spring can really hang you up the most

a new idea i'm working on with this standard. (even though it's not april anymore!) you may want to listen with headphones to really hear the bass.  a continuation of my new attempt to turn off the self-edit mode by putting stuff out there, even if it's not fully formed.  

every poem is you, brooklyn

i swear this platform shakes

as wind blows over Mcdonald Ave

we wait, spitting into space,

level with tops of brick apartments, warehouses 

selling wooden doors and tombstones. 

here someone has written

Hiroshima ain't nothing compared

--never finished or maybe obscured 

by illegible tags, making this line's neat print

all the more glaring.

i reentered this city on my own,

a shrinking circle of daily listening,

expanding net of unknowns--

a best friend crying beside me

on a bench on a street near childhood.

we are grown and i don't know if she wants

to be held (i always do.)

the bodies around us keep moving

talking of how it smells like rain,

getting in and out of cars, carrying groceries,

talking loudly, adjusting their clothes.

i swear i have been here most my life--

eaten various flat breads, chickpeas and lentils.

in some shops, barbers, sign-painters, cooks, musicians

know my name and want me to join them for tea--

this is no secret city, not the first time

i've seen you- sang along

you look like a city but you feel like religion to me

oh!  i want to be able to leave you

and there is nowhere else to go.

i want you inside me,

whispering through my pores as i sleep.

i walked home talking loudly, holding my pants in place,

past curses and kisses, and it never did rain.

woke in a pool of sweat, an unseasonably hot morning.

today, the subway like so many times,

waiting above ground, swooshing around phlegm

in our cheeks before letting it go,

launching it into quivering space.

today like so many times

i want to know just what you did to me,

but i cannot see everything.

stay with me

my take on "stay with me" by sparlha swa.  

trying to build up some solo bass/ voice pieces these days.  

might be easier to hear the bass if you listen with headphones.  

good shit

i feel a bit bipolar lately, up and down about just about everything. but today it is 80 degrees! and so, a quickie-post, in honor of the gorgeous weather. as the title suggests here is a list of some good shit that i've seen/ heard recently:

"the business of being born"- a film about the birthing industry in the US with some incredible footage of home-births. it made me disgusted with US hospital birthing policies, and more than that it made me want to deliver and/ or have babies immediately!

i have been reading "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith. just wanted to say that i cannot put it down. the novel takes place in London and follows 3 generations of families from different backgrounds (white, Bangladeshi, and Jamaican.) this was Smith's debut novel in 2000 and the writing is incredible. she moves seamlessly from skillful plot that weaves between characters and years, hilarious and poignant character development, and spot-on critical study of identity politics (often without being clear which is which.) i am impressed and enamored!

check out this organization: Young Women's Empowerment Project (YWEP) based in Chicago. i heard a woman from YWEP speak and i was blown away by the depth and breadth of what they do and the fearlessly radical way that they do it. the woman who spoke actually said that her job is being phased out because the organization is in the process of becoming entirely youth run and operated! it's overwhelmingly exciting to hear of a group that seems so grassroots, sustainable, and solution-oriented.

i heard Irene Aebi sing, in person! if you don't know, Irene was Steve Lacy's wife and muse. her energy and presence were unbelievable. i'm not always into all that woo-woo stuff but you know sometimes you're in someone's presence and you can just feel the beauty of their spirit? being near Irene was like that. the group "ideal bread" performed some Lacy tunes, and then Irene sang some of Lacy's art songs with a soprano saxophonist and pianist. gorgeous. Steve Lacy's writing is humorous and painful, composed and messy. i was so happy to hear a few tunes i knew and a lot of new ones. one thing i love about Lacy's work is that his pieces are about something. always. he puts thought into his titles, dedications, text-settings. a true artist. sometimes i think jazz musicians are afraid of language. we should all take a tip from Lacy and partner with words, worship the world of letters while simultaneously using music- those sounds that get at what we could never speak or write. okay, enough. watch this:

satisfy this hungriness

after listening repeatedly to both nina simone and cat power take on this song, i decided to see what would happen if i tried.  it's rough around the edges but honestly, so was i in this moment.  posting this video in an effort to spill my creative juices a little more indeterminately these days.

staggering

blood hardened inside me.

here it is-- a clump, staggering

to the depths of toilet bowl.

almost went in after it, to know

how it clings to flesh between fingers,

slides off palms, but let it disappear.

enough.  this is what my body gives.

you can hear the sadness and wanting

in my voice but i am not afraid

or embarrassed.  this is how i came into the world.

a bloody mass.  so listen!

some songs just come out this way,

lapping at your heels and disposing of their own mess.

feed my body so much good food but

not exactly what it wants.  you cannot

hold anything in rubber between flesh

forever.  and when i let it all go, each drop

doesn't matter-- slithers and staggers

and stops, somewhere beyond my vision.

where's the fight?! complacency versus realism

it is cold now. we are already longing for summer. we are holed up in our apartments with so much of our own thoughts and potential for productivity. and i am never quite productive enough for my own desires. i have nothing coherent to write and yet i am desperate for some form of creative output. the winter is shriveling my creative fertility. or something like that.

tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. tuesday is Obama's inauguration. i am on the couch reading children's books about MLK, deciding what to read to my students. and i am reading a magazine that sketchily says little about who put it out, but contains moving pictures and articles related to Obama. flipping through it yesterday i had something like a body memory of election night. and flipping through it today i started crying again. 

and i cannot bring myself to watch the video of Oscar Grant being murdered. (sign this petition.)  and i cannot bring myself to look at any more pictures of Palestine.  and i am reading eulogies written for a girl i sort of knew, a girl who went to my summer camp, was a year older than me, had the same name as me, and who recently took her own life.  she was a photographer, a writer, a feminist.

it is a new year and i feel heavy.  i want to re-educate myself on how to be fearless.  when i was 13 i argued with everyone and i think it was because i was invested in everyone, was an incredibly idealistic person.  i've tried, as i've grown, to hone my confrontational nature into something a little more tactful.  but now i'm afraid i don't know the line between complacency and realism.  

here's what i mean- i did not go to a single march against the Israeli attacks on Gaza.  i was too busy.  i did not make any phone calls about it.  i did sign a few online petitions.  but i sat at home reading the news and feeling angry and ashamed to be an American Jew, to live in a country where we cannot call a massacre a massacre.  

i did not campaign for Obama.  i was too busy.  i tried to keep my cool through the whole election.  i think deep down, i was afraid he would lose and i didn't want to invest too much.  and then when he won, i lost it- could not stop sobbing.  and i thanked the couple of friends i was with who had done a lot of work for the campaign.  i truly felt grateful to them and to so many others who proved my cynicism wrong.  

and the other week i saw an inspiring photography show by Catherine Opie that left me swimming in thoughts about identity, art, architecture, place, queerness (self portrait nursing pictured above)...  i left the museum eager to talk about the exhibit.  my friend's friend spoke immediately, writing off the entirety of the show as "banal" (though he complemented the "composition" of only one photograph) in a self-confident and absolutely dismissive way that only well-schooled white men can speak.  i simply tried to let it slide off and not ruin my own art-induced high.  but later i thought, who am i?  i would never have let someone get away with such a comment without an argument in the past!  

when i was an adolescent i argued with everyone- sometimes i came out thrilled at changing someone's mind or at least holding my own in debate, sometimes i was stubborn, loud, and self-righteous and simply got myself in trouble (as was the case with too many teachers in middle and high school.)  when i was an adolescent i marched in protests- some of them were uplifting and sustaining gatherings, some felt like unfocused, unproductive, left-wing masturbation.  (to be honest!)  i went to meetings of social action groups but quickly became disillusioned by all the talk and concern with self-image that can go with young activists.

yes, i am cynical now.  but i am trying to be a grown-up living in the complicated real world.  it is a world where biracial former-community-organizers can become president.  but it is also a world where Sean Bell and Oscar Grant no longer live.  i get so caught up in my own inane shit-- it is cold out and i have too many jobs and i should be grateful for all my jobs but i am tired and being a musician is so hard and i'm so busy...!  

i know i could never be complacent.  i am far too emotional.  i want to live in the real-world but i also want space for some of my younger-self's idealism.  as the inauguration approaches i want to grasp onto some of the Obama "hope" rhetoric.  i want to read this beautiful book called Martin's Big Words (illustration pictured above) to my 4th and 5th graders in the Bronx on the day that we get a president who looks like he could be related to my students.  i want to help them believe that they too can make significant change happen.  because lord knows, we need it.  i want to enjoy my snowy weekend inside for what it is; use this time to gather up some of my former fire!