0LD SCH00L SVRV1V4L R3QV1R3D...

old school survival required 
deep knowledge of a place - far 
deeper than superficial 

SONG OF THE DAY: Ordinary Guy

Joe Bataan is key figure in Fania Records and the Latin Soul sounds of New York City in the late ‘60s. Bataan, who had been in a Puerto Rican street gang and grew up in East Harlem, was actually the child of a Filipino pops and Black mom. Please note, I’m just cribbing from the Wikipedia page, because mostly I just know Joe Bataan because of all these Fania Records retrospectives I’ve been playing the past couple months. But apparently he had a falling out with the owner of Fania, and left the label, but while still there, secretly started his own label – Ghetto Records – funded by successful criminal. Kinda want to hear all that stuff now. Anyways, Bataan helped coin the term “salsoul”, and that dude is still doing shit to this day, and should be considered a national treasure. Why the fuck did we end up with Hamilton’s Starbucks drive through ass cultural event, and not Joe Bataan doing something real? Oh yeah, we hate real in America, and love the superficial. This song is a banger though. One of my faves by Bataan.

SONG OF THE DAY: Old Man Plants A Coconut Tree

IN A TIME OF GREAT NEGATIVITY, HERE IS A SONG ABOUT AN OLD MAN PLANTING A COCONUT TREE.

SONG OF THE DAY: I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man

Hoochie Coochie has been replaced by Gucci in the rhyming dictionary of the (American) human mind, and that’s a depressing sign of how nobody paid attention to what the fuck Carter G. Woodson was talking about when he said, “If you can control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.”
Woodson was actually born right across the James River in Buckingham County, a few miles from where I walk the Rivanna line. That 69th mile marker where they’ll scatter my ashes is a metaphysical power zone. Woodson was born nearby. The James has flowed by for centuries. The good luck of the horseshoe bend is about 8 miles west. The slate quarries once mined by poor Welsh immigrants and then slave labor are around there, which is where Thomas Jefferson demanded the slate roofing tiles for all his buildings be from, to mimic the style of what he saw in France. Knowledge of Self is missing for a lot of people, not just minorities. We’ve had our histories scrubbed from us so that we just purchase a new identity, as often as possible. That shit ain’t sustainable either. And that’s not a real culture. We live in a hollow era.

SONG OF THE DAY: Buddies

I suffer from lack of a circle, where most of my brainstorming is done solo style. The place I live has a conflated sense of self due to the large university here that's listed as a public ivy, but a lot of the shit I see coming out of here artistically lacks a certain possessed spirit. Maybe I expect too much. Maybe I'm full of shit. I don't know. But I know most of the ramping up of my self, the inspiring of self, unfortunately has to come from myself. That shit is tiring, and also leads to being too secluded without outside shit being funneled in.

Couple years back I was reaching out to various folks, seeking mentors so to speak. I've been very lucky to have navigated the self-destructive minefields I have without fucking myself up so far, but also realize I never had access to mentors, to people to guide me through the shit I don't understand culturally coming from the direction I came from. None of them really worked out. It left me feeling unmoored.

Fuck it though. Do what I can even if as lonely nomad without elder guidance. That makes me weaker, especially as I get older, but this world is poisoned by a culture of possession, where folks are either monetizing their elder knowledge, or their charging for lesser knowledge when they're not even elder status because everyone's so desperate to have better understanding. We've got no lineage of culture, no chains of deep knowledge. The older I get, the more lost I feel, and the more times I make a big circle around this American land mass, the more I realize the only real solution to most of what is fucking up everything is a return to ways more akin to what existed pre-Columbian, albeit complemented by modern technology. But fuck, I wish I had somebody other than the mirror to give me guidance.

R3C0RDS 0F P4ST 3V3NTS C4RV3D...

records of past events carved

into elder beech which

looks over old train tracks path

L3G3NDS 0F TH3 1LL3G1T...

legends of the illegit

arts creep past sometimes without

the gatekeepers realizing

TH3 4L03 PL4NT H4S F41L3D T0...

the aloe plant has failed to

recover since this wooden

doll cast their kitchen witch spell

TR33S 0LD3R TH4N 1'LL 3V3R...

trees older than I'll ever

get, just standing there, ignored

by half the people that pass

SONG OF THE DAY: Didn't I?

So many gods of dirt out here, making magic out of emptiness, building art in every direction pointing outwards because that’s how the unrestrained human heart works.

DIDN’T I TREAT YOU RIGHT, NOW? DIDN’T I?

Folks too busy living and creating and being natural born artists in the way all humans was meant to be, adding blossoms of thought to the dreary land that’s been scaped into shape by inhumane master plans which somehow built fences around us all while we was too busy being occupied. Life without all these blossoms of expression from all the folks that couldn’t be stopped from being true human in the non-manufactured ways… it’d be unbearable without that artistic medication.

DIDN’T I DO THE BEST I COULD? DIDN’T I?

And how many of these folks, like Dynamite D Darondo the Bay Area street hustler who likely did ugly things to survive this western world, but also gave the world immense beauty as well, albeit in obscurity because it never got held up at proper marketing angle for the shineface world of material consumption to recognize as legitimate… how many of these folks are seen as illegitimate because authenticity is decided by pre-determined algorithm of wealth which holds the keys to the gates and decides what is worth your attention and what is not? Out here making beautiful sense of this nonsense pyramid scam we all done got trapped underneath of, whether y’all know it or not.

DIDN’T I GIVE YA EVERYTHING? DIDN’T I?

Darondo died of heart attack half a decade ago, and only now is his music circulating to a wider audience, after he’s gone. A lifetime spent creating, for the most part unseen, but steady doing it because that’s all he knew how to do. The art don’t stop being beautiful even if the creator is gone, but damn, I often wonder what kinda world we’d have if we supported these people while they were alive. Would they have done more? Bigger and wilder things? Or would they have crashed under the weight of too much light? Of having to navigate manicured spaces where you can’t hide in the tall grasses of the margins?

I TRIED MY BEST JUST TO BE A MAN. DIDN’T I?

Hatsu Basho 2018 Honour Tanka Day 5: AMINISHIKI (1-4)

[poor Aminishiki's knee, too much chankonabe]

Aminishiki 

old balding sumo bastard 

of perseverance 

made makuuchi debut 

back in the year two thousand 

spent years that level, 

no championship wins, but 

two times runner-up 

fourth best of all-time in terms 

of top level tournaments 

two years back though, tore 

his left Achilles tendon - 

withdrew… demoted 

scrappy fucker even at 

advanced age never gave up 

battled fourteen months 

at juryo, still consistent, 

fighting spirit strong 

last november, at 

age thirty-nine, he returned 

to makuuchi 

he faired well, earning his 

kachikoshi (just barely) 

but the new year has 

not been kind to our elder 

sumo rikishi 

knees wrapped in ace bandages, 

thickened with supportive gauze 

now in third decade 

of sumo wrestling, those knees 

have carried much weight 

real and metaphysical, 

how much can one man sustain? 

day five, we see our 

hero Aminishiki 

hobbled, with one win 

Chiyonokuni is not 

a top-level superstar 

Aminshiki 

struggled but held for a while, 

then tragedy struck 

the right knee discontinued what 

it was created to do 

Aminishiki 

buckled into the dohyo 

sand, clutching that knee 

Chiyonokuni checks in, 

sensing something had gone wrong 

the aging balding 

rikishi, pushing forty, 

couldn’t climb back up 

he limped to the locker room, 

gone fusenhai, with one win 

a few more basho, 

he would’ve been second in 

most appearances 

now though, his future in doubt, 

contemplating elder stock 

MY D4D W0VLD S4Y 1F TH3 S1GN...

my dad would say "if the sign

says 'curve 15 mph',

that's a good place to wreck at"

TH4T M0TH3RFVCK1N' BVDDH4...

that motherfuckin' buddha

droppin' bezels of wisdom,

but y'all ain't even listen

Natsu Basho 2017 Honour Tanka Day 8: HOKUTOFUJI (6-2)

gravity centered 

so deeply two feet like roots 

to earthen dirt floor 

gravity centered so hard 

even one foot holds steady 

Hokutofuji’s 

gravity centered so well 

one foot works as two 

big man balancing against 

ongoing force on one foot 

Hokutofuji 

pushed backwards against edge, but 

never went over 

imagine having center 

of gravity like poplar 

like stubborn poplar, 

Hokutofuji refused 

to become toppled 

rooted, he endured the storm, 

then vanquished his winded foe 

R41LR04D PH1L0S0PH13S BVZZ...

railyard philosophies buzz

by in industrial blur -

poetry too pure for print

CR0WS C0MP0S1NG C0RR1D0S...

crows composing corridos

in honor of elder oaks

(as well as revered others)

TR33S D0N'T R3SP3CT TH3S3 F3NC3S...

trees don't respect these fences,

and they're a hundred years my

elder; why the fuck should I?

ancestral energies charge

bloodstream with unseen traumas;

strive to revitalize self

elders once spoke of lessons

learned; when the young are old

civilization is fucked

Railroad Time signaled go as

recalibration began;

we stole needed groceries