moth’s powder [05.10.10]

from: a
to: a
Monday, May 10, 2010, 4:33 AM
subject: Re: mp 

of course tonight, because i had no one to talk to, i missed you just a bit more than usual. things with girlfriendofthreeyears, of course did not pan out as i’d hoped, but rightly so. too embarrassed to even talk to anyone about it. so here we are. or, really, here i am. i should delete all this shit soon.

moth’s powder [04.25.10]

from: a
to: a
Saturday, April 25, 2010, 3:36 AM
subject: Re: mp

dear moth’s powder,

we had trust issues. they were my fault. and, sure, i waited until too late – like now, like yesterday – to explain why. i’m sorry. but you’ve never had someone in an aol chatroom – someone with whom you didn’t even initiate conversation say to you – “you’re so ugly…please leave this chatroom.” it was the weirdest thing, all i could say in reply was “lol” … didn’t block the guy because i didn’t want him to think i was effected by what he said. years ago, of course, but clearly i’m thinking about it now. which is sad. and you’ve never had someone say, and truly believe them when they did, “i like you…a lot. but i’m just not attracted to you. i’m sorry.” sweet, how he cared enough to be honest and not malicious. but that doesn’t mean i wasn’t effected. it means that sex clubs and i have become quick friends, and when i feel appreciated, i indulge not necessarily the safest of behaviors. a bit of reckless abandon, a bit of self-deprecation.

this is what it means :: it means you wait after the bars and clubs have let out, when you’re alone and tipsy, and hope someone sees you, nods and talks to you, flirts with you. no one does, and though this is the reality you’re used to, you act as if it can still possibly happen. so you end up having fascinating conversations with homeless men and women that are looking for similar recognition, for someone to look into their eyes and affirm their humanity. and there is nothing you can do to change this. it is not that the men and women you encounter are not worthy of such communion, by the way. it just means that you question your own place in the world. or something like that …

ted stopped by me tonight, on the corner, “you’re so beautiful…say, um…do you have a cigarette?” and after giving him one, “look, it’s my birthday…i just want some weed. can you give me a dollar so i can get some…please?” it was the plea, as “please,” that made me amenable, of course. i gave him a dollar because i knew, even if it were not his birthday, that he wanted to feel good. and that’s ok with me…i was looking for the same thing.

but after i gave him one dollar, he said, “now you know weed costs more than one dollar! do you have five? please?” once i told him i had no more dollars to give, unfortunately – you know how i don’t carry money only cards – he kept it moving. no goodbye either. so as more folks walked by, i smiled with shy embarrassment. you wouldn’t have convinced me at 15 that i’d be here years later…waiting again. but i am. and i am. and so, this is my reality. i have all sorts of guilt for not telling you about shit like this before. but it’s too embarrassing to say out loud, to admit. so i write to this nothingness that is you with hopes that, somehow, some way, you’ll understand.

will you? can you? i hope…
a.

moth’s powder [04.24.10]

from: a
to: a
Saturday, April 24, 2010, 2:11 AM
subject: Re: mp

moth’s powder,

curious what an old email can do, what an old email can make you feel. curious how an old email might hold all sorts of answers and even more questions. i was searching for something in my inbox and because i haven’t needed to delete an email since i got gmail years ago, an old exchange popped up that i knew i should’ve deleted. and i knew it because as soon as i saw the name of dude, my stomach churned…it literally turned in a nervous bundle of embarrassment. but because i fancy myself a trooper, i clicked on it anyway, read it in order to prove how much stronger i am today…but also to see if the exchange was as bad as my stomach remembered.

curious what an old email can do. i saw dude’s name and it reminded me of why i resisted you so much initially, why i, in fact, could not trust anyone, myself most of all. anyway, this is what i sent him after we ‘d been hanging out a while…as friends. and, much like you, it was after eating together at a diner that i knew [you always laughed at me because i’d always suggest diners for us to eat … i guess some things never change]:

dear you…

 

so i might as well be as straightforward as possible and say it. problem is, though i feel it, i can’t yet name it. it is lodged deep within me, those two moments tonight when our eyes met and lingered just a shade – inflections of green against confectioner’s dark brown – just a hairsbreadth longer, causing quickened head turns and slow releases of pent-up energy, pentecostal breath, unvoiced sighs [because had we voiced sigh, had we sounded it out like third grade phonics, all doubt of this “it” would have dissipated and we simply cannot have that desedimentation]. what is this it? i feel sorta like an Addie Bundren middling speech from and within Faulknerian journeys: whatever it is, the name does not yet exist by which we could or should call it :: whatever it is, it exists within the

 

[s    p   a  c es]

 

of such resistant gaze, stuttered exhale.

 

i wanted to touch you tonight. and i had to get home quickly and write you and let you know: i wanted to touch you tonight. we, i hope you realize, have never hugged, never mistakenly touched knees under the table, never bumped elbows while walking. strange because we spend so much time together, from late night text messages to early morning breakfasts … the most we’ve ever done is shake hands at a safe distance. but even the handshakes are a bit too weak and tepid. i hesitate each time because if i grip too strongly, i’d feel the warmth of your hand and not want to let go, i’d feel – and i’d hope you’d feel – all that “it” that this is. is it like that for you too?

 

what if we admitted that we loved each other? what if we stopped this song and dance, this refusal to move into the direction in which our hearts have already traveled? what if? …

 

i know you’re otherwise involved, otherwise preoccupied but we spend more time together than your otherwise. what could that mean, what does that mean? have you considered how it feels to know that you would and could call me whenever to talk about anything while slightly flirting each and every time we’d converse? or how we’d sit in silence together and just breathe. i accepted it all. i wanted to. but what if i want more? or, what if i want acknowledgement that there is, indeed, something here, something between us, some “it”?

 

anyway. you already know,

a.

his reply:

i want to be completely honest with u and i want you to understand that i am being this honest not to hurt ur feelings but u seriously need to stop and let it go. i think u r extremely intelligent i love debating and talking with u about shit, and because of that i know u will appreciate things that my other close friends wont. but with that being said, i have never been physically attracted to u, and what i liked about u as far as intellect was never on the level of me liking u as more than a friend

im sorry but this is the honest truth, and i understand u may like me a lot or whatever and thats kinda effecting ur perception of reality but honestly i have never wanted to get at u as more than a friend. and honestly u make me feel uncomfortable knowing that u still like me, i thought u had long gotten over that, i thought it was just a passing thing. didnt you like a lot of people before? we talked abt this when we first hung out and ur cool but im not into u, told u, and thought u understood. there is nothing between us. i didnt look into ur eyes, didnt sigh or whatever else u thought u saw. thats your emotions messing up how u can see reality. not being mean i just dont like u like that

of course, i never told you about this email. or this dude. and, even now, it feels sorta shitty to recollect it, to reread it. i’m embarrassed, and certainly was then too. needless to say, that night at the diner before i sent the message was the last time we ever talked he never called nor emailed me again after that and i, of course, never had the will or resolve to reach out to him. self-doubt became manna, feeding daily on the one concern :: how could i have been so wrong. and i knew i was wrong not just because he said i was wrong but also, and more importantly and fundamentally, because of the way he told me i was wrong. it wasn’t even the fact that he said i was intelligent and not attractive to him, it was that i was reduced to only being worth the “debate” i could offer him … so even in my purported intellect, my worth was determined by his valuation of it, that my supposed intellect was only there to serve his purpose, his need. as moved as i am by the fact that i felt something so deeply that i wrote to him what i wrote, i am repulsed by the fact that his response was so … i don’t have the word for it. i’m just surprised someone could write something like that, and seriously think it was ok.

is there any wonder why, sitting across the table from you at a diner years later, that i was a bit hesitant? muted trumpet, sounding out but a bit muffled. it wasn’t that i was merely afraid of you, it was that i thought the tune would change immediately after i named that there was some “it” between you and i, similar to what happened with dude years before. the way we can radically reorient ourselves to an object is something i learned growing up pentecostal … we can call his response and subsequent silence a conversion narrative, a new and living way…or some shit. and i was so … baffled by the conviction with which he spoke his truth that i needed time, a lot of time, to get myself together. i retreated, hermit-like, into the woods of my own desolation, into the forest of my own green, and listened to wordless music, a lot of “nothing music” … something about being and nothingness, being and nonchalance, i was trying to figure out after such an encounter.

and then i met you. and, well, yeah…thank you. anyway. i deleted the email and may have to delete this one after i send it. i need to let go…really.

anyway. always.
a.

moth’s powder [04.21.10]

from: a
to: a
Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 4:13 PM
subject: Re: mp

mp,

it happened again and i don’t know what to make of it. not staring but the sorta moment you feel someone looking at you from across the room and you look up from the convo you’d been engaging and, sure enough, there he is, looking. you make brief eye contact, he takes a deep breath and looks away, almost as if his looking – the very fact of his doing it – stunned him, so he also was not immediately able to look away. you’re the trainwreck. the fire to which the moth is attracted. beautifully so [or, at least, you convince yourself]. but also: he’s cute. very cute. but the hesitant averted gaze, the stalled look away, the wary worry which announces, before any “hello,” the emergence of problems.

it was at calvin’s art opening a few weeks ago, his first gallery showing in fact, so things were abuzz and he was rather excited. wine was flowing and there genuine giddiness in the air. i was pleased to support and met all sorts of folks: people i’d never seen or heard of before – who knew so many cool, artsy folks lived here? – and finally met folks that i’ve known online but never in person from twitter and facebook, for example. anyway. the artwork was nothing short of amazing. called it his “music and movement” installation where he’d taken all sorts of media and used oil paint to create these abstract swirls and strokes, all based on the music to which he’d be listening at the time. the painting was to approach a kind of sonic referentiality, was a type of metaphorization of the sounds, of the music. i was moved by the colors he used, mostly darker gradations :: deep purples and blues, dense, full-bodied reds, and lots of black. he used a variety of surfaces, “to bespeak the everydayness of our encounters with music. this is a piece about the sublime’s relation to the ordinary.” sure, i laughed a bit at his description, but more because i never pay attention to what artists say about their own shit…it’s always on the edge of self-congratulatory “look at this cool shit i did and now please pay me” message implicit in their self-referential descriptions, and so they always misread their own motives. but aside from his description, it truly was amazing. couldn’t deny it.

the problem, of course, was that there was this hella cute dude there with his girlfriendofthreeyears [he said it, rushed just like that, while she was in the restroom]. calvin wanted me to meet this guy because he’s a likewise nerd and sometimey musician, so he thought we’d hit off. dude had been glancing at me even before the official introduction, when i stood across the gallery space talking with some other folks. and then we were introduced and of course i was surprised to learn that the young woman was not just a friend but was, in fact, the girlfriendofthreeyears. but anyway, nice guy and his girlfriendofthreeyears were, in fact, cool as hell. the three of us talked for at least an hour, conversation moving through all sorts of terrain, from theology to the presidency. needless to say, i got along with them very well, so calvin wasn’t wrong at all. the problem? well…you know how i tend to get a bit on the edge of loud, and insistent, when i’ve had one too many glasses of wine. not the sorta belligerent volume but speaking my mind, sans filter, so also full of conviction. i was on some, “i voted green party! not even gonna vote the next time around if things keep going the way they’re going!” shit. and though true, it’s always weird to sorta feel that settled with folks you’d just met. anyway, girlfriendofthreeyears went to the restroom but saw an old colleague and stopped to talk to her for a while. so dude and i kept talking and it was nice. it goes without saying that i noticed how handsome he was and how, had there been no girlfriendofthreeyears present, i would’ve overtly flirted. but i’m not desperate. nor that needy. nor grimy. but things did cross my mind. his smile, his eyes, his lips? just.yes.to.it.all.

so after this hour or so convo and girlfriendofthreeyears returned, i bid them adieu so that i could meet/talk to other friends i hadn’t seen in a while. we facebooked each other and i scurried away. whispered to calvin “oh my god…he’s cute! ugh!” and he laughed. i settled on a new group of old friends with whom i could catch up. but while drinking this newest glass of wine and having convo where i laughed a lot and made several points – with my hands, so you know i was doing my good talking – i looked up and saw him. not quite staring but definitely looking with an almost insatiable desire. i felt it. felt it in me. knew someone was looking, just had to find the directional field from which the energy emanated. and each time [it happened about four times throughout the duration of the evening after we’d met to say nothing of the before] when he realized i realized he was looking at me, he’d sorta almost – faintly – smile but not really, because there was also not a slight hint of embarrassment on his face, in his heart i presume as well, that he was looking at me with that look in the first place. made me question what it was that prompted his search that landed in my face, in my eyes, each time, causing him to further still: search.

[are metaphors a displacement of thought? do they get us closer to the heart of the matter? or are they some other kind of complication?]

i think he saw something familiar in me that he’d not ever named. it almost sounds egotistical to think it the way i’m thinking it but that’s not what i’m going for. i wish things were much less complex but this has happened with so many dudes that it’s pretty common now. declarations of heterosexuality are cool but then they long for something otherwise and see me, and act as if whatever that otherwise might be is somewhere hidden in me, is something familiar. and i had this weird experience when i was a kid that was all about familiarity. we took a bus trip when i was in the fifth grade to Baltimore or some other city and the trip included everyone in the fifth grade so all the teachers, most of whom i did not know, went along. there was one teacher on the bus who, upon catching my eye in the rear view mirror the first time [she was staring at me] continued to look at me. i would turn around to someone behind me and begin to talk and she’d walk up to me, grab my arm, tell me “didn’t i tell you to turn around?! stop talking! and look forward!,” forcing me to turn around on the bus so she could continue to look at me in the rear view mirror. she would not let me talk to others, made me to face forward. she stared into my reflection in the mirror. needless to say, i was not a little bit uncomfortable.

upon my return home, i told my parents about the entire affair and when i told them who it was, they said “the next time you see her, ask her if she knows elder so-n-so.” so i did and when i did, she exclaimed loudly, hugging me hard, “i knew it!” turns out, she saw my parents – mother’s mouth and lips, daddy’s voice [even though i was too young, fifth grade…but i suppose i had pre-pubescent hints of the voice to come, it’s futurity already with me and if i learned anything from my father, it was the insistence in voice, the conviction] – in me, on me. the point is that familiarity shows up in all sorts of weird ways. something about – literally external to – me bespoke something in me. but that something was noise at best, incoherence, or at least, incomprehensible, ineffable audiovisuality [sorta like how cell phones used to produce all of this static whenever you’d go out of range]. nevertheless, it was a certain sort of knowledge, a knowledge of having known, a knowledge of knowing, a knowledge of desire to know. that knowledge – the who that i was – was there, while withdrawing with each pondered “but how do i know him? but where do i know him from?” furrow of her brow. i felt abused by her force on the bus, felt ashamed and felt that she was misunderstanding my simple wish to talk to other kids. and i’m not the least bit disabused of the erotics that sorta underpinned the staring into a mirror to figure me out. she was trying to remember something without knowing what it was. and so, dude with the girlfriendofthreeyears, i think, also was cathected by some sorta eroto-libidinal excess, provoked by the insistence of my voice, an insistence that produced in him some desire to know more. to “get” what was so familiar. maybe he thought he could, if he stared enough, figure out what it was for which he was longing. of course, a few days after the event, it all became a bit clearer with a message on facebook that would feign the flirting that is certainly implied, so vague that a claim of ignorance and misunderstanding – another sort of noise and static – could be made though the apparentness of the interactions are no less there.

anyway. i don’t know what to do with all this. just complaining a bit, i guess. because he’d be a great person with whom to hang out but not with all of this even more complicated interaction. and there’s also calvin. so yeah…we’ll see. and i guess it was something familiar that you’d seen in and on me that made our initial interactions so weirdly frustrating, frustrating because they were so fulfilling to me, for us. as if we’d known each other all our lives, the gift as well as curse. 

moth’s powder [02.27.10]

— — — 

— — — 

from: dtim
to: a
Sunday, February 27, 2010, 8:29 AM
subject: Re: omg…

just waking up, so I’m just getting your message! Of course you can email me whenever you want…that’s why I sent you a message yesterday. We should have a phone convo too soon…I miss your voice.

moth’s powder [02.12.10]

from: a
to: dtim
Friday, February 12, 2010, 2:07 PM
subject: Re: ummmm 

this.

mp, 

shit…totally forgot to tell you that i started bikram last week. the vinyasa just wasn’t cuttin it anymore so of course, yeah, i’m bein all deep with it. an hour and a half of just being in a hotass room, hoping that i can stand head-to-knee or whatever. imagine this black dude in a room full of white women sweating his ass off so early in the morning [i go to the 6am class]. yeah. it’s funny when i think about it too…lol

but anyway. got me to thinking about all sorts of things…and it’s – finally? – helping me put shit in perspective, i think. or. i hope.

my grandfather’s grandfather – or so the story that i’m told goes – was a griot and preacher, though a “preacher” in a very loose, kibdasorta not too christian kind of way. whenever we’d visit Darien, granddaddy would always tell us the story of his grandfather, telling us that the folks [the whites and blacks, of course] knew him most for sayin “ha! ha! ha!” to enunciate phrases, called him Ha!-John, in fact, because of it. he started doing it after he tried to escape to a small maroon community in the swamplands between Georgia and South Carolina but was caught right before he reached refuge. anyway. they beat the shit outta him – “least a hundred lashes,” granddaddy’d say.

but most intriguing in the story and the part that animated granddaddy so much was this: while Ha!-John’s mouth was open to release a yelp, a bunch of moths – “least a hundred or so!” – flew into his mouth and, no doubt, disintegrated into that powdery substance. couldn’t breathe, in fact and almost choked to death. no sound would come out, “quiet as a mouse piss on cotton,” he’d say. each time. Ha!-John’s mouth opened, of course, because he needed to let go all of the pain he felt with each blow. not really exhaling or inhaling but some sorta other thing where he’d make a shriek that sounded out nothing other than withdrawal from the world, as if as soon as he’d make a noise to match the pain, he’d take relent and refuse such satisfaction. “but then moths came from everywhere, all over the place” and filled Ha!-John’s mouth and throat and lungs. the women standing around prayed. he began to choke. and that they all heard. the dude who “owned” him [i still never know how to say this. i don’t like the word “owned” and i definitely resist the word “master” … but you get what i mean] had at least a small bone of decency in his body, cut Ha!-John loose from the post and let grandaddy’s grandfather just lay there. everyone gathered around, dressing his wounds, praying and cussin the occasion of that violence in the first place.

he had always told stories but when he finally “came to,” he decided to become a preacher; said he was converted the moment he could no longer breathe. well, granddaddy told us of how Ha!-John received a new name because, now when he told stories, there was an insistence and longing, complete with the “ha!” as if what mingled in every enunciation was the force necessary to rid himself of the overwhelming need to breathe again. each and every time, in fact. it was that “ha!” that, in fact it turns out, led to his eventual successful escape [new enlightenment, or “endarkenment” into the swamp; moved to swamp, told stories and could be heard laughing for miles but wasn’t locatable; new enlightenment where he escaped the desire for some sorta Kantian self-inflicted individualism for a social; anyway. he was partially successful because he was laughing while preaching and partially because he planned with other folks to leave rather than attempting some sorta genius plan to be famous; Ha!-John was always a bit of a showman, from what the stories of him said].

it may be hella weird – actually, i know it is, in fact – but Ha!-John is what i thought about in yoga today while in savasana [my head is never clear of thoughts], mainly because they tell me to hold poses for so long that i get angry and when i am angry, my breathing becomes labored. but because they tell us to only “breathe in nose and out the nose” and that we must, under no uncertain circumstances, breathe with the mouth, i sometimes laugh “ha! ha! ha!” in order to get all sorts of relief from the heat. it’s also a proverbial “fuck you!” but of course, you’d know that. so i began to think about Ha!-John’s “ha!” and how it likely echoed all sorts of sentiment that was nothing other than critique. i mean, think about it. enslavement was this institutional practice that tried to sever the possibility for breathing, that tried in fact, to exhaust people so much that they would have no energy to resist, no energy to even as it were, breathe deeply with joy. but then we hear all these stories of how folks went to praise houses and clearing way back in the woods after working all day and would stay and sing and pray and dance [without ever crossing their legs; that would be unholy!] all night. and others – the more secular of them – would stay behind on porches and tell stories or dance crossing the legs [so you know it was sinful…lol].

all these uses of breath after the possibility had been, excuse such corniness, choked out of them. it’s as if enslavement was the perpetual movement from outside, from having moth’s powder in your mouth, throat and lungs as the condition of possibility for a new sound. so with each breath there mingled the critique of having been put in a situation where choking would be relief, where laughter in the face of denigration would be the curious rescue from such denigration. Ha!-John would laugh at dude who “owned” him in his sermons and that dude began to tell folks that, after the moth incident, Ha!-John was crazy. but granddaddy would tell us how deep and long and beautiful the “ha!” was of Ha!-John, how his entire body would shake when he laughed, when he prayed, when he preached. and the dude who owned him could only hear crazy rather than thinking that the sounds had intention behind them, that they were, indeed, a way around such oppressive practices.

anyway. made me think about that song we used to sing at my church…and ya’ll probably sang it in yours too. i should ask your mother but, well, i still am afraid to contact her.

ha ha ha ha…ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha…ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha ha…ha ha ha ha
and he brought laughter into my soul 

indeed.
a.-

— — — 

from: dtim
to: a
Friday, February 12, 2010, 8:39 PM
subject: Re: ummmm 

is that story real?! it’s sooooo great! and, chile, i don’t know how you do bikram. i tried it a few times but it was WAAAAY too hot. and your godson is trippin…terrible twos…lol. we miss you…come see us soon!

— — —  

from: a
to: dtim
Friday, February 12, 2010, 9:04 PM
subject: Re: ummmm 

well what is he doing? lolol…and i miss  you too! i need to visit soon. and i’ve tried to find other stories of Ha!-John but couldn’t. but everyone i know from back home seems to know something about the story…so who knows? even if it ain’t real, it sounds true. 

moth’s powder [12.15.09]

from: a
to: dtim
Monday, December 15, 2009, 10:49 PM
Subject: until i get *this* outta me

i gotta keep writing, i suppose. i’ve been listenin to all these youtube videos the group did so i’ve been thinking and writing and thinking and writing a lot about it. this sorta just popped outta me earlier today. shit. feels like i’m just supposed to write this … so i’m doing it or whatever…anyway.

part of me just thinks this is hella heavy-handed. but then the other part of me doesn’t care because ain’t nobody gonna see this shit anyway…so yeah

miss you…xoxo!

mp,

it’s like i’m embarrassed by having the desire to keep writing you. but what’s the use in trying to act like i don’t still feel shit? i can’t afford therapy – or, well, you know, i never liked going to it anyway…that shit was definitely your idea…lol – so anyway, i write.

and i guess we could say that i’ve only partially been honest or, at the very least, i haven’t been entirely forthcoming. i have been rather obsessed with New Dawns music lately, listening to recordings of us, though we only performed for a little over two years. and i have of course been listening to it lately because our anniversary is quickly approaching – not of our coming together but of our breaking apart. and so i’ve been watching these recordings, listening to them with the volume on up as high as possible because i’ve been trying to rediscover you, so to speak. like, i wanted to know if there was something in your gestures, in your face, in your smile that i could know and seize, on which i could think and meditate. so i’ve been looking and listening to instances and inflections.

to say i miss you would be the most vulgar of misstatements and half-truths ever. it is not merely that i miss you, it is that i am no longer me, that i no longer play the same musics, that i do not inhabit the social-sonic space that made me, we. you know i don’t necessarily believe in soul mates but something certainly happened that first day we went to the diner. the shy eyes, the reticent gestures, the bashful but ongoing pleasure of jumping headlong from one conversation to the next. who knew that that sorta calm conversation and knowing comfort were possible between strangers? who knew that that sorta wordplay and game, inflection and voice were attainable for two people not even yet acquaintances? i had butterflies.

and of course, and thus, i knew. and of course, you told me you trusted me. and of course, that made no sense if we were bound and restricted to some sorta linear time progression.

our meeting, i think, at least for me, was the disruption of such linearity. it’s as if i’d known you many moons ago, some half-life agone, that our communion and conversation could be traced back to some such agora. [and i’ve been quietly working on this speculative fiction about a character named Xenith who finds life and love after he comes to earth as a created human being…the life and love he finds is with the king’s son but they’d “known” each other before their birth or whatever. it’s like, rather than meeting for the first time, they “found” each other on their earth planet. but the whole fucked up part was because they were both dudes and people couldn’t understand it and so they had to make all sorts of cosmic conclusions about the nature of love and sex and connectedness that precedes time and exists long after time ceases. anyway. our love was the inspiration.]

what was most weird and cool and most interesting was that that non-date – whatever it was – was the first time you asked me, right before you left, if we could pray together and it made me quite afraid. i was not one prone to pray. [and still am not, truth be told; because if prayer will fix it every time, and i’ve prayed ceaselessly for you, for you to come back to me, for me to be able to smell and taste and touch you just one more time? just one more time? well? well prayer must not work. prayer, in this case and if anything, makes me long more for that which i do not have; prayer becomes the perpetual, ongoing index of loss and lack.]  of course, i grew up saying grace and going to prayer and bible band on tuesday nights and wednesday night prayer meetings [Mingus was entirely too correct], so i knew and know how to pray. i just didn’t then. and don’t. i did not then because i felt it inefficacious, a joke, folly that tried to escape this life. prayer was infelicitous at best, a performative utterance that did not do what it purported.

then i met you and our communion, at the very least, introduced me to the notion of focus. of course, other traditions privilege meditation as a means to focus thought and breath but i had never conceived of those loud prayers from my mother and father along this wise.

you showed me and whispered to me and spoke in tongues to me and demonstrated for me how wrong i was. just because we’re loud doesn’t mean we’re not focused or not contemplative is what you said to me. focused thought and breath is not only found in the quietude of buddhist meditational practice, in the soft hum or brush of yoga chaturanga poses and the like. it is found when my mother would be in the microphone and i’d be on the organ backing her up, her saying something like  

satan!  the lord rebuke you! 

wherein she’d punctuate words with the letter t and the sound tuh! along with the intentional singularity of such words that were plural [think of rebuke rather than rebukes]for dramatic purpose and pause. so it’d sound like she was saying

satan’tuh!  the lord rebuke’tayuh! 

as some sorta melismatic break of word and augment with new sound. what do you think prayers are? you’d ask me, then making me listen to my mother a bit differently because, well, she did not say satan’tuh when she was speaking, only when she was praying or preaching or, generally, when she was convicted. so, and of course, you forced me to think about the intentionality of such breath and vocablic rupture and suspension.

well.

we stood outside the diner, and you asked can we pray right quick? i mean, before we leave? and there was no way i could say no to you. you were insistent while asking but once. you were energetic by some sorta withdrawal. it was in your face. you became gravely serious as we stood out there, not knowing how to say goodbye, whether we should shake hands or hug or kiss, right there, in the lot, outside, for all to see. i wanted to do all those things but i did not yet really even know you, i just knew that i felt things that were either dormant or dead or demonic, all concurrently, all for you. so much boldness displayed by your query. so much strength. and conviction, i suppose. i just sorta stood there and you just continued by standing right in front of me, looking me clear into my eyes – i almost began to have tears forming right there, in the bottom of my heart – grabbing my hands with your hands, you lowered your voice a bit and said, ever so gently, we should…we should pray. i know this may a bit strange but i’d like to pray with you. for me? please?

i did not say a thing. i sorta stood there stunned by what was happening. loss of control. then a tear, before you even uttered a word, a tear formed and it dropped and, i suppose because you did not want me to feel embarrassed, you bowed your head and closed your eyes. the dropped tear, you felt and were correct to know, was assent and ascent. i bowed, closed eyes. then we stood there. and the wind blew a bit. and the street lamp overhead in the parking light buzzed a bit, almost backgrounded to the edge of nothingness. faint, ever so faint. you began to moan a bit, really quickly. then father, i’m thankful for the two of us having met today. keep him and me as we leave here. i would certainly like to see him again. in jesus’s name. amen.

but all i heard was i would certainly like to see him again. and you hugged me. then: i hate to sound all James Baldwin-y but, bye-bye baby, so long, and flashed a smile, and got in your car. i never told you but i stood in that parking lot for nearly ten minutes after you drove off. i could not figure out what had just occurred with me, with you, with us. i just knew that i’d see you again. and so, i was very, very happy. so happy that i cried.

these thoughts of that first experience and prayer came to me today as i listened to the first song our group sang at that first concert some years ago, the one i’d written prayer for zelophehad’s children. to say that mount zion church of god in christ knew not what to make of this motley crew of singers, musicians and songs is no misstatement. i don’t think most of them had heard of zelophehad so they were confused about who we were singing to or for. this mattered less when i descended the scales on the b-3 but, still, most of the congregation remained wary of us throughout the two songs we rendered. [render, of course, is the best word for what we did because we had decided – you, i, Salim, Jaylah, Jalisa and Bobby – that we would literally improvise our way through the entire song; we made it up on the fly, though we practiced the structure of the song and knew the keys, we would allow you to lead us from tonal center to tonal center, and the harmonic progressions were up to us to provide as you gave the melody [we might call it the new way to line a hymn]; and, of course, i refused to sing and only sang that one time because i always hated singing in front of people; but i did what i could do on the b-3 in order to cut and augment the sounds you all made. Zelophehad, and his daughters i suspect, would have been proud.]

breathing into our microphones and using the atonal sound of our breath as much as the harmonies, Bobby’s percussive operations and the sonic architectonics provided by your melody and my response? well. we gave the meaning to Zelophehad’s daughters going to Moses, telling him that he should be open to the spirit, to giving them what rightfully belonged to them, even if the laws and customs of their age dictated that women were not able to inherit land. our song was all about contesting conventional notions of the sacred, of the gospel, of the love of christ and the power of community. so we breathed a bit on and off, before and after the beat. we sang harmonies that clashed. and we hummed and buzzed. the congregation wasn’t ready but neither was Moses, so we were alright. the video is funny. you can see the congregation sorta just sitting there and you can see us not paying them any attention. just kept singing, kept insisting, kept pushing through with improvisation and caprice. threw in a couple of Jesus’s for good measure. i suppose it worked. i miss that sorta blending and disagreement, that kinda sound and sociality, that prayer, that praise.

still,

a.- 

from: dtim
to: a
Tuesday, December 15, 2009, 1:22 AM
Subject: Re: until i get *this* outta me

boo! i hope you KNOW that you can send me stuff whenever you want! i sooooo love this and i sooooooo feel you on all of this! and i’m sad you’re not making music anymore, and i know you’re so sad about the way things went down but you’ve gotta know that he loved you…loves you. you’ve GOTTA know that!

don’t feel bad about writing this stuff, this much or whatever. you’re not obsessing. i just know that when i write out my feelings sometimes i understand them better…which is why i’ve been loving the emails you’ve been sending to me. i might not have much to say in response but i’ve been thinking about it a LOT!

write soon…!

moth’s powder [12.15.09]

from: a
to: xoxobffrs
Monday, December 15, 2009, 1:16 AM
Subject: …and another one…

i’m just mad…and angry…and lonely. ultimately, afraid i’ll never have what i had with in, in him. he meant the world to me. the WORLD! but yeah, i’m still writing…or i guess you could say, obsessing.

powder,

maybe i said the right thing at the wrong time; or maybe it was the wrong thing at the right time; or maybe – and more unsettling – the wrong thing at the wrong time. it certainly couldn’t have both been the right thing at the right time unless, that is, it doesn’t matter anyway. seems there is nothing i could’ve said anyway, and seems that whenever it had been said would’ve been the moment of departure. i just have too much hope, too much wishing inside me that will never be fulfilled. and that’s the hardest thing about this all :: THAT I CANNOT CHANGE SHIT … that it matters not what my desire is, that not even force and will and inequitable power would or could return you to me.

i love you, even still, so much.

so much so,
a.-

— —  

from: a
to: dtim
Monday, December 15, 2009, 1:28 AM
Subject: …

i just miss him soooooooo much … will i ever get over this shit? feels like i’m an obsessive ass at this point …

powder,

maybe i said the right thing at the wrong time; or maybe it was the wrong thing at the right time; or maybe – and more unsettling – the wrong thing at the wrong time. it certainly couldn’t have both been the right thing at the right time unless, that is, it doesn’t matter anyway. seems there is nothing i could’ve said anyway, and seems that whenever it had been said would’ve been the moment of departure. i just have too much hope, too much wishing inside me that will never be fulfilled. and that’s the hardest thing about this all :: THAT I CANNOT CHANGE SHIT … that it matters not what my desire is, that not even force and will and inequitable power would or could return you to me.

so fuckin mad at you. so fuckin mad at you … wish you knew how mad i was, and am, at you. that you just left and redoubled that shit so much so that there is nothing, nothing … nothing left to say. but i keep trying to say shit, in hopes and dreams and wishes and, quite ultimately, fear.

i love you, even still, so much.

so much so,
a.-

— — 

from: dtim
to: a
Monday, December 15, 2009, 8:07 AM
Subject: Re: …

You already know that I understand. Why are you beating yourself up, babes? You love him…nothing wrong with that. But I keep thinking of this poem that I heard/watched on youtube – she starts with “if at first you are alone, be patient…” If I can find it, I’ll send it to you. The point is that there is nothing wrong with being alone, or feeling alone. The point is that we can figure out a way to work through the loneliness and all the shit that makes us feel that way.

YOU need to come here for the holidays … I don’t want you to be alone (only a slight pun…lol)… Love you babes!!!

— —  

from: a
to: dtim
Monday, December 15, 2009, 10:39 AM
Subject: Re: …

i’m just mad…and angry…and lonely. ultimately, afraid i’ll never have what i had with in, in him. he meant the world to me. i never knew i could have love like that…and before i knew it, he was gone, twice. i lay in bed, have nightmares, and awaken to tears all of the time. it’s like shit is increasing, more intense these days. i need some sun or something. too much snow here and cold weather.

but anyway…i’d LOVE to see you for the holidays. really. gonna work it out…

— —

from: xoxobffrs
to: a
Monday, December 15, 2009, 3:22 PM
Subject: Re: …and another one…

was at work so i couldn’t respond. shit. wish i could just reach in your heart and fix it. it’ll get better, though…it will! think about the last hard thing you went through and i bet you don’t think about it much these days. that’s because one day, you’ll wake up and shit will just be…different. be patient.

— —

from: a
to: xoxobffrs
Monday, December 15, 2009, 4:21 PM
Subject: Re: …and another one…

can that day PLEASE be today?! lol

moth’s powder [12.14.09]

from: a 
to: a
Sunday, December 14, 2009, 3:11 PM
Subject: selfreminder 

mp,

while rereading the shit i assigned my students for class tomorrow, i was reminded how much i enjoy playing the bass runs and lines and pedal points on the b-3. and, of course, the acoustic environment greatly effects how that bass is heard and felt, either deep in the depths of the flesh or whether it sorta tinkers along, teetering on the trebled troubling clangs, going in one ear and – excuse the corniness of such declaration – out the other. of course, i prefer the sorta architecclesial space where the bass is base [and, don’t lie…that word is sorta hot…portmanteau!]. it’s all about attunement to placement of the leslie speaker in the church. if it is lifted off the ground and raised – imagine it in the front of the church building that must, of necessity, be large, raised twenty or so feet and propped on the wall above the congregation and pulpit, held by a small platform with two chains holding it such that it does not fall to the ground – rather than on the floor where the sound turns vibration turns shaking ground? well, don’t expect much.

when the leslie speaker is raised, it seems to make the sound more diffusive and difficult to pin down; but on the floor, the vibrations and the switches from tremolo for the fast speed (around some 390 rpms) to chorale for the slow speed (around 40 rpms) and back is literally felt in the body. and the bass pedal points are important for this feeling, this movement of the body by the vibration that is heard as sound. but also the body moves by that vibration that one almost does not hear because it plunges depths too deep but is still there. still there. this bass sound, at least for me, is a sorta foundational sound that does not necessarily make all other sound possible, but has the capacity in its depths to be radical and transformative while always moving and on the run [like Tomey’s Turl in Faulkner’s Go Down Moses…the story starting with him running away, almost in game-like poise, for love].

the bass pedals when played with skill and intensity, which we could call intentionality, seem to be a sonic YES and an I CAN and any such agreement with the movement so taken. slow songs, of course you know, are my favorite to play. so much space is opened up for improv and praise when lingering in the moments and notes and chords. the yes lord praise song that we always sung

yes lord, yes lord, yes lord
yes lord, yes lord, yes lord 

yessss, yesssss, yeh-esss
yeh-eh-esss, yeh-eh-esss, yeh-eh-esss 

we’d sing this structure over and over again and it would be the chance for me to learn new methods to convey the same feeling and conviction and desire. curious and fascinating how the word yes is a mode of dissent and acceptance at the same time, highlighting, i think at the very least, the ambivalence of being and of being as human [sort of a Buddhist “existence is suffering” mantra to which the yes lord praise and loss of self in song and structure [ecstasy, even?] replies “true and but: so what? keep going!”].

what i would do with the bass pedal points, i find now that i think about it a bit, to be most moving. because the song has no rhythm [or it is a rhythm that is prior to regulation, so one would need even more attunement to how others are producing the moving along of the song together, as a group, not rushing in font of nor too far behind the other], i would often play the keyboard, left and right hand chords while utilizing the bass pedal points as punctuatory. my father loved to sing this song when we growing up during testimony service and he would sing it with all of the heart and soul he could muster. and so while he’d sing

yessss 

i would use the bass pedal points only at the end of each chorded phrase, using the bass as the point and mode of transition from one sonic phrasing to the other

so if we were in A-flat for example, the yeh would announce itself with left and right hand chords, but the bass would remain heard only in its anticipation until the ehssss and then the bass would drop with my feet touching the 5th (E-flat) to the tonic (A-flat). and then again yeh, which would be only left and right hands, no bottomed bass and then again ehssss with the bass pedal coming in on the 4th (D-flat). and then yet again yeh, which would be left empty at the bottom until ehsss when the bass would drop down, literally by descent from minor-7th (G-flat) to minor-6th (E) to the 5th (E-flat). 

well.

this is all too intricate, so i apologize, but i am trying to give you at least a hint of meaning. just think of it like this: some parts of some words and phrases are accompanied only by left and right hand chording while other words and phrases are accompanied by left and right hand chords along with the bass pedals. and the bass pedal sounds, i think, elucidate a sort of agreement or “holding” or “carrying” of the other sounds, holding and carrying by giving that which is below and beneath the sonic surface.

yes.
a.

from: a 
to: a
Sunday, December 14, 2009, 10:07 PM
Subject: Re: selfreminder 

shit won’t let me go…

and so, what is it to care for the bottom of things? you taught me to listen to it, to pay attention to it, to witness what the bottom can do. of course, there are the black bottom neighborhoods of places like philadelphia. but i’m really thinking about the first time you came to that old basement apartment in which i lived, and that being the first time you slipped off your shoes in front of me and i saw your feet. of course, i was afraid of your visiting my apartment but for your insistence, i let you visit anyway. that basement apartment with the dark mauve [almost rank] carpet, shabby and worn, and the small kitchen with floors that always had a bit of grease left on them, mucked on from years of cooking – not mine – that really could have benefitted from a steam cleaning. and the small bedroom with the full-sized bed [it was the first time i’d slept in something so big]. we sat in the living room of my apartment – as if living room is a good description for it; it really wasn’t much for living but we did do a lot there so, i suppose, life was there too – but we sat there in mostly darkness, the television the only light, because of the heat, it was too hot to have lights on and the window unit was only in the bedroom and it would’ve been a bit presumptuous to invite you in there.

so we sat on the couch that came with the apartment, with the tattered arms that almost barely were revealing of the wiry frame just beneath and propping the whole thing up, that couch that would make that squishy sound as we sat – no matter who sat really, regardless their weight, it was too much for that old couch. it was the couch that came with the apartment as was the full-sized bed. [i did not then realize that i was poor. but i knew that you had more money than i did and so i was a bit more than a bit embarrassed to have you over to visit me, and that embarrassment, i suppose, is what prompted my premonitions of poverty.] i was cool with scraping money together to go to diners late at night just to talk. but to have you enter the basement, smell the sorta closed up smell of years and years of folks who’d lived there and have you, quite possibly, make a judgment of me, my manner, my taste based on my living in some such underground? well. you insisted, so i gave in. and, truth be told, i loved that place for all of its intrusiveness [the walls were thin, so just as we heard my neighbors, after that first time and they saw you leave? well, they knew what they knew because of what they heard].

and so we sat on the couch and you slipped off your driving shoes that you always wore with no socks, and i asked if i could massage your feet. you already were laying in my lap as we talked about something while the shadowed images danced on the thirteen-inch television that was borrowed from a friend of mine. [did i ever tell you that i moved to that location because of its location in the city? but that it was the best that i could get with the money i had? and that all the other, nicer places were much more expensive, at least double what i paid? and that i lived there instead of moving because it never even entered my mind to consider purchasing a car? well. i had bad credit, not that it matters.] but i asked if i could massage your feet and you laughed and laughed more. but you also said

yes.

so you pulled your head reluctantly out of my lap – it was comfortable there, so you said – and as i sat on one end of the couch that was only a shadow’s breath longer than a love seat, you rested your head at the other end of the seat and put your feet in my lap. i took your right foot in my hand and as i massaged, and saw veins and hairs and felt smooth skin and smelled coco butter. and maybe i smelled oranges or tangerines too. as i pressed my fingers into your right foot, you’d sometimes wince, and other times smile. sometimes you leaned back and sighed faintly and at others you giggled a bit. i dug my fingers into the various muscles and parts of your foot, playing with your toes while listening to you breathe. and, well, of course it made sense to lick your foot. but just a bit.

and i’m sure i learned of the importance of feet when i began yoga, the feet as the base of stability and a moving, movable core, as the internal equilibrium and balance for movement and spin, lilt and twist. but of course, we could not end with me playing with the bottom of your feet, taking my index finger and lightly – ever so lightly – drawing circular motions over the ball and the heel, you being tickled and feeling faintly nervous concurrently. that edge and mix of both profane delight and holy terror. you said you wanted to see my bed, that we’d talked long enough.

and i didn’t believe your being versatile because i’d only imagined myself a top, and really it’s all i ever desired but something of you, something in you, compelled me to say

yes to your will.

you taught me how to be penetrated, and how there is something deep and profound and intimate about going in and in and in, about the allowing of another to go in and in and in. you taught this by going in me while at once allowing me to go in you. and of course, i should have known this because the bass pedal points are the bottom which i explored. until you forced me to listen and to feel, i thought [not felt…definitely thought] that the bottom was the debased. you taught me that though base and bass it may be, this position is celebratory. in other words: ain’t shit wrong with penetration and being penetrated. again, i should’ve known this from the way i taunted and teased with bass pedal points as the congregation sang yes lord so many days.

the point i’m trying to make is not about our [wonderful, of course] sexual appetites. i probably remember it a bit too nostalgically anyway. the point of it all is that the experience of your feet and at the time, my new bottomed out versatility occurred the same night that the group we started had our first singing engagement. and so i write to you now because i finally realize what i did not know then: that the name of the group – New Dawns – was really about you and i. of course, notions of newness and dawning was in the forefront of my mind because the first day we met, you were at your father’s church and i visiting, and you preached that day and we met after the service and exchanged numbers and you made a brief remark when we decided to have dinner at a diner that same night. you said something like we need a new dawning, which was your critique of what you called “the church” and its problematics, its stagnation regarding notions of sex and sexism and sexuality. 

i’m thinking about New Dawns because, at this point, your no longer self-imposed but forced silence is but the center of some sorta gravity and i write and write and write to approach this center as if to be the lighted edge that cuts darkness with the new day, shifting every second, barely detected by eyes naked. our group was similarly concerned with tonal centers and energetic fields, we tried to sing of the divine by modeling a new social of intimacy and warmth and love and religiosity. this meant dwelling with tones and singing slow songs with layers and new atonal harmonies and listening to “world” musics and islamic prayers and gregorian chant for the chance and occasion for old new things. and because of the intentional rhythms and arrhythmias we chose for our songs, as the organist, i was able to explore and plunge the bass pedal points in ways i did not know possible that only matched and heightened the ways in which we plunged and explored each others’ bodies. 

my friend – who listened to our music, attended and recorded every concert and appearance – said she was recently watching a video of New Dawns and how, for her, the music we created sounds like the residue of a constantly haunting dream, how our singing and humming and moaning and instrumentality and cadence and structure and harmonies and melodies are similar to when one is abruptly awaken and how one so awaken immediately notices the loss of the material content of the dream the more one tries to recall, so one attempts to reconstruct the dream by rhizomatic feeling, that tendency of using the last sensation and emotion because, we know, it, if anything, remains. well. we use whatever such final feeling to take us back into that which seeks to escape, a gathering and organizing of ephemera, if you will. so, for instance, you wake up with tears in your eyes and you are astonished at such tears. but the materiality of such tears lead you to a feeling of loss and abandonment. but that feeling of the gap and hole lead back to the question: why do i feel this way and based on that question you reconstruct that, in the dream, your best friend from childhood – whom you’ve never met; this is important information – that friend is left standing, waving to you as you – that’s it! you remember – as you drive away with your father in his red cougar with the top down and you see your friend becoming smaller and smaller but on the trunk hood you see the dance of sunlight reflection and shadow of trees quickly animated because of your father’s’ speed; and then you remember that you had had friends before you began moving all over the country but that this dream served as premonition [you began having this dream before you’d even met your father] because now that you move from place to place with such insistence that you trust people less and less and have few that you can call friends. [the you here, of course, is me.]

this recall, working from some such tear or smile or laugh or itch toward that which it hallucinates, then toward some question or general concern, further still to the even broader general field from which any emotion or sensation comes? that, of course, is how i’d write the music New Dawns performed. we were a difficult group to understand because we were after something so primitive and base and foundational and moving. and it was pentecostal only insofar as it was open to moving by the spirit. and tongues. of course, i had not intended to write you so haphazard an email [and still don’t know where i’d send it for you to get it, to get me, to understand, to apprehend]. but i was listening to a few songs of New Dawns and, well, it got me to crying which got me to thinking and got me to writing words and songs. 

i’ve lingered too long, too embarrassed that i still sorta miss you, stuck in the past as it were, with the day we first met. my tears keep bringing me back to that moment, that moment when the questions i’d had were answered, not so much by your words as with your smile and pleasant plea for communion.

i miss that. and you,
a.-