. And do to the history of slavery and geography you will not find many or any black people in Cuzco (due to the altitude) or the Amazon (due to slavery). So most black people are relegated to the outskirts of lima and the coastal areas (where we could thrive on plantation and survive because of similar living conditions that exist in w. africa).

So there is an absence of black bodies, black thought, and black social and artistic movements in peru. Peru has never had a civil rights movement, an uprising or revolution by the black communities. Very few Afro-peruanas attend college in the country and according to a afro-peruana scholar almost no afro-peruanas have attained economic advancement. So literally as I walk (or hobble due to a serious dance accident) or ride around Lima I do not see any black faces.

Peruana scholars speak about the large amount of mixing and passing that happens in the country because of the oppression. so those afro-peruanas who can pass do pass. i must say this is a generalization and i have not spoken directly to someone of afro-peruana descent so all of this is arguable, but i think we could look at the legacy of passing in the united states to draw parallels and analysis based on the politics of skin color that pollutes our own history.

Whether any or all of this is arguable there is an absence.

How do you analyze a disappeared body? The chalk outline is just the frontier. the boundary. The edge. I cannot say it is a beginning? But it does open a question. How does one craft a poem for the imagined presence? Can a poem speak to this truth? Can a poem color in a history? a body? a face that looks like home and tomorrow? How do I search out of absence? How do I search out of absence? How do I search out absence? and find warmth and sunshine and a skin that nods yes to this quest for legacy. An opening is not a beginning. maybe it is the moment before that calls us to take our places at the mark, get set, ready, go.....

So i am looking for blackness in lima with a crew of radical performers and theorists. we are keeping blackness a focus in all of these lectures and performances. two brothas from brazil and a sista from dc and myself are making our desire to see black bodies loud and present. we have chosen not to continue the absence our afro-peruana sisters and brothers are experiencing daily. there are with us and we are thinking and talking about them/us at every turn, every moment of this experience.

so because performance and politics are really one thing, we can look to performance as a way of complicating this already complicated issue. Kimba Fa, a lunch at Rustica, a viewing of Los Musicos Ambulantes, and a mask making workshop all inform my ideas about how performance create both visibility and invisibility for black people.

(to be continued)

ebony

working my rainbows~~entering performance studies installment

So it is Better to Speak:
Audre Lorde and the Perlocutionary Speech Act

Austin teaches that the perlocutionary act is a method for employing speech for the sole purpose of affecting change. He writes, "Saying something will often, or even normally, produce certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons: and it may be done with the design, intention, or purpose of producing them" (101). This explanation speaks to how perlocutionary speech is methodically implored to incite a cerebral and visceral change in the audience who partakes in the performance of such an act. One should consider experiencing the radical speeches of the Womanist liberation movement, such and the Combahee River Collective Statement or the writings of Elaine Brown, as examples of such texts. Influential writers, such as Audre Lorde, cast her "words as weapons" as invocations for a sensibility shift, but moreover, a call to direct action to "do" something to alter and dismantle the systematic oppression of Black women during the 1970's.

Austin provides an example of the perlocutionary act in his eighth lecture. He writes, "He persuaded me to shoot her" (102). This example illustrates the two key elements of the perlocutionary act: the statement and the presence of a desired effect. In this basic case one
views the statement and performance through the inclusion of the act of persuading the listening party. One should also notice the desired effect of the speech act as the shooting and possible death of the victim of this violent act.

This explanation provides the much needed backdrop for understanding how Audre Lorde wields the perlocutionary speech act, in her poem "Litany for Survival". In the poem she incites Black women to speak against sexual violence, homophobia, oppression and the culture of silence that encapsulates these issues. The first three stanzas of this poem present a multitude of situations that have historically silenced Black women. She writes, "for those of us who love in doorways/ coming and going…who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice". It is important to note that this silencing is not just a silencing of voice, but also the silencing of action. Perhaps Lorde provides this litany to remind women of their shared trauma. It is possible that this litany serves as a galvanizing tool to agitate the audience and stir the emotions so that when she exclaims, "So it is better to speak…," the audience is prepared to thoroughly absorb these words for the purpose of acting against oppression in their communities.

In Lorde's successful recitation of this poem she leaps beyond the intent to write and share a poem. She performs the act she incites in her audience and by doing so provides a template for how women can use speech to resist oppression. In short, Lorde's speech act, "…successfully achieves or consummates or brings off" (106), the desired effect she encourages her audience members to practice. Austin encourages his readers to consider the successful completion and consequences of perlocutionary speech acts. The trajectory of the Womanist movement and the prevalence of Lorde's oeuvre in contemporary social justice work shows and proves the successful completion and far reaching consequences of her speech act.

(high)ku a blog about peru
Current mood: anxious

tomorrow there will be sun


your sunless skies are gray
like a traveled beard like confederate slacks
like jazz wrung spiritless your skies are indeed sunless

one of your daughters tells me you own two seasons
the sun season and the sunless season my skin is hungry
for a teaspoon of light for a glimpse of sun against my neck

tomorrow there will be sun even for a moment
the ball of fire will force through the shadows and
greet us like the militant being he is arching our direction

south home now tickling our scalps from heaven

there is no apperance today or yesterday or tomorrow
you have collapsed time and space with your absence
and lima a city kissing the coast is left to sweep the dust and ash

how a crack becomes a riff
for nina,
1.
in the hollow of your moan
there is blackness there is blackness
and a grunt that sparks genuis in your daughters
in the reach of your eyes
there is god there is god
and redemption for all your daughters
in the bend of your fingers
there are ripples there are ripples
that trouble the earth and the spirit
you complicate emptiness with your blackness
you complicate song with your rasp
you complicate sound like a stereophonic volcano
and bring light and bring light
2.
your mama called you eunice
your mama called you eunice kathleen waymon
your daughters call you
3.
salvation
a lover called you little girl a lover called you little girl
your daughters call you salvation
4.
your voice is an offering like palm oil like "hard candy" like ripe coconut
like white flowers like river water and sweet bread
5.
those who know your song know religion is resistance
know a crack is a potential riff and moan is a moan

alright yall,
so imma try not to kirk out as i blog about me'shell ndegeocello visiting my class today. imma try. but just in case you been living under a rock and don't know who she is, you need to get hip and google and buy and worship at the altar that is her dope ass music.
in true ebony fashion, i gotta poem. i gotta poem. i don't believe in qualifiers but i must say the poem just shares a tanch of what she so freely taught us in our 2 and half hour lecture.
in the midst~~~~for fly ass me'shell ndegeocello
1.
the grain of your voice rubbed against vinyl is prayer
is a ridge (like a ridge in your bottom lip) where i oil up and tan
cause blackness is just a beginning and the edge is where i jump to life
2.
you say i am the offspring of an obsolete machine
so i guess me'shell i ain't got nothing to prove me standing here in all my black woman self all dripping with spirit and legacy and rips that healed and ripped and healed and warm hands say i aint got nothing to prove
3.
you say capitalism is the new religion of the masses
so i guess me'shell jesus gotta come back and set this shit straight cause we need a shift to let our people go we need a movement we can breathe through
4.
you say perchance blindness is but dark thought overcome by the light
and the light is a burgeoning entity that sends eyelashes to the tops of cheeks it shocks the back of the throat as it rolls up the spine it doubletimes doubletimed breath my sweet jesus my jesus i heard that you could save me light travels the blood to the ankles and freezes freezes the walk the thought and the pulse
5.
the star beneath your eye is a mantra is an unforgotten sutra an all night orgasm
like this audible memoir speaking all voices but just yours an evangalestic waltz in the higher chakras metronomic sonic swosh the star beneath your eye is a space where marriage can be savior and a whore a whore a whoreawhoreawhoreawhore
never got to open her p*s(y
6.
post script
a black girl soon to swirl around in her mamas belly writes me'shell a love note and places it in her mamas dreams she does not know other girl babies are writing too together the me'shell love notes make a b.i.b.l.e. read it as a sonogram of your destiny
7.
post script script
dear me'shell
thank you for teaching me that obama and hillary aint as fly as shirley (chilsom that is) and that my skin is written in a rich musical register and that tears open a space for self-construction and that a bass guitar can ask a question as loud as a protest and that thewomanistheonlyavenueofdeliverance and that harriet (tubman that is) was wise to walk her children to canada
truly delivered,
ebony
8.
in your silence you ask how can i be a guided missile meticulous in my craft a reserve of seeping energy a seducer of liberation a bringer of light a choir of hearts clapping hallelujahs in warm air

a poem for abbey lincoln

speak/ easy

for abbey lincoln

you know a horn reaches past the body past the ache past the secret past the silence like the guitar reaches past the scream past the flat line past the flourish like a name reaches

past the ancestors past the ovary past the egg and the water past the light like a remix reaches past its originary entrance

your voice reaches back it is a sankofa neck nodding the ancestors through folding me into myself like the ripples of a deep and wide ocean folding me into myself like flour enveloping sugar in an orange ceramic bowl

your voice reaches back it is a skin-so-soft hand with perfectly polished red nails it reaches
back it is a recipe recorded on tear stained tissue it reaches back it is a small curdled note
worn honey thin it reaches back like a turtle's dream

you remind me what muh deah said about being fast what my mama showed me bout being fast what india arie sung about being fast you remind me and i am thankful that I carry a

little bit of a swing on a sunday porch with me you remind me to reach past the creak past the crack past the slow heart beat and the fading eyes

you remind me to meditate on purple petals and tangerine dusks and that
moving slowly is not really bad/ moving slowly you see/ the wonders of the deep/ just waiting there for me

peace family,
last night i was blessed to learn of an new orleans ancestor called sista gertrude. i was introduced to her through a multimedia presentation which included a sound set by King Brit (holla) a band from Philly/New Orleans and a projectionist (anonymous, but dope). Not only did i enjoy the visuals but i enjoyed learning about the revolutionary-spiritualist sista gertrude.
this is all so important as i am writing about spiritual resistance and in the work of nina simone right now, specificially how traditional african spirituality in jazz is a performance of womanist resistance models.
take a look at www.summerstage.com for free concerts in the Central Park they got stuff going onn all the time. take a look at http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/5aa/5aa94.htm for more information about sista gertrude. take a look below for a poem about her.
peace and love, e-bone
Here is a picture of Sister Gertrude Morgan found at NPR's website
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4864538

packing list/ the recipe for soulsaving
~~~for sista gertrude morgan
polished cackling cymbals
tambourine
nurses cap white and washed with the holy ghost
packet of oils (sexy reds popping oranges deep purples) and brushes
mason jar of holy water
the holy book
the living bread and the sweet wine
a pinch of alabama clay
a voice like a holiness steel guitar
a map of the city
running shoes white laces
21st chapter of revelations
bride's veil
saving hands saving grace handsandgrace
keys to the holy city
a milk crate
eyes in the bodies of searching spirits
a bowl of mustard greens
a slow stroll to the battle field
the smell of old liquor and flat grins
an unrhymed rhythm when jesus comes
a home for the children and the delivered
two train tickets west
the teachings of our mothers and fathers never put on the shelf

nina simone in barbados, 1974. all hail the priestess!!!

this was during the time she recorded "it is finished" and more specifically "obeah woman". obeah a traditional congo spirituality is practiced throughout the caribbean. obeah is particulary important to understanding one of the key approaches to resistance in ninas work as a musician and civil rights leader. through her practice of obeah, and her deep pentacostal upbringing nina was able to move in the world as a conjure woman, a creator, an artist, and a revolutionary. all hail the high priestess!!!

here is a another poem in honor of studying and hopefully continuing her legacy~~~~

conjure woman, soul woman
for nina

nina
they say you have stolen shadows
say you have cast the babyspirits out in nocturnal limbo
that you make them wander
in search of womb
in search of milk
in search of the space between heaven and hell where each step is a breathsqueeze
they say you keep a sachet of boneshavings crescent city spit
and motherlanddust under your slip
and you blew
the eyebrows clean off a man's forehead
for cutting his eyes at you
they say you could have been a street preacher
but you couldn't keep your legs closed
or pray just to our lord jesus
but i know a woman who carries your face
and she aint nothing but sanctified
and she speak sweet like i heard you speak
and her fingers too are wands that stir heaven
and she too can hold night in her skin and sing it to her children at the break of dawn
nina
they really don't know how you got the blood and the lightening in your tone
they really don't know how you swung back this lifetime without wings
they really don't know how you birthed us with out light so
they call you witch when obeah woman is your name
they call you mystery when you are everywhere like dew
they call you magician when magician you are
they call you alien when you are mama
they call you alien when you are tuned to their hearts
obeah is your name

i do know you can bend time
and siphon your way through space
i have heard you do it
stretching through speakers at me
stretching through speakers at me
just when i get tired of shouting freedom
writing freedom birthing freedom

i have heard you do it
and have been redeemed


www.high-priestess.com

another poem for nina Current mood: calm
nina simone in barbados, 1974. all hail the priestess!!!

this was during the time she recorded "it is finished" and more specifically "obeah woman". obeah a traditional congo spirituality is practiced throughout the caribbean. obeah is particulary important to understanding one of the key approaches to resistance in ninas work as a musician and civil rights leader. through her practice of obeah, and her deep pentacostal upbringing nina was able to move in the world as a conjure woman, a creator, an artist, and a revolutionary. all hail the high priestess!!!

here is a another poem in honor of studying and hopefully continuing her legacy~~~~

conjure woman, soul woman
for nina

nina
they say you have stolen shadows
say you have cast the babyspirits out in nocturnal limbo
that you make them wander
in search of womb
in search of milk
in search of the space between heaven and hell where each step is a breathsqueeze
they say you keep a sachet of boneshavings crescent city spit
and motherlanddust under your slip
and you blew
the eyebrows clean off a man's forehead
for cutting his eyes at you
they say you could have been a street preacher
but you couldn't keep your legs closed
or pray just to our lord jesus
but i know a woman who carries your face
and she aint nothing but sanctified
and she speak sweet like i heard you speak
and her fingers too are wands that stir heaven
and she too can hold night in her skin and sing it to her children at the break of dawn
nina
they really don't know how you got the blood and the lightening in your tone
they really don't know how you swung back this lifetime without wings
they really don't know how you birthed us with out light so
they call you witch when obeah woman is your name
they call you mystery when you are everywhere like dew
they call you magician when magician you are
they call you alien when you are mama
they call you alien when you are tuned to their hearts
obeah is your name

i do know you can bend time
and siphon your way through space
i have heard you do it
stretching through speakers at me
stretching through speakers at me
just when i get tired of shouting freedom
writing freedom birthing freedom

i have heard you do it
and have been redeemed


www.high-priestess.com

full moon blood ~~~~~july 29, 2007, a poem
full moon blood, july, 29, 2007

my blood has caught the full moon again
the juju has set in my skin
i am ready to shake away this month's offspring
into the world like electrified fruit
there is a voodoo remix happening
in my tubes and box for me to leave at the crossroads
power

the spinach and basil bath power
the rosemary and the florida water power
the metal and the dirt power the slow stream to life
power the slow red stream to life power the pouting definition
and the reservoir of flesh power the scaled harmony
and the sloughed fear power the small bead of expectancy power
the legacy and the rampage power power resting on the rim of tomorrow

a poem in praise of remembering~~~~~

In Womanist Spirituality and Popular Music we watched a film called "The Language you Cry In" which chronicles reunited family through the story of a Mende funeral dirge. Interestingly, the song was sung before the slave trade and through the middle passage was transplanted to plantations and passed down by some enslaved African. The film documents a family who through keeping this song alive today is able to trace thier lineage back to Sierra Leon, where the song is still sung though rarely. Please view the film and share your thoughts about it with me here. take a look at the poem which unpacks some of my feelings and physical responses to the work.

a poem in praise of remembering~~~for the mende and the power of song

mendegeechemendegeeche
i know i am home
mendegeechemendegeeche
no longer spirit roams

more generations of mende than i can count
carry the same song in their mouths
carry the same sticky red rice in their mouths
fan and smash rice as children
dig out irrigations with the same dark hands

more generations of mende women than i can count
spread white clay on dry skin
keep an eye on rivergraves
swing in the new spirits
and carry the departed across the water

mendegeechemendegeeche
i know i am homemendegeechemende
no longer spirit roams
more generations of mende than i can count
go back with their tongues
their songs like a bread trail to the village
go back with their cries
their tears streaming clay away from skin
washing up ancestors
go back with their eyes
eyes that surge forth spirit as only eyes can

more generations of mende than i can count
know an offering eaten by the babies is an offering well spent
these strong lean bodies fed by the ancestors
to take the story into tomorrow

more generations of mende than i can count
know their legacy is carried in their cells
in knees that worship ancestors
know their legacy is carried in the heads humbly bowed
know their legacy is carried in working the spirit
like mending the threads of a fishing net

mendegeechemendegeeche
i know i am home
mendegeechemende
no longer spirit roams

working my rainbows: an introduction to performance studies
installment 1

Here is my first installment in my Introduction to Performance Studies portfolio, titled working my rainbows. You can also view this project at goldendharma.blogspot.com.

Happy reading!
ebony

for the orisha who order my stepsfor the ancestors who whisper in my ear
for the elders who light my path
for the contemporaries who quicken my breath with brilliance
for the unborn who inspire me to be ever true and ever vigilant

ashe!


Introduction


"Gotta Take My Time, Getting This One Together"

"…I'm the Obeah woman from beneath the seaTo get to satan you gotta pass through me'Cause I know the angels name by nameI can eat thunder and drink the rainBeen through enoughYeah they call me Nita and Pices tooThere ain't nothing that I can't doIf I choose to, if you let me…"

-from Obeah Woman by Nina Simone

Folks living in the south meditate on slowness like Miles Davis meditates on a sustained note. Mustard Greens, a delicacy in African diasporic communities, are simmered slowly with garlic, bay leaf, cayenne, onion, and ham hock hours before dinner. Sun tea is brewed in backyards full of hot sun that pierces glass containers pregnant with split lemons, sugar and Lipton tea bags. Gumbo, a Cajun stew, is conjured in coal black cast iron cauldrons nights before festive family gatherings in ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />New Orleans.
Being raised in the southern Texas, usually pronounced as three syllables, taught me how to appreciate the sensuality of unhurried happenings. The humidity rests in the bones and slows the breath to a crawl. A southern Baptist spiritual, wrestled from a sinner's throat, takes what seems like hours to sing. I have known southern lovers who studied every sinew of my body at a snail's pace, leisurely like a sunset, seriously like calculus.
I start here, with a meditation on southernity, space, sensuality and the lyrics of Nina Simone to illustrate how I enter this discipline: as a conjurer, a southern woman, a poet, and an observer and taster of the various flavors of this world. Nina Simone teaches us in her song "Obeah Woman" the power of transcending and transforming one's surroundings to accomplish mystical feats Africana women engage in daily.
Nina sings through a gravel and honey voice the importance of taking time to get things together. In her case, she is getting together God's divine work: controlling the rain, lightning, naming the angels, and fighting Satan on mankind's behalf. I fortunately, have another charge in this life, one no less difficult but different nonetheless. The essays in this portfolio begin to articulate my understanding of how and why people act the way the do in a myriad of situations. Whether in the midst of trauma or ecstasy, intention, motivation, and effect are extremely important to the manner in which behavior is perceived and metabolized.
working my rainbows represents a sustained meditation. This project seeks to critique, analyze, question performances of resistance by means of spiritual activism, intra/intercultural exchange, and social justice work. Further more, the project seeks to think about how performances of resistance inform and impact local communities striving to dismantle systemic institutions that perpetuate a culture of state violence and social oppression.
In writing these essays, several texts anchored my burgeoning understanding of this field. Namely, "Points of Contact between Anthropological and Theatrical Thought," "Stages," "Resistance of the Object," Exhausting Bodies (excerpt), "You are here the DNA of Performance," "Contact Improvisation and Anthropological Analysis," "Docile Bodies," and "Performing Citizenship". These works provide historical and cultural background, map the origins of Performance Studies, and provide differing philosophies and writing approaches employed in the discipline. I am drawn to these essays and excerpts because of how body is implicated as a central to agent of movement. Most importantly, the articles grant the novice a plethora of information in which to analyze how the body is a tool of social resistance. In essence, the articles continue my love affair with the body and the multitude of performances it stages in shifting temporal and spatial paradigms. The scholars' works bring home for me how individuals or whole communities can access the power of the Obeah women as they move to transform, transition, and transcend oppressive situations. Whether literally in dance, or ethereally, in unearthing the past to remix the present in framing a transformative narrative and politic for the future, the articles situate the body in a multitude of happenings which spark a uniquely necessary transformative response.
In compiling working my rainbows, I confronted several obstacles. Some of those obstacles included: difficulty incorporating how particular analysis relates to my larger year-long project, difficulty writing responses to articles with limited knowledge of the field, difficulty employing Womanist tradition of analysis and writing to essays distant from the lyrical and poetic nature of the aforementioned tradition. I experience these obstacles as points of possible access and growth as I work toward a longer project on Nina's Simone's oeuvre and the role of spirituality in social justice movements. I also view these stoppages as areas where I may be able to join Performance Studies, Cultural Studies, and Performing Arts discourses with a much needed voice of the Womanist scholarly tradition. Alice Walker, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Ntozake Shange, Jayne Cortez, bell hooks, Angela Davis, and Hortense Spillers are a few of voices who serve as my mentors; I am eager to continue in our tradition.
While wrought with difficulties, several successes took place as I compiled this collection. Similarly to writing poetry, I sharpened my abilities to respond to complex, gripping concepts in concise two or three page responses. Additionally, I found that I particularly appreciate the process of responding to film and dance. I could definitely foresee further research of these art forms. I was also reaffirmed in my belief of the importance of the community in the education process. Participating in class lectures assisted the development of clear thoughts about a topic or concept.
All in all, it is incumbent upon me to root my analysis of performance and creation of performance in deciphering its impact on local communities. The papers in working my rainbows assist me in creating everyday scholarship and performance that people can sink their teeth into. After composing these twelve essays I am clearer about how I will position my body in the ongoing conversations comprising this discipline. I am clearer about how I will engage in this Program, as a year long meditation on spirituality, resistance, bodies, movement, and sustained transformation of the present in the creation of a world without sexual violence in the now and ever after.

for sekou:

raised by jack-o-lanterns and parking tickets
dandelion eyelashes part the onyx birthstone

in weary times
our soupy mouths form easy o’s like lake huron
lumbering towards the universal sound
the land of rocking chairs

when poets die
let their henna circle my body seven times and become a new mole

crimson neither stopwatch
nor discount metronome

when poets die
let them be carried through the streets on the lips of harmonics and
earlobes.


Kim Arrington is a singer/song writer/playwrite/poet and all around fly sista. google her and be inspired. www.kimarrington.complease send your sekou poems to me and i will post them where ever i can.ebony

Now!
for sekou sundiata

i know what is means to have miles davis in your skin
to speak like a weeping willow
to resist citizenship
to chew gum like a gourmet meal
now
i know how to harness a dream
right behind my belly button
and hold it there til it sprouts wings
bears fruit
blows across an ocean like a liberated spore
you asked me the question
is the american dream a dream or a program
and at that moment i knew you were a blessing in my wounds
a libretto for the revolution epic
a hinge for me to hold onto in times of extended prayer
now
i know why i love my daddy's black taffy laugh
and his eyes like an anthology of sunsets
and his one purple nail that speaks slow around his chin
a chin that drinks the moonlight
i know now sekou you drink the moonlight
let it fill your vaselined cheeks articulate your tongue reawaken your tonsils
you asked me
what is a dream with out education
you asked me what is a dream with out education
youaskedmewhatisadreamwithouteducation liberation resistance love light
youasked me me me mmeeeeeee
whatisadreamwithouteducation
maybe its gospel without mahalia
or hip hop without rakim
or jazz without john
or new orleans without the mississippi
or my grandma without the love of her life
or me without poetry
orororoororororor
you asked me
what is a dream without education
i say it aint it aint it aint a dream with out the technology of technicolor

may the spirits walk you gently down
and raise a song in your honor
may elegba grant you safe passage
asheooooo asheooooooooo ashe

After Denko by Sweet Honey in the Rock

So I am currently going through a birthing process as I complete my first major project for my Performance Studies degree.

As I should, I turned to song a poetry by the women to fortify my body and voice. I spent this weekend writing, and listening to Nina, Sweet Honey, Alice Coltrane and meditating on words actions movement voice history and next steps.

Denko is a Bambara song offered to and by women traveling through the birthing process. I am birthing right now and call on this song for light, wisdom, and strength, and clarity.
Because my professor, Judith Casselberry, is brilliant she played the song today in my class. She didn't know I needed it, but she so knew I did.

I wrote this in class

After Denko/ a meditation on birthing words, light, wisdom

1.
i am here because the rattle of the blues brings down the spirits because gravel in nina's throat loosens teh music in mine

because i don't know my mother's mother's mother's name but she has a song to sing through me

because when i speak i want audre to wink and alice to clap three times

because my body is not a toy or a toilet or a laboratory or an existential dilemma

2.
the spirit quivers in the space where dreams are fertilized and nurtured
move the mountains spirits rattle the webs lose loosen the breath

let the blood warm the skin
there is a riff the sun bakes only this body translates

let us be born
let us be born
let us be born

sweep me up in a ring-shout

i am healed by the rattle fed by the drum

ashe

-love and light,

ebony

Got Poetry! We do. Check us out!

Check Durham's Community Writing Intensive online chapbook.


View us at http://www.ohsointense.wordpress.com/.
We will be adding to the chapbook in the next few days to keep coming back,and leave a comment as well.

peace,

ebony noelle golden

furiousflower@gmail.com

there is a way to articulate hallelujah

prayer sweated over hot rocks

spirit piercing alien vernaculars

multiplied throats hurling truth

truth hurling multiplied bodies

See hear

grab the dirt

rotate the skull

spit light lighten the step step light

rest in the right then write

like this

1. fight

2. remember

3. resistresistresist

4. rest

5. rise and chop

6. splay and shed

7. bring leave burn

8. repeat

turn slow bring palm to cheek check pulse then repeat

resist repeat resist

where does the body begin

itch

swing

OutKast ft Erykah Badu, Cee lo, Big Rube... Liberation!

libertad for life!!!

Poetry By The People~~ Community Writing INtensive

POETRY BY THE PEOPLE
Community Writing Intensive
Durham, NC
May 8-10, 2007

Dear Lovers of the Word,
You are cordially invited to write and discuss poetry in and with the Durham community. You will be surrounded by people who love poetry and believe in its transformative power. Here’s what you can expect:

Daily Schedule
1:00 ~ 3:00 Silent Writing/ Manuscript Conferences
3:00 ~ 4:00 Late Lunch/ Early Dinner
4:15 ~ 5:15 Community Sharing/ Open Mic
5:30 ~ 6:30 Poetry Exercises
6:30 ~ 8:30 Workshop/ Critique
8:30 ~ 9:00 Wrap – Up

Sponsors
This year betty’s daughter arts collaborative, broken beautiful press, and SpiritHouse-NC have graciously decided to sponsor Poetry By the People, so you don’t have to. There is no charge for attendance, just come with poems, an open heart, and a love for community art.

Funding
For poets who are not in the Durham-Raleigh-Chapel-Hill area, two very modest travel scholarships are available.
The Betty Ann Sims, Ed.D. Artist/Scholar Travel Scholarship is available to any poet who can demonstrate how expressive art will impact future or current scholarly projects.
The Talya Pierce Travel Scholarship for Emerging Poets is awarded to a woman of color who is beginning to explore the field of poetry. The recipient of this award must not hold any publications or academic degrees in creative writing.

Application
Please submit a five-page manuscript, a cover letter that explains the role of poetry in creating community, and your contact information to inthepeopleshands@gmail.com by May 6.


Contact Person
Ebony Noelle Golden, MFA
Director of betty’s daughter arts collaborative
furiousflower@gmail.com
www.myspace.com/mamashieroglyphics

Make a poem with me that answers this question...


How does poetry blossom in the midst of meditation?


respond here or on my blog at myspace.com/mamashieroglyphics


love,
e

processing process / a circular experience

Current mood: contemplative

more (quest)ioning!

so a sista friend asked me about my writing process and i invited her to lunch (you know talking about process takes time). in my ever present quest to develop a workable applicable (to everything and specifc things in my world) poetics (in which to enrich myself and the beings around me)

i think alot about the manipulation of words, sounds, spirit, images, and bodies. here is what we came up with.


processing process/ a work in progress/ a collaboration between/among the universe (especially kriti and i)


process is was use to be tangible etheral consistent full of light and absence

process will not accept a bottle or magnitude

process must (not) be or always is touch

process is (or isn't) always lack of urgency

process is presence yet anticipating reincarnation everyday

process is fullness wholeness holistic

process is looking for or waiting with language

process is the struggle for aunthenticity

process is living

process is a medium

process is patience

process is energy

and emerging

and making language

and creating

and telepathy

process is how

peace and pieces of peace slivers and wholes and splayed light

love,
e

The art of (quest)ioning

so on my consistent journey for art poetry relationship and a spiritfilled love affair with myself, i attempt to practice silence, even in a room of people. here is one installment of one of my listening sessions. look for more soon!

ebonybeinglight

always and forever,

the art of (quest)ioning / or vibing to alice coletranes harp everyday

where is the real? who is a "micro"community? when is a sista?

when is a performance? which is a trinity? where is a body?

where is the hurt? which is a critique? how is a vulva? how is the trust?

which is a soul? who is a response? where is the tear? where is the blood?

where is the power? when is a color? where is the desire? when is a voice?

so, family~~~~sometimes the answer is the (quest)ion? word! word!

take some time and get lost or found in your questions about this world and the beings on it

love and life
e

Shange and Moving Toward Healing Poetics!!!

Hey people,

Here are the notes and activities that I shared with the audience during my talk on Shange and performative healing poetics.

Sharing in love and light,

e

PERFORMATIVE HEALING IN NTOZAKE SHANGE’SFOR COLORED GIRLS WHO CONSIDEREDSUICIDE WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF

Working the Chakras-

Green: Love, acceptance allowance

Each character in For Colored Girls’ personifies an energy field or chakra in the body. In traditional healing arts, the color green is associated with the heart chakra thus; “Alla My Stuff” is an imperative thrust toward the Lady in Green’s reclamation of self and self love. Lady in Green reminds the audience of the universal sound/expression of love, self acceptance, and allowance. The Green lady reclaims her own “tacky skirts”, her aired out vagina, “callused feet”, her “arm wit the hot iron scar” as her story, her walk, and her meditation on freedom, awareness, and wholeness.

This reclamation and proclamation illustrates specifically black womyn reclaiming ourselves; interestingly, the pieces, bodies, desires communities have harvested, historically and recently, for consumption. Lady in Green’s monologue is indeed a celebration of the reclamation of voice and herstory; and serves as an insightful glimpse into the importance of vocalization as expressive healing.

My stuff exercise: List all of the stuff that makes you the fabulous person you are. You can list descriptions of your personality, wonderful things you have gifted this world, or something special about you that don’t mind sharing with this group. Create a list of at least five items!

Dance this Fever Away!

In “No More Love Poems # 1” Lady in Orange deconstructs her individual experience as a “colored girl”. We enter the monologue as the Lady in Orange gains of awareness of what it means to be “her colored self” against a landscape of trauma and voicelessness. Thankfully, Shange does not leave the Orange lady rambling in a disorienting space of helplessness. By the end of the piece this character opens up to the joy of tears, rebirth, and the self-realization that comes as the character exfoliates feelings and despair and sorrow.

One more point of importance in this monologue concerns the development of a body narrative through the medium of dance. Shange, a trained dancer, peppers choreography throughout the performance of this play. Dance is what I like to call the unrestrained voice of the soul. Dance similar to vocal expressiveness allows the body to make strides toward healing by quickening the breath, warming the body, and securing the space where womyn can walk whole in their own bodies.

If your body to talk: Awakening to dance is a beautiful way in engage with your own body. Choose three body parts and allow them to have a free dialogue on the page. If possible allow the parts of your body to communicate with each other. Share your body conversations with someone next to you.

Ebony Presents Lecture on Performative Healing in the Work of Ntozake Shange

Greetings folks,

In observance of Women's History Month and every month, I will present an interactive lecture based on Performative Healing in the work of Ntozake Shange.

Please attend if you can!!!

Date: 3/21/2007
Time: 7 pm
Place: Miller Morgan Auditorum on the Campus of North Carolina Central University

for more information email
furiousflower@gmail.com

peace and love,e

Yo Grits and Good as Ours: Support SpiritHouse and NCCU 2/17!!!

Yo Grits Aint Good as Mine: Support SpiritHouse and NCCU February 17!!!

Three artists, three fantastic visions, one night…

January, 08 2007

For Immediate Release
Durham, N.C. - Harry Davis, Derrick Mayo and Rodney Edwards: three artists from completely different worlds, drawn to canvas for different reasons. Harry Davis, an Army veteran and Wilmington, North Carolina native, was re-birthed through paints and canvases after an accidental shooting left him wheelchair bound. His subjects vary from tribal, to Americana to spiritual, but his masterful use of bold colors remain the same. His work is in the private collections of Halle Berry and Denzel Washington. His showings range from venues as varied as the CIA to our very own Artsplosion in Raleigh, North Carolina
Derrick Mayo looks more like an Indy rock star than the talented painter he is; sultry, brooding eyes and long dreadlocks complete the impression. His instruments are paintbrushes and his fans are the many canvases which welcome him with open arms when he begins to stroke their surfaces with a rhythm and cadence that produces such works as Expressions of Melody or Bird Lives or Lady Day. He pays homage to late, great jazz artists and angels of dance. If passion were a song it would be his alone, the words written across the surface of his canvases. His talent has been recognized and appreciated by the Durham Regional Hospital and Charlotte Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Cannon.

In each family there is a wild, errant child, but we love him nonetheless. This triumvirate is no different. Rodney Davis, foster child, in and out of prison since he was a teenager, was convicted of murder by the time he was nineteen. But did that kill the spirit in this man? Never. He twisted and manipulated his anger into an art form which through its sheer power made its way outside the prison walls into banks, corporations and art aficionados' personal coffers. His pain ripples across the surface of his canvases in broad strokes of darkness and light, transferring itself to the viewer. Inspirational, aching and revelatory all at once, his work will leave you emotionally dazzled.

On February 17, 2007 from 7-10pm these artists will have their work on display at a reception being held at North Carolina Central University's Law School. Hosted by the Grits and Gravy Filmmakers and Writers Festival as its first annual Artists in Motion fundraiser event, all work purchased is tax deductible for up to twenty five percent of the purchase price.

Admission is free and refreshments will be served.
For more information contact Aisha Hicks at (919) 636-1751 or at gritsandgravy08@nc.rr.com.

Call For Submissions

In The People’s Hands
(a grassroots literary zine)


Theme: Africana Women and Violence

Submission Deadline: March 5, 2007

Introduction

Africana (women of African heritage) share an interesting and distinct relationship with violence. Throughout h(er)story, and contemporary times Africana women have interfaced with police brutality, sexual assault, verbal attack, cultural brutality, academic dehumanization, reproductive injustice, political, and social disenfranchisement. Thank goddess, this is not the story of Africana women in total. We also experience and create love, joy, spirit, resilience, and fortitude that make our individual and collective journeys worth traveling. The complex relationship Africana women share with violence is reflected in our relationships with other women, men, ourselves; and is wonderfully and heartfully highlighted in the songs we sing, the stories we share, the love we make, the poems we recite, the food we cook, etc. etc.

In The People’s Hands, a SpiritHouse publication, was created to hear the voices of diverse communities. Submit work that explores your personal relationship with violence as an Africana woman or work in which explores this theme. Submit a literary creation that fits one or a combination of categories. Please note: We will not use your submission for any other purposes than creating In The People’s Hands literary zine. We will not reproduce in total or in part your submission for any other purpose than the paper-based, and online publication of this project. After publication author retains all implicit and explicit publication rights.

Criteria

Poetry
Two poems (maximum of two pages)

Short Fiction
1 story (maximum of four pages)

Essay
1 Essay (maximum of three pages)

Visual Art
2 pieces (please note one maybe chosen as the cover of collection)

Along with your creative work send:

-Two sentence biography
-picture (optional)
-contact information (phone, email address)

All submissions must be sent to:
InThePeoplesHands@gmail.com
In the subject line please type: Africana Women and Violence Issue

About the Sponsoring Organization

SpiritHouse- www.spirithouse-nc.org
SpiritHouse is a nonprofit grassroots community-based organization. We are part of a movement of progressive movements and organizations that endeavor to connect people to each other for the purpose of liberation, enlightenment, and fulfillment. We are independent. We are not supervised by any corporate, religious, or state bureaucracy. Our freedom allows us the flexibility to work and develop the partnerships of our choice. This gives us clarity and direction.

About the Editor-In-Chief www.myspace.com/mamashieroglyphics
Ebony Noelle Golden, MFA, is a poet, performer, and educator currently teaching African American Literature, Composition and Creative Writing at North Carolina Central University and Louisburg College as a Visiting Instructor. She has self-published a chap book of poems titled the sweet smell of juju funk and is currently editing mama's hieroglyphics to be released next year. In the near future, Ebony plans to undergo doctoral studies in Performance and stage her multimedia choreopoem, What Aunt Sarah Says to Siffronia When Sweet Thing is Moon-Watching and Peaches is Dancing to the Wind. Ebony can be contacted via email at furiousflower@gmail.com.

Midwives Exhibit in Durham!!!

Friends,
A traveling exhibition curated by Linda Janet Holmes, and on view at the Center for Documentary Studies, Reclaiming Midwives features photographs by Robert Galbraith that explore the lives and experiences of black midwives in Georgia in the early 1950s. Galbraith was a cameraman for George C. Stoney's 1953 film All My Babies, produced by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Georgia Department of Public Health, and intended as an instructional tool for the midwives still delivering most of the babies in rural Georgia at the time. The film, featuring Albany, Georgia, midwife Mary Francis Hill Coley (1900-66), has traveled to train midwives around the world.
Please spread the word that we will be screening the film All My Babies, this Sunday, February 4, at 2 p.m. at Richard White Auditorium on Duke's East Campus. The director of the film, George Stoney, will be there for a question and answer discussion session after the screening. There is a $5 donation requested for admission. I hope to see you there!
Peace,
Courtney
--
Courtney Reid-EatonExhibitions DirectorCenter for Documentary Studiesat Duke University1317 W. Pettigrew Street Durham, NC 27705919.660.3664919.681.7600 (fax)http://cds.aas.duke.edu

altar installation and silent protest in durham sunday

Because direct and immediate action is love, and revolution, and beauty, and resistance, and ....

Because art is action all over this globe Because we are we are we are we are we are agentsloversalliessurvivorsstriversresisterssistersfightersradicalsfamily

Because nifong is not the glue that holds this case or this community togetherBecause we will not be silenced or confused in the face of white racist patriarchy and sexual violence...

beacause we need....Movement now...

If you want to sit and meditate silently in front of the Court House Sunday meet us there!Bring a flower, a poem, a candle, a stick of incense, a piece of art work and... let's collectively focus positive energy on healing our ourselves and our community.

This is not an overly choreographed event, just show up at the court house around 12 noon Sunday 1/14.

in my mother's likeness

the slack hip and urban cheek
the kitchen that slicks neck easily

not her tree limb legs
twig like fingers
piano ear or cato skin
(because my daddy is the color of ocean's edge)
but eyes

oh the seeking eyes identical shimmering
glass in both our skulls

Hocking a Wedding Ring Published at www.wombpoetry.com

Yo,

check out my moving and grooving lit life at www.wombpoetry.com.

Hocking a Wedding Ring Published in online journal for women poets!

love and light,

ebony golden,
betty's daughter literary press

for harryette~~~~~ again!

for harryette~~~~


We collect things that matter. Trinkets. Love letters. Ideas that set earth's orbit. Sunrises and warm remembrances to smooth forehead-wrinkles and soften the grimace into a smile. We collect things like malleable dirt and fresh fruit beauty. A call. A call. To the new school poetics of fresh birth. A call. A call. To what once was and was never trash. Recycled gold I say. We answer recycled gold. Old wor(l)ds. New gold.

Ebony to Publishes Review of Recyclopedia in BIBR

Renewed Treasure: Recyclopedia in Review

By: Ebony Noelle Golden, MFA


Recyclopedia. Harryette Mullen.
St. Paul: Graywolf Press, 2006.
178 pp.
Price: 15.00 USA
18.95 Canada

Thinking thought to be a body wearing language as cloth-
ing or language a body of thought which is a soul or body
the clothing of a soul, she is veiled in silence. A veiled, un-
available body makes an available space.
-from trimmings


For hip readers who were, are, and will be in love with Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse &

Drudge. For the hydrating drink that is Harryette Mullen’s quintessential riff on gender,

language, geography, and legacy. For the poems re-gifted as lagniappes of light to enliven our

collective intellect; Harryette Mullen, Professor of English and African American Studies and

finalist for the National Book Award offers her new collection of previously published works in

Recyclopedia published by Gray Wolf Press. Mullen, dubbed “The Queen of Hip Hyperbole” by

Sandra Cisneros, reveals an intensely intricate and bitingly fresh approach to literary craft

which politicizes diction, exfoliates imagery, and reflects the brilliant glow which situates her in a

category poets, and writers alike, work ever so vigilantly to achieve. Mullen’s poems

deconstruct archetypal ideals of consumption, value, and economic class structure. She

writes,

“Pyramids are eroding monuments. Embalmed soup stocks
the recyclable soul adrift in its newspaper boat of double
coupons. Seconds decline in descent from number one, top
of the heap. So this is generic life, feeding from a dented
cant. Devoid of colored labels, the discounted irregulars.”

Long time Mullen enthusiasts and new readers can look forward to poems that spark critical

thought and conversation about local and global issues without heavily ladled didactic

overtures. Recyclopedia is elegantly spiced with imagistically rich verse, written in

short-lined stanzas, and concerned with historical, spiritual, and body narratives.

For example,

“bring money bring love
lucky floorwash seven
powers of Africa la mano
poderosa ayudame numeros suenos

…sister mystery listens
helps souls in misery
get to the square root
of evil and render in moot…”

This excerpt examines Yoruba spirituality and the cultural significance of the

conjure woman; but moreover, illustrates Mullen’s masterful and singular

approach to exploring Africana motif and symbology without clichéd

language and skin-deep imagery.

Harryette Mullen’s body of work, in general, and Recyclopedia, in

specific, demands readers to re-imagine and re-envision the possibilities of poetry. Additionally,

this collection urges readers to retire static assumptions about what creates readable, relevant,

and resonant poems. I highly recommend Mullen’s newest addition to the overpopulated

literary landscape for its quick wit, sharp intellect, and colorful approach to literary craft. Read

Recyclopedia and experience or re-acquaint yourself with one of contemporary poetry’s most

important treasures.

Author’s Biography

Ebony Noelle Golden, MFA, is a poet, performer, and educator currently teaching African American Literature, Composition and Creative Writing at North Carolina Central University and Louisburg College as a Visiting Instructor. She has self-published a chap book of poems titled the sweet smell of juju funk and is currently editing mama's hieroglyphics to be released in 2007. In the near future, Ebony plans to undergo doctoral studies in Performance and stage her multimedia choreopoem, What Aunt Sarah Says to Siffronia When Sweet Thing is Moon-Watching and Peaches is Dancing to the Wind. Ebony can be contacted via email at goldendharma@yahoo.com or www.goldendharma.blogspot.com.