Monday, November 30
SONG OF THE DAY: Is It My Body
3V3N TH3 M0ST B4S1C F0LKS...
Sunday, November 29
SONG OF THE DAY: Breaking Up Somebody's Home
WH3N3V3R 1'M S1TT1NG 0N...
Saturday, November 28
SONG OF THE DAY: I Like It (Soul Synopsis Mix)
Friday, November 27
S4D H0W TH3Y T1LL3D 1 N33D T0...
Thursday, November 26
SONG OF THE DAY: Listen To My Song
C0NT1NV0VSLY P3RPL3X3D...
Wednesday, November 25
SONG OF THE DAY: Loc'in On The Shaw
FR33D0M'S JVST 4N0TH3R W0RD...
Tuesday, November 24
SONG OF THE DAY: Angel From Montgomery
4LL TH3S3 N0 TR3SP4SS1NG S1GNS...
Monday, November 23
SONG OF THE DAY: Colors
Stayed up too late the other night watching Boyz In Tha Hood again. My kid came down for a late night snack, and starting interrupting and asking questions, right when Tre and Ricky were in the alley and Ricky got shot. My kid’s like, “You look like you’re about to cry?” I was like, “Damn, Ricky just got shot.” I told her the basic layout of Tre, Ricky, and Doughboy, then she goes back into the kitchen. As she comes back out, they’re putting Ricky in the Impala to take home, and my kid goes, “Is that Bread?” I’m like what? She goes, “Bread? Dough? Whatever it was?” And then we talked about the plastic on the furniture at Ricky and Doughboy’s house for a few minutes before she got bored with my existence, like any tween would with their dad watching some old ass movie, and left again.
TH3 HVM4N BR41N K33PS TH1NK1NG...
Sunday, November 22
TH3 P0W3R 0F L0VNG3 D03SN'T...
Saturday, November 21
Friday, November 20
SONG OF THE DAY: Mosquito Loco
Fuck it, no write up with this one. Just the most annoying beautiful cumbia song that was ever made (as far as I know). If you have MAGA neighbors, TURN IT UP LOUD AS FUCK, and shoot your guns into the ceiling. Or at least have a barrel fire. I've been in this new home of mine for almost three months, and still ain't got no burn barrel. Neighbors down below me by the river are burning trash, detritus, and scrap limbs every Friday night. Got the sky filled with trash fog now. And me up here, looking simple, ain't even got a burn barrel. Damn. Played myself again.
TH3 SVNS3T 4ND SVNR1S3 L00K...
Thursday, November 19
SONG OF THE DAY: Samuri Da Yan Matan
Walking the narrow road of “holding my shit
together” in a society that seems hell bent on squeezing as much literal blood
from folks stoned by hopelessness. I’ve wrestled with guilt lately for having
brung children into this world, who will have to survive it after I’m gone.
Haha, what a swerve – previous generations looked forward to playing with their
grandchildren, and I’m sitting here feeling guilty I gave life to my children.
I mean, I know it’s all perspective, and maybe all those times I stood in front
of people babbling about how we don’t actually get to an end, there’s no wall
that says “It’s over” for humanity, but that stubborn and persistent souls keep
pushing forward. I guess I don’t feel that stubborn, or persistent right now,
which also is probably normal, because we’ve been living in this fucked up
purgatory, hiding from potential illness, as well as medical debt in America,
and I still ain’t dug out from the debt that came about years ago.
That’s what’s so depressing about life in America now – it’s a burden to be
alive. Most of us are losing money every day we remain alive, with no hope of
that figure ever changing, so no wonder suicides are rising and people feel
guilty for procreating. I just want to sink into a cocoon for three months, be
left the fuck alone, zero expectations from anybody, and come back out with the
redbuds, and see how shit feels at that point. But I can’t, because in America
any day you don’t at least tread water to where it’s risen, you get flooded a
little bit more. I can’t wait for this country to dissolve from what it is now.
It’s going to be a great relief to a lot of people, even though it feels scary
since it’s all we’ve ever known. But this shit ain’t working no more.
TH3 L3SS0NS 0F GR4FF1T1...
Wednesday, November 18
SONG OF THE DAY: Why Do Everything Happen To Me
The weird thing about our culture – if you can call it that – is how proudly stupid people have become. Even smart people. Shit everybody. If our culture is anything it’s one of self-importance, where we think we have to share our goddamn idiot thoughts on every single subject on social media. And then trending topics force us to give opinions about shit we didn’t even think about or care about otherwise. And it all gets to feel so stupid and overwhelming that when I’m trying to get through the stupid fucking Food Lion during a pandemic with rising numbers, and just grab the things I need, and I see the idiot pear-shaped redneck produce man standing there looking like a goddamn cartoon warning against electrocuting yourself from 1949, setting bags of onions out, I just wanna stomp him and the whole world into pulp. But I can’t, and don’t. I just buy my useless shit and go home, like everybody else, until the credit behind my name runs out, and I’m sleeping in the cold earth again.
TH0S3 WH0 P4SS10N4T3LY GR1P...
Tuesday, November 17
SONG OF THE DAY: I Wanna Be Where You Are (Underboss Remix)
Nowhere to go, nothing to be, so I meandered my way back on 11, then 250, in the early evening winter night time, taking pictures of dying strip mall stores with bright lights but dead dreams. Stopped at the Sheetz, where of course covid doesn't exist for these rednecks, who aren't even rednecks anymore but some weird suburban wannabe hybrid that was steeped more deeply in the internet than back roads, and when their drunk uncle took them to the river to sit there and drink and get high, they must've been looking at social media more than the river, because these folks ain't rednecks, or country. But they also don't wear masks, and walk around like too many roosters in a chicken pen, so I wanna slit their throats, because that's how I was raised when there's too many useless fucking roosters strutting around the chicken pen, making things hard for everybody else.
Sadly, I'm probably wrong, and that is "country" in what this country is now - all of us penned up in our chicken runs, too many goddamned self-important roosters flapping around, making noise all the fucking time but got no real fight to them, and would die in the wild with the quickness. Me too. There's a dude living down below me by the river, and I walk past him and we go "hey!" at each other, but two or three nights down there in the cold November Blue Ridge foothills nights would destroy me. I'm too weak for this shit, to be dealing with all these dumbass roosters and dying malls and machetes that aren't sharp enough to cut through bone and winter in America.
Strangely, the military surplus store had lockers for rent on the concourse, with proceeds going to the Dolly Parton Literary Fund. It seemed interesting the store that appeared to believe antifa was a George Soros-funded militia, also supported Dolly Parton charities, but I have to remember not every living person gets feed the same digital stream of memes I do. They may not realize Dolly is a lesbian at heart, and rides rainbow candy-painted Harley Davidsons over the new moon every month. But also, who is going to use a locker at the mall? Only thing I could think of was nearly homeless people, who are likely not far from that mall, by the looks of things. I also tried to find a bathroom, which was at the far desolate end, by the movie theater I couldn't tell if it was actually operational or not, but also some claw machines, all by themselves. The bathrooms were blocked off with warning tape, and had OUT OF ORDER written on them. I started to walk away but a black dude popped out of some lavender bakery place and was like, "Oh you can use it, man. I was just trying to clean it up. It was fucked up in there." "Alright. I'll try not to mess it up," I answered. "Oh, you ain't got to worry 'bout it; you're good."
The floor was still wet, and my boots left black marks on the floor, and I felt horrible about it. He popped out as I was walking off and said, "Take it easy!" and I said thanks and also took it easy as best I could.
The whole thing was sad, because we're all out here still trying to feel good, still trying to survive, and I'm not sure where all the people who can afford things are. Downtown Staunton has become more gentrified, housing prices going up, pushing people into the suburban areas, which are spiraling downward, like that mall. Some lady was sitting at the desk and said over the PA that the mall was closing at six and to wrap up your shopping. I thought the book store was open til 8, but I also didn't want to find out if they were going to kick me out or not, because it gave me an excuse not to disappear like Dr. Haha Lung. So I did.
Also, I did not break up my conversation with the dude who cleaned the bathroom into multiple paragraphs, because it was all one conversation, and just like with malls, and American flags, and "country" people at the Sheetz, that 1950s shit doesn't apply anymore. Sorry, that's just how shit is.
N4T1V3 S0N 0F RVR4L S0VTH...
Monday, November 16
3X1ST3NT14L QV3ST10NS R1S3...
Sunday, November 15
SONG OF THE DAY: Open the Door (Alternate Take)
SC4TT3R MY 4SH3S 4R0VND...
DR34M1NG 4B0VT H4V1NG SH1T...
Saturday, November 14
D0M3ST1C4T3D G4M3C0CK...
Friday, November 13
SONG OF THE DAY: Tre World Freestyle
Hadn't even been six months since George Floyd got murdered by police in Minnesota. What the fuck? RIP Big Floyd.
H4RD N0T T0 F0LL0W P4THS L41D...
Thursday, November 12
SONG OF THE DAY: Signoya
The river is high from all the rain, which I like because it means that all the spots where people sit there drinking a quarter or pint or whatever, and bottles got left in the brush, it all gets washed loose and down the river. Then it recedes, and bottles which got moved about end up in the muck down below where I live, and I find them while tromping along the road. It takes a lot of patience to write poems on old river bottles, because you can't rush the finding of bottles. Nature has to do their part in the creative process. If I started forcing it, or getting bottles in a different way, I'd be turning creative process into manufacturing, and then I'd lose heart for it, because creation is a heart thing but manufacturing is a brain thing. Fuck my brain, in my opinion.
ST1LL M4K1NG P1LGR1M4G3S...
Wednesday, November 11
SONG OF THE DAY: Cheeba Cheeba
Randomly decided to look up famous graffiti artist Stay
High 149, and turns out he was born in Southside Virginia, down in Emporia,
before moving to the New York City at age 6 in the mid-1950s, and ending up in
the Bronx around ‘66. Apparently he never knew his dad, but early on in
graffiti’s late ‘60s/early ‘70s days, Stay High 149 became well-known, turning
a haloed stickman figure from a popular TV show into a smoking character that
was thrown up with his every time he did it, stylizing it in a way not
everybody did at the time. By the time hip hop and graffiti was blowing up
towards the mid-70s, Stay High 149 was a legend. He apparently had a job as a
messenger downtown, so rode the train all day long, saw other tags, so started
carrying markers with him and tagging all over. He got featured in a New York
magazine article in 1973, including a picture, and the cops busted him afterwards
once they knew what he looked like. He switched to other tags after that, then
he sort of disappeared, still tagging but also battling drug problems, while
raising and supporting a family. (He apparently tagged the stairwells of the
World Trade Center extensively, because that’s where his job was based, before
he lost it due to drug issues.) Around 2000, as internet culture and
information sharing was developing, he ran into another graffiti writer, and
found out his name still carried legend. He resurfaced, getting mobbed at a
couple art shows he showed up to at the time, and got back into graffiti for a
while. Norman Mailer’s “Faith of Graffiti” long essay had been released as a
book with photographs of prominent graffiti back in ’74, and featured Stay High
149. It got reissued in 2009, and had a picture of a Stay High 149 tag on the
cover of it. At the same time, the actual Stay High 149 could be found haggling
prices for graffiti canvases on the streets of NYC. Once again, the archivist
from within the system of respectability and authority got more wealth out of
the deal than the originator and source of the material. Stay High 149 died in
2012, from liver disease, after a life spent battling those addiction demons.
He’s got a government name that his obituaries go by, but his real name is Stay
High 149, and to think otherwise is fucking stupid and disrespectful to how he
lived his life.
Emporia used to have both an east-west and north-south train line, but the
east-west has been shut down, like a lot of shit in Southside Virginia. Folks
try to gentrify them into rails to trails, but weekend bikers will never bring
the economy that actual functioning textile mills and factories gave folks. It’s
a dead end town for the most part now if you don’t already have wealth to live
off of. The north-south line still runs, operated by CSX, and the Amtrak still
comes through, carrying folks up north to better opportunities or family or an
escape to this day. There’s no yard there, so probably not any old freights
sitting around, but I wanna go down there and tag up some Stay High 149s, as
homage to an illegitimate arts legend, and where he was born, because ain’t
nobody there gonna bother trying to remember shit like that.
C4RV1NG P03TRY 1NT0...
Tuesday, November 10
SONG OF THE DAY: Pass
The malls are all nearly empty now; they sold off the last headless department store mannequins a couple months back, 90% off the overpriced starting point. The only thing left now are a used book store where the old dude sells junk he gets in bulk for free from estate dump-offs, and the military surplus store, where you could get a nice knife but they're gonna look at you funny if you're wearing a mask of anything other than a beard and naive belief in freedom as a god. A couple stores can now afford rent where they used to be kiosks, and you always hope it turns into a giant international flea market, pull the unpainted food trucks up to the big double doors of the long gone tire center on whatever all purpose capitalist destination from three decades ago could give you tires along with your home goods, let the wretched of the earth, who have come here always but hidden in the corners of this country, finding shelter in the gaps between margins, let them thrive in this place. But it won't happen. The value of the land's potential is always more than what poor people can actually do with it. These old buildings will hang on, out of kindness to the small business owners who are respectably white, but eventually be bulldozed and hauled away, and replaced by a new investment opportunity, unfaded by time, bright and shiny and made of the newest plastics, which decay even more slowly than the ones from before, although it all ends up in the same pile eventually, far beyond the horizons we pay attention to. Those are the hills you see, cutting a skyline in the twilight of America, piles of rubble of dead dreams, with a thin layer of soil and grass sown over top, sprayed with pesticides to keep any dandelions or four-leaf clovers from blooming, and fucking up the eternal sameness.
SVP3RL4T1V3 3X1ST3NC3...
Monday, November 9
TH3 M3D1C1N3 0VR R4GG3D...
Sunday, November 8
SONG OF THE DAY: Jo Lean (Slurred & Blurred)
SHOUT OUT TO DJ BRILLIANT, SLURRING IT AND BLURRING IT. He told me he'd never really listened to this song before he fucked with it, slowing it down and chopping it up. True artists understand the essence of the material they're working with, even without analysis. Without thinking. Shit just comes to you, naturally, like McDonalds bags full of fries to a pack of crows.
1NT3RN4L F3RM3NT4T10N...
Saturday, November 7
SONG OF THE DAY: Robots Taking Them Jobs Away
Friday, November 6
SONG OF THE DAY: Pirate
Trying to stream things is such a chaotic mess now.
Music or shows just disappear, or move to some new thing you’re supposed to be
like, “oh okay, let’s throw another $12 over here after throwing all these $5,
$10, whatever the fucks everywhere else.” Fuck that, I’m going back to pirating
shit, burning it to DVD, and then when the internet is shut down because too
many people are coordinating where they’ll be to flip over police Humvees together,
when I get home after a long weekend of rioting, and put my tear gassed track
suit in the wash, I know I can still enjoy Iron Chef, by just slipping a media
disc into the machine.
P3RF3CT10N 41N'T P0SS1BL3...
Thursday, November 5
SONG OF THE DAY: Soub Hanak
G3TT1NG L0ST 1N TH3 F00TPR1NTS...
Wednesday, November 4
SONG OF THE DAY: レッドブルとグミ
N0 M4TT3R WH3R3 1 G0 1N...
Tuesday, November 3
SONG OF THE DAY: Legs
I have found my best stress response is to walk,
preferably where there’s not a lot of human activity but with the detritus of
civilization still around. Railroad tracks obviously are great for this, but so
are back roads through dying towns. It’d be great to be walking ten miles a
day, without all the time constraints of a job, and just scribbling the weird
shit that comes into my mind on trains or notecards or tiny doll-sized dollar
store composition books. Ideally, I’d even just be walking twenty miles a day,
but not counting the miles either, just knowing I walked enough that it was
probably that amount, composing scraps of poems in my mind, like a late
American Taneda Santoka, or even a new school Vachal Lindsay. I mean, obviously
I’d just be Raven Mack, not anybody else, and the fact I think I’d be a
reflection of some earlier entity is probably why I’ll still honor my
responsibilities of employment and financial obligation, and not walk off after
the horizon. But that’s the ideal life. My legs would grow as big as ox, and I’d
stick and poke tattoo my favorite poems on them, or maybe just freestyle poems
onto my legs in those moments where I felt most attuned to the universal
magnetics, slowly stick and poking the words into order. Yeah, that’s the dream
right there.