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Saul Williams Has to Pay His Gas Bill

Buy this DVD at Amazon.com!The last time I met Saul Williams in person, he was with the finest South African woman of some kind of Afro-East-Indian descent I have ever seen. So let’s get that straight. So, like DJ Spooky, when you are going to accuse me of being a jealous “hater” then assume I am jealous of not having the female company Saul might keep—but when it comes to other stuff… well… I try to speak in parables to the colored folk who think they know who I am… I try to use the parable of Arthur MacArthur… more on that later…

I’m sure you, Black person reading this paragraph, don’t have my “special” problems but I often get the feeling that when I meet, what someone on Bossip would cruelly call a “D-list celebrity,” the supposed celebrity sees me as so poor, ignorant, provincial and so much in awe of the crumbs “the white man” can throw down, that my apparent reserve and nonchalance is a pretense. What pisses me off is when someone like DJ Spooky or Saul Williams might assume—just for a second—that I would like to be them—or that I would like to “trade places” with them… When it comes to these void, egocentric showdowns—when it becomes clear to me that the only way communication is going to take place is within the limited confines of bloated egocentrism, then fine—let’s be egocentric:

Now hear this D-list through A-list celebrities! I don’t want to be you. I want to repurpose the power and resources of the muffuka that pays you… You are an errand girl sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill… Me watching you in “mainstream” or “alternative” media is like watching you go to Nicks Check Cashing to pay your gas bill… Who gives a f’ about being the art president!!! What kind of ghetto do you think I am from? I see the power that subsidizes the presidential platform!!!

I think of myself as of the Jackson Family led by a dancing Michael angel before he got his nose cut off (like the nose off the so-called “sphinx”)—and I think of people like DJ Spooky and Saul Williams as the hard-working Osmond-family, tea-dance substitutes for the real shit… I’m old enough to be honest about this now… Anybody who can get along with properly-assimilated, bourgeois, white liberals of all skin colors all over the world with nothing lost in translation is not from the real shit… A lot of black people are just painted black, they are just “the same” on the inside… The science tells me that my melanin is not a topical application… it is in my body… neuromelanin makes me think different… “What?” “Huh?”

When I use the phrase ‘the real shit’ I am referring to the shit a dung beetle from the Nile Valley rolls in African manifestations that Mos Def might throw away brilliantly in a rhyme scheme—but real people got to live that shit… and when you start to live that shit… it gets real hard to show up at Lollapalooza and talk about where I need to put my bags down… it gets real hard to tolerate people who write explicitly that they are from somewhere between “self hate and Brooklyn”… I’m from L.A. mufukka: the great Fela had to travel from Africa to Los Angles back in the 1960s to find out that he was Black and proud—I know you all got plenty, plenty of rejection for me writing this but I find Black people living in the snow—often choosing to live in the snow—very strange…

Every “successful artist” has to go through a phase of self-exploitation. Laurie Anderson talks about mechanical trees that grow to their full heights and then chop themselves down. I think that associates well here… So when Saul Williams writes about his sound showing up in a Nike commercial, to me he is just announcing another effect of lumber-jack enterprise in his wooden-mahogany-brown furniture factory:

I received a lot of questions from some about why I would allow my song ‘List of Demands’ to be used in a Nike campaign. Ironically, half of the people now reading this post never heard of me until that commercial aired. That, indeed, was one of my reasons for allowing it. A small circle of poets and conscious do-gooders are not enough to effect the change necessary to shift our planet in peril. We must enlist people from all walks of life, people not accustomed to questioning the norm, people who may simply want to dance uninterrupted without message or slogan. I see no glory in ‘preaching to the converted’. Furthermore, I believe fully in the power of music and have branded my work with [its] own conscientious stamp and stomp of attitude fueled to steal the show in the face of the nonsensical.

First, when he says the word “allow”—do stress that he is saying that he “allowed” Nike Corporation to use his music in a commercial. That’s like saying a Tibetan monk allowed the Chinese government to use a pair of slippers that was hidden in a box to be put on the feet of the appointed puppet ruler for a day-long ceremony. Second, when he says that a “small circle of poets and conscious do-gooders are not enough,” I will flatter myself and assume that he is referring to me. But don’t let me feel too “good” because Saul clearly has dismissed me. Third, when Saul says that he can “steal the show” he is saying that his message will be more powerful and eternal than:

  • Decades of The Simpsons with their Monty Burns character designed to ‘help’ the masses question the upper classes.
  • Almost a century of Monty Python, anti-colonial, anti-establishment buffoonery.
  • Jim Morrison (a more powerful rock-and-roll poet than Saul Williams) actually yelling at audiences of thousands telling to them “wake up!!!” (study “Celebration of the Lizard”).
  • In 1984, Bruce Springsteen released “Born in the U.S.A.” this anti-establishment, protest song was later raped by the Ronald Reagan presidential campaign. This song is rated as of the top 500 songs of all white time—Saul Williams is ready to beat this…
  • And Joe Strummer? Saul Williams? Hah! Well, I am recklessly confident that Saul Williams is a “nicer” person than Joe Strummer… But I mention Joe Strummer because his father was a diplomat and this caused “Joe Strummer” (John Graham Mellor) to travel the world and live extensively in many places at an early age—this had a profound impact on his life that nouveau riche Negroes (who often preach in utter ignorance to poor boys like me about needing to “expand my horizons”) need to study in depth. Joe Strummer, by the way, leads to my Arthur MacArthur quip (see below).
  • Kurt Cobain’s message (a union of lyrics and music that is way, way more powerful than what Saul Williams brings no matter how hard he squeezes his face and sweats—and I am referring to non-Black people in this list on purpose)—smells like teen spirit?I’m going with this: Nike Corporation is releasing an image during this Chinese-dominated Olympic season to sell radical American “freedom” juxtaposed with Chinese explicit totalitarianism. This is the same move white U.S. powers would use with people like Paul Robeson to pose in front of the former Soviet Union. Saul Williams should be flattered because I have compared him with Paul Robeson. The little catch is that Paul Robeson had the entire Cold War era to not be killed by the U.S. powers. Once the Olympics are over and bullshitting in front of China is off the radar, my feeling is that Saul Williams’ people will not have enough parlay-time to get another deal. It’s down to the Warholean 15 minutes, baby…

Buy this DVD at Amazon.com! Who was the Naz’ with God-given ass? Naz’ refers to Nazi as well as Nazarene—that’s depth in Ziggy poetry… (what’s sad to me right about is that Saul’s “Niggy Tardust” rhymes with “Ziggy Stardust”—but Ziggy played guitar—was inspired by Jimi Hendrix who is quite “niggy”—so we lose a stratum of depth?)… My rule for the powerful artist is that the more you study them the more you will find—not finding less the other way ’round. Saul Williams, like thousands of truly talented actors and political business people who answer to the name “poet,” is to me the other way ’round. You people outnumber me so I don’t plan to “win” this “argument.”

Combine the fan-base of Michael Franti, Saul Williams, Carl Hancock Rux and whoever else of this chocolate ilk (ever in defense of a “universal message” which ‘accidentally’ does not hurt ticket sales) you can think of and you have a large “community” of pseudo-activists who can actually galvanize for once around the news of my future death. My potential to bring people together around these “important” issues is actually quite impressive.

Most pop personalities have a de-facto dependency on the ignorance and self-centeredness of their enthusiastic, youthful audience. Saul Williams seems like James Baldwin for kids born in the 1980s—and being James Baldwin for PBS kids with excellent taste in women and a Spike-Lee-style-Nike-commercial income is not a horrible place to be for a few fiscal years. I am not saying that Saul Williams needs to get run over by an Israeli bulldozer penniless in some stolen suburb of Palestine in order to “prove” that he is “real” but… hmm… (“hater!”) well… look: we are proud to present Saul Williams here in the kinté space—check out “Saul Williams: Antiwar Freestyle.” And dig this 10-minute interview on YouTube.com with Saul in the Jimi Hendrix soldier jacket.

Buy this product at Amazon.com! The last time I thought about Arthur MacArthur was when I was sitting in the recently remodeled kitchen of the mother of my youngest son. She lives near the park where I saw Saul Williams twice and the grocery store where I saw him once. Because of where my son’s mother lives are the only reasons why I have seen Saul Williams in person and have spoken to him. (I mention this so that Saul Williams “fans” won’t erroneously assume that he actually sought me out. Don’t worry, kids, Saul still does not know where I am…)

My son’s mother (who is a Black woman by the way) wanted to announce to me that our son will be flown to England in 2009 because her live-in boyfriend (who is a Black man by the way) has some kind of academic appointment at Oxford. I thought this experience would be great for my son so that, like Arthur MacArthur, he can travel the world at a very young age and (I pray) remove a lot of illusions and trappings of what it means to be “rich” and/or “famous.” I think there is a reason why Arthur MacArthur did not even try to “become famous” like his father—and I think it has something to do with learning at an early age what is bullshit, a gas-bill payment and what is important. My son’s mother, by the way, will not remember that I told her I obtained my first passport specifically for events like this—she was too busy thinking I was threatening to take my son out of the country. But that’s another story about nouveau riche Negroes…

Like his real father, my son continually has the opportunity to get the fascination of flying first class, staying in expensive hotels, getting educated while sitting next to white children, eating the finest food in the world and wearing the finest clothes out of his system. I am sure a young Joe Strummer went thought a similar experience (and possibly Saul Williams had something like this with his civil-rights-preacher-father childhood). One very rewarding effect of living with supposed “riches” at an early age is that you can grow beyond that shit and get down to what really matters (which is not getting a “message across” embedded in a Nike commercial). I know many of you know that this is not true in all cases—but the potential is there. Arthur MacArthur is my symbol of that potential.

Now I am not here to convince Saul Williams—or even Jason Calacanis—that they need to rethink a lot of shit of a nouveau riche fragrance. I am not going to play a bunch of Pink Floyd albums in tribute to Saul Williams so he can learn (probably again) about being crazy and having a real need to see pigs fly. This therapy is not needed and would not work when it is—that is why I bring up Arthur MacArthur. Arthur MacArthur is more of a non-conformist rebel than Saul Williams—and Arthur was right there in the heart of military whiteness. Let him tell you without even speaking how much vanity and vexation in public gets you —just to pay a gas bill…

Correction: Saul Williams was in a play at Stages Theater Center in Hollywood called “Tibi’s Law,” by Jean Verdun (translated from the French by Robert Cohen). I happened to see him (again) in this play because of my old connection with Arye Gross and Stages as sound designer for a one-woman play called “Shak’n” by Saundra Quarterman and Lisa Arrindell Anderson. This effort, by way, won a nomination for best sound design in the NAACP Theatre Awards. Also, Saul Williams was nominated for best leading male performance for “Tibi’s Law” in the 25th Annual LA Weekly Theater Awards.

Comments

Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky, 2008-08-13 19:55:32

It is about dialog. The difference between a fool and someone who is foolish is that the foolish can learn.

rasx(), 2008-08-14 02:27:22

The fool hates instruction and so has a lack of knowledge. The fool and the foolish falls into folly. Look for it and report what you see when you seek from in your heart to judge one as foolish.

My suggestion is that you parse my words and attempt to explicitly reduce them to the absurd. I do not consider this "hostile"---to me it is a part of the dialog.

My words are not as needlessly dense as, say, the opening paragraphs of Rux's Asphalt.

By the way, where can I find an MP3 of your version of "Black Dada Nihilismus"?

invisiblewoman, 2008-08-14 08:44:03

Interesting.....

Carl Hancock Rux, 2008-08-14 19:04:58

Not sure what you're angry about or who snatched your lollipop, but dialogue and dicourse are two different things. You seem like a brother with something to say, but I'm not sure what you're saying. As for the "needlessly dense" opening paragraphs of Asphalt, I thank you.

rasx(), 2008-08-15 18:13:56

Carl? You are not sure what I am angry about? You wrote an entire piece of fiction and you cannot even guess a little story? That's not freestyle creative---creativity even for five seconds. You see the "hip hop culture" I recall had brothers freestyling in nanoseconds.

"Lollipop"? I have heard you sing on YouTube.com man! Who is the childish one engaging in pop music here?

You are not sure what I am saying? Like I said to the previous commenter: My suggestion is that you parse my words and attempt to explicitly reduce them to the absurd. I do not consider this “hostile”---to me it is a part of the "dialog," "dicourse" or whatever term the sophomore can misspell.

Remember you two outnumber me so I don't intend to "win" this "argument." I find it hard to stomach that you two members of the intelligentsia are having reading comprehension problems. I would rather assume you are having ironic censorship and suppression issues---there is a reason there was an old song called “Yo! Bum Rush the Show.” I am not going to sit around and wait for blokes like you to "let" me speak. I have written almost 1000 entries in this Blog---read them or move on... but, before you go, understand you can NOT say that you don't understand me and not look like a condescending, white liberal liar that happens to painted chocolate... read, n-word...

Your work speaks for itself. I am inspired to respectfully approach "the artist" when their work demands it. I am unable to locate these demands in your work---especially in the sound of your singing voice. I understand how this can hurt egocentric feelings and forever prevent one---and the 200 facebook/myspace friends that can be influenced by one---from appreciating any of my work---even when my work is actually found to be more innovative and original.

I do not expect "sensitive artists" to uphold justice especially when they feel they are being attacked personally---and, yes, I have critiqued you personally. I expect "sensitive artists" to be violent, dismissive divas who defend vigorously the center of attention.

I will forever make the "mistake" that artistic expression is personal and I have no "adult," "mature," "level-headed" respect for detached, "professional" art. That's just being 'white' (self-alienated) to me...

I understand fully the possibility that you think you are reading the result of some mental defect here... These consolations would not be surprising... I went to some of the toughest inner-city Los Angeles schools with extremely (often physically) violent calls for conformity on a daily basis---for years... You think a few corrective comments from Carl Hancock Rux and a little lesson about "dialog" from Paul D. Miller is going to move me to any location?

You either show me respect by actually showing me that you are reading my work or you go back to making books and recordings that sit on shelves and hard drives and posing in yet-another-conference panel photo with some young cat in an African hat from Oslo, old guilty white folks (that can't teach you shit) and Lesbians "of color" that actually hate your guts...

There is no point in being known as an "artist" when too few people actually engage your work... That is another form of loneliness that you might not appreciate yet... I fully accept the responsibility of my behavior---what you might describe as "self sabotage" but I call it 'recognition of the actual situation'... only entertainers like attention for attention's sake... for actual poets, communicating writers and real musicians it must be a completely different thang...

shermel, 2008-08-15 22:49:34

What are you talking about?????????????? Does anybody know besides you? Rux, Williams and Spooky have been working, not blogging, and they have an AUDIENCE to prove it. Where do you get this "blacker than thou" bullshit from? Rux grew up in Harlem, in foster care, went to college in Ghana West Africa and lves in Brooklyn. Williams and Spooky look black to me. What does it look like to you? Have yu read ANYTHING these guys have PUBLISHED?? (and what's up with the black lesbian comment?) Where are you coming from and why are you still there?

patrick, 2008-08-15 22:54:15

Reason you can't win this argument is cuz you don't have one. Damn son, a little anti-depression medication would help. By the way, read Asphalt and Rux's essay on Eminem and blackness and his book Talk. Loved it. Read Saul's books. Loved them. Read Spooky's book, loved it. Nothing's dense if you're literate.

rasx(), 2008-08-16 04:46:22

Shermel, Hannah Montana has an audience---am I supposed to envy her ability to "work" too?

Patrick: “Reason you can’t win this argument is cuz you don’t have one.” You are absolutely correct. I appreciate you reading.

shermel, 2008-08-16 13:36:02

Nobody suggested you ENVY anything. I was suggesting you LEARN something, like from paople who've WRITTEN and PUBLISHED BOOKS and TEACH at universities and have been doing what they been doing infront of the world all around the world while you was somewhere getting blacker than everybody on the planet. Time out for that "I grew up in the real hood of los angeles bullshit". So did I. Formerly South Central and now Inglewood. Did the Crip Bloods thing till I figured out my shit stank like everybody else's and growin up black and poor don't meand SHIT. You grew up in the hood? And??????????????. THIS all you got to say? You and a whole lotta otha muthafuckas grew up black and poor. Good news is some of us got over it. Been checking out more of your blogs and just realized I'm about the only muthafucka up in here responding to ANYTHING you have to say. (Shit, do I hear crickets?). I HATE HATIN' muthafuckas. Can't imagine you got past the first few "dense" paragraphs of ASPHALT (one of my favorite books) or anything DJ Spooky wrote (don't know him) or Saul (one of my favorite poets) wrote, because you to busy woryyin' bout the new men in the lives of yo three different baby mamas (damn!) and Eddie Murphy's ex-wife (son, can you go register somebody to vote or get a GEd or do somethin useful besides worry bout the "juice" you got first from some BITCH. Damn that some stupid shit.) How you get to be blacker than everybody, straighter than everybody, smarter than everynody and you ain't published shit or sustained a family? Stop bloggin and stop hatin and pick up a damn book. By the way I think that last guy was sayin YOU didn't have an argument or a POINT for that matter. I realize people blog cuz they lonely, sad and nobody else would publish what the fuck they got to say, but I had Saul Williams on google alert ever since his Oprah letter and this stupid shit comes cross my screen about his gas bill. You got the nerve to calll someobody lonely and you got like 200 blogs entries with no commments except from people like me who just can't believe the STUPID SHIT some muthafuckas like you have to say

rasx(), 2008-08-16 18:39:03

shermel:

Let's recap: I need learn something from people who are published and they teach at universities. I am a hatin' mufukka. I am lonely because nobody leaves comments on my Blog. Saul Williams is your favorite poet. I am Blacker than you. I do not have a GED. I have too many mothers with my children. My shit is stupid. I got to pick up a book. You and I are from the ’hood and I need to stop using it in certain ways that is sad and because I am not published. You were a Crip but not an Inglewood Family---not an 8-tray gangster---not a Brim---not a Deuce Deuce---not Fruit Town Piru. And I don't have a point because having points wins real friends and influences functional people.

Did I miss anything? Wait. I think I need to register people to vote. Hey, is there is centralized list of things I need to do so you can like me? A "list of demands" perhaps?

Again, since you dig “published” people in universities so much (and their paper books) then you should know how they formally break a nigga down: you have to quote my shit and then tear it up. Your orthogonal synopsis of me is not unusual and you should see in my writing, not unexpected. There are plenty of you and this is why Blackness is where it is at right now.

You want to remind me of that pair of flooding pants I wore at Raymond Ave. school in 1977? Your abuse in your effort to protect your favorite poet is nothing compared to being reminded of dress code by my fellow elementary school kids. Dig: some of those children knew how to play chess better than a writer of a "published" book of chess. I don't make the mistake of calling them sad and stupid.

The great thing about writing and publishing on the Internet is that my shit is (almost) all here. You have to spend just a few minutes to actually read the shit and then try to beat it down. And since you think I am sad, stupid, and Blacker than "everyone" it should take you about five minutes. My guess is that you don't have five minutes to "waste" on a loser like me, right? Close?

Bye?

Remember what they used to call them shermel? They used to call them "sherm heads," right?

shermel, 2008-08-16 20:52:06

Sorry man, you was right the first time. You dumber than I thought and I need to respect that. Peace or war or whatever you lookin for.

Baraka, 2008-08-17 15:41:02

Niah, why did you even send me this Bryan Wilhite bullshit. He gonna talk abot Saul Williams and Carl Hancock Rux (can't believe DJ Spooky and Rux even responded. Glad saul didn't waste his time) and women like we cans of v-8. Did you even read Bryan Wilhite's little sad ass poetry chapbook? Big up to the real poets like Rux and Williams and them. Glad you called him out though. Like Beck said, he's a loser baby.

rasx(), 2008-08-17 16:41:19

Baraka, the question is, Did you even read Bryan Wilhite’s little sad ass poetry chapbook? I don't think so... which means your method of judgment is corrupt---which means your sight of Saul Williams is understandable. It's great to capture the reality of my situation in the raw. People would not take my word for it without your help...

I know this "Baraka" cannot be the writer of "Black Dada Nihilismus" and the inspiration behind the Black Caucus?

Baraka, 2008-08-17 19:45:29

You'd laugh if you knew who my mother was and my father was but I don't wear their books on my back to tell people who I am. Don't need to. Did YOU read DJ Spooky's "Rythm Science" or Carl Hancock Rux's "Asphalt" or "Talk" or "Pagan Operetta" or his essay on black writers ; did YOU read Amiri Baraka's Black Cyciphus or Samuel Delaney's Dahlgren (there's a whole lot for you to find out about yourself in the aforementioned) or anything by anyone beside yourself? I don't think so. Which makes sense given how poor your tools of criticism are. Funny how you don't like being attacked but you have no problem attacking writers you don't know anything about. You can go off on me now if you like, I'm too busy to be bothered with your narcissicsm.

Ahmad, 2008-08-17 22:21:19

Who the fuck is this mufuh? Where his freestyle creativity or creativity for that matter? What's wrong wid poets singing? I'm havin reading comprehension my damn self on this foul shit. Does that make me a white liberal liar too? Thius dude is mad angry about nuthin and aint got jack shit to show but logs bout halle berry n shit. Yo, what happened? This why the whole poetry movement went down the toilet bcause niggas like this is sad coming off all righteous and shit about nothing. where's the reviews? where's the literary criticism? dis mufuh must think his dick is big! this some faggot shit:

rasx(), 2008-08-17 22:59:45

Baracka: I think this means you are leaving right: “I’m too busy to be bothered with your narcissicsm”? You are done right?

Ahmad: “this some faggot shit”? I think you are the one coming to the defense of Saul Williams, right? ...At the top of the page you are "reading" is a Search box. It might actually work. When you actually look at the web site you may actually find reviews and criticism.

Peoples, peoples... do I have to close comments here? Or will you do the sensible thing and be useless elsewhere...

niah, 2008-08-18 13:05:04

LMAO! That last guy broke it down! By the way...closing comments is fascist. sweetie.

ahmad, 2008-08-18 23:03:43

Yo, Baraka, thought I'd give this one more chance, take the advise of the blogger and "click search" to read a few book reviews or literary criticism. Still came up empty handed. Atleast this guy seems to mention a lot of books even if he doesn't read them (the latest entry on Sheree R. Thomas anthology, for instance. Says he opened it and goes off the subject. I still don't know shit about teh anthology or its purpose. Guess I gotta go do that work myself, which makes me wonder, what the fuck?) He should take his own advise and "look inside" the books he posts. Might help. I'm movin on. I guess the reason why on line bloggers prefer to be online bloggers is they don't have to answer to editors or anybody else, which makes for some pretty bad writing. One thing though, anybody else notice the most comments for any of these entries is the one when dude went off on DJ Spooky, Carl Hancock Rux and Saul Williams? Celebrities help the visibility of the invisile I guess, but like the Invisible woman said, "interesting".

ahmad, 2008-08-18 23:06:11

typo: "I meant celebrities help the visibility of the INVISIBLE..."

rasx(), 2008-08-19 00:00:35

I knew back in 1998 that people with your vibe would assume that when I tell you that something is on this web site---and you don't find it you assume that the error is on me. You would even go so far as to assume I am lying. This assumption is very racial to me---especially when other black people are doing it.

What is worse is when they actually find the work and they go silent. They were so eager to destroy that when they actually find the creativity they are simply not prepared to accept it. This is very embarrassing when attempting to condescend from supremacy. "Winning" these people over is a waste of energy.

At the top of this page are links right next to the Search box. Here is one:

http://kintespace.com/index_time.html

Note how the word INDEX is in the link. Since I do not have a GED I do not want to insult your intelligence about what an INDEX is... I really don't want to hear from any of you great people when you have trouble reading all of what's there.

Niah, 2008-08-19 00:25:46

But it's your website!!! That's like not holding an editor accountable for what's in an anthology!

rasx(), 2008-08-19 05:24:30

Niah, don't you have something else to do? Your life certainly must be supremely more interesting than mine. I find it hard to accept that I am sitting here writing to my superiors about clicking on ONE link.

My website has an index---in fact three indexes. This Blog you are reading is like the green room in a live studio. What's in the index are the formal 'shows.'

Three indexes: I can't make you good people of Texas click on them. There are three of them... space people... space time... space visitors...

Actually what is easier is this link:

http://www.kintespace.com/khits.html

Not only do you see ALL formal presentations on this site you will see the traffic numbers as well.

Good night and good luck.

ahmad, 2008-08-19 12:53:38

So is the dude who wrote the essay about Africa and Pre-Colombian contact (dug that) the same dude who wrote the little ditty on Kara Walker ( subjective empty bullshit just like the Saul Williams penis envy essay and the attack on singing poets and dj's dipped in chocolate who hang out with lesbians who hate their guts ) and is that dude you? What happened? A nervous break-down?

ahmad, 2008-08-19 12:58:46

And kill the noise on that racial accusation. It doesn't get more racial (or racist) than most of your entries. Damn dude...good luck to yu too. You gon need it.

Carl Hancock Rux, 2008-08-19 13:06:04

Guys, please stop sending your entries to this man to me. I have three deadlines to meet and an academic year to begin. I don't need defending. I'm not wounded. I'm not interested. All the best.

rasx(), 2008-08-19 16:21:29

Ahmad, do not send my work to Mr. Rux. He is not a publisher or an editor of words or sound. The childhood foundation of his aesthetic is deeply unconcerned with me (and I say that with some understanding of the details of Rux's early life). Like Farai Chideya, it is clear that Rux intends to make change "within and without" the "system"---since my background is in physics (UCSB 1991) I know you can't be two places at once without knowledge of time travel and all y'all mufukkas are deeply rooted in the worse place of the present. My assumption is that 90% of his work is controlled by white-owned concerns, ruling over a market that has destroyed the small mom and pop artsy businesses probably before you were born---so you may have American troubles imagining what the world was like before Viacom and Sony America---and even that world sucked...

Ahmad, whatever you do don't make a movie or write a story about who you think I am. Ellison beat you to it---and you don't want to insult him, right? He called that insane character "Ras the Destroyer"... he did it decades ago and still has your futuristic ass covered... Do let your celebrities satisfy "our" invisibility.

After "real" publication, Ellison enjoyed a life of academic privilege that I am either supposedly too ignorant to understand or secretly coveting. Let these dreams of imagination soothe you... (BTW: Invisible Man is one of my favorite novels---and none of you please don't even try to make a music video about it. Like Miles Davis would say, I can tell by the way you walk in the room and the way you begin to reach out and pick up your instrument whether you can play. I don't care how many pictures you pose in with Kenny G.---I don't care how many degrees in music theory you get--- you still can't play to me. The only thing you can do is "hope" the white world kills me--- "hope" that I am insane--- "hope" that this style of Black gets shamed away by high-school-lunch-table-Fox-News politics... Welcome to intellectual Vietnam... nothing is new under the Sun... the white elites will soon shut down the Internet as we know it and your monkey asses will actually be happy it because it stops me for the moment... the white elites will pass a law against me and it will censor you all... get ready to rock the vote in chocolate rain...)

Yes, you all. Leave us both alone. Carl is absolutely, predictably correct. He has three deadlines to meet (hmm... what does a 'real writer' look like in a movie from the 1970s? hmm... what does a 'real writer' look like now?)... Carl is very lucky that he has intelligent and dedicated followers like Ahmad---extremely valuable people that I will surely miss---who do not know the intimate details of how much struggle and uncertainty is actually involved... Carl also does not know that he is being recorded by a Black history that will be alive in the future---and we will see how this little insignificant incident plays out in the long distance run. The Apollo Theater as we knew it is gone... The Good Life stage is gone... so "we" can't really know how really untalented "we" actually can be...

Ahmad, Carl must dislike anything I do for the rest of my life... otherwise his life and his dreams fulfilled will be diminished... so, Ahmad, it's not a matter of justice---I have to be guilty... entire worlds of consciousness depend on it... possibly your identity as a man---let alone a human being---depends on my downfall.... at the end of the Hollywood movie, I have to die...

sounds melodramatic huh?

( "Get my agent on the phone...")

Carl Hancock Rux, 2008-08-19 18:48:02

Your second sissy punch at me. Congratulations. Feel good now? You have not proven you know anything about me. Your assumptions about my white controlled world are pathetically misinformed, and if anything is predictable, it is your hatred and disrespect. You do not know what I know, whom I know, or how I come to know what I know. You have never met me (not that you would have had to, seeing how omniscient and discerning your intellect is). Wow, you got me again, man. Pulled me away from the work on my desk, the work that really matters in my life right now: Present day Haitian slavery in the Dominican Republic; the history of that tower of Babel that was Santo Domingue where French and Spaniards confounded the languages imported Africans and indigenous people five hundred years ago and the divine work of eternal colonialism; these 3000 pages I'm dealing with to figure out why my first and last name are German and my face is black, which has taken me all the way back to 18th century Prussia and Angelo Soliman and Vienna's Egyptian pyramid with its wafting eye and Mozart's attempt at knowing Isis and Osiris in order to write Monostos into a polyphonic lauda while taxidermied African people were being exhibited by the Holy Roman Emperor in the Tiergarten Schönbrunn; the short brutal window of the Prussian Empire's African colonial history and the Herero rebellion and Mahi-Mahi war and the persecution and Christian/Islamic conversion of Hausa people during the days of King Njoya and the war of the Bamum and the German's tactical use of the Nso to bring them the severed head of King Nsangou and all the Basel Mission Schools in Fumban and all the Christian Missionaries throughout Africa that confounded and confused black people by telling us we were black to begin with; the French occupation of the Rhineland with African colonial troops and the biracial children born in those ten or so years between the first and second world war and the so called Black Horror and WEB DuBois’ recipe for the national Advancement of Colored people based on his own fond memories of a Prussian Empire; the incarceration and termination and experimentation of African peoples in Europe by the Nazi regime (inspired by American genocidal practices and policies) all of which is unmentionable when we mention the word Holocaust and is never part of the so called Holocaust discussion because the world still considers latter day European Jews to have a copyright on Judaism and genocide, to the extant most Americans actually believe European Jews are actually descended from Judaic tribes, (which of course brings me to the third pile of papers I’m neglecting while I go off on this rant, the one on present day Palestine and the displacement of Africans and Middle Eastern peoples and the uprooting of olive trees by Israelis)...but none of this makes me black, not even the article I just finished after going down to Mississippi this summer to sit with Emmett Till's people and see where his body was thrown tied to a gin fan makes me black (or calling Morgan Freeman or Ifa Bayeza and asking them to explain why a 50 year old murder in the south is relevant to a 35 year old northerner 50 years later) none of this makes me black, not my papers or my letters or my investigation into the global history of African peoples, none of this qualifies or codifies my blackness. Not my ancestors slavery or government sponsored false emancipation nor my mother’s mental illness and institutionalization nor my father’s invisibility nor my group home adolescence nor my brother’s death from AIDS nor my years living on the beaches of Iture where I first learned to sing as a means of articulation when there was nothing left for me to say; not conferencing (as you pointed out earlier) on panels with Abioudun Ayowole or Omar Bin Hasim, addressing present day Apartheid in so called Apartheid free Joberg and Capetown makes me black —not even being black makes me black, or an intellectual, or famous, or a D List (as you put it) celebrity. What it makes me is painfully aware that my daily existence is a continuum of struggle, and my struggle does not belong soley to me, and the last thing in the world I want to do is stop what I’m doing because you don’t like me. I'm not afflicted that illness. You’re good brother. You got more of my time than I have

Carl Hancock Rux, 2008-08-19 18:51:13

...to give.

Carl Hancock Rux, 2008-08-19 18:53:32

Taking a note from Ahman, let me correct a typo: I'm not afflicted with THAT illness.

Niles23, 2008-08-19 18:57:57

WHEW!!! DAAAAAAAMN!!! Aiiight.

Niah, 2008-08-19 19:04:42

Sherm, thanks for this. That's why this brother's cool with me. Oh, and to answer the question, "don't I have anything bettr to do?" , like whut? Have babies and try to keep my "juice" fresh? I know you dont even wanna get into with me.

rasx(), 2008-08-19 19:52:19

You guys don't have to go home but you can't stay here. Carl will get a Blog post from me for that one (comments will be available for this future entry). And let's not even think of tit for tat... that's just revenge... because Carl would know that Wilhite (my last name) is also a German name... But directly Carl, I did not say or write you were not black or even Black. Me saying you are not black is like saying W.E.B. Dubois is not black---but even he had racial epithets for Marcus Garvey when pushed into a corner. And all of the friends that came to your aid are from that corner---Miles Davis even released an album of the same title... pull out "On the Corner" from your record collection and get back to work!

Carl, you follow in the footsteps of my teacher, Dr. Gerald Horne. See how he is treated by me. Search for him in on kintespace.com before you write me the word "lollipop"...

You guys don't have to go home but you can't stay here. And Niah, fascists not only make you go home but they build a reservation called "home" and make you live on it and proudly defend it... Toni Morrison called it "Sweet Home" in a little book she wrote...

rasx()