Without My Unwelcome Help, You will Never Find Fumi in That Janet Jackson Video

It is quite pleasing to see the talented and inspiring Fumi Bankole in total command of her Blog, The Mood Stone. Fumi joins a sisterhood of fiction authors turned Blog writers currently in my mutable roll:

• “Tayari’s Blog” by the acclaimed (and cute) Tayari Jones (http://www.tayarijones.com/ —she has one of the best designed sites I have ever seen on the Internet—and remember the “hyper critical” guy that’s writing this).
• “nalo’s blog” by the love-child-astral-projection of Octavia Butler, science fiction author Nalo Hopkinson. Nalo often has Blog entries like “Blackheart Man, 76,588 words” and “Blackheart Man at 77,511 words” to show that she is not playing about writing about writing—and she does the charming personal stuff (like “Happy birthday, Mummy!”) too. And she is clearly aware of the existence of other artists in Blog form with an unusual entry like “Bayou: comic by Jeremy Love and Patrick Morgan.”
• The resplendent and illuminating Tananarive Due.
• “black girl lost...in a book”—I’m being rebellious including this Blog from the woman with the handle “naysue” because we need readers as well as writers writing about writing…So, like Nalo, Fumi will explore subjects related to her writing. But she gets personal too. In “Got Till It’s Gone—Janet Jackson” she asks, “Can you see me?” My answer is, No. You will have to work hard (like I did to see her in the 1997 Janet Jackson video “Got ’til It’s Gone”). Can you see Fumi?

What about her childhood friend, the mother of my third child, Tasha? Can you see Tasha?

Was my unwelcome help helpful? It takes a lot of teenage, VHS-era, porn-viewing skills to rewind and freeze frames—not many girls learn how to do this outside of an editing bay. You see, my romantic wolf cubs, non-alpha-males are actually useful!

Now let’s get not-so-personal and be a little more cultural. I took another still from the Janet Jackson video. My viewing of this video, by the way, is from the excellent Mark Romanek compilation, Director’s Series Vol. 4. This still, here in the rasx(), is more than just Janet’s eye candy:

This more-than-beautiful image represents my view of the ancient concept of understanding. You see, my ancient-home-blood friends (my friends not of the wolf pack), when you understand you stand under the water falling from the sky. When you make water be the symbol for thought, then water pouring over your head to caress your face represents your newly-acquired understanding, absorbed by the countenance of your being. When you look toward me after the water moistens your face, your eye will be filled with the water of wisdom and I will see you, my woman, as one of thought as well as one of a super-fine-chocolate body.

What’s the “big deal” about the sky and the water representing understanding? Well, you asking this question means (like me) you are a child of empire and (like me) you do not really know where real food grown by real agricultural peoples comes from…

By the way, Fumi Bankole is here in the kinté space in:

• “Fumilayo Bankole: Zoom Zooms n Wham Whams”
• “Fumilayo Bankole: L.A. River”
• “Fumi Bankole: Canaan’s Labyrinth”
• “Allegories of a Red Hot Angel”

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