moth’s powder [12.07-08.09]

from: a
to: dtim
Monday, December 7, 2009, 10:16 PM
Subject: Re: something 

some more, i guess … still working through. think of this as an extension of what i sent you yesterday morning. i got some other stuff in the middle that i took out because it’s just much too long or whatever … imma call you tomorrow

it’s not that i wanted to possess you, though i certainly did enjoy and envision a future of us where we seized each other. and i never could master you but felt that each new morning occasioned things about you unexplored. could it be possible to relate without ownership, to capture hearts while banishing jealousy? 

i am a bit surprised about how upset i got about all of this last night while speaking to someone about some new sorta technology that can “perfectly reproduce”Art Tatum’s piano playing. this technology has the ability to “listen” to music and recreate it. it kindasorta sees what our brains react to in order to infuse that in music performance. and i suppose i don’t have a real issue with reproducing something. there’s a guy – George Lewis, a friend of a friend, a musician and a pretty cool dude – in new york who has been using computer algorithms for years to improvise, to think about improvisation and subjectivity. and i’m down with all that because it seems he thinks of computer technology, not as opposed to human subjectivity but as part and parcel of it. i mean, you were the computer nut, and you were the one that told me that the first meaning of computer was one who computes, that dells, macs and gateways are only the newest mode of a really old concept.

so the issue i had with last night’s conversation [aside from the fact that i was real close to my limit] was the pressure applied to the word perfectly, that something could be possessed, mastered sonically by machines only in order to reproduce it perfectly. but i wonder, still, i wonder: what if the musician – Art Tatum, for example – was not trying to produce perfectly? what if, following Baraka’s listening to and writing about Lady Day, one tries to create failure? or, not even failure, but what if perfection is not part of the sociocultural vocabulary of a world, or not a thing desired in the first place? like, isn’t there an assumption that musicians and painters and all sorts of artists want to produce perfection? but what if they’re not :: do we even think this refusal of desire is possible? that the norm could be on bending bent notes until even the bends are bent? and what is assumed when it is thought that a new mode of some old thing now, finally, can create perfection? what does it say about ingenuity and emotion and drive?

trust me: we were not perfect but we only failed when we tried to appear as if we were so … but we know now what we did not know then. still, it was not an excuse. not for my behavior or, subsequently, yours. we should’ve worked harder.

imperfectly,
a.-

— — 

12.07.09

dtim [cell]: hey boo! got it! call me in the morning.
11:48 PM

 a: why are you still up?! lol
11:51 PM 

dtim [cell]: chiiile…I’ll tell you in the morning. it’s a mess! lol
11:52 PM  

a: oooooh. *him* again?
11:55 PM

12.08.09

dtim [cell]: you know it! HAM, really lol
12:02 AM
dtim [cell]: we’re STILL on the phone right now! I know! crazy!
12:04 AM 

a: oh…imma let you handle that … lol more power to you … lmao
12: 05 AM 

dtim [cell]: ok boo gnight
12:06 AM 

a: goodnight.
12:09 AM

— —

from: a
to: a
Tuesday, December 8, 2009, 1:29 AM
Subject: Re: something 

continuing …

i began arguing rather forcefully against what the guy at the bar was saying about perfection and Art Tatum and his rather ridiculous assumptions. the technology he described seems to be nothing other than an enactment of a desire to possess and master without accounting for the underside of such declaration. it hallucinates the idea that the “original” producers had particular intent that could be fully realizable. rather than asking how does the technology become another occasion to produce failure beautifully, it gets taken up to say that it can reproduce without failure. more perfectly than even Art Tatum could’ve done i think the dude said, but i’m not sure but he likely did. of course, there is likewise an assumption of an essence of music performance that can be found, that there is some ground-zero, some foundational claim to production of emotion and thought and drive.

and there seems to be, of course, the implication of an articulation of a critique of authenticity because if sound technology can “hear” Art Tatum “play” without his vivid thereness, then and of course, Art Tatum becomes inconsequential to the performance of Art Tatum. his materiality becomes discardable chaff which the wind can drive away, at best. and, if the computer can reproduce perfectly what it has captured and mastered? well, then no one has the ability to be authentic. and i know anti-essentialism is all the rage with its being against claims for authenticity but i don’t even think the right questions are being posed. like, what is perfection and how is it determined? if i said that Tatum’s breath was just as consequence to his performance as his fingered weight on keys? 

and what about the social field that was produced when Art Tatum played? these technologies are all about reproducing and perfecting originary genius and individuality when folks like Tatum [and maybe us all?] are constantly engaging in creating ways to be with others.

…

from: a
to: a
Tuesday, December 7, 2009, 2:46 AM
Subject: Re: something 

…

and it finally hit me why dude last night was so wrong because i listened to the sermon Let’s Get it On by Bishop Iona Locke again (for the, how-many-nth time?) earlier this morning. you know how we produce something – other than – but close to the concept of failure? she was preaching and in the moment of her whooping when the congregation is just all the way in it, screaming and clapping and providing that necessary background that isn’t so backgrounded, she said 

god said i will pour out my spirit…upon some flesh  

and the congregation screamed back  

all! 

and then she came right back in 

you talkin right. all!  he said all flesh!  

how would a technology account for that? she literally in her preaching moment opened up a space to allow the congregation to engage with her disarticulation of the scripture. she ruptured its flow, some flesh, knowing that the audience was right there with her production of something other than that which was correct. there is, of course, a world of difference between “some” and “all”. but she realized the congregation as part and parcel of her preaching performance. could the technology of perfection – rather than improvisation – know that she was going to exclaim some for the audience to respond as such? there is incalculability that is part of the performance, some aspect that cannot occur before such sitting down at piano benches or standing in pulpits. and if the organ wasn’t there? and if the congregation wasn’t standing and jumping and screaming?

she isn’t the only one, though. it’s like when folks are up exhorting the congregation, or when the organ breaks during shouting music :: there are all sorts of gaps and elisions and ruptures of sound, thought, texture, openings and forestallments that go against any such notion of “perfection “ and reproduction that could ever be so termed.

nah. these are the calling forth, not just call and response but call and call, some sorta accretion and accrual, layer upon layer upon layer, each word and phrase and scream and breath engaging and revising that which came previous to it, affecting subsequence. in such performance is the recognition that the congregation has some such knowledge in them that is animated by and likewise animates any such praise leader, devotional singer or preacher.

…

from: a
to: a
Tuesday, December 7, 2009, 3:04 AM
Subject: Re: something 

…

sorta like how when you’d be up right before the preacher, giving words of encouragement during the momentary space between the dance and the yes lord praise where some folks would still be praising and running while others would be hunched over and yet others still bent over with their hands rubbing on their outer thighs and over there would be Patty throwing her head back AHHH! and over here would be Jesse clapping incessantly and you would talk while some arewould try to take your seat if ya can…hahaha!

you’d say something like 

i don’t know what you came to do but i came to praise the …

you wouldn’t, of course, include the lord but would leave the statement, if ever so faintly, still open ended. or how you’d say after all the things i been through, i stillll have jeeyuh… quick, crisp, staccato-like and the congregation knew what that meant. of course, you’d have to be some such one part of this social world to know that jeeyuh’ meant joy and that opening was also a space for folks to keep it going. the words do not necessarily cohere with what is desired. we’ve got to move on was as much a call for not moving on as it was to say that it was time to turn over the service. these are accents on and off the beat, not just slurred speech and weighted keys, but a way to inhabit a social antiphonal world. this world isn’t about perfection. it’s about the power of the lord coming down and i don’t think you can account for that with algorithms, though algorithms can help get you there. 

[i am not against technology. the b-3 for us is quintessentially pentecostal and without it, i wonder what the church world would sound like for black folks. and i’m still waiting on someone to write about First Church of Deliverance in chicago using the first hammond in a black church setting, and how, curiously enough, the pastor was – what would they have said then? queer? a homophile? homosexual? gay? – well. the technological, non-human machine that serves as foundational for the sound of this social world was first recognized as important by a someone very queer. there’s gotta be something about dispersal, spirit and sound there. and maybe that purported imperfection’s relation to the sound of pentecost.]

it just seems that any desire for such perfection really spins out from a different sorta epistemological center altogether. assumptions of clarity and rigor and rightness seem hella limiting to me. and there is never an accounting of how perfection – when it is achieved – may be merely another form of improv. sometimes, i just wanna say: leave this alone, let it do its own thing, if you wanna join it, cool but if you wanna perfect it? stay back. kinda like how i wanted to join you and you knew my chords behind you were hell good. not because i knew where you were going. but because i willing to go with you.

indeed.
a.-

Jesus, Justice and Dogs.

Matthew 15: 21-28

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.

— —

This is, admittedly for me, a quite difficult passage. It is difficult because here we have a rather curious, a rather odd, a rather intriguing and and a rather problematic Jesus.

There are a lot of stories told about this figure: that he was one born of a young woman virgin; that he was one who weeps when his friends die; that he was one who heals lepers, tells the lame to pick up pallets to walk and restores sight to blind men.

We are told that the same Jesus who in the above seems dismissive and rude is the one who would otherwise walk on water, would tell fisherman to follow him and change their lives.

We are told that the same Jesus who in the above passage seemed callous and cold is the one who would hang out with tax collectors and party people, one who cast his lot with those who are the most marginalized of his society.

We are, of course, told that the very same Jesus from the above passage — speaking to a woman with hints of sexism and xenophobia — is the one who went into a temple at a very young age and declared, by revisiting and reiterating a passage from Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible, that the spirit of the Lord was upon him, that he was anointed to preach good news to the poor, that he was to heal the brokenhearted, that he would preach freedom and libration to those bound in captivity and set at liberty the bruised.

But then we have this Canaanite woman, complicating all that Jesus said that he would do, all that he said he was. Jesus encountered someone who would be the monkey wrench in the spokes of the very things he spoke, someone who would be a general antagonism and threat to the very transformative life to which he was committed.

Here we have a woman, a mother, concerned for the health and wholeness of her daughter. Here we have a woman who needs good news, is poor in spirit, brokenhearted, captive to the that which possessed her daughter, and thus subsequently, bruised. She must have heard not only about Jesus’s proclamation in the temple, but the various ways he went about attempting to enact those very things he declared, empowered by God’s spirit in him. But then, we find out, she was not simply a woman with a need. She was a Canaanite woman, of a different - but related - ethnicity. Who knew that healing and wholeness was bound up with one’s ethnicity, one’s nationality, one’s religious affiliation, one’s gender, one’s sexual orientation?

Well. 

Her daughter was tormented and she sought her wholeness from one who could easily declare that wholeness was possible when encountering others like him, of the same tribe, or nationality, or religious tradition. He could encounter and critique the Pharisees and Sadducees because they had the same confession of faith and he was merely interested in cutting and augmenting their beliefs within that tradition. But this Canaanite woman was on another level, asking a different set of questions, posing all sorts of general problems. Is the Spirit of the Lord on Jesus only for those who are like him? 

Initially, it would seem to be the case. I am not interested in saying that this was a lesson Jesus wanted to teach the disciples about how to deal with those who are “other” in society. I am rather comfortable with thinking that Jesus was fully a member of his historic period and society, complete with all of the sexism, ethnocentrism and xenophobia it contained. Of course, we are not as acquainted with a Jesus who is ethnocentric, a Jesus who thinks of his nation, his birth, his lineage as of greater import than that of others. The relationship of the Jews to the Canaanites was a tenuous one at best. And it was mean. And it was vulgar. And we know this by way of Jesus declaring that this unnamed woman was as worthy of being heard as a “dog” was worthy of the bread for children.  

Let’s linger a bit. Let’s think about this story with regard to modes of social justice and enactments of injustice. To ask a simple question: what when one is seeking wholeness and the other responds with orations about what is just? “It is not fair” is a declaration about what is and is not justice. But, and of course, one would need to make this declaration from a particular position, from a certain construction of a social world. 

The Canaanite woman is concerned about wholeness of her daughter but Jesus responds to his disciples through their collective and rather limited understanding of justice. So it may be appropriate to apply pressure to “justice” as a universal. We can claim from the outset that justice as ideology does not necessarily account for wholeness. But we will also see, curiously and creatively, that wholeness as ideology and enactment likewise is the condition of possibility for justice. In other words, and to revise a sentiment artist Carrie Mae Weems stated a few months back at a talk I attended: in justice, there is very little room for the enactment wholeness, but in wholeness, there is a lot of room for the enactment of justice. What we see in Jesus’s statement “It is not fair…” is that the proclamation of what is and is not just often eclipses its very enactment. 

Previous to Jesus’s encounter with the Canaanite woman, he made all sorts of statements about the limits of tradition to and towards which the Pharisees and Sadducees ascribed and assented. He also spoke about things that do and do not defile. But then, he encounters a woman who puts his faith to the test, that forces him to consider his rhetoric in action. And initially, he failed. She asked for mercy for her daughter and he ignored her. She asked again and her disciples wanted her sent away, with Jesus declaring that he was not sent to people like her. She asked again and he said that helping her would be tantamount to giving the food of children to dogs. 

He did not declare that there was a limited amount of food. Rather, he implied that he would be wasteful, he would expend time, energy and culinary art on some such being who could not — because of their nature — appreciate it. But dogs do eat and they are fed, often by their owners. Jesus is speaking to the woman through a limited logic of limited justice and this justice necessarily distinguishes ethnicity, nationality rather than on need and necessity.

But then she responds. She responds with such profundity and clarity because she literally sees through the problematics of the logic through which Jesus dismisses her.

‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’

Or we might say she said: ok, cool…true, indeed. Giving the food of children to dogs is not fair. But what about the fact that dogs are still fed within the logic you set up?  

She shows how, even according to his logic, dogs are cared for. She illustrates rather simply that Jesus is not concerned for the feeding of dogs at all. Rather, and by her rebuttal, she shows that there was a more general misrecognition and mishearing of what she was asking. She shows that his logic was nothing other than a ruse, a thin veil behind which he hid a more fundamental refusal to engage with the needs, concerns and desires for people who were not like him. Her rebuttal also laid bare the fact that they were speaking on two very different, and at odds, registers.

The fact is that she asked for wholeness and that would not only heal her daughter but, for Jesus and his followers, would likewise interrogate their rather easy, normative vulgar beliefs about how to serve the world. She presented Jesus with the problem of sociality, of how to be with others in the world, how to be attuned to need and necessity rather than a limited understanding of justice. She presented Jesus with the way to be social, with the way to be concerned about wholeness that, when enacted, also enacts a different type of ethical project which we might call expansive justice. 

And our world is in desperate need of wholeness and not a limited notion of justice that would be about one’s nation, one’s ethnicity, one’s religious posture, one’s affectional orientation. Justice, in the ways it has been invoked lately, has often been at odds with wholeness, with the healing of the world, with the comfort and love of neighbor and self. The killing of symbols is not tantamount to health, though it has been named as “justice.” What it is, rather, is the throwing of crumbs to the floor, telling us that we should be pleased we are getting anything at all. 

Children in Detroit are being arrested for wanting to keep their school open and the state of Michigan is under some sort of Marshall Law; the economy is past broken and broke; the Prison Industrial Complex has more folks of color in it today than there were slaves in the US during the last years of slavery. Guantanamo Bay is still open…indefinitely. But we are given symbols, thrown to us to pacify, given to us to have us desire to vote the “right way” in 2012. But we need wholeness, we need healing. 

So Jesus healed the woman’s daughter. But more…I think he tried to reformulate his social engagements based on his interaction with her. Immediately after this encounter, he cured people of afflictions and then fed over 4000 people, or so the story goes. I think his eyes were opened, his faith strengthened, his worldview expanded by the encounter with the anonymous woman. He thought about justice as belonging to a particular group but she knew that the movement toward wholeness is inexhaustible, it constantly revises and refreshes itself, it never runs out. So maybe we could live in a world where we seek healing and wholeness, that will likewise expand our notion of justice. A world where healing is not tantamount to ableist rhetoric and engagements but that would so have us reconsider and reformulate our relations to others.   

Sports Dudes Not Celebrating #OBL’s Death!

crunkfeministcollective:

I know nothing about sports, except what Summer M. tells me. She told me about some pretty fierce athletes who are catching flack for saying what we say all the time, particular about #OBL’s death.

Chris Douglas-Roberts of the NBA said: 

Is this a celebration?? … Always read the fine print. … It took 919,967 deaths to kill that one guy. It took 10 years & 2 Wars to kill that…guy. It cost us (USA) roughly $1,188,263,000,000 to kill that………..guy. But we #winning though. Haaaa. (Sarcasm) … People are telling me to get out of America now b/c I’m against MORE INNOCENT people dying everyday? B/c I’m against a 10 year WAR? … What I’m sayin has nothing to do with 9/11 or that guy. I still feel bad for the 9/11 families but I feel EQUALLY bad for the war families. … What I’ve learned tonight, athletes shouldn’t have perspectives. But I don’t care. We feel certain ways about things TOO.

Rashard Mendenhall of the NFL also had some questions about the Twin Towers and who was responsible for 9/11 tweeting,  “I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style.”

I for one am excited to hear these perspectives in such a mainstream arena. Cheers to them for raising a critique that their fans and industry may not like to hear! Folks have already begun to cast them as “crazy” and conspiracy theorists. Nope just truth tellers and question askers! Props! 

hotness.

moth’s powder [12.06.09]

from: a
to: a
Sunday, December 6, 2009, 2:40 AM
Subject: … 

mp…

i knew we were wrong to end things because the week after you called things off and i – lonelier than i’d been in a while – went on a date with the most fascinating of people, he told me things in two hours and connected with me in such a way that i knew he was an angel telling me that what i felt for you and your fear of me was right. he was that break allowing me to hear into and explore what you would have said had you felt safe enough. it was such a song. 

[i’m listening to Me’shell Ndegéocello right now so i’m thinkin about] the bass guitar, that pluck that reverberates and reverberates and vibrates and vibrates. one pluck letting presence the boong sound, letting presence the very thereness and materiality of intention to sound out and move and relate with other tones and sounds. boong again, the bass string plucked. that was the date with that fascinating guy one week to that very day that we decided that we would no longer be whatever that was that we had described so imperceptibly to each other: as love. 

boong,
a.- 

— —

from: a
to: a
Sunday, December 6, 2009, 3:02 AM
Subject: Re: … 

continuing…

i can’t sleep but that’s not new. i wrote something else but i can’t recall the exact wording … i was using my phone while laying here in bed but pressed “discard” on the touchscreen and lost it all, so now i’m on the laptop trying to salvage a bit of it.

anyway, what i mean is this. listen to the bass dexterity of Me’shell :: in love song #1: haunting, faint, barely audible, pulsing, backgrounded. you’ve gotta hear it under – way underneath – the guitar and the hi-hat and snare and that warm voice, mellow tone. of course, love song #3 is where you really hear this bass. it begins the song, repetitive: boong, bump-boong. so of course, love song #2 is the conduit, the in-between the over and under, it is the interstice, the point of aperture and departure, that space gathered up and thrown down by the confluence of human and technological sound: sounds of a baby opens, then drums with the hi-hat, then the bass, then the singing. what does it mean, i wonder, to have these three songs, these odes to love and rapture paced differently, announced differently? 

love song #2, i think, expresses the date i had the week after you and i ceased speaking to each other, difficult given the fact that at that moment, we still lived together. the guy told me of how i was beautiful and how he was moved to meet me and pleasantly surprised and how in his entire life he had not imagined the possibility of sitting at a diner with some such dude he just met and – he wasn’t out or anything – holding hands with this stranger dude across the table so much so that the waitress brought two spoons when i ordered hot chocolate and ice cream [like they’d always do whenever it was you and i] and she asked us how long we’d been together and we’d receive stares and glares from other folks in the diner but were so lost in the conversation and each others’ eyes that we did not see what they saw. 

you make people do things they don’t want to do. i don’t mean that in a bad way, just things i never thought about doing, i’m doing with you. right now.

i could not help but feel and know that he was the angel i needed to let me know that i’d done everything i could do in order to make things up to you; i needed to be convinced that i was, indeed, lovable and that i was, indeed, striving and striving and striving to make a life for us both. this fascinating guy had no idea that him saying to me you are beautiful was more than anything because you would say that to me but ceased because life became too complicated and though i tried to hold you and had held you many times and whispered in your ear right before you’d drift that i loved you and meant it? well. you were fatigued with this idea because you constantly had to guard your heart and head because you could no longer believe me so i would not hear that i was beautiful from you. and i needed to hear it because i doubted it too much. and still do. i suppose your distrust of what i’d say about you and how you saved my life with your smile and gave me heaven with your laughter finally leapt on me and i was beleaguered likewise. 

— —

from: a
to: a
Sunday, December 6, 2009, 3:49 AM
Subject: Re: … 

continuing…

the baby’s inarticulate goo-goo ba goo goo voicings: like me. i was pushed out of relating with you in such violent fashion as if it were a birth, me born again to some hell, me crying daily because i missed you. and still do. but still.

my father called me today and asked me how i was and also have you heard from them [your parents, of course]? i could not answer because his simple question showed he cared about me. and when he asked me if i heard from them? it was reminiscent of when we first broke up and he’d ask me have you heard from him?. he wouldn’t ask where you were. he wouldn’t ask what you were doing. he would ask if i heard from you :: as if knowing that i’m a musician and that a lot of the shit i’d been creating soon thereafter “us” had been created with a curious, melancholic relation to your silence :: so to ask if i had heard from you was to force me yet again to realize that i’d always wanted to hear from you, even in the house when i’d hold you – your voice, your feet on the Pergo floors, your singing in the shower, your snoring, your hesitations, your sadness, your joy. 

with love,
a.- 

— —

from: a
to: a
Sunday, December 6, 2009, 4:36 AM
Subject: Re: … 

continuing… 

i just want to go to sleep. shit. but, well, of course my ear had been inclined to hear from you since the day i met you and i have not stopped turning my ear toward the ground to hear, to hear, to hear something, anything, everything from you. have you heard from him? every night. when i dream. when i smell sandlewood and white musk? i hear you. when the fascinating dude said i was beautiful? i heard you…so my father asked me the one question that could make me cry and i cried like the time we sang  

i love you, i love you, i love you lord today
because you care for me in such a special way
and yes i praise you, i lift you up, i magnify your name
that’s why my heart is filled with praise 

as i stood in the front of the church where it seemed that i could simply cry, for the living and the dead, cry. it was the year my mother died and it was a mere cry, i suppose. but a simple sort of overwhelming overtook me and i was overcome with grief and joy. it wasn’t a hard cry. it was the kind when you just sorta stand or sit baffled, numb to the world, numb to that stream of tears that flow, your breathing slowed and slow. if my heart was filled with praise it was because my eyes filled with tears. 

a simple cry. a simple overwhelming.  

and it was then that we announced to the church, through our gestures, that we were together. you came up to me, walking down from the pulpit, and though some suspected where you were going, no one knew, including, most of all, you. you walked to me. stood in front of me. grabbed my hands. stretched our arms as if we were on some cross (and, honestly, we were crucified by at least some of them soon after). took your arms. wrapped them around me. bent my elbows. against your chest. took my hands. covered my face. cried. cried long streams of tears, almost silently, barely audible. but you heard. and the rest of the singers. sung. but you heard my tears. and whispered in my ears. shh, baby. shh. yes. in front of them all. and i cried more. and a bit louder. still. shh, baby. shh. and you. held me. me. in front of them. all. some gasped. some gagged. some glorified. finally, they knew. they knew!  shh, baby. shh. 

you held me like that for at least ten minutes. some left the church the very moment they realized our pastor wasn’t throwing us out but was smiling. at least that’s what you said. all i remember of the actual experience was the feeling in my stomach of you being there. and the feel of your breath on my ear, whispering your spirit and life into me. have i heard from you? hell no. i wish i could hear from you. like that.  anyway. i cried like that today when my father asked me that simple question. made me recall how i only wanted to hear from you, and still wish to. 

hold me,
a.-

— —

from: a
to: a
Sunday, December 6, 2009, 7:54 AM
Subject: Re: … 

continuing…

i want to be between songs. is that not what love song #2 is in the sequence? that middling position? it’s like she pressed pause between 1 and 3, and in that infinitesimal space, crack, fissure, she gave us all this sound of life and love and baby and bass. between 1 and 3 is a world of birth and technology and breath and trouble. so yes. the fascinating guy was an angel that you sent. you must have sent him to me. gave him the dialogue you wanted to say. because though i know he meant what he said as his thoughts, it was also from some other such place that he did not know existed, that he did not know was possible. his telling me of my beauty was him feeling something deep in him that was quickened. but what he felt in him was the connection i had to you, given in my eyes and our held hands, deposited in him. what i mean is that it is impossible for anyone to meet me and not know you. i carried you. across thresholds, in dreams, in my heart. always have. still do.

my breath and song and conversation? it is the giving of you with each enunciation. you have not left me. your breath is still in me, animating me. those tears today were my recognition that though i wanna be done with you, i cannot be. and possibly never will be. and this is not pathological [or, probably, it is but isn’t that what love is anyway?]. it is the brutal honesty of the human necessity to be in relation. the bass lets us get into it. lets us descend the gap between notes by the constant vibrational qualities. and i do not feel bad for crying. i remember that sermon you preached – when can i cry? – and was more moved by that than anything. i will be Tamar but you will not be Absalom, you will let me weep. i can only say i miss you. and cry for you. somehow, someway, hold me as you did that day :: or something 

i’m really done.
a.-

moth’s powder [12.2.09]

from: a
to: dtim 

Wednesday December 2, 2009, 2:22am

Subject: …

i can’t sleep or whatever, so of course, i’m up writing again. figured you may like this shit because the Patti Labelle show … and i know you love Sounds of Blackness (lolol…i kid, I kid!) but still … 

12.3.09
moth’s powder, 

remember that show Out All Nightthat starred Patti Labelle a few years ago? the show about Chelsea – played by Ms. Labelle herself – owner of the “Club Chelsea” nightclub? it was amazing because it was Chelsea’s deaded, deadened singing career that made possible her relationships with others in “the industry.” it was only because she was no longer in the industry that she was able to engage it differently … or that’s what the show wanted us to think, at least. [really, though, the show was merely an excuse for Ms. Labelle to sing on television weekly; and i ain’t complaining!] 

there was one episode i remember in particular: she sang the song you are my friendand the song is that sorta on-the-edge kindasorta inspirational, kindasorta secular [back then, i would’ve simply said – because it was non-gospel – “worldly”] tune about being friends and having love and sharing it with the world. the song slipped into words that were almost familiar to any gospel ear, so much so that my father was excited and possibly sorta on-the-edge of saying that Ms. Labelle was not only showing that she’d grown up in the church but that – and he’d say this with a bit of enthusiasm right in the bottom of his voice, restrained a bit – you know she knows the lord, right? the words in the song i’ve been looking around and you were here all the timeresonated with him but it was also the appearance of Ann Nesby – not-so-famous but kindasorta is famous for singing with the gospel-esque [but certainly, not gospel] group Sounds of Blackness. well. Ms. Nesby and Ms. Labelle screaming and wailing and walking the floor and waving hands and stomping feet was as reminiscent of “church” as it could get for my father, so he was pleased and because he was pleased i was happy. something happened right there after the song ended when Ms. Nesby threw her hand up and almost said – almostbut restrained herself from saying – hallelujah!

and i’ve always tried to figure out that moment, that break when things transition from one mode to another. it’s like when a gospel singer or group – think the Clara Ward Singers or Shirley Caesar or even Ricky Dillard – is performing at a decidedly non-gospel awards ceremony and they say something at the beginning like let’s take it to churchwhich means you’re gonna hear someone wail in the microphone, there will be an organ filling the air with sustained and minor chords and arpeggios and there might be a tambourine struck here and there, now and again. pretty much, taking it to church indexes some sorta building of tension sonically in order to be released after a break. you also hear this when people are dancing and shouting at church. at first, folks may be a bit polite with their dancing or may just stand and clap. but the music builds and swells and builds and swells and then – pop! – snare drum struck and the organist grinds, sliding up or down the keys, breaking: and the people fill the instrumental gap with the soundsof their feet and their voices and their clapping. the break is the moment of encounter, the moment of the ever so faintly after the tension built exceeds and overflows occurs.

or it can be much simpler. like when singing congregational songs during the testimony portion of a church service, when we go from one tune to the next because they have the same form, the same chord structure. going from   

this is the day

 to 

in the name of jesus (we have the victory)

to 

victory is mine 

to 

bless that wonderful name of jesus 

to  

there is power, power, wonder working power in the blooooood of the laaaaamb…

well.

the point? at least in the social world and social life of the curious churches in which i’ve been a member or which i’ve been a musician, there is a much more general disposition toward transition and dispositionseems to be bound up with dispossession. in the transition – after breaks, or from song to song – one descends and ascends simultaneously, one gets down by going higher. that is, one creates centripetal and centrifugal space in which to inhabit in the tiniest cracks and crevices, easily discounted when one isn’t given to nuance. getting down, going higher, descending and ascending in small space wears and abolishes the limits of location itself, lays bare the ruse of boundaries. and this social world teaches, if anything, self-critical nuance and attention to detail. to have a dispositiontowards transitionis, to me at least, the realization that transition is the relinquishment of position and location, it is movement on the move that is constantly moving and never arriving [or, more precisely, arrival is about staying rather than possessing: that’s why we never got “possessed” by the Holy Ghost … but more on that another time]. it is the present participle [to get all linguistic on you, apologies] that makes real philosophic contemplation of temporality and being. i mean, what was most intriguing about the transition from song to song was the aspect of and ability to be – especially as kids, particularly as kids – surprised, to be inspired and struck with awe and wonder with the way the transition occurred :: what chords did the musician play, how did we clap, did the drummer keep going or  pause if only in an infinitesimal beat?

it’s like that time i heard someone leading praise and worship sing 

we worship christ our lord / we worship christ our lord
we lift our hands to him today / we worship christ our lord

and transitioned to  

we worship christ our lord / who is worthy to be praised and adored
so we lift up holy hands with one accord / we worship christ our lord

well.

not just a surprise but also the pure joy and beauty of mixing the second song – blessed be the name of the lord– with the first to create something new from something old at the point of transition. something i read recently said something like: the great thing about black church musicians is that they have to fulfill a role normally thought only reserved for “composers” in western classical music. one must be adept with a range of sonic ideas, chord structures and progressions in order to cohere with singers. but one must be able to do this while learning and creating at the moment of performance. this is not just reserved for organists, though. this singer created a new song from splicing two old songs. and the congregation, as was i, was pleased. and he was pleased because we were pleased. and we all emerged from the situation differently :: thinking about the possibilities of mixing old and new things, things never thought to cohere.

of course, you’re wondering what this has to do with anything and why i’m writing to you. this is connected, i think at least in the way i’ve been thinking lately, to how i had to  stop calling you a “friend.” there was a point [a break] when my family knew that we are no longer together so they stopped referencing you – bless their hearts – as my “friend” [of course, they meant “partner” but had not the language for it and probably would’ve obscured it had i insisted otherwise; but they didn’t know how Foucaultian they were really being, you know, “friendship as a way of life” and whatnot]. but even when they’d stopped, i’d still been saying to people – new people i’d meet that i would have loved for them to replace the space in my heart you still [yes, even yet, still] have [and i am not afraid to admit this] – but i would say to them oh, i have a friend who lives… well, you know where you lived, so that’s not of import.

what i finally heardmyself say one day without realizing was the surprise in my voice when i transitioned to another idea, some otherwise than friendfor you: my former partner lives [and of course, now, lived]…and i startled myself, to say the least. then i realized. i do not, and never did i want, you to be my friend. if i really do think Foucault was right, it was in that he said that people should work at becomingand not being homosexuals and that friendship offers the space of that very becoming. there is a world of difference in the present participle and the thing as [always, already and only] present [as if to say that the thing desired and desirable had been achieved, as if it could be seized].

and if this is the demonstration of the tendency of the disposition toward transition, it is by way of dispossession :: i never owned you, you were not my possession and my love for you could never hold you down, nor should it have. dispossession is a concept of relationality, it is not what someone is, it is what we do. but we let things go only in order to receive. we, as my friend Fred reminded me today, exhale in order to inhale, we are poor in spirit in order to disperse that which is in us so that we may constantly receive more. if we do not engage in dispossession [the constant relinquishment of seizure and ownership], we will never have anything, we will cease to be. if i try holding my breath, it won’t work. gotta give up that shit that i want the most. but giving it up, relinquishing, allows for renewedness and renewal, for refreshment and is this not the chorus, the refrain?

the blessed be the name of the lord surprise and pleasure came by way of releasing the expected toward some old new other thing.

dispossession and breathing, it seems to me at least, are bound together. well? well, indeed. like Marvin Gaye said

i gotta give it up,

a.-

from: dtim
to: a 

Wednesday December 2, 2009, 7:47am 

Subject: Re: …

YOU and your early morning tomes! lolol! and you know i hatehatehate Sounds of Blackness, but she do be singin so I can’t hate too much … you know i tried to google that episode and find it on youtube but couldn’t.

oh and you be havin a whooooole lotta asides in your ish lol

— — 

from: a
to: dtim 

Wednesday December 2, 2009, 8:35pm 

Subject: Re: … 

haha! true…i don’t know, i just got too much shit to say … i’ll see if i can find the video for you and send it to you …but anyway, i wrote a little more but don’t feel pressure to respond

continuing

what is it about modulation, about taking it higher, about, what Mahalia’d sing as the tendency to want to move on up a little higher? think about it. of the many songs i have directed or played, we would want to take a song just a little higher, just a little higher, just a little higher, continually moving up the scale, recalibrating our voices, rewriting the possibilities of the song by way of stretching our vocal cords and widening our mouths and with each successive key changeand release of a whooooo! just after we’d “land” in the new key. it’s weird: i didn’t think about music and sound and location much if at all when we were together, we just sorta played it and sang it and were there in location together but now that all sorts of space separates us, i can’t help but think about being a listening, a hearer and from what positions i must do these things. and it’s not that you’ve written back and it’s not like you could see the letters i’ve written to you but something tells me – some presence, some haunting, some haint – that you still know that i’m writing to you and thinking about you and each letter that i think and breathe and write to you becomes just another such version of me taking it just a little higher, revising the concepts and ideas and dreams and visions of you i have with each subsequent writing that would give you maybe a bit more knowledge of the one whom you said you knew so much that you could not stand to any longer know.

well.

we begin songs in one key, kinda like how we dance and shout, trying to withhold energy until the vamp, the drive. and then, finally, we let them have it, we give it a go, we exert all that we have within us. modulation occurs in some songs, making audible migration and movement and motion, modulation as that sonorous refusal of stillness and being stilled [though, of course, being stilled is merely another “movement”]. and the audience sits – well, by the time of the modulations, probably no longer sitting but is moved as the choir is moved – so the audience stands and is moved and amazed and surprised and enraptured by the heights achieved that were not initially imagined.

and there’s something rather sensuous about it. something a bit erotic. it’s in the ways taking it higher brings all of the attention to our wearied bodies. though our voices are worn out to the point of exhaustion – but right there, at that broken edge, when the voice reemerges with new vigor and life and love – we sing and go higher and higher and higher, centering the very bodies that would be so discounted and dismembered in our theologies. many of our christian theologies are – i don’t have to tell you, i know – really restrictive about what our bodies can and cannot do. i mean, we both know that pentecostalism was disdained and thought occult initially because of the focus on embodied holiness and sanctification, and because of the dancing and shouting and clapped hands and stomped feet and rolling on floors and sweat, the sweat, the sweat and they didn’t even have air conditioning then, so it was likely very much also a smelly experience, and those services were in cramped spaces like store-fronts where everything – sound, smell, sight, sensuousness itself – is heightened by the compression. can you imagine a religious tradition that not only allowed for the senses to be attacked by corporeal praise but desired this assault?

well.

when we sing and we go higher, the congregation hears the voices…and more. and the more is the way they look at what the voice does: to the mouths opened wider than they should be and the lips that quiver and the chins that quake and the necks twist with veins protruding and with the sometimes wagging, sometimes prostrate tongues, and with the sweaty brows and foreheads. no one can keep their eyes closed with all that modulation. so the audience, of course, must attend to the visual aspects of such a – literally – moving sonic performance. 

so indeed, at least in western musics, this thing called modulation is the changing, moving – nay, transitioning – from one tonal center to another. and the notion of a tonal center is all about inhabitation and marooning, about staying and leaving, about the constant movement and migration and flight, what a friend’s friend called the dislocated African’s pursuit of a meta-voice. it also makes present the fact that each of us has the capacity within us to move over and above and away from that which would keep up regulated and relegated, that which would keep us bound and beleaguered. modulation renounces one tonal center for another, does not seek rest but rather, seeks occasion for new words and new worlds. modulation is the chance, the encounter, the moment. modulation is event.

i don’t know. when i think of modulation, and certainly when i hear it, i think of the choir arriving to a new key together and that arrival is but a short inhabitation in that space or field of epistemological exploration of the sonic zone, to, let’s say, have a look [again, by way of throwing the voice] around at the new digs so to speak, the new space opened up by way of some such new tonal center. but then, of course, arriving at that tonal center cannot last too long but some such director will – exuberantly, probably a bit too excitedly – take their hands, form two fists while, with their thumbs stretched giving the choir some sorta thumbs up motion; or take that one hand [for me, it was always the right hand] and point straight up, stretching from the arm through the index finger pointed, and breathe all yoga-like air into my finger or whatever – letting the group know it was time, yet again, to take it just a little higher. and i think, most profoundly, is the notion of arrival because it does not denote final destination but it certainly indexes that you’ve left somewhere, some place or space from which you sought release. 

well.

each modulation as the event of arrival? can we modulate together? i’d like to arrive…with you. i carried you in that dream after i arrived to the house. we arrived in the bedroom after i carried you across thresholds. and we arrived to libidinous joys – ok, we ejaculated and released and screamed after moaning and grinding and fucking, yes – after we arrived together in the bed. we arrived at heartbreak when joy ceased and our visages created more turmoil than butterflies. but we do not need to stay any there but can move to some such other event. grab my hand. let’s go.

or, i suppose, it is too late.

when every voice is a bit of a fugitive, on its run away from normative function and form, modulation becomes but yet another occasion to critique the general field of normativity. if, as Arthur Jafa might argue, every note in black singing is inherently unstable, given to caprice, is bent before its own being bending, is worried previous to the occasion, well, then every taking it a bit higher is the possibility for critiquing the sonic space just evacuated and escaped. similar to how, with melisma, several notes break the syllable when sung such that the notes are both that which break and that which are broken concurrently, well, modulation both moves from while moving to [and too]. it’s kinda like how Harriet Tubman escaped Eastern Shore, Maryland, arrived in New York and was, for all intents and purposes free but returned to that very place that enslaved her only to bring others. freedom for her was fundamentally social but it was also – excuse my obfuscatory nature – modulatory. constantly, freedom was being enacted by movement toward the spaces – New York, Canada, above Mason-Dixon Lines, etc. – where freedom could be enacted. double movements, we could say. sorta like how being a runaway could very well mean [and did for someone like Harriet Jacobs in the crawlspace; or Henry “Box” Brown in a box] not running at all, but being stilled. sometimes, i suppose, stilled movement migrates just as effectively. 

i’ve only once heard modulation that occurred by way of declining the scale rather than – excuse my desire to sound witty – scaling the scale. and there, too, was the element of surprise and joy by each step downward. well. what is it to be able to talk about reaching for heaven but not hell? if writing to silence and impossibility has taught me anything, it is that i should continue to revise and restate and recalibrate and that i can reach down, into that seemingly empty sonic space to get something from you [maybe it is the echo of some such inhabitation long gone]. that silence, of course, is putative. that silence, of course, is noisy as hell. so i’m descending its reaches while, at the very same time, moving just a little higher. so this is me, taking it just a little higher in hopes. in hopes. i’m tryin to steal away, steal away home, because, well, i ain’t got long to stay here. gonna sing a new song in a new home sooner than you will soon think. some call it nirvana. but i’m not there yet. i still want you. and my wanting you is evinced both by my writing you and my refusal to send to your mother. gotta figure out a different means of communicating. maybe if i ascend the Empire State Building, sing you a song from the rooftop and throw you a paper airplane that reads something like “say you’ll go with me?” would that be high enough? 

or maybe i need to be buried. unsure.

love,
a.-

from: dtim
to: a 

Wednesday December 2, 2009, 11:49pm 

Subject: Re: … 

just. lovely. though, I hella need a dictionary to read what you be writing…it’s so beautiful!

— —

from: a
to: dtim 

Wednesday December 2, 2009, 11:56pm

Subject: Re: …

thanx

moth’s powder [12.1.09]

[The Gay Men’s Health Blog]
Thursday, October 22, 2009

Tell us your stories of health and wellness! Learn to take the weight off and keep it off! What do you do to keep healthy daily?
Posted by TheHealthyNut 12:19 PM

15 COMMENTS

Josh said…

yes! i need to know what people are doing because i haven’t been able to lose any weight. i’m 5’10” and weigh 210 pounds and have tried EVERYTHING! it’s just all so very frustrating! 

October 22, 2009 1:42 PM

TheHealthyNut said…

What have you been doing, Josh? I yo-yoed for a very long time with my weight but figured out that I wasn’t committed to myself. Once I came out the closet, everything got better for me! I began focusing on eating right and feeling great! 

October 22, 2009 2:50 PM

JoJoJoseph22 said…

i do P90X it is very very difficult but i like it a lot and i have a six pack am cut up and its gr8!

October 22, 2009 5:29 PM

TonytheTiger said…

When I began my weight loss journey, I was 250lbs but I’m only 5’9”. Yes! Whoa! I was a lardo. I had to cut all of the red meat out of my diet and barely eat any chicken. I eat six times a day and workout twice: once in the morning and once in the evening. I control my portions because, let’s be honest, anyone who was my size had to have been overeating and not caring about their body or their mind. I remember going to clubs with my big t-shirts and no one would look at me but now everyone tries to touch me! To Josh, you should figure out what you eat on a daily basis and try to change it. Write everything down. See how much sugar you consume, how much starch. When I cut rice, pasta, bread and High Fructose Corn Syrup out of my diet, the weight began to FALL OFF! It’s so awesome!

October 29, 2009 4:09 AM

Josh said … 

@TonytheTiger: why do you assume i haven’t done all of those things? i think i may have a thyroid problem or something. 

@JoJoJoseph: maybe i could try that? but i checked it out after i googled it and it’s really expensive …

@TheHealthyNut: but i’ve been out of the closet for years and everyone accepts me, until i go to the club or something … i dunno … it’s just all weird. i go to the gym about four days a week but when things don’t happen, i just fall off the wagon … but i’ll try this P90X thingy … maybe that’ll do the trick? 

October 31, 2009 3:22 PM

ExemplarLoss-n-Lost said …

Need to lose weight fast? Click Here for tips and suggestions! 

October 31, 2009 11:59 PM

TheHealthyNut said …

I hear you Josh. I just want to help. Seems a lot of people have been able to lose weight, so it should possible for you too! 

November 1, 2009 10:05 AM

TonytheTiger said …

Yeah, ok, Josh. I’m sure you’ve tried everything and you’re still fat.

 November 4, 2009 4:06 AM

TheHealthyNut said …

 @TonytheTiger: why are you so hostile? This is a place to come and share, not to berate people. And so early in the morning too? What’s that about? 

November 4, 2009 11:29 AM

TonytheTiger said … 

Unlike Josh, I was up in order to go to for my morning three mile run. He’s not losing weight because he’s obviously lazy.

November 4, 1:38 PM

JoJoJoseph said … 

Hey Josh, sorry for just responding. I check this site very sparingly. TonytheTiger has an ax to grind with everyone…he does this shit in all the forums but nobody likes him. I’ll send you a PM with my phone number and we can talk if you’d like. And I have P90X on my computer and can send you all the stuff you need. 

November 10, 2:18 AM

Josh said …

@JoJoJospeh: thanks! will do!

November 10, 10:09 AM

A said … 

sorry but it’s people like TonytheTiger that are the reasons gay folks are so fuckin backwards. i mean, i never even knew that i was (and probably still am) fatuntil i came out of my proverbial closet and tried to join some sorta gay “community.” i began to peruse online dating sites in order to find someone with whom i could connect and was flabbergasted to read over and over and over again no fats, no fems. but of course i didn’t know this pertained to me because, sure, yeah, i was a bit overweight and have always had a bit of a stomach and sure, yeah, i’d always hated running and never went to the gym consistently and sure but i didn’t know that i was fat. but i learned this truth rather quickly because either dudes whom i found mildly (to wildly!) attractive either would simply ignore me or would turn me down.

Josh, do you … these sorryass dudes on here posturing about what they do and don’t eat and how they look good as hell but STILL are on a4a everyday lookinglookinglooking for someone. and if they on everyday, and they can’t find someone, then it can’t be because they’re fat … they’re just assholes. 

November 28, 2009 11:47 PM 

TheHealthyNut said …

whoa (@A) …

November 29 9:17 AM 

TheRegenBul said …

hey, how’d you do that formatting with the italics and bold, @A?!

December 1, 2009 2:12 AM

Josh said …

@A: thanks! Did you get my PM? I asked you a couple of questions
@TheHealthyNut: i know, right?!?!?!

December 1, 2009 6:16 AM 

— —

from: a
to: a
Tuesday December 1, 2009, 11:40am
Subject: selfreminder

moth’s powder,

i never even knew that i was [and probably still am] fatuntil i came out of my proverbial closet and tried to join some sorta gay “community.” there was this guy – let’s call him, mysterious –  whom i fell pretty hard for my senior year in undergrad. well, with the way things were and are and i not being out of the closet but not necessarily in one either, well, after about a year of us hanging out too tough, i told him how i felt and he told me he was straight and so i determined after spending about nine months with him every day talking and laughing and sitting in rooms and staring at televisions and having our knees maybe almost touch as we sat on couches, well, i told myself that in order to avoid such situations again, i’d come out the closet and all the boys would flock to me because i’d imagined myself to be a pretty nice guy, sorta stand-up-like and cool and a nice dresser and sorta smart or whatever. or whatever.

and i’m sure i talk about the church in which i grew up a bit too romantically but i can, at the very least, say that before i came out the closet, i thought of myself – maybe as sinful, well, definitely as sinful – but also desirable. i thought i was sexy, though i might’ve had a one-way ticket to hell. when i’d go to some restaurant with my family after church on Sundays, we’d sit and i’d look around and coyly ogle some such teenaged dude with a cute smile and church suit and stacy adams shoes and he’d smile back and we’d have this entirely delightful conversation with only our eyes and smiles and gazes and averted glances. our parents were none the wiser. but after my senior year in undergrad and getting my heart broken, well, i figured that coming out the closet would at least afford me the possibility of not having to go through some type of hidden, emotional despair. at least not alone.

and i wasn’t all wrong, i suppose. but dammit if i didn’t discover that i was fat. and that such fatness made me undesirable. i began to peruse online dating [“dating” because, really, they’re just to find good (or bad) fuck buddies, that is, unless you’re in Philly and you use the partyline because i’d met a lot of great people on the partyline and well, i digress]; but i began searching these online dating sites in order to find someone with whom i could connect and was flabbergasted to read over and over and over again “no fats, no fems.” but of course i didn’t know this pertained to me because, sure, yeah, i was a bit overweight and have always had a bit of a stomach and sure, yeah, i’d always hated running and never went to the gym consistently and sure, yeah, i didn’t like walking up steps and the only real exercise i did was in church when we were dance dance dance dance dance dance dance all night‘ing and sure, yeah, i loved a pork chop (or two) and collard greens and mac-n-cheese and cornbread, but no, i did not know that i was fat. 

from: a
to: a
Tuesday December 1, 2009, 2:30pm
Subject: Re: selfreminder

continuing 

…but i learned this truth rather quickly because either dudes whom i found mildly (to wildly!) attractive either would simply ignore me or would say nicely sorry, you’re not my typeor some would be rude and just say yo, don’t fuckin talk to me you fat ass muthafuckaand then. well. then. i figured out i was fat.

and i suppose i blame the church for that because they might not have appreciated the fact that i was a fag but they ain’t hate on me because i was fat and i was fat a lot longer than i’ve been a fag. [funny what that t and g do to that utterance, so much so that it seems that you would think online profiles would say no fats, no fagsor some shit. but yeah.] i was able to find hella boyfriends in churchbut once i kicked down that closet door [and, really, it didn’t need to be kicked and there really wasn’t a closet; it was more like when i began to ownthe fact of my existence, not when i went into or out of some such rhetorical space that didn’t make or break me anyway], when i began to challenge normative church theology and doctrine about who iwanted to fuck and when i said that it could be with anyone, that it was my desire that i cared for and not the desire of the church for me and that i didn’t have to wait until marriage, well, i became unattractive to those very boys who – days before, literally – were ringing my phone, leaving me messages on my machine and trying to come over late at night and fuck and pray and fuck and pray and fuck and pray. Derrick was just one example. what should one do when they lose two communities at the same time? one they never had and the other they felt secure in even if in a problematic relation?

i ain’t been the same since, honestly. joined a gym soon after i had these online encounters that were nothing other than the lack of encounters i desired. been going to the gym ever since, though, i’m lazy and hell and it gets boring. but i gotta try, right? i’ve always found the notion of “no fats, no fems” to be so intriguing because some of these same folks will argue and spit and curse people out if you say they’re going to hell for being gay or some shit. they’ll do all of this savvy (and i’d add, correct) exegetical maneuvering, showing how faulty relying on biblical text is especially when you don’t read it in context and from understanding the text’s culture and whatnot and how the text might be sacred but it ain’t infallible and so many of them leave the church and don’t go because jesus ain’t the author and finisher of their faith. and i’m cool with that. but i do furrow my brow hard as hell when these same folks – with fat friends, mind you – have on their profiles that they don’t talk to fat or fem people.

 well.

 isn’t this the same sort of christian body/text/sacred shit that we’ve tried to escape in the first place? i mean, i get it. you want to show the value and worth of the bodies that were deemed sinful. queer people aren’t sinning, we’re just living lives differently. but you can’t displace fucked up theology with fucked up theology. and there is a theology at play right in that “no fats, no fems” declaration. it posits, i’m pretty sure, that there is a holy and separated body type, that there is a sanctified body, that there is a righteous body and that we will know them and their worth and their labors by the abs and muscles and masculinities they bear (bare, even). if that ain’t some holiness/pentecostal rhetoric, i don’t know what is.

what i find so, sad, really sad, really? it is that we have somehow taken the theology from one place to another and it utterly leaves many of us lonely and in despair. i have a friend who does work against spiritual violences of the church and i think the great thing about the concept of spiritual violence is not merely that it is violent but that it is spiritual, meaning, it is not necessarily (or even primarily) housed or sequestered: in a body or institution or within any such strict boundary. spiritual violence disperses. the violence is so spiritual that we cannot see that the same ones we’d link with in the underground society of not-so-secret places and closets are ones we cannot bear to hold, to carry, to love in some other such community. and this is put forward as progressive. it’s nothing other than the same old mode of surveillance that was used to regulate our behavior – you know, making sure we weren’t sinning – used in the service of regulating other sorts of embodied pleasures. so the fuck what, if i want a(nother) pork chop? people kill me … literally

then, there was you. treated me so genuinely different that i thought you were lying for a long time, waiting to trick me, trip me, show everyone how silly i was … but i was the one, of course, who fucked up. but you did too …

sorry. venting.

a.-

[notes]

so i need to figure out: to focus on one location or various? to focus on the movement of one song or various? to focus on one time period or its expansiveness? 

Rebecca Solnit’s work in Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas is really exciting me right now: “…today’s computer-driven Geographic Information System [GIS] cartography, with its ability to layer information, is not only an elegantly maneuverable electronic equivalent of the transparent pages that were, in the age of paper, more common in anatomy books” (2).

what’s so cool about this is the idea of the city as inexhaustible, as irreducible and thus, always allowing for discovery and surprise. i initially was prompted to think about the Underground Railroad and marronage because of my enduring interest in (pentecost/al) music —its prehistory, its energy and its movement; and also, the way it does and doesn’t show up in black studies— with regard to subjectivity and social life. so the the anatomy books and paper transparencies are sorta cool because of the layering that was the manifestation of a sorta irreducibility; each layer could be cut with another incision, augmented by that which is atop and beneath it: sorta like water or something. 

maybe it could be a southern studies, pre-great migration sorta project? or practice? i do know that i wanna go to a bunch of weeknight church services … and attend a bunch of capoeria rehearsals … we’ll see …