learning

thoughts

i once read this quote on erykah badu's website that life is process of creation instead of one of discovery. i like that idea. being a creative person isn't about being "artsy" or having locks or burning inscents. everyone can, and should, in a sense, be a creative person. the core of me is getting stronger. i'm finding that i have energy to focus. the strength to drag a good a idea out of the realm of thought. as i'm getting older i'm finding that it's not that people don't have good ideas. it's just the followthru that trips so many people up. ask me how i kno...
i guess i had a bit of luck here lately. a while back, by boy evan was back from college and chocolate who plays drums was chillin with his girls at some jazz club that had this band wit some cats from VCU. we end up sitting in, which is to say, the whole band got up, and we sat down. i think towards the end the guitar player ending up sitting in with us. now i feel like our all being that was tacit prophecy.
about 2 weeks ago, i'm in the area and i decide to go in that same cafe and ask the lady for some gigs. no cds, no kit, no nothin. just off a whim. cigarette in hand, she pulls out her calender and starts showing me dates. meyes watering i ask "well don't u need to hear us?" she said, "well ur good right?" and there we have it.
so this is kinda sorta a big deal because it's getting to the point where i have to choose something to do with my life. like committ to something. i'm like a lot of like natural gifts but i don't feel as tho i've been the best steward of them. in terms of learning my craft, practicing, managing my time. but at the same time a guess everybody has to grow up. life isn't just music and everything that i've been through makes me who i am as a (muhfuggin beautiful) person, and your experiences also inform your playing. but having said that, i say i want to be a (jazz) piano player but yet i'm sporadic about my practicing, college seems far away and most of my playing is being done inside soandso's Baptist Church. i think there's a group of cats in Richmond who are started to take me in, and i'm thankful for that. but that's all somebody elses stuff. i want to do my thing. what is my thing? fuck if i kno! i don't think i've taken the time it really takes to find out.
so that's why playing a trio gig right now, at this moment really really really means a lot to me. in a lot of ways. we rehearsed today for like 6 hours and i was just so drained mentally afterwards. the idea of conceptualizing music is hard enough, and then one has to learn how to communicate. i'm nowhere close to that but this felt like a step in that direction. i wrote out a transcription of Peter Martin's arrangement of "You'd B So Nice 2 Cum Home 2" (i kno) and i arranged "Tomorrow" from Annie. No orginials yet but i'm sure they will come. i'm sure it will come. what?

all of it. until then...we playing 7-11 on Sunday the 11th of May at the Artist Underground. 1600 Monument Ave.

cool. peace--Calvin

yoooooooo!

so much on my mind and heart right now. it's been a while since I posted. the past year had been: horrendous, miraculous, dark, scary yet i'm better because of it. my faith is more than what it was. and this is simply because i'm still here breathing. life was the book i read. faith is the wisdom i gained.
in retrospect i understand that like maybe i did too much. online. there was a time in my life when i was out of control and everyone could see everything. which was cool except for that fact that i myself was blind. and that can be kind of embarrassing. like having something stuck in your teeth. makes you grimace when you remember smiling...
so now there's his hesitance...to write, even to play the piano. to articulate things. i just want to be sure i can see myself. and at the same time thats what the blog or a diary was supposed to be about. and i guess involving other people in that process is just a matter of exchanging ideas. we make each other better. dig me?
the online world is funny. u see the randommest things. u keep up with people that otherwise you wouldn't call or write. It's so wierd I saw a lot of my friends finally like getting what they want in life...my boy just pledged alfa beta whatever (LOLfrats always make me thing of like, abc soup, don't ask) and 2 of my girls are in the process of pledging. my friends in new york are making moves, performing and recording on there own and with some big names. and i'm so happy for them all. the pictures are great. so much in a picture. i don't know about a thousand words but they're definately happy. and that's great to see.
so here i am: at home staying in the same bed i stayed in for the first 18 years of my life. in a state that i'm not crazy about. i'm not playing that much, though i would like to be. it's hard to say that you really go to a college if you don't stay on campus. so i go to school and pass by all these gorgeous people who are probably (hopefully?) cool and smart and it's like i could just touch them and or least say hello but i don't. and the painful part is that i could but i don't.
i don't know. it's a challenging place to be in. i'm thankful for so much. a year ago i was depressed. i lost the taste for music. my thinking was slow and muddy and life was like this dream. a movie i was watching. but now i'm getting back to being myself. i'm percieving things worth writing down. i'm creating in my head. i'm inspired and motivated.
but i understand that the whole world isn't just supposed to stop just because i'm ready to start living again. money isn't supposed to start growing on trees, it's not supposed to start raining friends. where do i start tho?
i guess i already have... this is the first thing i've written in months. MONTHS. like riding a bike....faster........
ya trick ya............
ya ya trick...........lol

loose thoughts/blunted on reality

what is real? crystal clear images. digitally. so many pixels u can almost the atoms. lies. all lies. those tits are fake. that muscle was airbrushed. this one starve herself for that figure. that one smiles though inside a black hole threatens to suck her very life away. and yet we imitate them. look at them. on magazine racks. in movies. on television. talk about the latest gossip with that strange mixture of disgust and intruige.
where does reality begin? certainly not with ourselves. looking at a lot of blogs and myspaces and facebooks, and being a using of all three, i'm starting to feel as though we all feel the need to editorialize our own lives. something in my is critical of that desire. it feels to much to me like press. like a smaller imitiation of the media machine we find ourselves caught up in.
what's the point in broadcasting all of our friendships and interactions? i'm starting to feel like the world--ok, my world--is lacking real interaction. of course things like distance make that impossible. but even a phone call is better than the minimal myspace comment, or looking at a picture. because what's the first thing we do for cameras? act unnatural. pose. and even the pictures that catch us in the natural, i'm still posing. [i'll stop using the "we", cause i don't know u] i'm still making split second decisions about how my action will be recieved.
too often i find myself looking at myself. looking at pictures, words, clothes that i've chosen to respresent myself. and very slowly i've gotta confess that i let shit slip out of wack. clothes don't make the man. i'm cool because of the person i am. those representations will never do me justice. so i shouldn't give them that kind of wieght. confession is the first step to recovery.
and now i'm looking at myself looking at myself. lol. a nigga just can't win. but i can think myself free.--reallycalvin

view from the choir-loft

view from the choir-loft

ever since I can remember
black people been performing
we sung our blues out on the fields
and exulted them into jazz and
wrapped them up in rhythm
even made a gospel of them
but mind u
back in the fields
it wasn’t for them
it was always for us
now we perform for different reasons
slaves to ourselves
slaves to money and position and tradition
everything is so different now
can’t u tell how
the artist has to take all the truth out of a song
for it to make it to the radio
that’s why there are so many songs about sexing
and not many about loving
so many songs about living large
and not enough songs about plain honest living.
and so hear I sit
in the choir loft
we just got finished singing
and man it was awful
not all the parts were there,
but honestly, that didn’t bother me
today I feel something different
I stand up on the choir loft
swaying, smiling, trying to will
the tension out of my body
and mimic the glitter and glam
of Bobby Jones Gospel hour on BET
and while up there I begin
to situation begins to shift

we
your babies, your grandbabies, your nieces, nephews, cousins
you,
the congregation
our parents, aunties, uncles, and friends

so much between us is unspoken
as you clap and sway,
you become the choir
and we are the congregation
you want us to know that you like
what we look like up there
robes on, hair done, combed, looking presentable
you applaud and we love it
because everywhere a nuisance and a problem
and here we get to be your joy
but there is a deeper truth to us
but we can’t show you
cause we’re afraid you won’t applaud

we come to church cause u make us
and now you want to teach us
not how to be
but how to perform
so we can stay in your world
so we can act in your play
can’t say the word sex,
though many of us are already having it.
can’t cuss
though cursing would be the only way some of us have
to call our nameless demons
it doesn’t seem to matter, that
some of us are gay,
some of us can’t stop doing drugs,
some of us can’t stop selling them,
some of us don’t have Daddies
so we turn to strangers
for our identity, and love
none of that really seems to matter
as long as on the Sunday you assign
we all get up and sing and dance and smile
while you clap and holler
while you trade the truth of us
for the lie you are so anxious to believe

I want a song
that I can sing
full throated, and free
with a choir or without
in church or not

but right now
this is my story,
these are my blues.

I'm Proud of Hip-Hop

I grew up in the woods of Virginia on on a steady diet of grits, white people, and Viacom. The only ideas about blackness I got were from my home, of course, but then from television, and my wanttobe thug friends at school. Over the years I developed this hatred for hip-hop. An absolute disgust. And it had nothing to do with how the treated the women. It was more about how the men themselves were portrayed. The image of the thug as being hard and gangster. For me it was a prison, the standard by which my white and black friends, girls especially judged me. And since I wasn’t “hard” enough for them, I was considered, for lack of a better word, “soft”. And lets just say it affected me. Unfortunately. Moving on:
Hating hip-hop was also convenient being a church boy, and living in a God-fearing, middle-class house hold. If you haven’t noticed not all black people were created equal. Some have money, and some don’t. Some get their kids into decent school districts, some don’t. Some have money to support their kids dreams, some don’t. The two classes to not mix. I have seen my own family dissolve basically because of class. And it is so wrong. But honestly if I were to go talk to my cuzins right now, one of them would be speaking from a prison cell, the other would be talking about leaving prison. And it would probably be a good conversation, but just as well, it hasn’t happened yet.
The class division in the black division has a lot to do with hip-hop. For instance my parents and their friends say so many ignorant things about hip-hop without understanding it. Without even listening. From a spiritual aspect, they told me it was poision. They actually kept me from radio and television for as long as they could, I was like 12 before I got into my generations culture.
But now I am seeing the light. The [potential] beauty of hip-hop to me is that it is [can be] an BLACK SPACE FOR BLACK PEOPLE TO BE ARTISTICALLY AND ENTRUPRENUTIRALLY CREATIVE. A space for us to define our own astetics, write and live our own history.
If we call each other niggas, at last now we get to work our own fields. Eat the fruits of our own labor. Black people are making advances not just as artists but as businessmen. Diddy, Jay-Z all these cats are making it so that everthing can be done “in house” and potentially beneficial things can be done for the community, because unlike white people, these cats came from our communities. They understand us [hopefully].
I’m just honestly proud to be a part of this generation. Young. Gifted. Black.

jill scott resurfaces

i can tell u the exact night i fell in love with music. not the date, but i remember the night. 2001ish. jill scott live at the landmark theatre. she was pure magic. we made me feel things that were beyond me. the band was so inspiring. the way it wasn't just music but she acted, danced, joked, pondered, felt. all on stage. naked. the lights. the drama. the tension the release. i left with a feeling similar to the one i had the night i lost my virginity. just without the shame.
her new album, "The Real Thing" is due out [ ]. but she's currently on tour.

word on the street is she is going through a divorce from Lyzel. in E flat. .... it's just crazy to me. lets hope it ain't tru. how can she sing our favorite songs? but she did say
"if you have a nightmare, does it mean u stop dreaming."


well jill 4 real...i'm single....lol....