Sunday, February 12, 2012

Goodbye Whitney :-(

The night gets a little broken and
a little of the stuffing comes out

the first thing you feel is old. The second thing you feel is robbed
some people are more than people -

an era -
a cocktail of longago moments
a snapshot of you in pastel-coloured legwarmers
earlyyouth and innocence
her death is not
one nervous system stopping
its more like giving up
your childhood walking into your present and
saying "i give up"!

(But wait! Before you go - tell me
where do broken hearts go?)

Whitney was the one
who taught you about love!

from whom you memorized every vibrato
every voicecrack of heartbreak
before you'd so much as held a boys hand

taught you what it meant to lose
what it meant to long
in a way that seemed beautiful - in a way that felt
safe, as if being a woman would be no different than being a girl
but more fun!

mountains of curls
a face impenetrably happy,
a face too pretty and not beautiful enough to be tragic
the face of a girl who's voice knows everything

Every line from the top of
how do I know! to the bottom of I wanna dance
made you want
to feel that quality of pain - because love
would be worth it!
that was the promise in that voice
that voice that always seemed to have a whole lifetime buried in it!

not the type of voice that dies at 48 -
before you know what happens to broken hearts!

Its a voice that's been holding your hand
since before you knew what music was

it mattered not if she was a genius
not judged and critiqued like MJ
just complete and whole and far away
like childhood

you shut your mind to what she had become
as far away from herself
as innocence to cynicism -

the stuffing gets knocked out of the night a little bit
you are thinking of how sad it is
you are thinking of her daughter

but you are also thinking of yourself
thinking

in her songs
both of you
are the same forever

Thursday, February 09, 2012

Euphoria Skank!!!

1.

When I get a good idea

going like this.. MAN! Ah - just like this

all juicy in my head like some kind of bomb - some kind of bomb made out of good shit like penny sweets

when I'm like this i gotta tell you - I have to do a funny dance!

I'm gonna tell you about this cos it's time I start sharing this stuff cos real talk

I am peculiar! And if I don't tell you about peculiar stuff pretty soon I won't be saying anything at all!

So let me tell you about this dance man -

i get a GOOD IDEA and I start walking like a

chicken all the way down the hall to my kitchen and I jerk my shoulders up and down

shuffle side to side and cackle to myself

and I might clap my hands in time to some rhythm of my thoughts coming down like the kind of rain

you make with a xylophone - I might actually spin round like some kind of Michael Jackson

one-woman tribute (bandless) band

I might do something really mad and

make a cuppa tea with two bags - one ginger and one black

and NOT EVEN MEASURE THE SUGAR - just drop it in! Just WHATEVER

cos something is HAPPENING TO ME!

And its the feeling I'm always waiting to feel - when I am

finally delivered of that promise - always idling away inside me - ticking -dividing cell after cell - the promise that I might make

something beautiful - real - that I might grab reality by its head - and hear the scream

and cut the chord! - that I may fling myself across my floor and

with pen and notebook and throw my chest wide

wide open like a skylight and the heavens might come crashing

through me - this poor wretched funny-dancing little single mothering bag of peculiarities - that all this stuff - this stuff that's TRUE - and real and human might come through - might coming crashing through me like a mob

a tumult - a chaos - a hurricane - a riot - an apocalypse of diamonds!



2.

Oh yes. And I'm bout to go hit that page again like some fool that owes me money.

Wednesday, February 08, 2012

I'm painting again!

Talking heads says it best in that track 'Artists Only':

I'M PAINTING! I'M PAINTING AGAIN!!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfYZFS7JvT0)

That cry of euphoric weirdness and doom... Just substitute 'painting' for 'writing'.

I'm painting, I'm painting again.
I'm cleaning, I'm cleaning again.
I'm cleaning, I'm cleaning my brain.

Pretty soon now, I will be bitter.
Pretty soon now, will be a quitter.
Pretty soon now, I will be bitter.
You can't see it 'til it's finished

I don't have to prove...that I am creative!
I dont' have to prove...that I am creative!
All my pictures are confused
And now I'm going to take me to you.


Sitting in bed in two pairs of trousers and two tops layered up and been sitting here for the straight 5 hours that constitute my workday (there is also the 3 or four hour worknight later once maternal duties have been taken care of). I am quite wolfishly happy with myself. My hair is a mess.

I have much project at the moment, probably more than even discipline can get me through, but we'll soon see. I am simultaneously in a sturdy frame of mind and also away with the mystics. I am all emotional about everything. The snow. D'angelo being back. My boy having lost a tooth already. All kinds of crazy-eyed joyful and also Caribbean-ly practical. I am still fully of happiness that 2011, that dirty old smelly vagrant of a year, is over. Oh yes. 2012, bring it on. Whats the worst that could happen? The apocalypse! Pfffft!

ANd I am writing a book (2nd draft) and a play (first draft) and an album (just to keep shit impossible, the way I like it).

I can't share actual text from any of my official projects (that would be crack-ish), though I shall no doubt be back to whinge about them. Instead, I shall share this little free-write (that of course has nothing whatever to do with my life or anybody I know or have ever met) I posted on facebook today during my break:

You and I are eternal
eternally
eternally leaving
stuff behind hoping
we'll have a chance to come back
trying to outwit the days that faster and faster
push us along
wrenching us
from one adventure
to the next so fast the road tangles
up in itself
and trips us
into each other

and we are wily as hansel and gretel
traces must be left
so tomorrow remembers yesterday
a pair of glasses - a scarf - a book
a bracelet left idling behind the broken television
we are forever
forever leaving ourselves places
so we can come back
to the times we were loved
that we smiled all over
and felt home
home.

we leave ourselves behind and go
with a smile
and a kiss that has medicine in it
a prescription for loneliness

a silent request that you
keep me close against your dreams
wrapped tight in all your corniest
white picket fantasies, so you don't pick up one
without the other
I am forever
forever leaving
myself with you
in the hopes
I will one day
be free
to stay -

In other news: Some people have angelic timing, don't they?

Back soon with a blog that's actually, like, coherent. Promise.

Huge gigantic whale shark-sized love,

Gemxxx