BKLYN sweatbox.

what’s up world — chillin’ with a glass of watermelon lemonade, hoping that i’m not gonna clothesline anybody with my freakin’ electric cord at this here cafe. it is a humid sweaty disgusting and glorious mess in brooklyn right now, ai-yuh…been a little bit more grasshopper than ant lately, so gettin’ back to the do it to it this week, but it’s been fun, ha!

taking a ‘lil hiatus during the summer months (will be doing a few shows here and there) to just kick it and get my solo show, screenplay, and poetry manuscript done this summer before my heavy touring season hits again in the fall. so a lot of planting, sowing, tending, growing…so yup, grrowr, WATCH OUT, ha!

to be present in the writing process every time i come to the laptop or the page. like honor, like prayer, like celebration, like love. an intimate meeting with the page, the word, the self, the world, the heart, to just sit with it and not turn away, to not be afraid of what i will or won’t find. (understanding more than anything, i write with my heart, smear it on the page all messy and unrefined and that’s the gift, the blessing of it — intellect and technician be damned, they don’t run this mutha’ altho’ they try to, ha!)…lots of happy creative fertility — and i’m much about it…writing for writing’s sake and i like it

let’s see since i got back from cali…been doin’ the brooklyn summer in a serious way, slow-walking in flip flops and summer skirts down the hot-ass concrete, more dusk ’til dawn booty-shaking, and enjoying the crush of humanity that is new york in the summertime, when everybody comes out looking fly, spirits loose…everyone and everything brilliant, fresh, possible — those nights you wish would last forever. y’know, living

saw “sex and the city” in manhattan (i did wear my heels; i couldn’t resist, i’m a SATC junkie). i’ve never heard so much rampant feminine squealing in a movie theater (or anywhere for that matter), full of gratuitous fashion porn moments (i.e. couture bridal gowns, diva diamonds, and of course, killer stilettos)…but i think it’s ridiculous that the show is criticized for its portrayal of men — ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! not one of the men on the show is a prostitute or has turned up dead, which would be the case for probably 90% of the portrayals of women in pop culture throughout human history.

other snippets of the last two weeks — note to people of non-asian descent: when trying to relate to an asian person, try normal conversation like “hi, how are you? what’s your name? what do you do?” vs. rhapsodizing poetic about how much you love wushu/qigong/buddhism/studied for 90 years at the shaolin temple with sifu yaddayaddayadda, etc. — this happened to me at least FOUR TIMES in the last week. i understand that others may be excited about meeting an asian person and sharing all their random (and largely irrelevant to my lived daily reality of my culture as an asian person) knowledge about asia with said asian person, but believe me, non-asian-related conversation works just as well, thanks.

whoa, where’d my happy summer vibe go? ha! anyhoo, YAY! for barack finally getting the party nomination. thank goodness…more on that next blog, and also went to see the brown girls burlesque tribute (myspace.com/browngirlsburlesque) in honor of prince’s 50th birthday, which was saucy, scandalous, and downright brilliant.

got to go to the gnarls barkley show at irving plaza last night, which was a MIRACLE. i felt so integrated, like any separation in my body and spirit completely dissolved, any separation in the world at all — it was so hot in there, that cee-lo took his shirt off, but yes, he and danger mouse are nothing short of genius. the music (above any or all persona or marketing or media hype), plain and simple, was the healing, the salvation, the star. missed opening act janelle monae but caught battles who were raw and rocked the hell out of the spot…

okey smokey…back to poetry…

superkells

pure performance.

what’s up world? a gorgeous day in bk today — 3 cutie pies on my block were backsliding into the cars parked on the street in their baby plastic escalade which made me wanna yell out “xiao xin” — which made me think how funny it is that in mandarin to say “watch out” or “be careful” translates literally into “little heart” like you’ve got to shrink your passion some to keep yourself in check — have i written about that in this blog before? i forget.

performed at abc no rio last night which was lots of fun (thanks christine!), and just got back from the bay on saturday after performing at the cal state east bay ethnic studies graduation celebration (thanks eiko!), which was good stuff too…caught up with lots and lots of spoken word/apia and taiwanese activist community fam in the bay, which was very necessary — booty-shaking with dj phatrick on the 1’s and 2’s at devil’s pie and poleng, carolyn, mitch, sahra, debbie, vu bang, r.j., steve, chin, weyland, jeff, kiwi, adriel, nico, chinaka, watsky, rafael, reynelle — got to see the intergenerational writers event over at kearny street workshop and also lalah hathaway (donny hathaway’s daughter) at yoshi’s oakland, which was amazing.

i have a lot of convo’s with folks about how the little shuffle-ly self-effacing (or self-promoting) intros before poems are just as much a part of the performance as the poem itself, but seeing lalah hathaway perform, made me wonder what poetry would be like if we harnessed the raw power of poetry, pure performance. no hyping, no congeniality, just the song, just the poem, and the rawness of the god in that. her work needed no introduction. it was a revelation, and her scatting made me realize that i’d never REALLY heard scatting before. (thanks weyland!) also, it’s nice to hear an artist whose work and reach will only deepen with time

lot of shenanigans with chicago and l.a. friends in nyc and convo’s with my friend mitch in the bay about culture as commodity, and how some accumulate “culture” like other people accumulate shoes or cars — it’s the same consumerism and elitism, just different stuff — also, this whole complex for marginalized artists re: whether our identities create niches or pigeonholes — can we embrace the niche and pimp external expectations in order to flip them? do we end up playing the system, ourselves, or both?

been reading gao xingjian’s “the case for literature” (chinese nobel laureate exile in paris who wrote “soul mountain”) — to think of the enormous lengths that people have gone to around the world to have the freedom to write. we downright squander our goddamn freedoms in the u.s. on so much dumb shit in the pursuit of profit (can’t tell you how many times i’ve been told in my career to dumb down my work) or in the pursuit of maintaining a neatly defined image of an individual or community (is it leftist enough? radical enough? hip hop enough? asian enough? whatever.)

gao xingjian sez’ “The so-called writer is nothing more than an individual speaking or writing, and whether he is listened to or read is for others to choose. The writer is not a hero acting on the orders of the people, nor is he worthy of worship as an idol, but he is certainly not a criminal or an enemy of the people. At times, he and his writings will encounter problems simply because of the needs of others. When the authorities need to manufacture a few enemies to divert people’s attention, writers will become sacrifices. Worse still, writers who have been duped actually think it is a great honour to be sacrificed.”

–> reckoning lately that what one believes about oneself is approx. 19,756,982,365 times more important than what others believe about that person, positively or negatively. it’s scientific fact. i checked it out.

until next smell,
kells the big-hearted

ritual complex.

man, i am sucking at keeping up with my blog. but anyhoo…’twas a dark and stormy night in northfield, massachusetts. just finished up doing a performance and mini-poetry intensive workshop with some of the wonderful students at northfield mount hermon school a ‘lil bit past curfew. now, i’m in a big quiet guesthouse in the countryside, with literally not a light in the sky or a noise in this huge expanse of space. poet at peace at last.

so let’s see…since last writing, got to perform and kick it with the folks at depauw university (yes, g-castle!), where i got to catch up with old friends and new over $3 pitchers of beer, and then that weekend performed at the 50 shots, 50 artists event honoring the memory of sean bell at the brecht forum in new york, which was very necessary. i think i was most moved by the haitian drummers and the aztec dance group that performed at the end of the night. as the aztec dance group paid homage to the 6 directions of the elements and danced and chanted, as the shakers on their legs clacked, it made me think about how folk traditions in music and dance and storytelling provide such an important release emotionally. they so often combine what is powerful and joyful and painful and physical and spiritual all in one breath, one movement. the complexity of ritual. ritual complex.

then (with parenthetical thoughts on it all)…lemme see, got to see the mary j. blige (sheer athleticism) and jay-z (icon eternal) concert and kanye west (the future now) glow in the dark tour but missed n.e.r.d. (who rocked HARD) and lupe (my chi-town hero) at msg but caught rihanna (who i actually enjoyed, even tho’ i freakin’ hate that murderer song), the slam finals over at bar 13 (so dope to see people grow inside their body of work, voice, and technique), visiting with friends from chicago by way of santa fe, and london (spreading our groundedness, community, and love everywhere), talking shop with other writers like novelists and creative non-fiction people, which brought about a lot of epiphanies for me.

questions like: whom do you give up your own authority to and why? how much can improving your art improve your life and how much can improving your life improve your art? what are your own standards for what you create beyond anyone else’s opinions - when will you be most satisfied? what is the path to believing in yourself more than you would demand anyone else to believe in you? what is the line between fiction and non-fiction and how does that impact people in the worlds around you?

lemme see, what else? just performed at kalamazoo college and did a workshop there over the last couple of days (thanks kelsay and zach and ann and amber!), which was oodles of fun. i learned that michigan has the second largest korean adoptee population in the country as well as what a guinea pig mating call looks like. so all kinds of educational, ha! been listening listening listening as hard and thoroughly as i can to everything around me…to life.

prob a lot of stuff that i’m forgetting, but also performed at an event focused on raising money for social change arts projects that was held at peter’s (as in folk legend superstars peter, paul, and mary) house where he and mary sang songs and said of the activism of the 60’s that although many paid dearly for the multiple movements of those times, that time period was infinitely fulfilling. they further called into question who will sing the songs of protest today for 500,000 people like peter, paul, and mary did during the march on washington over 45 years ago in 1963?

who indeed? not sure. workin’ on it. but i’ll bet u that facebook will be involved.

back in bk tomorrow, heading off to cali next week…

feeling. blessed.

kells

wright or wrong.

what up world…man, i’ve been thinking about starting this blog about five different times since my last blog on all totally different topics, so needless to say, a lot of life goin’ on.

reading erich fromm’s escape from freedom right now on the recommendation of a friend…peep this:

“the more [man] gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness with man and nature and the more he becomes an ‘individual,’ has no choice but to unite himself with the world in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the world as destroy his freedom and the integrity of his individual self.”

more often than not if you ask folks about freedom, they say it’s something that they don’t know, right? like sean bell cops acquitted of all charges, like 36 shootings in chicago two weekends ago, like u.s. offensives in afghanistan, like voter suppression, like china and tibet, like corporate media bought from music magazines on up, like this and like that, like this and like that.

but i’ve been really meditating on the fact that this is CRITICAL. this is KEY. for us to understand what FREEDOM is on a community and personal level. it has to happen. what does it mean to unite with the spontanaiety of love and productive work? how does one feel safe and secure in a world while maintaining her or his own uniqueness? how to let the you be you and the i be i and the we be we and the they be they?

doing the open mic in champaign-urbana before my feature made me so keenly aware that THIS is what democracy looks like. every voice. every experience. every opportunity. every person. sing.

one of the students asked me what i was reading lately (christin o’keefe aptowicz’s words in your face, which brings up a lot of interesting points about slam in nyc — which makes me wonder who will archive all the poets beyond the slam scene and beyond new york, who will shape and frame that narrative of how we remember it through history and, in essence, the spectrum of democratic expression itself…

so, in the spirit of the names of all the chicago poets (many from the slam scene, many NOT from the slam scene; many from the green mill, from mental graffiti that was birthed from the ashes of lit ex) that i came across in my earlier years in the scene: marc smith, patricia smith, regie gibson, dean hacker, tyehimba jess, tara betts, mario smith, avery r. young, krista franklin, mama maria mccray, monica lee copeland, kent foreman, ken green, dan ferri, cin salach, sheila donohue, krystal ashe, anacron, mars gamba adisa caulton, shappy, jason pettis, marlon esguerra, ben ortiz, trooper tru, billy tuggle, kevin coval, bonafide rojas, dennis kim, anida ali, gina magsombol, kathy bardales, dan sullivan, nikki patin, patrick sanchez, kurt heintz, theaster gates, marvin tate, poetree chicago, lucy anderton, mugabe, motep…

and many more who i’m sure i will remember tomorrow and the next day and the day after that (and the institutions of some like it black and the batey urbano and the asian american artists collective and many many more) - but this is just a minute sampling of those whom i have shared rooms with, shared poetry with, shared lives with, whose words and experiences i spent so many nights listening to (and an even tinier slice of the poetry scene and oral expression itself in chicago)…in the name of history and poetry and democracy. may our words and lives sing —> (yes, all of that was a parenthetical with 2 paragraph breaks. and this is a parenthetical inside a parenthetical))

but i thought, well, just as good a question is who am i listening to (lupe fiasco, amy winehouse, liz phair, common), who i’m watching (katt williams, kathy griffin, dave chapelle, rev. wright, barack obama), oral culture, oral literature, we learn how to put together words from everything around us. there is such beauty and necessity in having that range of global influences. what is literate is not just what you read, but what you listen to and how you listen.

all this stuff with rev. wright makes me sad. i feel like the mainstream media is forcing barack into a corner to separate himself from the rage and pain that so many communities feel here in the u.s. like we’re supposed to ignore it all towards this happy coalition. it’s fuckin’ depressing to me that this media ploy worked. i mean, who paid off who to get this so jacked up, really?

incredible shows over at columbia university (thanks APAAM!), and mo beaseley’s urban erotika (which was new and different, talaam acey also in the house that night, thanks mo and april!), and going back to champaign-urbana (thanks bryana, ross, and may!), well, let’s just say the spoken word revolution can and needs to happen everywhere, not just in our urban centers, and a motorcycle ride through the cornfields was just what this poet-gurl needed

feeling special,
kells

and yes, it’s true. i did love “harold and kumar: escape from guantanamo bay.” cringe-worthy, crass, smart and fun.