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 [excerpt 2]

remember how we’d lay in bed all night talking until three or four, you falling asleep mid-sentence in my arms as i spooned you only to wake up an hour later and begin again? me, right behind you, my left leg covering your lower body, my left arm on your stomach, your left arm right under mine, your left hand on top of mine almost getting a bit too balmy so we’d separate our hands and move our arms a bit so that cool air could surface between us because – and you know this – holding someone for a while is both beautiful and hot, the humidity emerging between bodies so close that “between” seemed to be a ruse.

you’d wake up and finish that sentence and you’d not even have to look at me and not even open your eyes and barely begin the sentence again before i was reawakened and reengaging and taking my index finger and running it along your arm and taking my head and moving it even closer and deeper still into your collar bone so i could hear you. i wanted to get into you as much as the music. to make you feel what i felt inside me. to transfer the butterflies that i thought about and saw in the pit of my stomach anytime i heard your voice. it never changed. it never changed. it has not changed. i want to hear your voice and still imagine it in the same ways that i’d always imagined it and even as i sit here and write to you i begin to feel that same way again and you’d smell a bit musky with that cologne and oil you wore and i’d take my finger and slip it in your briefs as you talked and play with the hair right down there, twirling and twirling my finger and around and around and making a bit of a knot and then taking the hair and smoothing it out again.

and i would respond to your speaking but my eyes would be closed too and  

that was the romance. and for the assholes who think there’s no knowledge produced or created or experienced in that movement of bodies into each other – fucking could not do what our voices and laying almost still did, though it certainly approached it, yes, indeed – but we learned and taught and dissented while spooning. something about the small moans and shortnesses of breath and the snoring and the smells of our bodies – once sweaty, once humid, once balmy, now cooled and held – and the taste of your ear in my mouth and your lips with the ketchup from the fries we shared earlier that night. remember that night? those nights? what happens when we remember things as sense and not through the senses? what if my memory of you is synesthesia? i don’t want that feeling to go. neither do i want that knowledge. and i think that is the point of 

taking it to church 

or 

taking it just a little higher 

or [another saying that announces the vamp] 

let’s take it home

is the fact that there is something there that can be taken, that has life and breath and spirit, that there is something carried, held previous to the giving of breath as song that also curiously enough remains after the last chord and note and hand clap recedes.

so yes.

isn’t that the music, the sequestering and organizing of sound that we hear? the song is an object that we use to reach things, to convey things. we turn our voices into objects, we instrumentalize our bodies for the master’s use to sing and dance and pray. and with each breath – singing just makes this explicit – two things: we enunciate and articulate the weight and depth and materiality of the thing carried; and we are the weight and depth and materiality being carried. when we take it, we announce that there is something there that compels this movement, some spirited object that resists being stilled and stilling. 

moth’s powder [rambling]

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?

moth’s powder [03.26.10]

from: a
to: a
Thursday, March 26, 2010, 1:18 AM
subject: Re: mp

so i was just looking over things i’d written in my sent box … and figured i should tell you that i started painting – or really, attempting to make art – again. so what i thought was really sweet was the way i took you to my parents’ home, how i showed you the tiny room in which i grew up and the paintings i made when i was just a kid, maybe twelve or thirteen years old and i had dreams of becoming the black Bob Ross, afro and all. and how sweet it was of you to want to bring them home with you, with us, and take one of them to your office so that you could constantly be reminded that i was someone’s child, that i belonged to Roberta and James, that i was at one time in a high chair needing to be fed, and struggling on floors attempting to tie shoes and a child who cried a lot. but and still, a child who attempted to paint, to make a world i’d never seen … no, i’d never been to the mountains…these are a combination of bob ross shows and desire is what i told you they were. not a desire to escape where i grew up – i loved it there, still do, problems and love and all – but i also wanted to see what bob had seen, make me feel the wind to my back or something. anyway…you said that the paintings reminded you of the fact that we all come from some place, that we all had dreams and ideas and goals, even when we were kids … even when they don’t necessarily turn out the way we thought.

and shit…my life is hella different than what i thought it’d be. but that’s neither here…nor there. i just wanted to tell you that i started making art again, though it’s not good at all; been recording the entire process, actually, with a rented camera from school; been using the artist studio and some cheap ass paint i bought from Pearl…expensive place and i’m broke [but when am i not? lol]. anyway. i was inspired by this one video dtim sent me of a little girl making art in her home … she was covered in paint and i’m pretty sure her parents had access to all sorts of financial resources that i’d never think possible. and the comments on youtube were full of people saying things like my kid could do that too! or this isn’t really art! she’s a child! which is just sad. i, on the other hand, was moved by her intentionality. sure, she’s a child, but aren’t we all? and sure, she’s young. but does that mean she cannot make aesthetic choices? the vulgarity of our world comes with the idea that only certain people with the mental capacity can think and conceive of the beautiful, that only certain people with the mental capacity can think and conceive of aesthetic choice. but my nephew hates – HATES – peas … and pineapple … and milk. this dude refuses to consume those things; the very sight of them makes him have a fit. and yeah, he’s only five, but dude knows what he likes – broccoli … how he’s my nephew, i don’t know because you know how i feel about that shit … lol – and what he doesn’t. he makes choices all of the time. so why can this little girl not?

anyway. dtim sent the video not hours after i’d been sitting in the office, longing for home, crying a lot because of these “praise breaks” i’d been listening to. something in the music, in the clapping and stomping and in the shouts and orations, something in those sounds made me sit weakened, almost no energy, so the tears just flowed. so i was already vulnerable, already open. and then dtim sends a video of a little girl making art…and it was  in the middle of that video when she had all this blue paint on her hands and she was bent over and began to clap her hands, lightly, and blue splattered all over the canvas spread on the floor. and i don’t know if i can convey how much that very simple, nuanced, barely there movement hit me with the force of so many angels singing. i sorta wanted to run around the house but, instead, i hopped in the car and drove as quickly as possible to Pearl but they were, of course, closed as it was a sunday and much too late for them to be open. so i went to the supermarket and bought some paint for kids … i needed to get moving as quickly as possible on what seemed to be an awesome idea. and it’s good to know people, “in the industry,” i suppose you could say and so i called up our friend calvin who has the studio that we’ve visited a couple of times a long time ago, and asked if i could use it for a quick experiment. and also, do you have canvas i could borrow? he was more than willing to help me out since he was in a bind and we let him stay with us for a brief stint a few years ago. i drove to his studio quickly, bottles of blue and red acrylic paint, a pair of church shoes i never wear anymore and my laptop in hand, asked him to lay out canvas on the floor – he did – plugged up the laptop and began to play all these testimony service songs and shouting music. what in the hell was i doing? it didn’t come out nearly as well as i envisioned even though i keep trying…keep going back [but not to calvin’s studio for that, at least, but i’ll explain that soon]. calvin tried, really hard, to take me seriously but i could see the smirk on his face and i couldn’t help but laugh midway through my experiment with paint and song but it turned out to be the laughter that allowed my approach most fully toward the feeling, the mood, i was hoping.

so yeah. anyway. i had on tattered old clothing, so i wasn’t much worried about keeping clean and since the shoes i wore for the experiment were inconsequential, i wasn’t much worried about splattering paint on them. calvin laid the canvas on the floor and it was simply huge – exactly what i wanted, in fact. asked him to record it with his camera so i could later see just how silly i looked [i said silly while hoping it would not appear so at all…a momentary pre-deflection or something, a sarcasmical appeal]. i created a playlist of all these songs that would allow me to clap my hands, stomp my feet and shout – you know, the holy dance – rather quickly, up-tempo songs that would make me break a sweat if i were really into it. i pressed play and turned up the volume as high as possible – it wasaround midnight once i finally got everything set up and started. i slipped on the shoes and stood in the middle of the floor, opened a bottle of the blue paint and poured it all over my hands like the little girl and began to clap to the beat. the paint wasn’t splattering nearly as far as i thought it would, so i took more blue paint and poured it over my hands and began to clap, again, to the rhythm of the beat. ding dong. jokes.

as luck would have it, after the 4’08” rendition of “there’s a storm out on the ocean” – a rather mildly paced “fast” song … nothing too strenuous – some shout music that i’d downloaded from youtube came on  [some church in brooklyn where the women let out small yelps and hollers, where the kids would laugh and jump up and down because their mothers were shouting and not paying much attention to them, where the men would say hooooo loudly]. so i poured paint on the canvas-floor and began to dance, began to shout, as if i were in church with them; eyes were closed now, mouth was frowned now, lips were flattened out now; i was moving to the rhythm one-two-three-dip, one-two-three-dip. now, keep in mind that i haven’t seriously done this in a long while so it took a minute to get my decomposure; that is, i was way too serious – instead of playful and jubilant – about it at first…i was too conscious of calvin sitting in the corner looking. but as i saw him smirk a bit, it broke me out of my seriousness just momentarily enough to open out into something else. only after his smirk, and my smile and laughter, did i close my eyes and listen to the people praising, to the drums, to the b-3 creating sonic distance between the bass and the use of the notes in the highest register, all drawbars pulled out, that some thing happened. i made sure that my feet were close to the paint, so i was shouting in a puddle of blue and kept pouring paint and kept shouting … and i danced as i would have had i been in church [even though i was the main organist, i was known for jumping off the bench and getting at least thirty seconds of praise … of course, you’ve seen me in such play … lol].

by this time, calvin saw that i was in but that the paint wasn’t moving any further than my feet, so he opened a bottle of red and poured it wherever my feet danced [i did not, of course, notice this until after the thirteen minutes of music went off…i was definitely into it; so i discovered his collaboration only after i opened my eyes and saw blues, reds and the breakthrough of purples in various intensities, depending upon how hard and where i danced, how much i mixed and, literally, scratched the canvas with old-new colors]. anyway. i opened my eyes once the thirteen minutes had ceased, hella tired, feeling as if i’d touched some otherwise, as if i’d worshipped even while maintaining a disbelief [my theological resistance to why people often say they worship in the first place]. it’s as if i’d discovered something in the movement itself, something that could not be contained by a confessional faith, something that is not merely transcendent but that is, most fundamentally, constitutive. upon opening my eyes, the canvas had a few splotches of color here and there, a few strings of paint every now and then. it was still far too empty; one person simply can’t do the kind of spiritual-material thing [and i use the word thing here intentionally; it’s etymology, meaning the place of gathering to discuss matters of concern – though i’m sure “discuss” could also easily index a desire to work out, a desire to perform, a desire to think – is important to what i’m envisioning for the soon to come] alone. so though i’ve been practicing by myself a lot lately – with all sorts of paint – i’m hoping to invite others to play along, to recreate a church service where the residue of such sociality will be the colors we leave behind.

i’ve said all that to say: the little girl quickened in me the notion that even clapping, even shouting – any movement, or hairsbreadth nuance, of breathing, of dilation – contains within it the potentia for the thing we call art. such movement simply needs the work energy to convert. her clapped hands with blue made me want to see what it would look like, what the sorta pentecostalist praise i love would splatter on the ground and upon walls; i wanted to see what praise looks like after the bodies – the material force of such creation – left the building. would i be able to look at the canvas and see something of such gathering, of such moving of spirit, by spirit, for spirit? i chuckled a bit after i was done with the initial experiment but i’m becoming much more adept with color mixture and i’m getting my good breathing back too … which means i’ve convinced myself that there might be something to this experimentation, in color, in song, after all.

and, so, well…i guess there’s not much harm in telling you that some thing happened with calvin in the studio and we’ve been trying to figure it out. after my brief initial chuckle that initial evening with my hypothesized ecstatics, he walked up to me, face serious as hell and said that was sooooo hot! shit… and took some of red paint in the bottle he did not once put down the entire time – or at least, i don’t think he did … i did peek at him every now and dip, every once and a skip – poured it on his right hand [mind you, we were standing stomach to stomach, just a hairsbreadth away really], threw the bottle to the ground, rubbed his left hand into his right palm, then placed his hands on my face, brought his lips in, a hairsbreadth away from mine and i smelled his breath – marlboro lights, weed and sweet tea … it didn’t stink but smelled alive, i suppose – and then rubbed his hands on my face a bit, moved my head around a bit, turning it, kissing my neck, then saying i’m so…i’m so sorry. too soon. i suppose i tensed up.

i haven’t stopped visiting his studio. but we haven’t directly talked of what happened yet. he’s simply given me tips and pointers for colors and history of performance art. good shit. but i decided that it’d be best not to perform these experiments alone with him in his studio because i don’t know what’s happening with us. not sure what all of this is meaning but i’m glad – are you glad that i can breathe again? – glad that i seem to be at least open to spending time with someone. now i just need to turn him into you…and we’ll be good…lol.

i love you. really. even still. ever still.
a. 

titled moth’s powder, the fiction i’m presently writing seeks to think through a protocol for writing to absence, for writing about absence. a collection about the enunciative force of love, of queerness, of blackness, the main character — a. — continually writes about his love for the gone person, the gone institution, the gone way of life. to figure out a method to make that absence speak back, or mollify, is his project. inspired by the epistolary From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate by Nathaniel Mackey, moth’s powder is a continual revision of itself, saying over and over again, ‘i love you’ and yet, and still, ‘i love you’: an improvisational, pentecostalist plea.

moth’s powder [12.17/20.09]

from: a
to: a
Thursday, December 17, 2009, 1:32 AM
Subject: …

moth’s powder,

it is simply undeniable that there are social worlds that invite others to join in. it’s not an essentialist claim but neither is it an anti-essentialist claim. it’s something i think my friend Arthur describes as the “materialist retentionist” strain or grain that runs in and through and over black folks. he thinks that there are “levels” of culture that are enacted and performed based on material availability. he was over the crib yesterday and pretty much making the argument that when the enslaved were transported to the americas, whatever culture they could carry in their heads – the patterns, musics, dance; the ways of breathing and doing, ways of caring and sharing, ways of conjuring and conceiving – could more easily be passed from generation to generation as well as dispersed amongst people. it’s a pretty sophisticated argument to say something like we remember, or maybe i’ve gotten his theory totally wrong.   

but you know i’ve been talking about pentecostalism as if it’s some sorta monolithic group. but there are all kinds of pentecostals with all sorts of doctrinal beliefs. but what i find most curious and most interesting is how there is a pretty consistent theme of movement, motion, migration, that most pentecostals – even if they do not themselves individually engage – do no balk at the sight of what others find unseemly praise.

of course, there’s something seemingly a bit problematic in the construction of the above paragraph, beginning every statement as if it is some such would be adversarial conjunctive utterance. but the rhythmic feeling i was going for in that paragraph with all the buts is the same sorta quality for which, if anything, New Dawns aspired toward, a sorta pentecostal open-ended-like resistance to resolve. each utterance of the but, not contradicted or stood in contradistinction, but opened up a way, a way of escape, widened the ever widening circle of thought, emotion.

and it is exactly how New Dawns would perform. but Bobby would introduce a rhythm. but you’d follow, with the bare architectaural blueprint, the bare bones, so to speak, of what would eventually become song. what you’d hum or moan or line out was both more and less than melody, it was evacuative structure, withdrawn breath, tendency and tentativity of the voice, hesitance and reticence, giving sound and words while remaining every so wary of them being somehow conclusive. stuttering, scatting, we might say that it was a poetics of pentecostalism: just as one plays at shouting, initiates by that slight and jubilant dance – deliberative – ever so, and a bit, lightly, not glibly but with eyes open, looking around while the feet tap-tap-dip, tap-tap-dip. well. your singing would begin with some kind of chant or repetition. but we’d hear. but Jaylah would come first with that alto, full of vibrato and conviction, sometimes in a minor, plaintive strain against your melody though it was difficult to know. but it was not until Jaylah’s entry that i would begin to figure out a way, a way towards harmonics, following and creating harmonic phrasing, clicking the tremolo then the chorale and back again. but Jalisa would enter, with her soprano register, oft changing the tonal center with her voice. cutting, augmenting what was already there. but Salim would round out the voices, tenor holding some such thread of melody. but then, and only after the entry of all voices; but then, and only after i was chording, would i end phrases with the bass pedal points. but of course there were tambourines, but much, much later.

i remember the first time we sang like that, each one entering the sonic conversation from the pew, wherever we were seated and the congregation seemed dumbfounded. dumbfounded but they could not also help but be moved by our hollers and wails and tonalities. we revised prayer for zelophehad’s children to zelophehad’s daughters, and with the revision of the title was also the introduction of 5/4 rhythmic pacing and spacing, some new inheritable but nonreproductive call and call against response. our voices didn’t so much respond to the other as much as the voices called out in recognition for the other [it’s like the difference between glossolalia and xenolalia … the former is for the other, utterance as commons but incomprehensible; the latter is of a “self,” an assumed possible core stability that we call identity … but more on that some other time]. each voice was allowed to occupy its sonic space, a field or zone of voiced movement, wherein the voices tried not to touch and agree as much as they tried to detect distance and dwell together by buoyant engagement. the rhythm, of course, was Bobby’s fault, but we made do and did something new. and true to form, voices simply fell out when they were exhausted from singing. the congregation would always and undeniably be in it by the time we were done, so the open-endedness worked, they filled in the space where our sound once occupied, we moved them and were so moved.

well.

i get angry when folks tell me, as did a couple of acquaintances said after one of our performances – you were there; you’d remember if you could – it don’t take all that!, that what we did was a shade on the side of excessive, too expressive and unnecessary. pretty much the same sorta critique i heard about growing up at the storefront pentecostal church, where services were too long and we were too tired to do anything once we got home sundays except sleep. it don’t take all that is really a claim about authenticity, saying that, as my friend reminded me of Gertrude Stein’s statement, there is no there there. it’s a claim that approximates the idea thatsince it does not ”take all that” to have an encounter with the divine, that which happens there, the “all that,” that excessive and expressive strain is nothing other than posturing that posits something that is anything but “real.”  i can almost hear someone saying if i can be quiet and composed and have an encounter with the divine, your sweat is merely performance. the weird thing is this, though: i think most pentecostals would agree and say, no, it doesn’t “take all that.”  but whereas the former is critique, the pentecostal claim is to say but we still do it, and most importantly including the idea, and you should join us.

i’m pretty cool with the idea that pentecostals don’t get everything right. what i love about the tradition, though, is that it is fundamentally invitational, it constantly says to come in, eat, have fun, dance even if you don’t know how to, tarry, sweat with us. the music of New Dawns was seeking that notion of joining and togetherness. we never “finished” our songs but left them undone on purpose. it’s like this: pentecostalism is about transfer, the in-between. things don’t end, energy just modulates from moment to moment. we did not aspire towards perfection but towards pursuit, towards journey, towards carrying. sure. we could’ve sung normal songs and sung with staid composure. the performances toward the divine we created did not necessitate the excess. but the excess was the coolest part of the performances, i think.

of course, there was too much excess, not in terms of New Dawns, but you did charge me with that in terms of our relationship. i was, what was it? too intense? i believe that is what you said. but it’s funny how time changed things because, initially, it was i who was being pursued and thought you a bit too…much. there was the nadir when we sorta matched each other in intensity and fucking and all that … and things were cool for a while, when you thought it was a passing phase, that eventually you’d take up the intensity again and i’d repress myself. let you lead the way or some shit. but you changed me, so it was a new way of life, a fact i did not want to change. that it was not only intense for you but for me, quite quotidian to be and do in such excessive a manner? well. i suppose it was just…just too much. eloquence is not necessary here. it was just too much. and thus, the end. of New Dawns. of us. i wish we learned to expect more out of life, such that the quotidian is not excessive and the too much is a way of life. i still hold out for that possibility. at least between us.

love,

a.