Redemption Song

Yesterday I wanted to post a question for myself, it went along the lines of "is it better to write slowly and get there eventually or to pound them (the words) out and get there more quickly."

I stayed stuck on the matter for a while. Last night, the answer came and found me in an article from The Atlantic. It encouraged the labor, the long labor, of wordsmithing.

I have a song I discovered in a friend's collection that has been keeping me regular company for nearly a week now. The song has crawled into my consciousness and seems to be girding my spine and reinforcing my stomach, for I've found all kinds of courage I thought I lacked.

I started speaking up for myself yesterday, for my dreams. Yes, it's unrealistic to want to be a writer (of all things, a writer?) but real life is painful enough without abandoning your dreams in the process. Dear Reader, do you know what happens when dreams are ignored? They do not shrivel up like a raisin in the sun. No, they become the deepest, longest, most persistent nightmares imaginable. Or worse, they are unimaginable because the force it requires to ignore a dream, or to set it aside, is the full force of your being.

That's a lot of force. It is more force than the majority of people encounter, I am constantly reminded that a great many people never have to call on their basic will to live in order to stay alive. I find that, in itself, fascinating.

So, I'm working my dream. working, working, working. The long version of work, the type that redeems a soul rocked too hard by nightmares.

Love,

Camille

There Goes My Hero

Today I flew to new york and took the M60 to 125th street. I've been in a fog of sleeplessness and grief over the death of Michael Jackson. I'm one of those holdouts who just didn't care what happened in his personal life because I loved his music and that was what he gave for public consumption. The rest - the allegations, the public furor, the judgment - well, frankly that wasn't much of my business and I didn't really care. I hated to see someone who was so obviously fragile get dragged through the labrynthine legal system, but there it is. You can't be great forever and that's just life.

I've been grieving. Sometimes I wonder why there seems to be a pall over my day, or my heart just seems less joyful, then I recall I've lost someone dear, whom I admired and loved from my earliest memories. And I am more gentle with myself. It is gratifying to hear his music blaring from streetcorners and to see photos of him populating the windows of shops and street vendor carts. It was most gratifying to see hundreds milling about the Apollo Theater writing their thoughts and peaceful journey messages on the walls surrounding the Apollo. It was the love I think he lived for, but never truly felt he deserved.

New York, the first city of my dreams; it is so wonderful to walk these familiar sidewalks, to reconnect with those who helped form me when I mostly resisted direction and suggestion. On the subway this evening I struck up conversation with William from Georgia, who had a slow southern-boy cadence and beautiful eyes. We talked about turning 30 and opening your eyes and realizing, "I don't have to screw up any more." Well, not the reckless screw ups. I'd wondered what turning 30 would do for me. It damn sure didn't feel any different than 26-29. Then I started to notice the sea change of the people around me. My close friends started forming close romantic relationships, having babies, discarding old philosophies and talking about stability. I began to consider all of those things. Now I carry the label of the one who almost died, but it's almost incidental to the larger questions being mulled over by all who surround me.

I don't have any answers, but life tends to provide those in time. Or time provides those if you keep living. Or both. Both. The trick is to keep living, resisting the urge to just exist or always take the easy way, and occasionally applying your heart to matters where the mind can make a wrong decision to see if it feels right.

Michael's death sucks an artist out of this world. That hurts. It makes those artists who defined and delighted recent generations that much more precious. It makes the act of creation that much more important - creation of life, creation of ideas, creation of change, creation of words on a page...creation.

A quote from the inimitable Toni Morrison: "I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can't teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort."

Comfort. I like that word, especially as it applies to writing, which is just uncomfortable work. Today I wrote about my experience taking a year to write. It was maddening. I would sit down at my typewriter and the blank page would look back at me. I would sometimes be reduced to typing one letter for lines, just to put something on the paper, then I would expand that letter to include a vowel (the single letter was always a consonant) and then a word, then a sentence and I would switch off the part of my brain that lives to critique sentences so I could write a few more.

I produced a lot of pages that way. I also spent a great deal of time seeking solace in the world outside my windows, wandering the streets and striking up odd conversation with strangers on the street or at the market or on the MUNI to buffer the crowded loneliness of voices in my head. I thought the other day about babies and how my body seems ill suited to producing a version of my genetic code. I thought that my babies will have to be words, and deeds, and acts of love to share with the world, these things will have to survive me, they will have to speak for me when I can no longer speak for myself.

I think Michael left us a great, great deal to hear - great acts and great actions that speak on his behalf. When he lived, those actions and words were drowned out by his very act of continuing to draw breath while shrinking from the view of the world. Now that he is gone, the words, the actions, the memory of his life must stand on its own. It has great legs...and it moonwalks.

Preciso Me Encontrar

The translation I've figured for the title is "Necessary to Find Me" and it's from a song by Brazilian songwriter singer Cartola, who received zero recognition until he'd been dead for 20 good years. The song has always mesmerized me, maybe i will try to add it to this blog so it will play while someone reads.

But I especially like the idea of necessary to find me. My dearest friend Kyle decided to spend her spring break at my casa. she's downstairs watching The Devil Wears Prada and thoroughly vegging out. We've eaten out, spent more money than I actually have and laughed and talked and had a raging good time. But at a slow pace. She was there for the first surgery, she knows the clues when I'm flagging and she doesn't like to see me going down so we keep it simple.

Today, in spite of myself, I bought an Easter Dress. At every turn I try and try and try some more to reject my traditional middle-class black upbringing but it's like kicking the white horse or something, i can-not do it completely.If someone is coming to visit me I HAVE to clean the house. I HAVE to clean it, it's a compulsion i fight by leaving the house, shopping, reading books, driving aimlessly but within 30 minutes of my guests' arrival I am a whirlwind of industry - shooing out dustballs, vaccuming, dusting, washing dishes, wiping down all surfaces and extra-sanitizing the restrooms. I put on new sheets and open the window so the breeze airs out any odors. I spritz a bit of Lemongrass Linen spray on the bed linen and berry spray in the air. 30 minutes, without fail, i cannot and will not stop doing this.

Anyway, I went tot he store to buy jeans or shoes or towels or anything EXCEPT an easter dress. my poor grandmother, i know she wants in her deepest heart for me to be with her in church as proof positive that not all her descendents are self-centered asses, and I found myself today in the store gravitating toward the dresses with the excuse "well, i couldn't find any shoes and they did have a cute dress last week." it fit like a dream and then i declared it my Easter Dress. No forethought, but now i'm spiritually committed to going to Easter service and being Christian. Again. Catholics lapse, what do Christians do? I'm more of an amalgamation of Christian (by indoctrination), Buddhist (by exposure), Taoist (by choice), and Catholic (cause it's complex and has lots of holidays!).

In celebration of my buddhist and catholic traditions i also bought two new rosary necklaces and bracelets from some monastery dedicted to St. Benedict in Rome. You gotta love Ebay. I get Chooka rainboots from China before they hit the stores in the U.S. or Europe because someone threw them off the back of the truck (euphamism for they went missing from the factory's intended shipment) and now i'm gettin gmy holy relics straight from the source - patrizia. That's her name. Oddly enough, the majority of the time I've spent in St. Lucia has been at a Benedictine Monastery run by nuns. Mother Superior is Italian and oh my god, her cooking makes me believe in a higher power! never do I eat better and they only cook what they can grow. the wine - well, i'm well accustomed to cold red wine at this point. Those holidays at the monastary helped me keep my sanity and once i even met a delightful priest who was on holiday, Father Tom - if i looked in my journals i could give you his URL. He's always got something stimulating up, some dissertation on the heavens and god's will and human frailty. He used to be an engineer and left the field because it was cold and heartless. Then God Found Him.

So, we're back to the beginning - necessary to find me. Right now I find myself in a nervolous place, there are people depending on me do accomplish things I no longer believe i can do before I have surgery and take at least 3 weeks getting over anesthesia and the terrible shock of seeing where they cut me open (for a girl this vain it's a real deal killer. i didn't mind surgery as much as i minded the sutured incisions, I kept repeating "they cut me! they cut me!" in my head, of course.) I do have quite a bit of writing to catch up on, I just got my first edits back from one of my readers and they are exactly what I needed, just a push in the direction of making the writing cleaner, clearer, less dependent upon what is in my head and better translated for the recipient. Go Reader!

Preciso Me Encontrar is a love song by the way. It is necessary to find the one whom you were born to love, but jesus, you may have to look long and hard and a little past yourself to get there.

best of luck.

Aint Nothin Free But jesus

Or so says the folks from the south. Maybe your people say it too. So, here I am, reading over writings at least 10 years old, sometimes more than that and I'm not old enough to feel accomplished by all of this. More relieved. I can meet the minimum numbers required by all the writing competitions. If you can't impress them with the quality, then at least overwhelm them with the quanitity, right?

Okay, that may work for the already wealthy and accomplished and the preponderance of spoken word "artists" (hint: most people aren't really listening so just scream the most incendiary phrases and you'll get ego-soothing applause). Instead, I'm going for quality and quantity. Suddenly I have faith in my faith of my words. heck, they are more dependable than my entire reproductive system - at least they are predictable and while they are often the result of pain, they are never a source of pain.

that Neil Gaiman's laid-back style is really rubbing off on me. I like the way some writers approach the craft. I would tend to say everyone except Americans, who are entirely too self-concious about being artists, but there are tortured artists the world over. But when I think of the writers i admire for just writing and approaching the whole venture the way one would approach cleaning the carpet after a year of college partying or refinishing a chair by Home Depot instruction - I like the idea of the simplicity of it all. You have a vocabulary, you use it, you expand it, you get curiouser and curiouser about the world and at the ned of the day you're trying to lie without showing the fierce machinations behind your poker face, though sometimes you smile at the shared joke. I like that approach to writing. Bono once said he admired hip hop artists because they understood capitalism - you wanna a hip hop branded chair - have a hip hop branded chair. it's a communal art form without the airs and snobbery of rock, classical music blah blah blah.

maybe i am a hip hop writer. in spirit. i mean, i am of the appropriate generation. we shall see.