Wow. I'm actually doing this.
This is a pic from an event recently held by Bare Naked Bake Sale, who I am involved with in a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to contrib to various causes. Peace donated a training session to the fundraising; I donated my cd and picture and stuff, which I pawprinted later. This is a picture of the winner and his swag, and one of BNakedB's founders, the lovely and talented Justina Walford.
It is really amazing how much music can affect how you feel, how you perceive the world, how much your life can be echoed by another person's lyrics. It's no small feat that hearing a song, whether you liked it or not, can take you right back to where you were, what you were doing, and who you were with when you heard it...when you lived it. Especially if you are an artist who either makes or uses music on a regular basis-- I don't mean just listening to it; I mean IMMERSING yourself in that shxt like it's a bath...wearing it like your favourite shirt. Breathing it. Carrying it.
We all have at least one song that, to put it mildly, eviscerates you, rips you from asshole to scalp and makes no apologies for it. It feels like swords sliding through your heart all at once....right up to the hilt, and you are dead in the water, with no-one to put it in a box for you so it beats forever...sorry. Too many viewings of POtC: Dead Man's Chest.
In my "past life", I had SEVERAL such songs. I couldn't listen to any of them w/o nausea, dizziness, and my heart beating a mile a minute. My gut felt like it had been kissed passionately by a steel-toe boot. I ached soooo much. I felt like I was bleeding out. You know the feeling. I even had a whole album like that. So for years, I avoided such songs like the proverbial plague.
The song here was one of those songs.
I associated this and many other songs with a time in that life that should've been happy, but which really was an out-and-out lie. I carried that burden with me, couldn't even hear the first two notes of the song without diving for the radio or the tv to kill it DEAD before it could get going. It hurt too much.
At some point, in the new life, I decided that I would do an exercise that I learned called "blowing pictures". The pictures the practise is referring to are embedded in your auric field, and can affect your life heavily. You may not even know why. You basically destroy that picture, and heal that spot in your aura. Some pictures are stubborn and you have to do the task over and over to make it stick.
I combined this technique with a cord-cutting visualisation and another technique involving connecting your timeline to change things in your past. It is S T R O N G work, lemme tell ya. And it WORX.
I am happy to say that this beautiful song (and that aforementioned album, for that matter) does NOT NOT NOT have the effect it had before. I can listen to it with no ill effects. It's so freeing to be able to listen to WTH I want w/o feeling imprisoned in pain.
It's wonderful.
How cule is that? I'm freakin' ecstatic about it!
The song has a different energy; a different heart/soulprint for me now. I'll say it again: it's. WONDERFUL.
I can breathe...
...since it seems I can't be consistent with this shxt!
I recently did a short local gig at a place called Majesty Loft. They had a small fashion event called Cat Fight (how apropos), and asked me to do a few ditties...
I like this one because it really captures both the intimacy and the energy of the place and what we did there. Catherine is a damned good photographer.
Till next time, GNOtaku.
When one-third of one of my biggest influences from the hip-hop culture was suddenly lost to us, I admit it: I wept. Hard.
I couldn't believe it. It made no sense. He couldn't be gone. He was immortal. Run-DMC and Jam Master Jay were fxcking immortal. A part of the bedrock, the infrastructure. There's no way.
I remember that the day after, the streets were filled with nothing but the best that these men gave us: "Rock Box". "King of Rock". "It's Like That". "Raising Hell", a song I still need to play before a show, like a ritual. And someone, in a drop-top, in Brick City, no less, was actually blasting "Jam Master Jamming". I was having an "oh, shxt!" moment right there on the bus. It was beautiful.
It's Jay's birthday today. I still wonder what it would be like, how much further would the East Coast have come, if he were still here. Would the sound have reshaped? Would Run-DMC have made us a slew of more stuff? Would they have toured? Would Jay have hit us with more skilled djs, well-trained in the art of scratch? Would he have turned out something to turn the whole rap world upside down? I like to think so.
Happy Birthday, Jay. You're still in my heart and on my mind. Thank you for helping to make me what I am.
...and I agree.
Here's an excerpt from an article about the VH1 documentary he executive produced, Planet Rock: The Story of Hip-Hop and the Crack Generation (it airs this Sunday night):
On What’s Missing From Hip-Hop "I want to see some little motherfuckers get together like a Public Enemy and give these fools a wake up call like, 'Fuck this jewelry and cars bullshit,' (say
it AGAIN!!--GATA) and bring it back to Armageddon! Don’t get it
twisted--the people that are making music now, I’m not mad at them. People think I’m mad at pop music [but] I’m not. I’m just saying
the conscious music is lacking.There’s no roots, really, and when you
think about the groups that I name like the PE’s and all that, they
can’t make records now because we’re not the right age. We’re the age
of their parents. Kids don’t want to listen to their parents, so we
accept that so I’m saying there just needs to be some-- how could KRS 1
and all of us used to be so militant at our age. Where are those kids
that are gonna come out and really push the envelope? NWA did “Fuck the
Police,” we were going hard, we were getting arrested. Now everybody
is trying to stay in their nice little safe bubble and I miss the edgy
music. That’s all I’m saying. Saying you sell drugs, that’s not edgy to
me, let’s talk about some issues. Lupe fiasco does it. I’ve listened
to some of his stuff. He’s not afraid but there’s a lack. I would love
to be a fan of some new little bad ass cats coming out and letting
mother fuckers know what’s up."
I say fxck yer age-- do that shxt anyway. They need to learn from SOMEONE. I guess that's just me.
You can read the whole article here. It also talks about a well-known swagger-jacker Ice calls out...oh, the irony.
If you've heard GATA City, or used the neat little download doohicky at the side of the blog there, or received a download card from me in the street, you've heard the song, "Paperdollz". If not, I'll post it here so you can check it out...I'll wait.
So far, it's looking to be my lead single because it's the one getting all the attention.
I've been doing a lot of thinking about it because it is something personal, and I realise some people might take it the wrong way. So I wanted to post a blog on it.
Admittedly, the song is semi-autobiographical in that I have actually experienced some of the feelings I express in the lyrics (and in the interlude proceeding it on the cd)...but I haven't had the problem of being almost compleatly ignored over some porn goddess. (Thank GOD.) I used the extremes to illustrate and convey the feelings a little more hardcore. Who knows? Maybe there is a girl out there who HAS gone through this exact thing. I just happened to feel strongly enough about this subject to write about it; after all, this is the very bedrock of songwriting.
The song is NOT about dissing the lovely ladies of the porn industry, that's for sure. I couldn't, in good conscience, really do that, being that I WAS a Paperdoll myself for one brief moment. It would be hypocritical! For all I know, there was some guy out there obsessed w/some picture I took, and his girlfriend was going off on him about it. Why would be beyond me, as the pictures were, for the most part, very tasteful for that kind of mag, even cheesy...and we know people like their hardcore shxt!-- but I digress.
The song IS about a dysfunctional relationship, in that the guy in it clearly has an addiction to porn to the point his girlfriend isn't enough for him anymore, and he ignores her 99 per cent of the time. She's unhappy, and she warns him, "You gon' get left with them paperdollz". She's at her wits' end, but still willing to play ball if he is. Whether he does or not remains to be seen.
Some of the descriptions of the girls in print might be taken as inflammatory --"cookie-cutter", referring to said girls as "that" as opposed to "her/them", pointing out their "fake boobs" and "big booty"-- you get the idea. Remember: this is from the POV of an obviously frustrated, neglected woman, who's feeling just a wee bit insecure about her partner's infatuation. She even tries to tell him, "I get it"-- even going so far as to suggest his indulging in his porno fantasies helps their relationship by keeping him faithful ("mainlining those'll/keep you home, I suppose"). The problem lies in him not paying any attention to her whatsoever, and she feels she can't compete even though she is a flesh-and-blood woman.
My own feelings are coming out in that I do take issue with the majority of these girls looking the same...P/shopped to the point their bodies are almost identical: same skin, same boobs...definitely the same big ass, LOL. It's insane. It also kills me that if a girl has that look in real life, the men will complain about the very enhancements that made them buy the magazines and movies in the first place....and then complain they want a "real" girl. Ri-i-i-ght...no pressure there.
The real message is that anyone--not just guys, but women too-- need to appreciate the person in their life and not take them for granted, favouring things that are not real over someone who is. A magazine is just ink, metal, and paper. A flick or an online site is just pixels on a screen. It's two-dimensional. And in the end, your partner is right there, and that image is NOT.
This even extends to the strippers/exotic dancers at the club. They are there to get their money. They are there to entertain you and do their job... up to and including being friendly (in some cases, EXTRA friendly) with you. It doesn't mean they wanna bear your kids or give you any, even. They might not be 2-D, but they usually aren't a part of your life outside of that club or that bachelor/bachelorette party or whatever. They are real people, but they aren't your real relationship. They sell you fantasy.
THAT is what the song is about.
So, no...it's not an animosity thing. Trust me.
Why was I a Paperdoll, you ask? Simple.
"I was young. I needed the money."
Who CARES?
I had my own reasons. Besides-- I don't think I'm the first femcee or artist who did this at one time in their life. It was one mag, a loooooooooooooong time ago. Anything I've done since was either pin-up or fetish modelling.
And...trust me on this: the feature sucked because a) it wasn't real and b) my hair was a wreck. Ugh. I have better pics with my kit off in my possession that are waaaay better, LOL.
